The Lost Master / Forgotten One

The Forgotten One, also called the Lost Master, is an ancient rival of the Sinanju line whose spirit animates Sonmi’s body and later speaks with Chiun in Father to Son. The story presents his background through Chiun’s account of Sinanju history and a conversation after the final battle; it gives no personal name or date for him.

Chiun places the episode after Master Hung of the Old Order died without an heir. In his telling, Great Wang returned from the wilderness claiming to have found the Sun Source and killed the rival night tigers who were fighting to succeed Hung. Wang established a single Master-and-pupil line. The last survivor was a lesser Master from a family known for magic and the black arts.

As he lay dying, the survivor called Wang an impostor, denounced the new lineage as illegitimate and refused his assigned place in the Void. He cursed Wang, Sinanju’s people and their descendants, predicting judgment when his own bloodline ended. Chiun’s account later calls him the Lost Master.

After returning as the Forgotten One, he says his family has plotted vengeance for uncounted years. He sees an opportunity through Nuihc, Nuihc’s protégé Jeremiah Purcell and the death of the last living member of his family. The account leaves the intervening generations unspecified; the closing narration identifies Sonmi as the last of the Lost Master’s bloodline.

The elderly Sonmi is a human woman whose father is described by some villagers as a powerful shaman. In the Foreword she rows into West Korean Bay, scatters herbs, recites chants inherited from her father and grandfather, and jumps into the water. The closing passage says her drowning death gave the Forgotten One life. It then describes the spirit leaving the frail body it had animated; the corpse looks like Sonmi again, and the narrator calls her Nuihc’s aunt and the last of the Lost Master’s bloodline. Sonmi, her body and the possessing spirit are related in the story but are not treated as one person.

The Forgotten One is also distinct from Jeremiah Purcell. During the battle, Mark identifies both apparent opponents as Purcell, and the narration shows the figure appearing as Nuihc changing into Purcell. Only afterward does Chiun meet the separately named Lost Master/Forgotten One, who speaks of the ancient curse and leaves Sonmi’s body. The story therefore separates Purcell’s assumed appearance from the spirit’s later conversation.

Chiun says Wang accepted the curse and predicted that a future Master would find a dead-eyed Westerner, train him as a night tiger and Shiva the Destroyer, and eventually make him Master. Chiun declares the predicted age present. The Forgotten One accepts death, and its spirit leaves the body; the corpse is cold as if dead for months. Chiun carries Sonmi to the abandoned ancestral house and collapses it, ending the episode.