The Mask Puzzle stops your progress cold during the What Lurks in the Shadows mission, inside the Underground Laboratory. Four masks drop from the ceiling of a dojo-style room, and the game asks you to shoot them with your Oni Bow. The trick is the sequence, and the answer is hidden on the wall behind you.
Quick answer: Facing the four hanging masks, shoot them from left to right in this order: third mask, fourth mask, first mask, second mask.
Where the Mask Puzzle appears
The puzzle sits in the Underground Laboratory during the What Lurks in the Shadows mission, in the section sometimes called Dokyo’s Dungeon. You first reach a large door with an unsettling face built into its lock, and it will not open. Your objective becomes finding a way to trigger the door’s mechanism.
Head up the stairs from that door and push through the surrounding hallways, clearing out Genma and the roaming Hitotsume Gasa enemies along the way. When you enter the dojo, a cutscene plays and four masks drop from the ceiling. The objective switches to Solve the Mask Puzzle.
How the shadow clue works
The four hanging masks are your targets, but shooting them randomly does nothing. The correct order is revealed by the identical masks mounted on the opposite wall, each lit by an overhead spotlight against paper shoji.
Step out through the doorway and look at the shadows those masks cast. Light streams through the small slits and holes in each design, and the number of openings that show through tells you the shooting order. Treat each shadow as a shape with holes rather than a face. The mask with one opening is shot first, the mask with two openings second, and so on up to four.
Note: If you wait around in the room, Shizuka drops hints about the masks looking like archery targets and about the shadows, which points you toward the same solution.
Mask shooting order
Stand in the main room facing the four hanging masks and number them from left to right. Fire your Oni Bow in the sequence below. There is no timer and no penalty for a wrong shot, so you can recheck the shadows and continue if you miss the order.
| Shot | Mask position (left to right) | Openings in shadow |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Third mask | One |
| 2nd | Fourth mask (far right) | Two |
| 3rd | First mask (far left) | Three |
| 4th | Second mask | Four |
Claiming the Unsettling Mask and opening the door
Once all four masks are hit in the correct sequence, the hanging masks pull upward and the cage in the room opens. Inside is the Unsettling Mask. This is not just a collectible. It is the key needed for the face mechanism on the locked door you found earlier.
Grab the mask and return to that large door. Interact with it while carrying the Unsettling Mask, and a cutscene shows the mask slotting into the face on the lock. The door’s eyes glow red, confirming the mechanism is active, and the door opens so you can continue deeper into the laboratory.
If nothing happens at the door, it is because the mask has not been picked up yet or you shot the sequence incorrectly and the cage never opened. Recheck the shadows, hit the masks in the one-two-three-four opening order, then take the Unsettling Mask before heading back. With the door open, the rest of the mission is a straight run of combat before the boss.
