Chae Joochul

Chae Joochul is the chairman of Daehyun and the superhuman known as the Four-colored Immortal. His Gift, Multi-colored Immortality, lets him resonate with natural energy and control the four elements of fire, earth, wind, and water on a vast scale. The same cultivation that raises him into humanity's highest tier steadily erodes his emotions, leaving a leader capable of calm strategic decisions but increasingly unable to feel the human cost of them. (Chapters 68, 193, 242, 269, and 359)

His story connects the private crimes behind the Kwang-Oh Incident with the public wars against Orden and Baal. Joochul supports a corrupt order when that arrangement benefits Daehyun, employs killers and subordinate families to preserve its secrets, and helps destroy Kim Chundong's family—the orphaned life and body later connected to Kim Hajin. He also risks his life against devils and ultimately helps expose former partners once Chae Nayun demonstrates that the balance of the era has changed. His final cooperation is consequential, but it does not erase his responsibility for the system he helped build. (Chapters 114, 117, 167, 242, 297–300, 360–374)

Biography

Becoming the Four-colored Immortal

In the ruined Seoul of 1980, Joochul withdraws from the city's struggle to master a Gift he does not yet fully control. He releases his will into nature, receives its essence, and assimilates it until wind, fire, earth, and water answer his fan. Even blood loss and the passage of time escape his attention while he trains. Shin Myungchul urges him not to overwork and asks him to return, but Joochul waits until his control is more natural, choosing power and readiness over immediate participation in rebuilding Seoul. (Chapter 269)

Two years of cultivation make him capable of raising typhoons, storms, lightning, and earthquakes with casual motions, allowing him to conquer half of Seoul's monster-infested territory. The achievement also damages his emotional life: as he understands Multi-colored Immortality more completely, his ability to identify and feel emotion deteriorates. In later decades, the owner of Daehyun lives in a traditional mountain residence harmonized with nature and commands enormous corporate and political influence, but family, rivals, and sensational events increasingly appear colorless to him. His public authority grows as his private reasons for exercising it fade. (Chapters 68, 193, 234, and 269)

Daehyun, Kwang-Oh, and controlled violence

Joochul joins the Hero Association's power structure because cooperation offers Daehyun a safer path to the top than resisting it. When Jin Younghwan is deemed a Djinn and considered too well connected to kill quietly, Joochul approves a broader massacre designed to conceal the assassination. Evidence later places him behind the Kwang-Oh operation alongside Yoo Jinwoong and below the Association leaders who initiated the larger scheme. The victims include Kim Chundong's parents, orphaning Chundong while Daehyun gains from the order that the violence protects; the corpus keeps Chundong distinct from Kim Hajin, who later inhabits his body. (Chapters 114, 117, 167, 250, 365, and 368)

Secrecy is maintained through institutions Joochul can distance from himself. The Yoo clan functions as the Chae clan's “hunting dog,” the old Chameleon Troupe carries out deniable work, and informants who pursue protected participants can be annihilated. Joochul later characterizes the decision not as a moral act but as the rational choice of an era in which the Association was ascendant and the Nine Stars no longer checked it. That explanation clarifies his calculation without absolving it: he knowingly lends power to killings and deception because accommodation appears more profitable and survivable than reform. (Chapters 144, 167, 193, 236, 368, and 371)

Jinyoon's death and the hunt for Plucas

Chae Jinyoon's destroyed magic core and later death put Joochul's secret apparatus under new pressure. Other characters expect him to show little sympathy for a grandson who can no longer function as a Hero, yet they also know he will mobilize Yoo Jinhyuk and Daehyun's reach to find the killer. He manages the official account and later requests Truth Agency intelligence on the humanoid monster, while his shadow is strong enough that information connected to Hajin's tattoo must be erased before it reaches him. The result is a family crisis processed through surveillance and retaliation rather than open grief. (Chapters 124, 127, 136, 140–144, and 230–236)

Information from the Truth Agency points Joochul toward the devil Plucas. The possibility of vengeance for Jinyoon may influence him, but the narration says even Joochul cannot distinguish that impulse from curiosity after so much emotional loss. He goes alone, reads the devil's attacks, creates a four-element domain, and accepts a wound to close the distance before dismembering Plucas's host body from within. Plucas begins resurrecting after Joochul leaves, and Hajin performs the final annihilation; Joochul nevertheless takes the horn, receives treatment for severe injuries, and is publicly credited with the victory. (Chapters 234 and 241–244)

The coalition against Orden

Orden's rise returns Joochul to sustained coalition work. A dream of his early training reminds him how far his emotional capacity has declined, yet the messages waiting when he wakes concern practical obligations: the Girl of Authority, Nayun's contact with Kim Joongho, the Association's Orden meeting, and Yoo Yeonha's request. He hears Yeonha's argument and agrees to introduce her to Nine Star Oh Jaejin, later participates in meetings with Heynckes and Yi Gongmyung, and uses his presence against Toji's prison. These decisions make his personal network and reputation operational resources before the battle begins. (Chapters 269, 272–282, and 294–295)

Inside Orden's palace, Joochul and Heynckes act as the coalition's heavy assault pair. Joochul draws in nearby natural energy to form an avatar matching Orden's size, while his folding fan acts as the medium through which he controls nature. Orden's chaos can disperse ordinary human magic, so the two veterans build a feint around a close strike: once Joochul's fan touches Orden's forehead, opposing natural particles enter his body and collide inside him. The technique wounds rather than instantly defeats Orden, and the operation succeeds only through the combined pressure of the broader task force. (Chapters 297–300)

Baal and the limits of nature

Before Baal's final assault, Joochul remains one of the senior figures consulted on threats that exceed national command. He and Heynckes enter Baal's barrier together, with Joochul creating nature wherever he walks so later Heroes can follow the path through the labyrinth. Against Morax, his Mother Nature avatar is made from soil, trees, his own magic power, and the energy of the sky. These manifestations can occupy enormous enemies and reshape hostile space, allowing Joochul to function simultaneously as vanguard, guide, and battlefield controller. (Chapters 329, 333, 345–347, and 359–360)

Baal establishes the upper limit of that control. A single breath corrupts Joochul's created landscape into a swamp of demonic energy and leaves Heroes dead or unconscious, while Joochul's apparent durability cannot protect the force around him. After recovering, he joins the collective attack: storms tear at Baal's eyes and natural undulations produce explosions inside his body. His power contributes meaningfully, but only alongside Heynckes, Kim Suho, Nayun, and the rest of the coalition. Even the Immortal cannot make nature sovereign inside a transcendent devil's isolated domain. (Chapters 360–363)

Nayun's reckoning and the Association purge

After the war, Nayun confronts Joochul with evidence of Kwang-Oh, Association collusion, and the civilians killed to preserve political power. He admits that he remembers and that he lent the Association his aid, initially defending the choice as correct for its era. When Nayun shows that the balance has changed, however, he does not threaten her or destroy the evidence. He gives permission to proceed and reveals a notebook written before his emotions vanished: a single rule stating that family is most important to him. The rule cannot produce remorse, but it lets Nayun reach a decision-maker whom feeling alone cannot move. (Chapter 371)

Joochul then appears at the Post-War Societal Leaders' Ball with investigators, reads the names of corrupt executives, and declares their arrest under authority supplied by Heynckes and the Nine Stars. His confession and whistleblowing help substantiate the purge, although his war record, age, health, and cooperation leave him in a privileged legal position; he is later described as having escaped the punishment imposed on Yoo Jinwoong. Essential Pharmacy's treatment restores only a small portion of his emotions and may require twenty years for full recovery. His ending is therefore partial reckoning, not complete redemption or restoration. (Chapters 373–376)

Appearance and personality

Joochul is an elderly man whose austere presentation matches his title of Immortal. He wears traditional clothing, carries a cane or folding fan, and lives in a secluded hanok integrated into the landscape of Kumgang Mountain. Age bends his back and neck, but after the battle with Baal his exposed body is described as exceptionally intact and physically developed. His deep gaze, measured movements, hair and beard stirred by mountain wind, and nearly expressionless face produce the pressure of a person whose authority is felt before he speaks. (Chapters 193, 234, 242, 297, 359, and 361)

He is patient, calculating, secretive, and habitually indifferent. Emotional loss makes sensational news seem gray and allows him to accept wounds without hesitation, but the condition is not presented as innocence: he understands bargains, concealment, profit, and political risk well enough to choose them deliberately. His warmer behavior is concentrated around Nayun, whom he regards as the apple of his eye even after forgetting what love feels like. The notebook naming family as his highest value shows an earlier Joochul trying to leave instructions for the person he knows he is becoming. (Chapters 193, 230, 234, 242, 359, and 371)

Gifts and abilities

Natural-energy absorption

Multi-colored Immortality begins with resonance between Joochul's will and the surrounding natural world. Nature releases an essence that merges with him, allowing him to become an incarnation of the environment and later absorb the magic power back into himself. This process supplies extraordinary scale and endurance, while his harmony with mountains and living terrain is the source of the Immortal title. The connection is active rather than merely aesthetic: nature appears along his path, answers his gestures, and can be shaped into fields or bodies that extend his presence across a battlefield. (Chapters 234, 269, 300, 346, and 359–360)

Four-element control

Joochul's magic carries the four properties of fire, earth, wind, and water. He can establish a large restricted field saturated with those elements, launch them together as a torrent, create fire and ice inside a target, and produce typhoons, lightning, storms, and earthquakes through simple motions. His folding fan is identified as the core medium for controlling nature, while his cane can channel defensive and offensive magic. The tools focus the Gift; they are not described as the original source of its power. (Chapters 242, 269, 297, and 300)

Avatars and internal attacks

Joochul can condense natural energy into autonomous-looking avatars. Against Orden he creates a three-meter martial artist, and against Morax he manifests Mother Nature from intertwined trees, soil, magic power, and sky energy. At close range, he can pass controlled natural particles through his fan into an enemy so they collide internally; against Baal, he similarly creates undulations and explosions inside the devil. These applications bypass some of the problems of striking only an opponent's exterior, but they still depend on access, timing, and support from allies. (Chapters 300, 346, and 362–363)

Costs, limits, and interactions

The Gift's defining cost is progressive emotional dulling. Two years of intensive synchronization measurably worsens Joochul's ability to feel, and by the Baal era Heynckes estimates that roughly ninety percent of his emotions are gone. Existing nature is normally required; inside Baal's empty labyrinth the Gift initially fails, although Joochul spends magic power and several minutes creating soil, water, and vegetation from which to expand. Plucas can still inflict grave wounds, Orden's chaos disrupts human magic, and Baal can corrupt and collapse the nature he creates. Medicine later restores only a little feeling rather than reversing the damage quickly. (Chapters 242, 269, 300, 359–361, and 376)

Power progression

Relationships

Chae Nayun

Nayun is Joochul's granddaughter, heir, and clearest remaining link to the family value he recorded before losing his emotions. She grows up admiring him, then learns that his decisions caused Kwang-Oh and contributed to Hajin's suffering. Joochul protects her position and asks after her progress, but he does not volunteer the truth. Their decisive conversation occurs only when she brings evidence and challenges his concept of righteousness. By allowing the purge and entrusting her with his notebook, he chooses her judgment over his former partners without claiming that he suddenly feels guilt. (Chapters 117, 193, 230, 250, 315, 368, and 371)

Chae Jinyoon

Jinyoon's value to Joochul is entangled with the Chae family's Hero legacy. Others expect his destroyed magic core to reduce his grandfather's sympathy, and Jinyoon's death triggers an investigation powerful enough to threaten anyone connected to it. Yet Joochul's later pursuit of Plucas cannot be cleanly called revenge: even he no longer knows whether familial feeling or simple stimulation draws him toward the devil. The ambiguity shows the damage caused by his Gift—he can mobilize enormous resources around a grandson's death without being able to identify whether he is mourning. (Chapters 124, 127, 140–143, 230–234, and 242)

Kim Hajin

Joochul's connection to Hajin begins through violence he arranges but does not personally witness. His support for the Kwang-Oh massacre kills Kim Chundong's parents and leaves Chundong as a surviving loose end; Hajin later occupies Chundong's body and inherits the consequences without becoming the same identity. Hajin in turn supplies the information that leads Joochul to Plucas, using the older man's pride and search for stimulation to aim him at a devil. They never receive a conventional reconciliation. Joochul's participation in the purge addresses part of the system that harmed them, but it cannot undo the family destroyed at Kwang-Oh. (Chapters 114, 117, 158, 167, 172, 234, 250, and 365–374)

Heynckes

Heynckes is Joochul's old peer, battlefield partner, and one of the few people who remembers his gradual emotional decline. Their contrasting Gifts make them effective against Orden and Baal, while Heynckes's commentary exposes the personal cost hidden by Joochul's calm. He follows the nature Joochul creates through Baal's labyrinth and later supplies the Nine Stars authority under which Joochul acts as an investigator at the purge. Their alliance combines long familiarity, complementary force, and an institutional route for turning Joochul against his former political partners. (Chapters 277–300, 329, 359–363, and 373)

Items

Folding fan and cane

Joochul alternates between a cane and a folding fan as channels for Multi-colored Immortality. The cane blocks Plucas's spatially shifting demonic attacks and anchors the four-element field, while the folding fan is explicitly called the core medium through which he controls nature and delivers natural particles into Orden. Neither object has a scoped item article in this corpus, and neither is presented as the source of his Gift. Their importance is functional: they focus an already existing relationship with nature into defense, domains, and precise contact attacks. (Chapters 242, 269, 297, and 300)