Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“I’ll show you exactly who you laid your hands on.”

Yoon Taehee murmured to himself as he dragged the long sword across the floor.

“W-what is that...?”

Kim Yekwon trembled, clutching his head.

A man in old-fashioned clothing had appeared, then transformed into a sword.

It was impossible to believe, even after seeing it with his own eyes.

Offering a Naja as a sacrifice to his teacher had been something agreed upon within the Office of Narye. But they had never asked for this kind of sacrifice.

What Naja in the world could control ghosts?

And not stray ghosts, either, but intelligent ones...

The long sword—whether one called it a weapon or a ghost—was so finely honed it looked capable of slicing through even a falling strand of hair. An eerie, weighty spiritual force poured from the blade.

Sword in hand, Yoon Taehee strode toward Kim Yekwon, who had curled up among the debris.

Kim Yekwon turned pale and fled into a corner. Clutching his head, shaking violently, he screamed.

“Ahhh! D-don’t come any closer!”

Yoon Taehee’s hand stopped mid-swing.

“No. No, this isn’t right...”

He could not end his life so easily.

He had to return exactly what he had received.

Yoon Taehee tossed the sword aside.

It clattered across the floor.

For a moment, he must have lost his mind.

He should not end this so cleanly. Yoon Taehee realized he was not thinking straight. His thoughts, which had never stopped for even an instant, seemed to have sunk into a thick fog.

“Sorry. I’m a little worked up right now. Give me a moment.”

Yoon Taehee muttered flatly, belatedly apologizing to Paehyeon for throwing him aside so carelessly while he was in sword form.

He wiped the blood running down his forehead with his forearm and removed the wristwatch from his left hand.

“I shouldn’t kill him carelessly.”

Leaving the sword aside for now, Yoon Taehee grabbed Kim Yekwon by the collar with an expressionless face, his wristwatch clenched in his fist like brass knuckles.

When he shook his hand lightly, the metal watch gave a hard clink.

Then Yoon Taehee pinned Kim Yekwon down with one knee pressed into his abdomen and began punching him without mercy.

“Bite down. Unless you want your tongue cut off.”

His spiritual force was sealed, so these were only barehanded blows.

But Yoon Taehee did not care.

In pure physical strength, he was no weaker than Jaegyeom.

A chilling rage flashed through Yoon Taehee’s eyes as he beat Kim Yekwon as though possessed. His face, focused only on striking with all his strength, held a wordless madness, malice, and raw desire for revenge.

His ribs were broken, but he could not even feel the pain.

Yoon Taehee swung his fists like a madman.

Only after a long while did he finally let go.

By then, Kim Yekwon had crumpled miserably to the floor.

Breathing roughly, Yoon Taehee looked down at him with an icy gaze.

It was the gaze of someone standing above another person and knowing it.

Collapsed on the floor, Kim Yekwon pleaded in a half-conscious daze.

“Please... spare me...”

Yoon Taehee stared expressionlessly at the watch around his fist.

Then he threw the shattered watch aside and picked up the long sword he had discarded earlier.

Brushing his blood-soaked bangs back with one bloodied hand, Yoon Taehee approached Kim Yekwon.

His bloodstained shoe came down hard on Kim Yekwon’s hand.

“Stay still. I always repay what I’m given.”

Kim Yekwon writhed and screamed.

Yoon Taehee raised the hand holding the sword. Stepping on Kim Yekwon’s fingers to hold them in place, he stared blankly at the ceiling and murmured in a low voice.

“Don’t move.”

With that careless command, Paehyeon’s blade pierced through Kim Yekwon’s hand and drove into the floor.

“Aaaaargh!”

Kim Yekwon screamed from the unbearable pain.

Born an ordinary person and poorly pretending to be gifted, he had no way of overpowering a naturally powerful gifted person. That was why they had sealed Yoon Taehee’s spiritual force in the first place.

But the moment Yoon Taehee summoned a ghost, all of it became meaningless.

There was no way someone like this could be used as a “sacrifice.”

He might truly die here today.

Kim Yekwon raised his uninjured hand and clutched at the toe of Yoon Taehee’s shoe, begging.

“Please... please... s-spare me...”

The desperate plea came out almost like a mutter to himself.

Yoon Taehee silently looked down at Kim Yekwon and listened closely to his sobbing.

Then he inhaled deeply, calming himself, and relaxed his shoulders.

“Don’t worry. I won’t kill you.”

Yoon Taehee answered readily.

Of course, he did not add the rest.

Not right now.

There were things he needed to hear before killing him.

Kim Yekwon, half out of his mind, lifted his head with difficulty, as though his neck were creaking.

“I-is that true...?”

Yoon Taehee smiled silently with his bloodstained face.

“It would be a waste to kill you.”

“Tell me everything you know about immortality.”

Yoon Taehee asked Kim Yekwon several questions.

The first was about the immortality Kim Yekwon had mentioned.

Beaten so badly his face was almost unrecognizable, Kim Yekwon sobbed as he began to # Nоvеlight # speak.

What came out of his mouth was unexpected.

“Mermaids... If you consume the blood and flesh of mermaids, you can achieve immortality...”

At the unexpected answer, Yoon Taehee paused and narrowed his eyes slightly.

As it happened, he had already been tracking clues about mermaids and immortality.

He had not expected a lead about mermaids to appear here.

“Capture mermaids... separate their flesh and blood... then use them as ingredients for a spell...”

According to Kim Yekwon, among obsolete forms of alchemy, there was a method that completely separated a mermaid’s blood and flesh and used them as sacrificial ingredients to create a pill.

If one ate that “immortality pill,” one would become immortal.

But once mermaids became extinct, the spell could no longer be performed.

“So... as an alternative, there’s another spell that uses the gifted as sacrifices...”

Yoon Taehee listened with narrowed eyes.

All of this was new information to him.

According to Kim Yekwon, because mermaids were so difficult to obtain as alchemical ingredients, they had begun performing a spell using the gifted as substitute sacrifices. That was why they had been searching for gifted people to offer up.

“So your teacher became immortal using this immortality pill?”

“Yes.”

“Then what does it mean to become your teacher’s ‘vessel’?”

Kim Yekwon hesitated, then continued haltingly.

“There was a problem with the immortality pill made from the gifted.”

The immortality pill created using the gifted instead of mermaids had a fatal flaw.

Aging.

The pill could not stop the body from growing old.

The person would not die, but as time passed, they would gradually weaken, shrivel into something like a mummy, and lose bodily function.

“To compensate for that problem, gifted blood was needed. To maintain youth, he had to drink gifted blood regularly. Otherwise, he couldn’t stay young.”

That was why Kim Yekwon had been responsible for finding gifted people outside and supplying their blood to his teacher.

As the head of a welfare foundation, he ran orphanages and nursing homes in order to locate the gifted, extort blood from them, and offer it to his teacher.

“But Master... perhaps because he grew tired of drinking gifted blood every day to stave off aging, ordered me this time to bring him a new shell. He wanted to transfer his soul into a fresh vessel...”

According to Kim Yekwon, his teacher wanted to create another immortality pill using a powerful gifted person as the sacrifice and obtain an entirely new vessel.

That was why they could not use just anyone.

They needed someone strong.

And so they had targeted Naja from the Exorcism Unit, said to be the strongest among the gifted, as sacrifices.

“....”

Yoon Taehee listened quietly, then fell into thought with an expressionless face.

A sacrifice.

The person they had originally targeted was probably Kang Ibin.

She had been the one assigned to the dispatch at first, and she had said the order came from the head of the Covert Division.

This might be more deeply connected to the upper ranks at headquarters than he had thought.

The same went for the leak of the spiritual-force spray developed by the Ritual Implements Department. It was possible it had been made inside the Office for this very purpose from the beginning.

Now that he thought about it, the Office should already know he had been captured here.

And yet no support had arrived.

Under normal circumstances, more than enough time had passed for them to reach this place.

Kang Ibin seemed to have returned safely to headquarters, and she had spoken with Seok Juryeon immediately before the infiltration.

Even if she had not explained the full circumstances, Seok Juryeon would have sensed something was wrong from that brief call alone.

“Then my last question.”

Yoon Taehee, who had been lost in thought for a moment, spoke in a low voice.

“Who is this ‘teacher’ you keep talking about?”

Kim Yekwon, who had obediently answered until now, shut his mouth.

“I... I can’t say that...”

“Oh, really? Then I’ll make you say it.”

Yoon Taehee nodded, tapped Kim Yekwon lightly on the head with the toe of his shoe, then stepped firmly on his uninjured wrist.

The moment he picked up a nearby brick, Kim Yekwon sensed what was coming and wailed.

“Aaaaargh! I can’t say it!”

Just as Yoon Taehee was about to raise the brick—

Kim Yekwon suddenly spat something out through incoherent sobs.

“Ugh... huu... hic...”

What he spat out was a small piece of flesh.

Half his tongue.

He had bitten off his own tongue.

Yoon Taehee narrowed his eyes.

Kim Yekwon, lying on the floor, retched and vomited black liquid instead of blood.

The black liquid he spewed from his mouth abruptly began to writhe and gather together, transforming in the blink of an eye into a leech-like worm.

Yoon Taehee’s eyes widened, and he drew the sword.

But the black leech, no larger than a finger, quickly slipped between the debris and vanished.

“I’m... I’m sorry... to the great... cough... presence...”

With half his tongue gone, Kim Yekwon mumbled something unintelligible, seemingly speaking to someone unknown.

Then he smiled like a madman and suddenly burst into tears.

His head drooped limply.

With a thud, his head hit the floor.

Just like that, he collapsed.

Yoon Taehee quickly knelt and felt Kim Yekwon’s neck.

His pulse had stopped.

Slowly, Yoon Taehee straightened.

Then he stared blankly up at the ceiling and muttered,

“Ah, fuck...”