[KD] Tree With Deep Roots: Episode 7

King Sejong fills in the missing character from the ‘puzzle’ left by
Scholar Yoon-pil, and ‘Mil Bon’ (Hidden Root) is created. No one else
has been able to solve it because it’s a language that they don’t know,
and one that Sejong has been working to create with painstaking care and
the utmost secrecy. He’s more than dismayed to know the truth to
Yoon-pil’s dying message, and it’s only made worse when Mu-hyul arrives
to tell him that the dead bodies of the scholars have gone missing.

It looks like my theory of Shim Jong-soo secretly being Jung Ki-joon
was incorrect – Jong-soo talks about the ‘group leader’ of Hidden Root
and how he has yet to make a move. The female leader of Ban Chon
disagrees, and hands him an order from the leader himself… whose
identity we don’t know. We do find out the identity of the masked man,
PYUNG, who informs the Leader that scholars Sung Sam-moon and Park
Paeng-nyeon are the ones who’ve stolen the bodies.



As if reading our thoughts, Chae-yoon sits his teammates down to
discuss who’s on what side. He’s written down all the players – the
living (and dead) scholars, So-yi, the masked man, the cloth-covered
package, the corpse stealers. He separates them to the right and left –
basically, who’s on the side of the King and who is against him. It’s a
great moment to get a general feel for how Chae-yoon is breaking down
the case, and he’s come to his own good conclusions. The most pressing
matter is where the corpses are, and he knows that the corpse-stealers
must be Jiphyunjeon scholars (after that stunt he pulled by asking the
head scholar if he could body-check each scholar for tattoos).

The only wild card, at least in Chae-yoon’s opinion, is So-yi. They
don’t know why the masked man didn’t kill her, and there are enough
suspicions to place her right in the middle.

Chae-yoon wants to find out who stole the bodies, and knows that the
scholars have enough ethics to return the bodies to their families – so
that’s where they’ll go to wait.



In an interesting turn, Jo Mal-saeng proves his loyalty to the
monarchy (he may be a political schemer, but he’s not as nefarious as
Hidden Root) by leading King Sejong to the very cave that his father
once saw – complete with the carving in the wall by Jung Do-jun. He’s
done this to prove to Sejong that Hidden Root exists, because Former
King Taejong had charged him with a last order to help his son, future
King Sejong, should bizarre happenings begin to occur in the palace.
Bizarre things are indeed occurring, and Jo Mal-saeng has stepped up to
the plate.

Juxtaposing this dark and eerie scene is a dark an eerie plot set in
broad daylight, as Shim Jong-soo follows the Hidden Root group leader’s
mission to find Master Hae-gang. If they can bring him over to Hidden
Root, then half of Joseon’s scholars will follow him. The older man asks
the same question Sejong asks – who’s left alive to lead Hidden Root?
They both pretty much find out the same answer at the same time – Jung
Do-jun and his brother Jung Do-gwang may be dead, but Jung Do-gwang’s
son, Jung Ki-joon, survived. And that’s exactly who’s leading Hidden
Root. Dun dun dun!



Chae-yoon is going step by step in his investigation, and ends up at
the house of Heo Dahm to give his consolations for the fact that they
don’t have a body to mourn. He asks about the package he delivered to
Heo Dahm when he first arrived – the one wrapped in green cloth. It was a
book – what they’re referring to as the Bi Ba Sa Ron – but the most
curious thing is that it was written in Sanskrit.

He wants to know who he can ask about it, which leads him to the
bookstore in Ban Chon. The woman at Heo Dahm’s house said he had
discussed the book with the owner of the store, only Chae-yoon doesn’t
find the owner when he pays a visit – instead he finds PYUNG, our
resident man-in-a-mask.



Chae-yoon acts like he wants to buy a book, and sees Pyung’s iron
bracelet in the process – recognizing the symbol as the one So-yi drew
for him. He couldn’t be less obvious about knowing, and soon finds a
sword held to his neck. Pyung asks Chae-yoon how he was recognized, but
Cho-tak comes bursting in and the fight begins. Pyung has no choice but
to make a break for it – and he flees out the window and uses the
rooftops of Ban Chon to make his escape.

It isn’t the first time Pyung has used the leaping martial arts
technique, but when Chae-yoon tries to do the same to follow him he’s
stopped by Cho-tak – too many people are around as witnesses. They try
to chase down the man-without-a-mask using traditional methods (meaning:
only their feet) and are met with failure. In a moment of frustration,
Cho-tak calls Chae-yoon out on his Teacher’s possible involvement. Pyung
knows the same leaping method that Chae-yoon’s always bragged about,
after all. Chae-yoon says that can’t be possible, though, since his
Teacher disappeared two years ago… and it’s a strange thing for him to
say, because disappearing for two years makes it seem exactly possible.



The King finds himself alone in the assembly room (only he isn’t, as
So-yi proves to be a silent bystander). It’s there he vents, as loudly
as he pleases, about all of his many troubles. Not only is he figuring
out that Hidden Root is alive and well, but that means Jung Ki-joon is
alive and well. And on top of all that, Chae-yoon is alive and well, and
that other small detail – that he’s there to kill him.



The female leader of Ban Chon gets wind that the palace guards have
infiltrated the bookstore, and calls the whole slave village to arms.
It’s expressly forbidden that royal troops enter Ban Chon, and both the
villagers and the palace guards have a charged standoff outside.

Chae-yoon diffuses the situation head-to-head with the Leader,
although she doesn’t seem to recognize him from his younger days. He
points out that they came unarmed, and asks her about Pyung. She may be
chief of the town, she says, but she doesn’t know everyone. So-yi is
among the crowd, however, as she’s on a mission from the King and has a
wordless exchange (ha – I swear I’m not doing this on purpose) with a
scholar, JANG SEONG-SOO, in disguise.



Her presence isn’t missed by Chae-yoon, who wonders what a court lady
is doing in the middle of Ban Chon. Once she’s able to meet with the
scholar in private, she hands him a letter. He’s to deliver all the data
he has so far (presumably on the super-secret Hangul project) and hand
it to her, and then burn all the books related to it in Jiphyunjeon.
It’s the King’s command, and he can’t help but oblige. He tells her
he’ll met her later tonight at a temple to hand her the information she
needs.



Jo Mal-saeng is giving us some nice surprises this episode. I’d
originally written him off as just another official bent on subverting
the King’s power, but really his objectives are the exact opposite of
Hidden Root. He might gripe about the monarchy, but he doesn’t want it
demolished. Thus, he goes again to King Sejong – repeating news that
Sejong just heard from Mu-hyul about Chae-yoon and other palace guards
storming the Ban Chon bookstore.

But he’s there for another reason – to warn the King against trusting
anyone. Hidden Root is everywhere, he can trust no one. Not
Sungkyunkwan University, not even his beloved Jiphyunjeon scholars.
There’s no telling who’s part of Hidden Root, and Sejong must come to
terms with the fact that he must suspect those who are hardest to
suspect… and then says that he should entrust the investigation to him,
and not the palace guards.

Sejong has a waitaminute moment… if he’s not supposed to trust anyone, why should he trust Jo Mal-saeng? In a little bit of a ‘good, let the hate flow through you’ moment, Jo Mal-saeng says he’s done his job and leaves.



Official Lee Shin-juk has been doing some shadowy things through the
past few episodes, and it’s been unclear which side he’s on. But now
that Jo Mal-saeng has revealed himself to be trustworthy (for now) the
following exchange between him and Lee Shin-juk is worth noting. The
palace is full of eyes and ears, and Lee Shin-juk knows all about Jo
Mal-saeng’s secret comings and goings. What has he been discussing with
the King?

In a bit of a witty moment that only makes me like Jo Mal-saeng more,
he simply replies that if Lee Shin-juk knows about all these secret
meetings then they aren’t much of a secret, are they? He effectively
cuts off further questioning by asking Shin-juk about Hidden Root – and
we can see, after Mal-saeng leaves, how rattled this question leaves his
fellow official.



Jo Mal-saeng’s words have affected Sejong deeply, and Mu-hyul finds
him just lying down without his official Kingly robe while he soaks it
all in. It’s clear Mu-hyul is his closest and most trusted confidante,
and Sejong asks him a simple question.

King Sejong: “Do you believe in people?”

Mu-hyul replies that he believes in Sejong, who says that if that’s
so, why does Mu-hyul want to kill Ddol-bok so bad if he knows him so
well? Basically, Mu-hyul kills people because he believes them, other
people kill people because they don’t believe them, and Sejong feels
like killing people the most when he can’t believe himself. Aww, these
moral crises bring back fond memories of the young Sejong.



The Leader of Ban Chon meets with her loyal assassin, Pyung, and asks
him how he was figured out by Chae-yoon. He doesn’t know, and she
simply tells him that he can’t make a mistake again – because Sung
Sam-moon is next. Nooooo. Damn you, Show! I knew you were going to do
this to me.

Meanwhile, the scholar that So-yi met with in Ban Chon, Jang
Seong-soo, is called before the rest of the scholars for some illicit
drawings he’s been keeping. It’s clear that Scholar Jang knows he’s been
let off easy (the drawings are better than his colleagues finding out
about his secret mission) and he hams it up, falling to his knees to say
that he’s done wrong. He’s to be kicked out immediately.



Scholar Sung Sam-moon was present when Scholar Jang was brought to
task for the naughty drawings, but saw something that the other scholars
seemed to have missed. He waits to catch Jang Seong-soo alone, and asks
him up front about all the things that have piqued his curiosity –
Scholar Heo Dahm was studying Sanskrit, Yoon-pil was studying printing
blocks, and now Scholar Jang was caught studying Phags-Pa Script
(Phags-pa script was an alphabet designed for Kublai Khan, the emperor
of Yuan. The alphabet was used for only a century before the Yuan
Dynasty gave rise to the Ming Dynasty, and the alphabet became extinct).

Scholar Jang denies everything, until Sam-moon grabs his clothing to
reveal the same square-within-a-circle tattoo that he has – and the same
tattoo that’s on the dead scholars. Jang says it’s just a mole, and
that there wasn’t anything special about the drawings – he just wanted
to look at some pornography. Sam-moon knows better, displaying the
curiosity that Hidden Root wants him killed for, and gets into a
physical scuffle with Jang to try and wrestle answers out of him.



There’s more to Sam-moon than just curiosity. He knows that members
of the Chun Ji (Heaven and Earth) organization are being killed, and he
probably fears for his own safety. More than that, though, he wants to
know the truth that’s being hidden from him by other members of the same
organization, like Jang. He pleads with his fellow scholar to tell him
what the King is working on – because only then can he find out who’s
killing off the scholars, and why. More importantly, who’s next?

Jang finally seems to give in, and tells Sam-moon to go back and wait
– he’ll give him the answer. Something tells me that this won’t happen,
since they’re watched in the shadows by Pyung, in his Killing Mask.



Chae-yoon and Sam-moon have, as the truism goes, taken different
paths to get to the same point on the mountain (literally). Our
investigator has been going step by step, painstakingly working to find
out who stole the bodies of the scholars – and after an interrogation
with the old man who housed the bodies after Sung Sam-moon and Park
Paeng-nyeon took them, he’s made it to the mountain to try and find our
curious scholar.

Only, they see another person coming up the same mountain path
heading towards the temple – it’s the mysterious court lady, So-yi.
She’s come to meet with Jang Seong-soo to get the information he
promised her earlier.



Pyung confronts Scholar Jang at the temple, but curiously doesn’t cut
him down with his sword – which gives the scholar enough time to yell
from the mountain that whoever is coming should run away. It’s clear
that he’s probably addressing So-yi, who seems intent to still head up
the mountain and toward the screams that end abruptly. Chae-yoon knows
that this means the man is dead, and reveals himself to So-yi in order
to physically stop her from going any further. He tells her to run back
down and inform the King that Scholar Jang is dead.



Scholar Jang isn’t quite dead yet, but suffering greatly. It
looks like the effects of poison as he’s bleeding from the ears, and
Pyung effectively steals the cloth-covered package that Scholar Jang was
carrying. I’m having a little trouble keeping up on my cloth-covered
packages – the Bi Ba Sa Ron, a Buddhist scroll written in Sanskrit, was
what Chae-yoon originally delivered to Heo Dahm, but that package was
stolen – presumably by the bad guys. So is that package the Bi Ba Sa
Ron, or something else having to do with Phags-Pa?

Pyung makes his escape, but not before finding Cho-tak in the forest
and landing a hit on the palace guard’s shoulder. I love that Cho-tak
seems nearly as capable as Chae-yoon, and isn’t relegated to being the
bumbly sidekick. When Chae-yoon finds him moments later, Cho-tak tells
his friend that no one is around – use the leaping method to his heart’s
content and catch that masked bastard.



Chae-yoon catches up to Pyung, who arrogantly asks if Chae-yoon is on
the hunt for the coral-cloth-covered-package. Chae-yoon is still upset
that he got a slight knick on the neck from Pyung in the bookstore
earlier, and quips back – what package? He just wants Pyung to take his
mask off. He’s seen his face anyway, so what’s there to hide?



So-yi has run all the way from the mountain to the King without
stopping, and uses the ground as a writing pad as she’s without paper.
It’s with growing anger that Sejong reads that Scholar Jang Seung-soo is
dead. She’s just the messenger, but Sejong directs his cursing and
yelling at her – he can’t stop these killings, and now news of another
one has literally arrived on his doorstep. Saying that he’s upset is an
understatement.



While Pyung is of the mind that Chae-yoon is inconsequential and
therefore useless to kill, Chae-yoon proves him wrong when he uses the
leaping method against him to cut his mask (and a bit of his forehead)
off. Now Pyung’s interest is piqued – so far he’s been the only one able
to use the leaping method that Chae-yoon knows, which somehow ties back
to Chae-yoon’s teacher – in a way that has yet to be revealed.

Pyung wants to know who he is (oh, now you care) and Chae-yoon isn’t
about to tell him. Instead, he’s more than happy to bait the mysterious
man into a fight.




COMMENTS

Fight! Fight! Fight!

This episode had its good, intriguing moments, but was a little bit
slower overall. We still got plenty of good information about our
characters as we delved deeper into what makes them tick. It was
especially fun, for me at least, to see Chae-yoon go through the
case-solving steps to unravel the mystery. There’s some comfort to be
had in knowing that he’s capable, and in fact, he might be the only one
capable enough to save the King. Sejong has his brilliant mind, but he
doesn’t know who to trust and it’s clearly taking an emotional and moral
toll on him. Chae-yoon only has to trust in himself, so he’s less
burdened by the things that are weighing Sejong down.

Even though Chae-yoon is working toward eventual revenge on the King
(which I hope he changes his mind about – we know from drama experience
that characters who live on one side of the extreme normally end up
dead), it’s interesting that he’s working so hard for his enemy in the
process. Maybe Sejong knows this too, because he’s pretty much choosing
to do nothing with the knowledge that there’s an assassin in the palace.

I’m really pleased with the way this show is carefully revealing what
everyone’s real goals are, and enjoyed all of Jo Mal-saeng’s moments in
this episode. His aims, while not the stuff heroes are made of, still
differentiate him from the real bad guys in Hidden Root.

I say that with a grain of salt, because Hidden Root is just an
idealistic group whose ideals aren’t too bad (in theory) – restrict the
power that one man has, and give more to the people. It’s more in line
with Sejong’s ideas about being King that were so different from his
father’s, which makes it interesting that these two groups are so at
odds. There’s the whole matter of revenge for Jung Do-jun, though.



The butcher’s assistant has been silent background material since
early on, but the amount of time the camera spends on him is curious. He
got plenty of Meaningful One-Shots during the Ban Chon scene, and
against my better judgment I’m beginning to wonder if he’s Jung Ki-joon.
But maybe that’s what the writers want me to believe and they’re still
secretly hiding him somewhere… Damn it! Just tell me already!

I’m just kidding. You take all the time you need, Tree. I trust you.