Ron Does Stuff

So…it’s been a month? Or more? Since I last blogged about Alchemy of Souls and to be frank I got a little ambivalent about continuing to watch it because as I’ve said over and over in several blog posts, the chemistry between the two leads just isn’t as strong as it should be.

But now there’s a supertyphoon bearing down on my country and I’ve prepared as well as I could have and so rather than doomscroll through social media I am distracting myself by watching this show again. Hopefully, I am distracted!

The last episode ended with two cliffhangers — Master Lee revealing he’s a soul shifter himself and Naksu being caught with a dead body and now being accused by Park Jin of being the cause of death. Exciting!

So the episode starts and we get a flashback of Master Lee as an old man. Or at least his death. And then it turns out he shifted his soul into some random boy’s body so from what I understand THE BOY’S SOUL GOT BURNED WITH MASTER LEE’S OLD BODY? LIKE WHAT THE FUCK? Oh okay the child was already dead but…so they can shift souls into freshly dead humans? I need a better explanation?

Meanwhile, Jin Mu’s thugs, along with Seo-i, have been killing everyone who would know that Seo-i isn’t blind. This is how the merchant gets killed and when Naksu gets caught with the dead body. And Park Jin once again proves himself to be horrible because he immediately focuses on Naksu without pursuing other leads. Le sigh.

In the royal palace, Master Lee is frightening the shit out of the queen by saying that he can find out if there is a soul shifter in the palace and that he plans to bring Gwigu in to sniff them out. The other soul shifters in the palace — because there’s a crapload of them apparently — are also shitting bricks and trying to think of a way to get out of this scrape. The queen isn’t helping her case either because she’s being overly defensive and making it really, really clear she doesn’t Gwiju in the palace.

Jin Mu isn’t making it any better for himself either as he and his goons accost Jang Wook outside as well, since Jang Wook is bringing in Gwigu with him. BUT thanks to the king being backed into a corner Jang Wook doesn’t get his ass kicked. BUT Master Lee reveals that someone born with the energy of the ~King’s Star~ has arrived and that another one of equal energy needs to face him for balance to be maintained. So…is that going to be for the second season? Anyway the Gwigu doesn’t bark at the queen or anything since it never made it inside the palace but Master Lee already figured out that the queen is the soul shifter.

After traipsing all around Daeho and finding the dead bodies Seo-i and the Jin Mu thug have been leaving, Naksu finally makes it back to the Jang household and has roped Maidservant Kim into helping her get into the Jin household since she had run into Cho-yeon back in the inn and now she plans to use her to testify that she wasn’t in the room when the murder happened.

Back in the palace, Yun-ok, the lady Jang Wook has better chemistry with, is treating the wounds he got trying to protect Gwiju. The crown prince informs everyone in the room — Seo Yool and Dang-gu in particular — that they’re being set up as potential husbands to Yun-ok, but it looks like she only has eyes for Jang Wook.

But of course, Jang Wook only has eyes for Naksu, and I do wish that K-dramas did rejections better because Jang Wook is being passive-aggressive rather than just letting her down gently like Aragorn did to Eowyn. Just saying!

In the Jin household, Naksu tries to convince Cho-yeon to exonerate her, but Cho-yeon is being difficult and Naksu has to resort to threats. Cho-yeon hides her in a room instead, which conveniently is the room where the Jin matriarch lights incense for Bu-yeon — who is Mudeok, the woman whose body Naksu is in. The Jin matriarch finds her in there trying out one of Bu-yeon’s eye coverings and she gets SLAPPED! Man the Jin matriarch is going to regret this down the line I’m pretty sure. I hope she regrets this down the line!

ALSO WAIT WHAT DID I MISS SOMETHING BU-YEON HAS A DIFFERENT DAD? SHE’S CHO-YEON’S HALF-SISTER? I DON’T REMEMBER THAT BEING REVEALED?

But we barrel away from all of that to Songrim where Park Jin is being a douche and trying to confuse JangWook and Naksu into spilling what their big secret is. So it’s a telepathy game thing that the variety shows do! And guess what, they said the same thing! Which is that they like each other very much. A confession that would have been much more kilig if, you know, they had better chemistry. Oh well.