Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“Is money really the reason?”

Master Yeohye’s voice was gentle and calm, carrying the weight of deep insight.

As she implied, money itself was secondary. At best, it was a shallow stream flowing alongside what truly mattered.

What Yoon Taehee genuinely wanted was something else entirely.

To plant a sense of crisis inside the Office of Narye.

That was the Leader’s true objective.

“...”

After a brief silence, Yoon Taehee spoke quietly.

“No. Honestly, I could live without money.”

A soft laugh slipped from him as he lowered his gaze.

“The truth is, I want to swim in bigger waters.”

“Bigger waters...”

Master Yeohye drew on another cigarette.

“And why do you want bigger waters?”

“To become a dragon, you need deep water.”

A rough laugh escaped her at the clever answer, which neatly echoed her earlier comment about the black serpent coiled in his belly.

“And why become a dragon?”

“To face a tiger, at minimum, you need to be a dragon.”

Master Yeohye smiled faintly as she met his unwavering gaze, clearly entertained by the exchange.

“So you intend to fight the tiger?”

“Yes.”

“And why?”

“I’m tired of watching it.”

His smile disappeared.

“And I can’t stand it anymore.”

The cryptic conversation continued, each of them probing at the other beneath layers of metaphor.

“Tired of it...”

Smoke drifted slowly from her lips.

“What exactly disgusts you so much?”

“The way it acts like this land belongs to it.”

For a moment, Master Yeohye simply looked at him.

“And who do you think this land belongs to instead?”

“Well.”

Yoon Taehee rubbed his chin with a faint grin.

“The sun rises during the day, and the moon rises at night. If someone asked whether the sun or the moon owned the sky...”

His eyes curved slightly.

“What would you answer, Master?”

Master Yeohye’s eyes widened before she burst into hearty laughter.

“Ahh, indeed.”

Nodding, she chuckled to herself.

“The sun and moon simply exist there.”

Their entire conversation had been wrapped in metaphor, but Master Yeohye was perceptive enough to understand exactly what the young man before her was implying.

Humans, ghosts, gods, spirits, mythical creatures—countless beings shared this land.

So why did humans alone behave as though they were its rightful rulers?

Master Yeohye studied him quietly ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ before speaking.

“You would’ve been better suited to our side than theirs.”

Like most shamans, she thought poorly of the Office of Narye. In her eyes, it was full of people who cared only about humans.

But Yoon Taehee was different.

From their conversation alone, she could already sense the deep resentment he held toward the Office’s human-centered order.

“I’ve always had a weakness for rebels.”

Turning a janggi piece between her fingers, Master Yeohye spoke again after a long pause.

“However...”

Her gaze lowered to the board.

“I’m a shaman who connects heaven and earth. Whether the tiger claims to rule or the dragon does, it has nothing to do with me.”

She flicked ash from her cigarette.

“I’ve no desire to get caught in the middle of their fight.”

Though indirect, her refusal was clear enough.

Yoon Taehee understood immediately and smiled faintly.

“I’m old. I don’t have much time left. My hearing’s bad, and I forget things the moment I hear them.”

Her voice remained mild.

“So this old woman can’t help you, no matter what we discussed today. Let’s finish the game and part ways quietly.”

She was an extraordinarily wise person.

In that gentle refusal, she was also promising silence.

“I understand.”

Yoon Taehee answered softly.

And with that, their strange conversation came to an end.

The two resumed their game in silence.

Some time later, Yoon Taehee smiled slightly and spoke.

“Checkmate.”

One move later, her king would fall.

After a long back-and-forth struggle, the game had finally ended.

Master Yeohye widened her eyes in surprise before laughing aloud.

“Well now. If I’d actually removed the cannon and chariot, I’d have been in serious trouble.”

Adjusting her posture, she scratched lightly at her head.

“How’s a young man supposed to beat up an old woman like this?”

“My grandfather never managed to beat me either.”

“What? Then why didn’t you ask me to handicap myself?”

She clicked her tongue playfully in mock scolding, and Yoon Taehee laughed openly.

“Aah, if you’d only moved one piece back, you wouldn’t have had to lower the jujube price...”

As promised, Master Yeohye offered to reduce the price of the jujubes.

But Yoon Taehee shook his head.

“I was joking.”

He paid the full amount instead.

Though politeness might have called for refusing the money, Master Yeohye accepted it without comment and began filling a plastic bag with jujubes.

Every single one she packed was bruised or worm-eaten.

“If you can’t eat them, toss them in the dirt for fertilizer or something.”

Yoon Taehee peered into the bag.

Then a slow smile spread across his face.

“...”

He lifted his eyes.

Despite her age, Master Yeohye’s gaze remained sharp and piercing.

“The human heart is a strange thing,” she said softly.

“It always leans somewhere in the end.”

The old shaman, who had deliberately handed him nothing but the discarded leftovers, smiled faintly.

“Next time, ask me to remove the cannon and chariot first.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“You understand what I mean, don’t you?”

***

From that day onward, Master Yeohye quietly became aligned with the Leader.

Requests too dangerous for ordinary handling—or tasks a shaman could not touch—began flowing toward Byeoksadan through her hands.

The perceptive old shaman became both bridge and broker between Byeoksadan and its clients.

Byeoksadan’s headquarters remained deeply hidden in the mountains, and every client came through Master Yeohye alone. Most of those clients were influential figures, and the Leader demanded outrageous sums from them whenever he pleased.

Ironically, the image of a ruthless man obsessed with money made people trust him more.

Despite his overwhelming workload, the Leader still visited the mountain headquarters two or three times a month to meet clients personally.

Over the past several years, nearly two hundred people had passed through Byeoksadan.

Rumors naturally began spreading.

People whispered that Master Yeohye was using Byeoksadan for her work.

That the Leader of Byeoksadan could freely change his appearance.

That touching the hem of his red robe granted divine revelations.

Every single rumor was false.

Yoon Taehee had deliberately spread them himself.

It was all meant to confuse the Office of Narye’s information network and bury his real identity beneath layers of nonsense.

The strategy worked perfectly.

By now, nobody even considered the possibility that Byeoksadan’s Leader might be human.

In the rumors, the Leader had already become an intelligent ghost.

“By the way, what happened to those people from earlier?”

The Leader suddenly remembered Kim Seokchul and Seo Jeongtak.

“They’re in the next room,” Paehyeon replied. “Still unconscious.”

“And their hands?”

The Leader’s robe carried an extremely vicious grudge.

An ordinary person could never withstand something saturated with such dense, foul energy.

Kim Seokchul was a gifted, not an ordinary human—but after receiving divine power, he had still spent years with his spiritual senses closed off. He could hardly be called a particularly sturdy vessel.

And when too much is forced into a fragile vessel, it naturally breaks.

That was why Kim Seokchul’s hand had fallen off.

Fortunately, they handled it quickly enough. Otherwise, he would have lost it permanently.

“I reattached them.”

The Leader nodded before leaning back lazily in his chair.

“Heukje.”

The door creaked open a moment later.

Dressed in spotless white robes, Heukje stepped soundlessly into the room. His footsteps were so light they were almost eerie.

Approaching the Leader, he bowed.

“You called for me, Leader.”

“A fly wandered in.”

The Leader gestured lazily toward the adjacent room.

“Mix up their memories.”

“Yes, understood.”

“Layer dream upon dream so they can’t tell what’s real anymore.”

The reason Yoon Taehee spread so many absurd rumors was simple.

Confusion.

The more uncertainty surrounding Byeoksadan’s Leader, the harder it became for the Office to grasp the truth.

And it had worked.

Nobody suspected the Leader was human anymore.

But he hadn’t anticipated someone hearing the rumors and tracking him down personally.

On one hand, it meant the rumors were spreading well.

On the other, it meant information about Byeoksadan’s location had leaked somewhere.

Or there was a breach.

This time, Heukje could clean things up by burying the intruders beneath layered dreams and scrambled memories.

But once outsiders had successfully infiltrated the place, it could no longer be considered safe.

“Oh, right.”

Resting his chin against one hand, the Leader stared absently toward the next room before speaking again.

“What about the thing I asked you to do yesterday?”

Heukje immediately understood what he meant.

The night before, the Leader had ordered him to enter a boy’s dream.