Chunghuh

Chunghuh is a physician and swordsman from the martial world whose refusal to abandon his humanity leaves his first Awakening incomplete. His ability to remember and restore endangered souls makes him one of Jaehwan's most important companions, while his renewed Awakening turns the old doctor into a frontline power in the wars across 《Chaos》 and the 《Abyss》.

Biography

Arrival in Chaos and the struggle for Gorgon

Chunghuh first appears in Gorgon when Mino and Karlton are beginning to become Forgotten Ones. He is the only physician in 《Chaos》 able to perform Forgotten One Severance, but his first sword breaks and his remaining spiritual power is insufficient to finish Mino's treatment. He borrows Solitary Unbowed, turns the room into a white canvas, and begins redrawing the lines of her vanishing soul. When he collapses near the end, Jaehwan imitates the principle with Stab and completes the restoration. Their first meeting therefore establishes both Chunghuh's medical authority and a partnership in which each can extend the other's technique. (Chapters 31–32)

The old physician tests Jaehwan in a duel soon afterward. Chunghuh had cleared the Master Tower Moby-Dick in World 12,764, trained beside figures of the “Legendary Generation,” and reached Awakening after roughly a century and one billion Slashes. By the time of the duel, he claims more than five billion repetitions and drives Jaehwan back with Extraordinary Slash, yet concedes when Jaehwan prepares a far more destructive attack. Their argument becomes mutual study: Jaehwan learns Ordinary Slash in five days, then converts its curved force into a spiraling Stab. Chunghuh's pride is wounded, but his willingness to exchange techniques gives Jaehwan a teacher and gives Chunghuh a reason to reassess a path he had followed for centuries. (Chapters 34–35, 45–46)

That reassessment is rooted in Chunghuh's failed first Abyss Expedition. At about one hundred and fifty years old, he followed Mulack Armelt toward the top of the Phantasmal Tree, seeking the Fruit believed to restore “real life” to the souls of 《Chaos》. The expedition obtained a Fruit, but the returning Lords stole it and founded the Palace of Rebirth. Chunghuh had already fallen behind before the expedition reached its destination, while Mulack vanished after declaring that he had both failed and not failed. Chunghuh explains that his old companion Huh Yu became a complete Awakened One, whereas he chose to retain emotion and human dignity. That choice left him “incomplete,” eventually brought him to 《Chaos》, and preserved the compassion on which his medicine depends. (Chapters 34, 36–38)

The cost of that compassion becomes personal when Chunghuh treats Aimel, Gorgon's Citadel Lord and his friend of nine hundred years. Forgotten One Severance restores enough of Aimel's fading self for Catastrophe to descend through him. Chunghuh's White Engraved World cannot withstand the Ancient God's darkness, but despite being immobilized by remembered terror, Chunghuh uses Push to warn Jaehwan rather than abandon him. After Jaehwan severs the incarnation's Link and Aimel dies, Chunghuh attends the Soul-Sending with outward calm, drinking and dancing while grief remains in his eyes. The loss turns his ideal of remembering vanished people from an abstract technique into the moral center of his later Unique World. (Chapters 39–43)

Chunghuh supports Jaehwan's plan to awaken Gorgon's residents even though he knows the process can cause madness, suicide, or soul contamination. Inside the rebuilt Carpe Diem, he abandons Rift's old sequence of Dismantling, Assembly, and Selflessness and begins again with Jaehwan's Doubt, Understanding, and Selflessness. After roughly two hundred subjective years, he reaches the third stage of Awakening. The change is ethical as well as martial: instead of avoiding questions and calling that detachment, he accepts uncertainty and the pain of examining his own decisions. His encounter with Heintz—whom he once dismissed with empty advice after refusing to make him stronger—forces him to recognize how that former distance helped drive another person into the Palace's service. (Chapters 58–65)

The renewed Chunghuh enters the Palace of Rebirth assault beside Jaehwan, conserving mental energy while cutting through the Manticore's defenders. He teaches Cayman that Awakening begins with learning how to gaze, but warns that an Awakened One can become blind through Alienation by seeing too much. When Jaehwan succumbs to that danger, Chunghuh carries him and Sirwen Armelt through enemy territory and sends an urgent request for aid. His progress no longer consists only of stronger Slashes; he now uses what he has learned to guide other people, remain with the vulnerable, and sustain the collective action that Jaehwan's campaign requires. (Chapters 63–69)

The Catastrophe pact and the second Abyss Expedition

During the battle for the Palace, Chunghuh and Cayman subdue several Lords but emerge battered, and the arrival of three higher-ranked Lords exposes the gap that remains between him and the greatest powers. Dark Fragrance throws Chunghuh and Sirwen aside in a single exchange before Jaehwan intervenes. Afterward, Chunghuh treats the gravely wounded Jegal Myeong and accompanies the newly organized expedition. These scenes define his battlefield role: he can contend with multiple commander-class enemies for a time, yet repeated high-output Slashes exhaust him, and every serious injury among his companions can redirect him from combat to medicine. (Chapters 70–80)

At Bizarre, Chunghuh recognizes factory masters from the expedition nine hundred years earlier and understands the danger of asking Catastrophe to open the Abyss. He nevertheless supports Jaehwan's negotiation when the alternative is abandoning their purpose. The decision is not simple faith in victory. Chunghuh remembers how Mulack bargained with the Ancient God and failed to return, but sees that Jaehwan is willing to inherit that unfinished promise without accepting Catastrophe's world. His knowledge gives the new expedition a historical warning, while his choice to proceed shows that the first expedition's failure has become a reason for vigilance rather than permanent retreat. (Chapters 87–90)

That distinction matters when Field Commander Sa Myeonghun destroys the expedition's formation. Chunghuh and Karlton intercept a strike meant for Cayman, but Chunghuh's sword breaks and both defenders are injured. For a moment he is tempted to repeat his retreat from nine hundred years earlier. Remembering that Jaehwan would not kneel even to Catastrophe, he instead helps the blinded Yoon Yong stand and tells the maimed survivors that they have not lost merely because their Citadel Lord has not arrived. Their decision to rise as the people of 《Chaos》 converts Chunghuh's private endurance into leadership and keeps resistance alive until Jaehwan returns. (Chapter 93)

Jaehwan then uses his own contaminated soul as Catastrophe's vessel to annihilate the invading Lords. The descent leaves him becoming a Forgotten One, but Chunghuh's memory of him persists inside the White Engraved World and lets Forgotten One Severance restore his identity. Jaehwan wakes and explains that he attempted the plan because he trusted the old physician. Chunghuh subsequently becomes one of the first companions to follow him through the opened passage, choosing another Abyss Expedition after the first consumed centuries of his life. This time he enters not as a follower left behind by Mulack, but as the person entrusted with preserving Jaehwan if the journey erases him. (Chapters 94–98)

Separation in the Abyss and the search during the Metaverse war

At the threshold of the 《Abyss》, Yu Seolha isolates Jaehwan inside a barrier. The passage closes with Chunghuh, Karlton, and Sirwen separated from him, even though Jaehwan's soul is still badly damaged and he had expected Chunghuh to treat it. The three companions therefore begin their new expedition without its central figure and without knowing where he has gone. Chunghuh's old connection to Yu Seolha also reveals that his rumored Rift past is real: she calls him master, and their reunion brings a relationship from his earlier Awakening into the search for the man who prompted him to begin it again. (Chapters 102–103)

For two years, Chunghuh's group crosses the Abyss, steals Treasures from the Seven Divine Thrones, and helps build the airship Destruction. They deliberately make themselves famous as pirates because notoriety increases the chance that news of Jaehwan will reach them. When a broadcast finally shows him fighting on the Metaverse's sixth floor, Chunghuh immediately wants to intervene, but the ship is at least fifteen days away. Confronted with distance rather than an enemy he can cut, he reluctantly uses a cracked-scale token to call on Rift. The favor reaches Yu Seolha, turning Chunghuh's discarded affiliation into the only available means of helping Jaehwan survive. (Chapters 124, 133, 144)

While Jaehwan climbs the Metaverse, Chunghuh remains physically absent but strategically present. His warning that the Abyss contains unknown powerhouses informs Jaehwan's approach to its gods, and Yu Seolha's account confirms that Chunghuh left Rift rather than simply failing within it. The separation also changes the balance of their bond: Jaehwan must survive without immediate access to Chunghuh's medicine, while Chunghuh, Karlton, and Sirwen develop their own reputation, World Power, and network instead of existing only as attendants to a Citadel Lord. By the time the Metaverse falls, the old physician is no longer merely the companion Jaehwan left behind; he helps lead a force capable of navigating the Abyss independently. (Chapters 159–161, 173)

The Grand Auction, Rift war, and the return of mortality

Chunghuh and Sirwen eventually reach Caspion, but their activities as the Guides of Destruction have made them too infamous to enter openly. Chunghuh uses Yu Seolha's clandestine Rift route, discovers Jaehwan's fight at the Grand Auction, and rushes toward it. The Destruction rescues Jaehwan, Runald, and Karavan after the battle; Chunghuh immediately treats Jaehwan, then remains with Karlton as a conspicuous decoy while the injured group escapes toward the Great Forest. When everyone reunites, his long account of their separation gives way to an openly emotional embrace. The reunion confirms that two years of independent struggle strengthened rather than loosened the trust formed in Gorgon. (Chapters 182, 195, 209)

As Maiad and Rift move to conquer the Abyss, Chunghuh tries to prevent Jaehwan from rushing directly into the Eighth Site and briefs him on scattered allies and captives. Yu Seolha joins the group associated with her former master, while Chunghuh functions as an elder mediator among companions with sharply different temperaments. He also accepts responsibility for Kim Yoonhwan, using a soul pulse to diagnose him and promising Jaehwan that the best physician can restore even a Forgotten One. Because treatment occupies him during the opening clashes, his medical duty again limits how much of his strength can be committed to the front. (Chapters 211, 214, 217–218)

When the assault begins in earnest, Chunghuh crashes the Destruction into the Eighth Site and cuts open Rift's formation from the front. His World Power now exceeds one billion, and his developed Unique World manifests twelve swords carrying the lost sword arts of his homeland. He fights evenly with Fourth Division Commander Kasim, a former student who remembers Chunghuh's billion-cut training method, and reveals the Sanctuary Manifestation called Martial World. That achievement answers the failure of his first Awakening: rather than discard the dead to reach a supposedly complete self, he builds a world from their remembered arts and lets their accumulated forms fight beside him. (Chapter 227)

Martial World is powerful but not absolute. When Maiad turns Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood into Only One World, the imposed reality invades Chunghuh's Unique World and leaves him convulsing and unconscious. Jaehwan and Karlton carry the wider battle to its conclusion. Afterward, Chunghuh enjoys the peace created by the Committee but admits that the old expedition's promise of a Fruit has lost its meaning: the Fruit leads only to another Site, not to a truer life. He hesitates to tell 《Chaos》 that its longed-for salvation was a deception, just as part of him hopes Jaehwan will stop climbing. Even so, when the Committee tries to prevent Jaehwan from going to 《Big Brother》, Chunghuh stands between them and tells his friend to go. (Chapters 234, 236–237)

Chunghuh remains in the reformed Abyss after Jaehwan's departure, helping defend the Assembly Hall when hostile gods attempt to reverse the Committee's changes. Jaehwan's destruction of the System then removes immortality and restores the ordinary effects of time. Chunghuh, already far beyond a human lifespan, is among the first companions to die. He keeps joking as his friends hold his hand, but regrets that he cannot see Jaehwan again and closes his eyes while looking toward the sky. His final acceptance gives literal form to the choice that once made him an incomplete Awakened One: he dies as a person embedded in relationships rather than escaping mortality by abandoning them. (Chapters 248, 262)

In the First Nightmare, Jaehwan writes the lost journey so that its people can persist as a story. The later Revision discloses that he changes some voices in the manuscript, making Chunghuh far more mild-mannered than the old man he remembers. That note does not reverse Chunghuh's death; it distinguishes the abrasive, complicated companion in Jaehwan's memory from the version shaped for readers. Chunghuh's afterlife in the narrative is therefore consistent with White Engraving itself: another person's imperfect but determined act of remembering draws a vanished existence back into a world. (Chapters 264–265)

Appearance and personality

Chunghuh is an elderly martial artist, already about a thousand years old when he meets Jaehwan and more than twelve hundred by the Rift war. He commonly wears a dignified black robe and a broad-brimmed hat, although Jaehwan's first duel reduces both to rags. Later appearances also place him in a blue robe. His age is visible in his wrinkled face and old-man bearing, but his movements remain fast and forceful enough to surprise younger fighters. During Forgotten One Severance, his eyes turn completely white as the surrounding world becomes a blank canvas. (Chapters 31–35, 182, 214)

He is boastful, argumentative, theatrical, and fond of pretending that Jaehwan's improvements prove the greatness of Chunghuh's teaching. His interest in beautiful women produces both the rumor that he treats only women and the later title “Lustful Immortal,” a reputation he insists is based on a misunderstanding. He drinks, jokes, lazes around when peace permits, and can be rambling or tactless. These habits do not make him careless about suffering: when a patient or companion is in danger, his playful manner gives way to concentrated attention, and he repeatedly accepts exhaustion or battlefield disadvantage to keep someone alive. (Chapters 32, 43, 46, 182, 209, 236)

Chunghuh's deepest trait is the humanity once judged to be a defect in his Awakening. He is capable of fear, grief, regret, attachment, and embarrassment, and his early detachment sometimes fails people such as Heintz. Unlike a complete Awakened One who treats those emotions as obstructions, he eventually examines them and makes them the basis of his world. He can be terrified by Catastrophe or tempted to retreat before Sa Myeonghun, yet still chooses the action that protects others. His courage is therefore not fearlessness; it is the repeated decision that a frightened, limited person can remain responsible to companions and patients. (Chapters 34, 40–43, 63–65, 93)

Powers and limitations

Awakening, White Engraving, and Martial World

Chunghuh becomes an Awakened One by repeating a perfectly formed Slash roughly one billion times over about a century. His first path follows Rift's Dismantling, Assembly, and Selflessness, but he does not become “complete” because he refuses to cast away emotion and humanity. In Carpe Diem he starts over through Doubt, Understanding, and Selflessness, reaches the third stage, and later advances to Hypothesis. Awakening removes his dependence on Adaptation and Skills, reveals the world through his own gaze, and gives him World Power that eventually exceeds one billion. Its attacks consume mental energy, however, and excessive perception risks Alienation; even the time spent training in Carpe Diem leaves lasting psychological strain. (Chapters 35, 63–65, 69, 80, 182, 227)

White Engraved World is the early form of Chunghuh's Unique World. It renders existence as lines on a white canvas and expresses his ideal of remembering people who have vanished. That ideal underpins Forgotten One Severance and preserves a record strong enough to anchor Jaehwan when Catastrophe's descent erodes his identity. The world is not inviolable: Catastrophe can overwhelm it through an incarnation, insufficient spiritual power can interrupt the treatment performed inside it, and a reality imposed as Only One World can invade it so completely that Chunghuh loses consciousness. (Chapters 32, 40–41, 97, 234)

By the Rift war, Chunghuh's world has developed into the Sanctuary Manifestation Martial World. Twelve floating swords reproduce traditions whose practitioners have died, including the Namgung Great Family's Emperor Sword Form, Mount Hua's Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Technique, the South Sea Thirty-Six Swords, Shaolin's Dharma Thirteen Swords, and Wudang's Taiji Wisdom Sword. Chunghuh acquires their manuals while searching forbidden zones for Ancient God Parts, but the Unique World does more than copy instructions: it remembers the blood, souls, and accumulated practice of dead martial artists. Kasim judges its potential immense, although it remains less developed than Rift's collectively maintained Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood. (Chapter 227)

Forgotten One Severance and medicine

Forgotten One Severance cuts away the contamination that turns a soul into a Forgotten One while redrawing the memories and form through which that soul exists. It is not a System Skill and cannot be learned through ordinary Adaptation. Chunghuh performs it by fixing an unbroken gaze on a patient's fading outline, turning his sword into a brush, and reinscribing the missing lines within White Engraved World. The procedure saves Mino, restores Aimel long enough to act, and brings Jaehwan back after Catastrophe's descent. His broader medical practice also stabilizes severely wounded allies such as Jegal Myeong, Jaehwan, Karavan, and Yoonhwan. (Chapters 31–32, 39–40, 80, 97, 195, 217)

The technique has strict practical limits. Chunghuh needs a sword made from a Four-Horned Beast or stronger, and his ordinary blade can break under the procedure or in battle; he first borrows the Five-Horned-Beast weapon Solitary Unbowed for that reason. Severance also requires time, concentration, and enough spiritual or mental strength to complete the picture. Exhaustion forces Jaehwan to finish Mino's treatment, while Catastrophe's descent through Aimel turns a medical success into an opening for a stronger being. Treating a critical patient can prevent Chunghuh from joining a battle at all. His title describes unmatched expertise, not an ability to reverse every injury or overpower every contaminating world. (Chapters 32, 40, 93, 218)

Slash techniques and combat

Ordinary Slash is the foundation of Chunghuh's swordsmanship, refined through billions of repetitions until the act itself produces power outside the System. Extraordinary Slash concentrates that history into a much stronger stroke capable of forcing Jaehwan back and, after two hundred additional years of subjective training, holding two chief-commander-class Lords at once. Chunghuh and Jaehwan's exchanges also lead to the spiraling technique later named Spiral Kill: Slash's curve is compressed into the converging point of Stab, producing a violent rotating sword wind. Although Jaehwan is its direct user, Chunghuh's technique supplies its essential principle. (Chapters 35, 45–46, 51, 73)

His later combat repertoire combines direct Slashes, high-speed movement, World Power, and the twelve autonomous sword paths of Martial World. He can break massed Awakened formations and fight Kasim without yielding, but he is not on Jaehwan's or Maiad's final scale. Dark Fragrance incapacitates him quickly, Sa Myeonghun breaks his sword when he and Karlton can only deflect a strike, and Only One World suppresses his consciousness. Repeated destructive Slashes strain him even after his third Awakening. Chunghuh is consequently strongest as a versatile physician-combatant whose endurance, memory, and judgment keep a group functioning, rather than as an invincible duelist. (Chapters 73, 77, 93, 227, 234)

Power progression

Relationships

• Jaehwan: Their relationship begins as a duel between two practitioners of one repeated movement and develops into teaching in both directions. Chunghuh gives Jaehwan the principle of Slash and soul restoration; Jaehwan gives Chunghuh a new Awakening path and the courage to attempt another expedition. Their deepest trust is demonstrated when Jaehwan lets Catastrophe consume his identity because he believes Chunghuh can remember him. (Chapters 32–35, 45–46, 63–64, 97)

• Mulack Armelt: Chunghuh follows Mulack on the first Abyss Expedition despite distrusting his Dream Demon origins. Mulack's disappearance and ambiguous claim of failure haunt Chunghuh for nine hundred years, while Jaehwan's willingness to inherit the broken promise helps Chunghuh move beyond that retreat. (Chapters 36–38, 87–90)

• Karlton: Karlton becomes Chunghuh's most constant fellow traveler after Gorgon. They protect one another in the expedition, face Sa Myeonghun together, search the Abyss for Jaehwan, operate the Destruction, and fight side by side through the Rift war and the Committee era. (Chapters 69, 80, 93, 98, 124, 195, 227, 248)

• Sirwen Armelt: Chunghuh and Sirwen repeatedly trade insults, but their behavior is protective. Sirwen's Warp saves him during the Palace conflict; Chunghuh carries and guards her when she is unconscious; and the two spend years aboard the Destruction searching for Jaehwan. She is among the companions holding his hand at his death. (Chapters 69–70, 87, 124, 182, 262)

• Yu Seolha: Yu Seolha is Chunghuh's former disciple and a commander in the Rift he left behind. He reluctantly calls on that old connection to protect Jaehwan in the Metaverse, later works with her to enter Caspion, and supports her Committee while still opposing her attempt to prevent Jaehwan's final climb. (Chapters 102, 124, 144, 182, 214, 236–237)

• Cayman: Chunghuh helps teach Cayman's Awakening and warns him about Alienation. They fight together at the Palace of Rebirth, and Chunghuh helps keep the expedition standing after taking a Field Commander's blow intended for him. (Chapters 64, 69, 75, 80, 93)

• Catastrophe: Catastrophe remembers Chunghuh from the first expedition and regards his retained humanity as incompleteness. The Ancient God's world repeatedly overwhelms Chunghuh's, yet Forgotten One Severance remains the critical counter to the contamination left by Catastrophe's descents. (Chapters 40–41, 87–90, 97)

Items

• Solitary Unbowed: Chunghuh borrows Jaehwan's Garnak-horn sword after his own blade breaks during Mino's treatment. Its Five-Horned-Beast material meets Forgotten One Severance's requirement and allows him to continue the procedure; it is not his permanent weapon. (Chapter 32)