Highlights of Eps 492-496
SPOILER ALERT
Moved by Soojin's words about the death of Vin's mother, Seongji decided to attack the shaman. He made sure, however, to set ablaze some of the things that he stored in his hut.
Seongji fought the genius James and kept on winning. But James realized his potentials midway and changed his game. Still, Seongji pressed on, to James annoyance (and this determination is true to Seongji's name meaning, "total determination").
Just then, the Gwang Yoo Trio came unannounced while dragging the Cheonliang Fam kids as their hostages, with Beolgu especially having overpowered Vin.
Worried for his pupils' safety, Seongji told Shinmyeong that he knew of the shaman's bad karma with Vin's father. As such, he was willing to bear the brunt of the shaman's wrath for Vin's sake.
So the Gwang Yoo Trio beat him up. Then the shaman proceeded to add to Seongji's torments by removing every one of his sixth fingers and toes. The Kojima brothers grabbed the King by the hair, gleeful to see him so weakened.
All through the tortures, to James' annoyance and amusement, Seongji withstood the pain in silence so as not to wake his pupils up.
Ruthless as always, Shinmyeong proceeded to kill Vin in spite of Seongji's pleas, but before the shaman could do anything, five young men came: the Kings of the first generation.
Each King received news of Seongji's smoke signal for help.
So, Jaegyeon (The King of Incheon) raced his car to Cheonliang, only for Taesoo (the King of Ansan) to crush it, followed by Seokdu (the King of Suwon), and Gongseob (the King of Daegu), who even urinated on it, as was his habit. Jaegyeon nearly lost his mind, but, spearheaded by Jichang, they refocused their attention on the matter at hand.
The Kings defeated the henchmen first, but to their shock and indignance, they saw bloodied Seongji, whose sixth fingers and toes were already sawed off.
To Jichang's chagrin, Seongji admitted that he could've avoided the tortures, but he refused to lead James's budding four crews and that sealed his doom.
The Kings fought against the Gwang Yoo Trio, with Taesoo defeating Jaesu in no time and moving on to Beolgu, Gongseob challenging Gwang, Jichang trying to tackle both Kojima Brothers (the so-called Gwijeon) and Seokdu was tasked by Jichang to protect Seongji. Meanwhile, Jaegyeon talked to James, who declined to answer the King's indirect challenge.
Around them, the duels commenced. Beolgu, who apparently learned his techniques from Gabryong himself, taunted Taesoo about only using his fists (the taunting that would later get to Taesoo once it was made by James instead). Gwang taunted Gongseob about his muscle weakness and speed, while the Gwijeon brothers taunted Jichang that they were stronger than him, even when they were tired.
James remarked to Jaegyeon that the Kings were weak after all, but like Jaegyeon said, he couldn't be more wrong. One by one, the Kings defeated their opponents (special mention here that Beolgu lost tufts of his hair from shock and shame, and the mention of Gongseob's The Iron Fortress).
Once they advanced on Shinmyeong, the shaman yelled at James to protect him but it turns out that James was also there to finish him off, supposedly per Charles's orders (because of the Red Paper).
The other Kings moved to stop James from leaving, while Jaegyeon was tending to Seongji's wounds. But the kid evaded them, all the while calculating each of their strengths, realizing that he was much weakened by Seongji's attacks earlier. James then escaped, leaving Shinmyeong to the mercy of the kings.
But the grip of Shinmyeong's parasitic influence was too strong on the Cheonliang villagers, that they rose up to protect their revered shaman and surround the Kings.
Just then and there, Seongji started having his panick attacks, to the Kings' horrifying realization. They hurriedly left the place with sick Seongji. Always the intelligent one, before he left Jichang asked the enraged villagers whether Shinmyeong had really granted their wishes at all.
Shinmyeong escaped to a cliff, but Vin found him alone and beat the shaman senseless. Still, he couldn't bring himself to kill the old man.
As Vin turned his back on the shaman, he found his mother's satba ribbon on the ground (he previously wore it wrapped around his fist) and stooped to pick it up.
In vicious glee, the shaman tried to kill Vin by lifting a boulder above the kid's head, but tripped and fell from the cliff to his death.
To Vin's horror and shock, Taejin was there all along, and saw what happened to his father.
With his last memories of the dark-skinned girl and his young self fading, Shinmyeong died.
Taejin faked his grief, all the way to his father's funeral when he finally was anointed as the new shaman and leader of the cult. He couldn't wait to reclaim all of his belongings, including the young girl Soojin.
Safe in Seongji's hideout, the Cheonliang Fam checked on their teacher (it seems that Jaegyeon helped bandaging Seongji's fingers).
Jewoo, their leader, remembered what Jichang told him earlier about Seongji's PTSD: that it was triggered whenever Seongji was around too many people, that he might turn vicious when it happened, and had no memories of his actions but would regret them so much. Luckily, this time Seongji was alright.
Back in the abandoned high school, James was tending to his injuries, to Gun's sarcastic remark: Was James really the person who ended Gabryong's reign?
To Gun's remark, James retorted that it was an unsolved case, anyway, and he wasn't alone in doing it (!). What mattered to him now was how the Kings had to be defeated, separately. Since together they were such a force to reckon with.
Gun offered to train James, but the genius student outright rejected it, since he already got the hang of Gun's methods (maybe from observing how Gun fought, from time to time).
Back in Cheonliang, Taejin assumed his shamanic roles and the first thing that he did was rejecting Charles's offer for co-operation. However, the cunning Charles had predicted this, since Taejin had no idea of the existence of the Red Paper. Then he left the village with the Gwijeon brothers.
Far away inside an unnamed meat market in Seoul, Jichang and his men found other men bloodied and unconscious, trampled by a raw meat-chewing young man.
The man was none other than Gabryong's other son, Gitae Kim. Yes, this is the future King of Seoul. And most likely, he was there per James's request.
Notes:
I find it interesting that it's sort of hinted that when Seongji died, he probably died some time after his frenzied PTSD set in. And maybe the Cheonliang kids couldn't stop him at all.
I wonder if Vin was forced to hurt or mercy kill Seongji back then, and whether this sad event was the action that drove the wedge between him and the other Cheonliang boys, other than Soojin's violent death, supposedly at the hands of Taejin.
I think Jaegyeon might have a bit of medical background, enough for him to know about surgical attachment of body parts. He probably also experienced it, with one of his fingers being recently re-attached in the past timeline.
Since James and Gitae previously were in cahoot (with or without Charles's knowledge), I wonder how they had since fallen apart, with Taejin now working under Gitae instead and James supposedly worked with Yoojin to bring down Charles.
It's delightful to me that, true to his nickname as The Genius of Nurture, Gun offered to help James in getting stronger (even though Gun probably did this out of the desire to show that he was superior to James). But it's sad that the two, being so young, had to live in such a derelict building under a shady businessman's order.
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