wanderee:
So I've read all posts about AoS in that tumblr blog. It has many interesting theories. I'd like to add some of  them in this thread. 

Wanderee, please provide full credit to that blogger - her name, link to the blog and her twitter feed.  She's put a lot of work into her theory;  she and I  even messaged for a few days last week.  She and I have been headed for the same conclusion from the beginning, but we have been on slightly different paths [I have posted several times that Naksu's soul was gradually seeping out and as JBY showed up (cabin porch, mirror) she was losing her "Naksu-ness" as Mu-deok/JBY gradually exerts influecnce.  There is bitter opposition to that theory.]

Her theory is also a better explanation of why Naksu changed so dramatically during Seo Yul's visits.  Although clearly a result of Jin Mu's lies, it makes more sense that it happened "10" years ago as opposed to whatever early memories she carried with her as a child.

wanderee

Wow! That's an excellent theory. I enjoyed reading yours. I will read the original link later.

But Cho Chung's daughter becomes pretty useless by that theory.

Why does Cho Chung's daughter's soul look like Mu Deok (Bu-yeon) then?

Cho Chung's daughter had saved Naksu/Bu-yeon and Uk many times.

Your theory suddenly seems like Jin Bu-yeon is the FL after all. It looks like a different story. Still, it's possible in this story.

 wanderee:
Unlike everyone, OP believes that Mudeok had also went back to her original body (GYJ) and died.

What does OP stand for? 😅

Edited:

No idea why Windows Key+. = emoji showed "?" instead.

Jin Bu-yeon's soul >>> Naksu' body

Naksu's soul >>> Jin Bu-yeon's body (Mudeok)

Then,

JBY >>> Mudeok (Back to her own body with real Naksu.)

That's how I understand. Am I right?

 Ahead:
What does OP stand for? ?

Original post/poster.

 Kathryn_51:
Wanderee, please provide full credit to that blogger - her name, link to the blog and her twitter feed.

i have already mentioned this person in other posts over the last weeks, as well as the last post where i mention the theories wanderee wrote about. i linked their blog, but i'll do it again since it seems to have been missed by many.

twitter : DaisiesOh 
tumblr : Mind Melt on a Bun

i really recommend reading their theories ! they all have lots of research and relate AoS to actual historical, cultural and scientific facts, which makes them very complete.

 Cau:

Original post/poster.

 julie:
twitter : DaisiesOh
tumblr : Mind Melt on a Bun

Thanks. :D

Too many to read. I don't know if I should be happy or not. 😭😂

hahaha ! well, if you're on the subway, riding the bus or just like me, waiting for next saturday to come, it should be fun to read :) can seem like long posts at first, but if you read 1 recap a day (from ep 1 to ep 12) it should be fine !!

Kim Hee Soo 

Thanks. XD

You have come up with interesting and important questions. Let's see how many I can answer. XD

"1. How did young Bu Yeon agree to go on that raft "expedition" to extract the ice stone? Mommy Jin was never on good terms with Uncle Jin Mu, it was a well-known fact, and knowing Mommy Jin was overprotective how did this happen? "

I am also wondering the same. Why?

"There were people behind them but it was more like Uncle Jin's henchmen. "

I don't get this part. Could anyone pls explain?

"2. Who is Daddy Jin? We know from ep 12 that he is suspicious. Is he the Shaman/fake Queen's right-hand man sent to infiltrate the Jins?"

I think I am 90% sure that he is Queen's sibling cos Eunuch said that you will have to bring your sibling from Jinyowon if he was petrified and died at the palace.

I will skip the questions that I agree with you or this comment is going to be very long.

"4.  Was the woman Mu Deok/Bu Yeon living with a normal person or a mage who knows Mu Deok/Bu Yeon needs to be protected? Hence changing her name to Mu Deok. We know Mu Deok/Bu Yeon is too kind (and probably gullible). Could this be the reason why the lady was killed or made to die? "

Just an old woman imo cos she got 10 years to find her parents and Bu-yeon's blindfold has Jin's family symbol.

"5. How or when did Mu Deok/Bu Yeon become friends with So Yi?"

More like when did MD become a victim of So-i? Sry, I still don't like her for now.

"1. Who is daddy Cho? Why is he targeted to be a soul shifter and thus end up killing every one of his family except Naksu? "

Why is he killing instead of absorbing energy from everyone? 

Whose soul is inside daddy Cho? Why was he trying to kill all of Cho's family?

Naksu was hidden from him so she got free from daddy Chou and 4 strongest mages.

"she was just cleaning up Jin Mu's mess" - So, those mages were not skilful mages. But Naksu killed them in one swoop so she was skilful but not very high skill.

For now, I will not think about Mudeok dead cos I will be sad.

It's not the end until its ends. XD

julie 

yeah. Thinking of reading it while I am travelling or while I am in bed.

Some new thoughts:

The Ice Stone can make tornado like wind 🌪️. Both Choi mage from the past and Bu-Yeon made it using the Ice Stone. So it can make all elements and can affect souls.
What's more interesting, when Choi mage summoned the tornado it showed him silouettes of the people - a man (Songrim founder?) and a blindfolded woman (Jin founder from the ritual?).
Maybe it can show the future? Maybe Bu-Yeon also saw something in it and that's why she was smiling? Like, that she will get soul shifted with Naksu?


Also, I still think the Ice Stone is divine in origin. Like water dragon divine. Maybe it has a whole water dragon inside, or part of it, or it is its egg. That water dragon in episode 1 wasn't shown just because. 

 I dunno if you play video games, but there was this rather old one called Jade Empire.
The plot there had some similarities. There was a big drought (a cyclical natural occurence involving water dragon's life span), which the villainous emperor solved by slaying the water dragon. Her blood/water started perpetually pouring from her giant body hidden in the royal palace, which ended the drought. But with a caveat, the water dragon not only supervised the distribution of water supplies and rainfall to the mortal world, but also shepherded the souls of the dead along the Great Wheel – the cycle of life, death and rebirth. And since she died, restless ghosts started roaming the land.

More about water dragon there, everything probably based on Chinese myths and folklore about water dragons:
https://jadeempire.fandom.com/wiki/Water_Dragon 

 Kathryn_51:
Wanderee, please provide full credit to that blogger - her name, link to the blog and her twitter feed.

I am sorry for my carelessness. All credits go to her. I thought there’s no need to since my post is just below the post that mentioned her. As I have said, I only summarized her theories and thoughts, and I wanted to share them with everyone here because they are very intriguing. 

 wanderee:
Naksu is Jin Buyeon.

I found it unbelievable initially, but as I read the evidences, it could be totally possible. (The recent episodes have been emphasizing the connection of JBY and Jang Uk. It made me question the position of Naksu in the story, This theory might be the resolution for that.)


 wanderee:
Mudeok is the constellation mage's daughter. Jinmu took her in, after her soul shifter father was killed, with the intention of swapping her soul with JBY later on.


 wanderee:
He transformed JBY to Naksu as a revenge to Jin Family and also to use her for their grand plans. 

I was actually thinking this theory in the first few episodes that was released, but then my mind got confused at the announcement that Jung So Min will not be the main lead in the part 2. Made me doubt a lot of things andnot rush to conclusions.

 jxxvvxxkstan:

My guess is that when they change bodies their souls change as well. 

It always bothered me why Naksu's soul appeared differently (Naksu vs Mudeok)  in the "dream world", but this explanation makes a lot of sense. The basic premise of AoS is that souls are different from bodies, so why would a soul continue to present in its original body, rather than the body it currently occupies?

Thecla 

Yeah. Souls are formless just like water & air right? :D

So, they will shape into any form they go into.

 wanderee:
I am sorry for my carelessness. All credits go to her. I thought there’s no need to since my post is just below the post that mentioned her.

 

 julie:
i have already mentioned this person in other posts over the last weeks, as well as the last post where i mention the theories wanderee wrote about.

Well, this shows how quickly things disappear on this particular forum.  LOL.  I only read her theory for the first time last week (on a different forum) and started a brief conversation with her.  Her theory runs counter to what the writers are currently providing the viewer which, in and of itself, is a good reason to think she's correct.  

Ahead 
Thank you for taking the time and answering my questions.

About my comment about the men behind them being more Uncle Jin Mu's henchmen, I was referring to the people behind uncle Jin Mu and Bu Yeon while they were on the raft and trying to get Bu Yeon to work the Ice Stone. I don't see Daddy Jin, or mommy Jin for that matter,  on that raft

Thank you for picking up that conversation by Eunuch and Queen/Shaman. With this logic,  there is a possibility that the actual Daddy Jin was killed while searching for Jin Bu Yeon and Shaman's bro took over the body so he can infiltrate Jinyowon. But if this is the case, how did he remain alive and not petrified? Is this the reason why he is always out to look for Jin Bu Yeon and rarely at home? Because he was out feeding on energies?

Your pertinent follow-up questions about Daddy Cho are also intriguing:

  • Why is he killing instead of absorbing energy from everyone? 
  • Whose soul is inside Daddy Cho? Why was he trying to kill all of Cho's family?
  • Naksu was hidden from him so she got free from daddy Chou and the 4 strongest mage

I guess we got 8 more episodes to find out about these daddy issues and also not forget the biggest daddy issue in the house, how will Daddy Jang Kang act and react now that he knows his son's energy is not contained?

I am envisioning an epic battle in ep 19 or early ep 20 similar to the opening of ep 1 except this time it's led by Jang Uk and Mu Deok/Jin Bu Yeon/Naksu supported by Daddy Jang Kang, Master Lee (Seo Gyeong? - someone here theorizes this and m on board simply because of the love letter. Why would it be taught to his pupil and propagated as a mage training manual of sorts)  Park Jin and Mommy Jin against Jin Mu and Queen/Shaman and Daddy Jin.

As Hong sisters go, someone (or more) has to die. It is a repeat carnage from 200 years ago. Hate the fact that Jang Uk keeps repeating the lines "if I die, you die too!" to Mu Deok/Naksu, it's such a foretelling of a tragic/bitter ending.  

Thecla 
You mentioned how you are bothered that Naksu's soul appears as Mu Deok when it is in the soul realm. It suddenly made me recall how this premise was used in Abyss (the Park Bo Young and Anh Hyo Seop drama of reliving your second life as how your soul appears, she became shorter and cute (instead of tall and pretty) and he became tall and handsome (instead of average and nerdy)). In there it explains that your soul takes on your "true" form.

Perhaps the reason Naksu's soul appears as Mu Deok/Bu Yeon is that she herself has or contains an ice stone similar to Mu Deok and that they are actually one Ice Stone. If this is the case then this may explain:

  • Why Naksu's soul was swapped into Mu Deok/Naksu and not that "strong lady" in the tavern in the first episode, Mu Deok was drawn to her "twin"
  • Why Naksu was picked up by Jin Mu and  not killed like the rest of the family 
  • She was able to master the 4 levels of mage proficiency faster than an average assassin
  • She was cold-hearted (?) because her "human" side was taken by her "twin" Mu Deok/Jin Bu Yeon. The next question would be, but Mu Deok/Jin Bu Yeon is much younger than Naksu, how was it spliced and half of it was able to be summoned about 10 years (or less) after Naksu? That answer may lie in Blind Priestess/Original Jin matriarch. She probably knew how dangerous it is to keep all the ice stone in 1 body so she kept part of it for her great-grandchild, Jin Bu Yeon, and half in Naksu, a Cho heir.

    The follow-up to this question then ties back to Ahead's questions on who is Daddy Cho and why he did what he did as a soul shifter (i.e kill instead of absorbing energy).  In a grander scheme of things, how influential/powerful are the Chos? How are they related (and definitely not in a family setting) to the Chois? On this note,  a couple of theorists here reckoned the Chois are the disgraced mage clan that was ostracised as they like to dabble in sorcery and thus became shamans. There is also a lot of discussion here that says the noble lady in the first ep is the actual queen (but is in the form of the actual shaman), which explains why she is familiar with daddy Jang Kang. But if that is the case, who then is the soul-shifting son she was helping to feed?

Haiz...so many questions and 8 more episodes to go! Let's hang in there guys and see how our theories pan out.

 Ahead:
Why does Cho Chung's daughter's soul look like Mu Deok (Bu-yeon) then?

Cho Chung's daughter had saved Naksu/Bu-yeon and Uk many times.

OP believes there are no two souls in JSM body. Mudeok‘s soul (Cho Chung’s daughter) went back to her original body (GYJ body) after Naksu (formerly known as JBY) went back to her original body (JSM). 

About the two souls in soul realm, she believes the blind JSM is the subconscious JBY, the one who can use her divine powers. Because she’s far from home and has amnesia, this version of herself became dormat. Basically, JBY forgot that she has divine powers, and she embodied the Naksu persona that Jinmu created for her using the story of Cho Chung’s daughter. 

The divine JBY is the one who has been saving Naksu and Uk several times. Because (1) Naksu is herself, and (2) she sees Uk as someone important to solve the problem. She might have sensed the energy of ice stone within Uk.