Series / Alchemy of Souls

Alchemy of Souls (Korean: 환혼, Hwanhon) is a South Korean fantasy series written by the Hong Sisters and starring Lee Jae-wook, Jung So-min, and Hwang Min-hyun.

Naksu, a rogue mage/assassin with a vendetta against the powerful mage families in the magical kingdom of Daeho, narrowly escapes capture by using the forbidden Alchemy of Souls to jump into a different body, faking her own death. She finds herself stranded in the body of a pauper girl named Mu-deok, just about to be sold to the local Gisaeng house. There she chances upon Jang Uk, the scion of one of the great families, who is blocked from doing magic due to complicated circumstances surrounding his birth.

Desperate to become a mage, Jang Uk strikes a deal with Naksu/Mu-deok: she will do all that she can to help him to overcome his obstacles and learn magic. In return, he will protect her and eventually help her regain her powers. With not much else to do, Naksu agrees to the deal, and becomes Jang Uk’s personal servant and secret master. Adventure, intrigue, betrayal and many many love triangles ensue.

A Korean foray into Chinese-style high fantasy dramas, Alchemy of Souls started airing on TvN and Netflix on June 2022 and ended a 20-episode run on August 28th, 2022. A second part consisting of 10 episodes, titled Alchemy of Souls: Light and Shadow, aired on December 2022 and ended on January 2023, providing a conclusion to the story.

Alchemy of Souls provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Naksu's introductory scene shows just how dangerous she is in her original body.
• All Love Is Unrequited: In their youth, Park Jin and Maidservant Kim were in love, respectively, with Do-hwa and Jang Gang (who ended up marrying each other). Fortunately, they get each other as Second Love.
• Ancient Artifact: The Ice Stone. Among its many powers, it produces the "soul ejectors" that can make the Alchemy of Souls possible for those who are not capable of Hwansu.
• Artifact Collection Agency: Jinyowon serves as this for the mages of Daeho.
• Attending Your Own Funeral:
  • Mu-deok/Naksu watches from the crowd as her original body is cremated.
  • Later, she is ordered by Maidservant Kim to arrange a memorial service for her real father and her own child self, whom Kim believes was killed with the rest of her family.
• Bed Trick: The former King used the Alchemy of Souls to swap bodies with Jang Gang with the goal of impregnating Gang's wife Do-hwa. She was unaware that her husband had swapped bodies and was seemingly never told the truth, and with Gang leaving so soon after Uk's birth it led to many believing that she had been unfaithful.
• The Big Damn Kiss: While it's not their first kiss, Uk and Mu-deok's kiss at the end of episode 18 after she elects not to kill him really seals the deal on their relationship.
• Black Magic: The eponymous Alchemy of Souls, which is about displacing souls from one body to another.
• Blind Seer: Jin Bu-yeon had Aura Vision to compensate for her blindness. As did Jin Seol-ran before her.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Jin Mu manages to mystically compel Mu-deok into running wild and committing a massacre while in a trance.
• Broken Ace: Uk's father and former Gwanju Jang Gang was also a mage prodigy, but every bad thing that happens in the characters' back-stories resulted from his interest in the Alchemy of Souls and failing to return the Ice Stone to Jinyowon. He goes into self-imposed exile for 20 years before finally returning a shell of his former self and his body degrading into dust as a result of his soul-shifting.
• The Call Put Me on Hold: Jang Uk, due his father blocking his energy gate after his birth and preventing him from becoming a mage. He gets over it pretty early into the series.
• Camp Straight: Park Dang-gu is quite flamboyant, but only ever shows romantic interest in women.
• Cannot Spit It Out:
  • Park Jin has a chronic problem with expressing his feelings, which in the past cost him the affections of Do-hwa and in the present threatens his relationship with Maidservant Kim.
  • Yul is aware that telling Mu-deok that he knows about her being Naksu is for the best, but can’t bring himself to do it.
• Celibate Hero: Part of Master Lee’s philosophy involves celibacy, enforced via a special tea. Not many are willing to follow in his footsteps (Heo Yeom stopped being his student specifically to get married), and even he slips from time to time.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The real Mu-deok initially appears to have been just a blind beggar who was in the wrong place in the wrong time. It gradually becomes apparent that she is really Bu-yeon, the Jin’s family lost daughter, who is immensely important to the plot.
• The Chosen One: Jang Uk, born under The King’s Star, is destined for greatness, although nobody knows if it will be ultimately for good or for evil.
• Clark Kenting: Who could this mysterious mage who dresses like Jang Uk, has the same build and covers only the lower half of his rather distinctive face possibly be?
• Death by Childbirth: Do-hwa died giving birth to Jang Uk.
• Diabolus ex Machina: The bells used to control soul shifters are never mentioned before the final episode of Part 1. Jin Mu handily uses them to make everything go to hell in a very short order.
• Disappeared Dad: Jang Gang went to walk the Earth shortly after Uk’s birth, and nobody has heard from him since.
• The Dragon: Gil-ju to Jin Mu. Yeom-su later replaces him in the role.
• Dual Wielding: Yul uses two short swords.
• Easy Amnesia: Jin Bu-yeon suffers from this after nearly drowning; it takes a decade for her memory to return. Then, Naksu suffers from it after petrifying, and it takes her three years to recover her memories.
• Elemental Powers: All magic in Daeho originates from the power of the sky as embodied in Lake Gyeongcheondaeho. Therefore, the mages mostly use water-based spells, although particularly skilled practitioners can transform water into fire energy.
• Eunuchs Are Evil: This is true for Eunuch Kim, a soul shifter who serves as an intermediary between Jin Mu and the Queen. However, It's fair to note that there are some perfectly nice eunuchs in the series, such as Go Won's personal servant Eunuch Oh.
• Evil Chancellor: Jin Mu, as the Assistant Gwanju, has strong Jafar vibes.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Gwigu is a canine-like spirit which can sniff out soul shifters. Later, Master Lee puts it into the body of a real dog, where it retains its special abilities.
• Evil Hand: After conjuring his energy for the first time, Jang Uk suffers a form of Power Incontinence which is expressed as his right hand going out of control and attacking everything in sight. He uses a special bracelet to control it until the issue is resolved.
• Fascinating Eyebrow: The Crown Prince’s signature expression.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: the “Four Seasons”, although Winter and Summer’s traditional temperaments are switched.
  • Jang Uk (Winter): choleric
  • Jin Cho-yeon (Spring): sanguine
  • Park Dang-gu (Summer): phlegmatic
  • Seo Yul (Autumn): melancholic
• Foreshadowing: Mu-deok ability to enter Jinyowon, which supposedly can only be opened by women of the Jin family, is an early hint to the real Mu-deok’s identity.
• Freudian Excuse: Jin Mu was born as an illegitimate child in a family where men don’t have much standing in the first place, and spent his youth in poverty, envying his more privileged peers. He’s very angry every time this is brought up, such as when Maidservant Kim reminisces about him stealing food while living in the Jang household.
• Gossip Evolution: The story of Uk’s fight with Gil-ju goes from “someone killed a soul shifter near the palace” to “Naksu was reincarnated in the body of a man and has come to exact her revenge” in a matter of hours.
• Grand Theft Me: The Alchemy of Souls allows one to do this, as exemplified by the old king and Naksu. We also get to see a live example with Master Kang, who steals the body of his student to avoid dying of old age.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Played with; the Crown Prince is clearly jealous of Jang Uk, and it motivates some of his actions later on, but he doesn't allow it to reach the point where they become intractable enemies. He even lampshades this to some of Jang Uk's less scrupulous rivals when he catches them spreading rumors, pointing out that it's foolish to allow your jealousy to draw you into making enemies out of talented and powerful people.
• Hermit Guru: Master Lee spends most of his time living ascetically in the wild.
• Hired Help as Family: Maidservant Kim very clearly functions as Jang Uk’s mother, doting on him and telling him how proud she is every time he accomplishes something. For his part, he does his best to make her happy.
• I Am Spartacus: Played for comedy. Mu-deok volunteers to drink the contents of a chamber pot to appease an enraged Crown Prince, only for Jang Uk, Maidservant Kim and Park Dang-gu to declare their intention to do the same. At this point, the exasperated Crown Prince gives up on the whole thing.
• I Ate WHAT?!: Libido-suppressing Celibate Tea, much to the male protagonists’ horror. Thankfully, the effects wear off very quickly.
• I Have Many Names: Both the heroine and the Jin heiress she shares a body with rack up a number of names to the point that Master Lee asks her what name she wants to be called during her marriage.
  • The body's first owner:
    • Jin Seol-ran: her identity before soul-shifting into her current body as a baby.
    • Jin Bu-yeon: her birth name
    • Mu-deok: her name given to her by her caretaker while separated from her family.
  • The body's second owner:
    • Cho Yeong: her birth name
    • Naksu the assassin
    • After soul-shifting, she takes on the names Mu-deok and Jin Bu-yeon due to Secret Identity.
• Impossible Task Instantly Accomplished:
  • After being accepted into Songrim, Uk’s first task is to perfectly memorize Songrim’s interminable list of rules, and he can’t leave until he accomplishes it. He succeeds rather quickly, and explains that in the course of his failed tutelage under the first 12 masters, he had already memorized the thing long ago.
  • This appears to onlookers to be the case with the second task he receives: reading an apparently empty book written by Songrim’s founder, which should take years of honing one’s magical abilities. However, he only succeeded because he was tipped off by Master Lee.
• Improbable Weapon User: During their first encounter, Mu-deok threatens Uk with a crab leg.
• Insult of Endearment: Crown Prince Go Won dubs Mu-deok “Filthy Mu-deok” after she throws a chamber pot at him, but over time his use of the nickname clearly becomes affectionate.
• Iron Lady: Everybody is kind of scared of Jin Ho-gyeong, especially her daughter.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: What the mages in the series are mostly about. Their preferred martial art is sword-fighting.
• Love Dodecahedron: Let’s see. Mu-deok’s fan club includes Jang Uk, Seo Yul and Crown Prince Go Won, while Jang Uk, in addition to Mu-deok, has Heo Yun-ok and Jin Cho-yeon pining for him. Cho-yeon later moves on to Park Dang-gu, while So-i has her eye on Yul… it’s endless, really.
• Love Triangle: In addition to the above, the older generation also gets to enjoy some romantic entanglements with Maidservant Kim being courted by both Park Jin and Master Lee.
• The Magocracy: Daeho’s centers of power are controlled by powerful mage families and organizations. The actual king isn’t necessarily a mage, although the current Crown Prince is.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: There are many rumors surrounding Jang Uk’s parentage, the most common being that he is a result of an affair between his mother Do-hwa and an unknown man. The truth is slightly more complicated, as he was conceived by the former king using Jang Gang’s body, with Do-hwa being none the wiser.
• Manipulative Bastard: While doing so for benevolent purposes, Jin Seol-ran has been manipulating both Mu-deok and Jang Uk since episode 1.
• The Man Behind the Man: The real Danju is the Queen, or should we say Shaman Choi in the Queen’s body.
• Matriarchy: The Jin family is matrilineal and controlled by the oldest daughter of each generation, with male spouses serving only as consorts. They also have an Amazon Brigade for a guard.
• Mark of the Supernatural: Soul shifters have a tell-tale blue mark on their body. With Mu-deok, it uniquely expresses itself as Occult Blue Eyes.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Go Won is more of an antagonist than a villain, and Seo Yul certainly isn't a villain; but Seo Yul defeating Jang Uk in the 10th and final fight of his bet with Go Won is still treated this way. While Go Won won his bet, none of the things involved were remotely as important as the fact that Jang Uk reached Chisu.
• Meet Cute: What essentially happens between Maidservant Kim and Master Lee when he rescues her from falling into a pond and magically recovers her lost shoe.
• Mirror Monster: A magic mirror kept in the Jin vault lures people who look into it, swallows them into some sort of pocket dimension and spawns doppelgängers who go on to beguile those close to them. Jang Uk refuses to fall for its bullshit, and it ends up being shattered.
• Missing Child: Jin Bu-yeon, the eldest daughter of the Jin clan, disappeared years ago. Her father spends most of his time searching for her. Or pretending to, at any rate.
• Mundane Utility: Master Lee uses his high-tier supernatural powers, which only a handful of people in the setting have ever attained, to do things like chop wood, fan cooking fires, and dry clothes.
• Nice Guy: Dang-gu doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body and always wants what’s best for everybody. His only perceived flaws are his cluelessness and his apparent inability to keep his mouth shut.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Go Won recognizes that the Mu-deok who comes to visit him is a doppelgänger when she happily partakes in some cinnamon wine, as he knows that the real Mu-deok despises cinnamon.
• Parental Favoritism: Jin Ho-gyeong prefers her eldest daughter to her youngest, a fact which Cho-yeon is clearly aware of and which drives some of her bratty behavior.
• Parental Substitute: Jang Uk never knew his parents, who are either missing or dead. Park Jin and Maidservant Kim serve as his paternal and maternal figures, respectively.
• Pater Familicide: Naksu’s father became a soul shifter and killed his entire family while running wild, forcing the Songrim mages to put him down.
• Posthumous Character: Jang Uk’s mother Do-hwa is only seen in flashbacks.
• Really 700 Years Old: Master Lee looks like he’s in his forties but is really over a century old. Onlookers are often weirded out by seeing him order around his former student Heo Yeom, who looks like he could be Lee’s grandfather.
• Record Needle Scratch: The Crown Prince and Jang Uk follow the pull of the paired jade bird eggs through town, only to have the music do this when they realize they have been led to each other.
• Redemption Equals Death: Jang Gang returns just in time to save everyone from Shaman Choi, confess all his sins and make sure that Uk and Songrim don’t suffer for any of it. He them turns into stone, having used the last of his strength to stop Choi’s attack.
• Rescue Romance: Yul’s gallant rescue of So-i from some thugs causes her to develop quite a crush on him.
• Self-Poisoning Gambit: Mu-deok poisons Uk in order to force the Songrim mages to open his energy gate. Since she won’t tell them what kind of poison she used, this is the only way to save him.
• Servile Snarker: Mu-deok, as Uk’s “maid”. She’s pretty sassy even undercover.
• The Smart Guy: Yul for the young mages.
• Something Else Also Rises: Inverted: when Cha Beom speculates that Jang Uk is studying under Master Lee and so must drink his libido-suppressing herbs, he emphasizes it by breaking a carrot in two.
• Spoiled Brat: Jin Cho-yeon is very used to getting her way, and tends to pout and sulk when she doesn’t. Cases in point are trying to force Jang Uk to marry her and blaming Mu-deok for breaking the Yin-Yang Jade (which she accidentally broke herself).
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: You'd expect that the hero mastering a new stage, reaching chisu, and learning several new techniques would allow him to win the climactic tenth duel with Seo Yul that these things were leading up to (and the bet that led to all this)... but Seo Yul had reached Chisu long before Jang Uk, had far more combat experience, and was the strongest mage of his generation in Songrim. Jang Uk's advances keep it from being a total curbstomp battle, but once the fight gets serious Jang Uk is still defeated extremely quickly.
• Taken for Granite: Soul shifters who run wild eventually turn into stone if they can’t find souls to feed on.
• A Taste of Power: Naksu begins the series as a badass assassin with an impressive array of powers. She quickly finds herself stranded in a weak and scrawny body that can’t support her skills, which frustrates her to no end.
• Throwing the Fight: Dang-gu attempts to help Uk win a bet in which he has to win at least one of ten duels by challenging him and deliberately losing. Uk immediately sees through it and forfeits the match in disgust.
• Training Montage: Jang Uk makes good use of a few of them, especially when trying to master Tansu.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Seo Yul to Naksu.
• Unskilled, but Strong: After having his energy gate opened and receiving an additional boost from Heo Yeom, Jang Uk has a lot of raw power, but lacks the years of training required to properly control it.
• Wax On, Wax Off: Jang Uk initially refuses Master Lee’s offer to go fishing shortly before a duel, preferring to do some more training. It turns out that fishing is a way to teach him a very advanced technique really quickly.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Eunuch Kim meets this fate after Jin Mu and the Queen decides that he no longer justifies his upkeep.
• You Killed My Father: The origin of Naksu’s vendetta against the Four Families, although things are not as they seem.

Tropes appearing in Alchemy of Souls: Light and Shadow (unmarked spoilers to the events of Part 1):

• Alas, Poor Villain: So-i was by no means a nice person, and spent most of the series serving the bad guys or her own criminal interests. Her death is still presented as a tragic result of a cruel life, and Yul grieves for her.
• Ambition Is Evil: Jin Mu’s schemes were always based on the desire of the powerful to accumulate more power and keep it forever. This becomes particularly apparent when the king and the Unanimous Assembly decide to join in, while knowing both the terrible cost of the Alchemy of Souls and the danger posed to the world by their plans.
• Angel Unaware: Go Won's pet turtle, which he saved at the behest of Bu-yeon, is an avatar of the Black Tortoise.
• Babies Ever After: In the epilogue, Dang-gu and Cho-yeon have twin baby boys, and Maidservant Kim also appears to be pregnant.
• Call to Agriculture: After the disastrous conclusion of Part 1, Park Jin stepped down, and now focuses mainly on cultivating a vegetable garden.
• Came Back Strong: After his resurrection and thanks to the Ice Stone inside him, Jang Uk goes from an Unskilled, but Strong prodigy to ridiculously overpowered.
• The Coup: Go Won ends up deposing his father and ascending the throne in his place. Since the king, at this point, has lost all regard to anything but his own personal power, it’s a justified move.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Uk is pretty much unstoppable in direct battle at this point, but his fight with Yeom-su and his lackeys stands out. "No one walks out of here alive", indeed.
• Death Seeker: Between Naksu’s apparent betrayal and death and his difficulties with handling the Ice Stone’s power, as well as being treated like a freak by almost everyone in Daeho, Uk feels that it would have been better if he had just died when stabbed by Naksu, and is willing to extract the Ice Stone even if it will cost him his life.
• Evil Costume Switch: After switching bodies with Yun-o, Jin Mu apparently finds time to go to his rooms, switch to a black cloak, make his eyebrows slightly pointier and apply some Guyliner.
• Evil Laugh: Jin Mu lets out an epically unhinged laugh while switching bodies with Seo Yun-o.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Park Dang-gu loses the blond hair during the Time Skip to showcase his increased maturity and responsibility, as well as the loss of some of his carefree nature.
• The Fettered: Despite having enough power to do pretty much whatever he wants, Uk chooses to obey the orders of the Royal Family and the Unanimous Assembly and use it only to hunt soul shifters. This is probably because his father figure, Park Jin, told him that if Uk wants to go mad with power and endanger the world, he will have to kill Jin first.
• The Four Gods: The Fire Bird is kept inside Jinyowon to prevent it from wrecking havoc on the world. The Black Tortoise also makes an appearance.
• Ghostly Chill: After using the Ice Stone's power to get rid of soul shifters, Jang Uk is regularly beset by wraiths who cause a general drop in temperature.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: If you thought that the real Queen was any better than Shaman Choi, think again. She was practically driven mad by her ordeal and is willing to risk the entire kingdom, if not the world, to shift her soul into a young, healthy, and most of all, beautiful body.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The fate of Jang Uk and Naksu at the series' end. They are tasked with hunting down the artifacts that escaped from Jinyowon.
• It Was with You All Along: A villainous version. The Queen is desperately looking for Jin Mu's last Soul Ejector. When she finds him on the verge of death in Gwido, Jin Mu reveals that he hid the thing inside her body, and promptly kills her to retrieve it.
• Kill It with Fire: The ultimate fate of Jin Mu and the Unanimous Assembly, courtesy of Jang Uk and the Fire Bird.
• Lethal Chef: Park Jin’s new culinary obsessions take a heavy toll on anyone subjected to his cooking. Heo Yeom complains that everyone in Songrim suffers a pickled tongue due to his terrible kimchi, and Dang-gu and Yul are unable to finish one serving.
• Morality Pet: Literally. Bu-yeon persuades Go Won to save and adopt a turtle by telling him that a good person like she sees he is will have mercy on it. The turtle comes to represent Won's better nature, and he claims that Jin Mu getting rid of it was the final straw that caused Won to turn against him.
• Mundane Utility: Park Jin uses his magic to ferment kimchi extra fast.
• My Beloved Smother: Jin Ho-gyeong was never terribly lenient, but her treatment of Bu-yeon crosses the line to downright abuse.
  • She locks her in a single room for three years and plans to use her as breeding stock to produce the next Jin heiress while never letting her out.
  • After Bu-yeon escapes and manages to get rid of the bracelet that allowed her mother to track her, Ho-gyeong sews the magic tracking string into her flesh to make sure she can’t remove it this time.
• Not Quite Dead: Naksu leaves Jin Mu to die a slow and painful death inside Gwido. If only the Queen and Yun-o hadn't chosen to intervene...
• Pocket Dimension: Gwido, an inescapable prison for those who practice Black Magic.
• Pregnancy Scare: Cho-yeon and Dang-gu aren't that worried about it in general, but since Cho-yeon's potential pregnancy prevents her from helping to save Yul's life, the realization comes at a bad time.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: The king attempts to get rid of Uk by appointing him as the general of the remote Northern Fortress.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Jang Uk shifts into wearing dark colors with a Badass Longcoat-esque cloak, instead of the more traditional and colorful attire he preferred in Part 1, to match his Darker and Edgier persona.
• Time Skip: Part 2 takes place three years after the conclusion of Part 1.
• Thanatos Gambit: Jin Seol-ran soul-shifted into the ice stone in an attempt to prevent it from being misused. This would have naturally resulted in her body's death.
• Tragic Keepsake: Uk has taken to carrying around Naksu's sword.
• Two-Person Love Triangle: Naksu as Jin Bu-yeon competing against Jang Uk's pining over Naksu as Mu-deok who Uk thinks is dead.

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