Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“Are you out of your mind?”

After a brief silence, Seok Juryeon let out a sigh.

Whether it was true or a joke, either way, it meant the same thing. If he was serious, he’d lost his mind. And if he was joking in a situation like this, he’d still lost his mind.

Yoon Taehee only chuckled softly and changed the subject as though nothing had happened.

“So. The notice?”

He stepped closer to the table. The Naja gathered around it instinctively parted for him. Kang Ibin and Jaegyeom used the opening to slip back beside the rest of Team 1.

Only after squeezing into the edge of the crowd did Jaegyeom finally see what everyone had been staring at.

吾周遊四方

不可以木目

人子不爲始

再臨於穢土

辟邪團主白

A large sheet of hanji was spread across the table, wide enough to cover more than half its surface. Bold black Chinese characters had been brushed across it in heavy ink.

Yoon Taehee leaned down slightly.

“This is it?”

In an instant, everyone’s eyes lowered to the notice again.

Standing diagonally across from him, Jaegyeom wasn’t /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ looking at the paper at all. He was secretly watching Yoon Taehee instead.

He didn’t even realize he was doing it.

As though sensing the stare, Yoon Taehee suddenly looked up. Jaegyeom immediately dropped his gaze to the notice.

Unlike Seok Juryeon and the senior Naja, who had clear views from the front, Jaegyeom had to tilt his head sideways to read the characters from where he stood. The others around him were doing the same.

Then Yoon Taehee straightened slightly and began reading the lines aloud, quietly interpreting them as he went.

“吾周遊四方.

Even after traveling the entire world.”

“不可以木目.

A single tree cannot be seen.”

“人子不爲始.

Humans cannot become the foundation.”

“再臨於穢土.

They shall return to this defiled land once more.”

“辟邪團主白.

Declared by the master of the Byeoksadan.”

When he finished reading, Yoon Taehee slipped both hands into his pockets.

Most of the Naja present could read Chinese characters well enough already. They had understood the contents the moment they saw them. Taehee’s interpretation merely acted as a signal, and the seminar room immediately erupted into louder discussion. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Pointing lazily at the notice, he asked,

“Where was it found?”

Han Juyoung, who had been assisting Seok Juryeon, answered immediately.

“It was discovered attached to the back gate of headquarters about an hour ago. Naja from the Exorcism Unit secured it directly. To ordinary people, it just looked like a blank white sheet of paper, but something had been done to make the writing visible only to gifted people.”

The first person to discover it had apparently been an employee from Jongmyo’s shrine management office. He’d noticed the large sheet of paper stuck to the gate and tried to remove it, but no matter what he did, it wouldn’t come off.

Only after the Naja arrived and infused spiritual force into their hands did the paper peel away effortlessly, as though nothing had been holding it there at all.

As Han Juyoung explained, Yoon Taehee leaned one hand against the table and stared silently down at the notice.

His expression was unreadable.

The atmosphere in the seminar room gradually sank into something heavy.

“The master of the Byeoksadan...”

Seok Juryeon muttered coldly under her breath.

Yoon Taehee ran a hand through his hair, then half sat against the edge of the table.

“For now, there are three things we can conclude from this.”

His voice remained calm.

“First, the Byeoksadan truly exists. Second, there’s a leader directing it. And third...”

A faint smile touched the corners of his mouth.

“That leader has absolutely no intention of hiding either fact.”

Oh Kiwoong, chief of Team 4 of the Exorcism Unit, nodded immediately.

“That’s right. And judging from the use of Chinese characters and the way it refers to humans as ‘Inja,’ the master of the Byeoksadan is almost certainly an old spirit.”

The contents were symbolic, vague, and yet strangely meaningful.

But the intention behind posting this directly on the back gate of headquarters could not have been clearer.

The master of the Byeoksadan was openly announcing both his own existence and the organization’s existence to the Office of Narye.

Oh Kiwoong stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“They must’ve realized headquarters has started moving against them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of making something only gifted people could read.”

The corner of Yoon Taehee’s mouth curled upward.

“They knew long before that. We summoned Master Yeohye ourselves and practically handed over our movements while asking questions. If this were a game of Go, the Covert Division already lost us the opening move.”

The sudden, merciless criticism of the Covert Division caught Oh Kiwoong off guard. He instinctively glanced around the room despite knowing full well only Naja from the Exorcism Unit were present.

Just in case.

“So this is a provocation,” he muttered awkwardly. “A pretty bold one.”

Han Juyoung, who had been quietly observing the discussion, summarized neatly,

“They’re inviting us to play tag. They’re setting the board first.”

Seok Juryeon nodded grimly.

In other words, the message was simple.

Come catch me if you can.

Her instincts from the very beginning had not been wrong. The moment she first heard the name Byeoksadan, she had sensed something dangerous budding beneath it.

“But...”

Go Junhyung spoke cautiously.

“Who exactly is supposed to ‘return to this land’?”

The room quieted slightly.

Even after wandering the whole world and failing to find a single tree, and even though humans could not become the foundation... they would return to this land.

But who was they?

The notice never explicitly said.

As soon as Go Junhyung pointed it out, murmurs spread among the gathered Naja.

“Isn’t it obviously talking about spirits? Probably the master himself.”

“Right. Especially with the line about humans not becoming the foundation.”

“Then it means the Byeoksadan itself becomes the foundation instead.”

“A ghost daring to imitate humans now...”

As the discussion gradually tilted toward the assumption that the master himself was the one returning, a voice suddenly cut through the room.

“Bangsangsi.”

“....”

“....”

“....”

The seminar room fell silent as though ice water had been poured over it.

Seok Juryeon’s expression hardened instantly.

Yoon Taehee, who had been sitting casually on the edge of the table listening to the conversation, abruptly lifted his head.

Every gaze in the room turned toward the speaker.

Jaegyeom.

“What did you just say?”

The sudden mention of Bangsangsi stunned everyone.

Seok Juryeon fixed her eyes on the boy standing at the edge of the crowd.

Jaegyeom was staring intently at the notice, utterly absorbed, as though trying to solve a puzzle. His gaze followed the brushstrokes one by one.

Then he muttered quietly,

“This is paja. Character decomposition.”

At those words, Yoon Taehee slowly pushed himself upright.

Something sharp flashed briefly through his eyes.

“...Paja?”

Jaegyeom nodded and pointed at the second line.

“不可以木目.”

“When people talk about seeing something, they don’t usually use the character ‘目’ like this. I mean... they can, technically, but...”

Still staring at the notice, he spoke distractedly, almost like someone talking in his sleep.

“If it were me, I wouldn’t have used this character. So it felt strange.”

His fingertip tapped the final two characters.

“But if you combine 木 and 目 together, you get 相. Then it makes sense why they specifically used 目 here.”

The nearby Team 1 members stared at him in surprise.

The other Naja did too.

Everyone in the room had turned their attention to Jaegyeom by now, but he remained completely focused on the notice itself, oblivious to the stares.

“And here too. If you take the final character from each line...”

His fingertip moved slowly downward.

吾周遊四(方)

不可以(木目)

人子不爲(始)

“If you read them vertically...”

方 木目 始

“...it becomes Bangsangsi.”

Then his finger slid down to the next line.

再臨於穢土

“And if you isolate only ‘Bangsangsi’ from the text, the meaning changes into...”

Jaegyeom looked up slightly.

“‘Bangsangsi will return to this land.’”

The moment the words left his mouth, deathly silence swallowed the seminar room whole.

Jaegyeom continued staring at the notice, lost in thought.

Wait. Bangsangsi is returning? Then what happens to the seal? Bangsangsi was the master of the former Office of Narye. Wasn’t he already gone? No... then what exactly is the connection between Bangsangsi and the master of the Byeoksadan...

“....”

Suddenly, Jaegyeom looked up.

Only then did reality slam back into him.

Every single person in the room was staring at him.

His thoughts froze.

Shit.

If a mere probationary Naja knew about Bangsangsi, wouldn’t that immediately seem suspicious?

He genuinely hadn’t meant to step forward like this.

He’d only been trying not to look at Yoon Taehee directly. That was why he’d forced himself to focus on the notice so intensely in the first place.

And that had led him here.

Flustered, Jaegyeom instinctively looked toward Taehee.

It was the first time their eyes had met properly since entering the seminar room.

But Yoon Taehee was looking at him with an utterly strange expression.

A faint crease sat between his brows, something rare for him. Yet he didn’t seem angry.

It was impossible to describe.

His eyes were focused entirely on Jaegyeom, but he wasn’t blinking, almost as though time itself had stopped while he stared.

“....”

Jaegyeom swallowed hard.

Cold sweat crawled slowly down his spine.

His eyes practically begged, Say something. Anything.

As though he’d understood perfectly, Yoon Taehee suddenly spoke.

“That was unbelievably sexy.”

It was the first thing he had said to Jaegyeom all day.