The massive conveyor belts of the Ulsan plant turned relentlessly, cutting through the air with a metallic shriek.
Jeong Ui-hyun had been roaming the heart of the factory floor for twelve hours straight, completely enveloped by the blinding sparks of welding arcs and the heavy stench of machine oil in temperatures pushing 40°C.
Ordinarily, a mere one-hour inspection would have left his complexion pale and exhausted.
Now, however, without breaking a single drop of sweat, he was pinpointing even the microscopic clearances along the assembly lines in an instant.
His eyes, cutting through the flashes of fire, mirrored those of an apex predator locking onto its prey.
The subordinates trailing behind him were already on the verge of collapse, stumbling over their own feet.
But Ui-hyun’s heart pounded with a heavy, rhythmic intensity—like a hydrogen engine that refused to stop.
By dawn the following day, a suffocating tension gripped the strategic war room on the 21st floor of the Yangjae-dong headquarters.
The establishment of a multi-trillion-won joint venture (JV) for a North American battery plant had been a grueling puzzle dragged out for months.
Yet, the session reached a unanimous resolution just thirty minutes after starting.
Instead of carefully analyzing the 500-page legal and financial review compiled overnight by the secretariat, Ui-hyun instinctively pierced right through the subtle risks hidden between the lines.
With his mind operating at an impossible velocity, complex financial formulas and market forecast data reconstructed themselves within his mind with absolute clarity.
Twirling his pen, he cut straight to the vulnerabilities of the opposing negotiating team with just a few sharp questions.
The veteran executives gathered in the room held their breath before that overwhelming intellectual dominance.
On the night of the third day, inside the robotics lab of the Namyang R&D Center.
Under the glare of fluorescent lights, Ui-hyun stayed up all night debating bottlenecks in autonomous driving algorithms alongside senior researchers.
Even the genius engineers recruited from around the world—men nearly thirty years younger than him—found themselves overwhelmed by Ui-hyun's clinical logic.
His neural pathways, once stiffened by age, had turned flexible and elastic under the influence of Phantom, allowing him to grasp the core of complex engineering within his calloused palms.
He no longer looked like a mere executive; he looked like a prophet dictating the future of technology.
On the night of the fourth day, in a secluded back room of "Avalon," the discreet bar in Hannam-dong.
Jeong Hyun-jin slowly swirled his crystal whiskey glass, his voice dropping low.
""Chairman, you should start preparing yourself mentally. By the night of the sixth day, or the morning of the seventh at the latest, that taut mind of yours will start screaming like rusted machinery."
Hyun-jin set his glass down, adding coldly,
"That’s the most terrifying part of Phantom. The deeper the heaven you experience when you feel like a god, the deeper and darker the hell becomes when you drop back down to a mere mortal."
Hyun-jin’s warning struck with the precision of a curse.
The moment dawn arrived on the fifth day, the steel-like tension in his muscles dissolved into nothingness.
A hazy fog drifted back into his vision, and a crushing weight settled over his shoulders, as if tens of tons of lead had dropped onto his frame.
His fingertips grew dull, turning the simple act of holding a pen to sign documents into agonizing labor.
The processing speed of his brain plummeted violently, and ideas that had been crystal clear just hours prior scattered into the far recesses of his memory.
The raw impulse to summon Lee Seo-han and beg for another injection drilled straight into his marrow.
Yet, the strict rule the scientist had emphasized—the mandatory one-week interval—haunted his thoughts, torturing him.
Unable to endure it any longer, Ui-hyun secretly summoned Professor Park, the country's foremost authority on endocrinology from P University and his personal physician, to his executive office.
After listening to the report of Ui-hyun’s abnormally volatile vital signs and his superhuman exploits over the past few days, Professor Park adjusted his glasses, speaking with extreme caution.
"From a medical standpoint, the symptoms you've described indicate a forced reactivation of the HPG axis—the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis. An external substance has violently awakened a dormant hormonal system, forcing it back to its absolute peak."
Professor Park’s expression turned grim.
"The problem is that such a powerful, artificial stimulus inevitably triggers desensitization. When the body's receptors are exposed to an overwhelming signal they cannot handle, they shut their doors entirely to protect themselves."
"They shut their doors?"
"Yes, sir. If left unchecked, it could induce a state akin to chemical castration, where no drug—not even your body's natural hormones—will elicit a response."
Professor Park turned on his tablet with a trembling hand, displaying five candidate compound classes currently under secret investigation within global biotechnology circles.
First: Oxytocin derivatives
Second: PT-141 (Bremelanotide)
Third: Ghost, the master switch of the entire endocrine system
Fourth: Direct testosterone infusion
Finally: hCG
Ui-hyun stared fiercely at the complex structural formulas on the screen with bloodshot eyes.
"What I experienced wasn't some simple surge in libido or a mere muscle pump. It felt as though every brain cell had synchronized, aligning every variable into a single equation. Which of these is closest to that sensation?"
Professor Park cautiously pointed to a specific molecular structure.
"There is a very high probability it is a sophisticated complex of Kisspeptin and PT-141. PT-141, in particular, directly stimulates the nervous system, maximizing instinctive aggression and the primal senses of a hunter."
The physician swallowed hard before delivering his conclusion.
"That 'predatory intelligence' you felt, Chairman, was likely due to this peptide chain completely seizing control of your brain's reward circuitry. But the whiplash is just as lethal.
The reason CEO Lee Seo-han emphasized the one-week interval so strictly was because it is the minimum—and only—safeguard preventing your brain receptors from burning out completely from overload."
Ui-hyun swallowed his dry spit. A parching thirst burned down his throat.
He finally understood. Lee Seo-han was no ordinary drug-peddling technician.
He was a cruel conductor holding the brain receptors of South Korea's tycoons hostage. He rationed out the drug called desire just carefully enough to keep them from collapsing, while holding their survival firmly in his hands.
In the mirror, Ui-hyun had returned once more to an old, exhausted leader in his sixties. He trembled with a violent craving to reclaim those three days of absolute command, even if it meant selling his soul.
"Professor Park, you are dismissed. What you saw and heard here today is data that does not exist until the day you die. Do you understand?"
"……I will keep that in mind, Chairman."
The moment the pale-faced physician scurried out of the office, Jeong Ui-hyun violently tore open his tie.
The sound of his heart, beating slow and heavy while pumping toxins of fatigue throughout his frame, struck his ears like a curse. The brilliant clarity that had cut through the global automotive landscape just days ago was gone.
Amidst the torment of his brain cells flickering like mud, he recalled the brutally simple prerequisite Lee Seo-han had demanded:
"Personally arrange a matchmaking meeting with a top-tier woman at least four times a month, until I find one who can truly paralyze my reasoning and drive me mad. If you sacrifice soulless shells as offerings, there will be no supply next week."
When he had first heard that rule, he had dismissed it as the vulgar, bizarre hubris of a mere biotech founder. Now, it was different.
If the caliber of the variable arranged by his secretariat failed to stimulate Seo-han’s fastidious emotional circuitry, his access to that drive would be permanently revoked.
It was a terror worse than death.
With a shaking hand, Ui-hyun slammed the intercom.
"Chief of Staff, get in here right now."
In less than a minute, the door swung open, and Chief of Staff Choi—the man who managed all of H Group’s shadow intelligence and government relations—entered with a low bow.
Ui-hyun glared at Choi with hollow, dying eyes, his voice low and cracked.
"Chief Choi. As of this exact second, halt all operations of Secretariat Team 1. Scour the marriage networks and elite infrastructure of South Korea's highest echelons."
Choi’s eyebrows twitched minutely. The Chairman was known as an iron-blooded dictator who had never shown an ounce of interest in personal pleasures or matchmaking arrangements.
"Chairman, what are the specific guidelines for the target? Are you referring to the daughters of prominent families, or perhaps lineages from academia...?"
"No, not those flat, tedious listings of credentials!" Ui-hyun slammed his fist onto the desk.
"Her intelligence must be cold and arrogant, but she must be someone genuine—untouched by the artificiality of the upper class. Filter out all the cheap, soulless shells who sway for a few pennies or family backgrounds!"
Ui-hyun’s breathing grew ragged.
"Find a peerless talent whose edge is sharp enough to grind a man's reasoning down to the molecular level. Use every ounce of influence the secretariat can mobilize—status, academic networks, family crests—to move her and seat her at the table."
Ui-hyun buried himself deep into his chair, rubbing his haggard face with his palm.
"It seems that high-end hostess named Chae Do-hee, sent by that bastard Jeong Hyun-jin, has temporarily caught the doctor's orbit. But a vulgar calculator like Vice Chairman Jeong will never satisfy that man."
Ui-hyun locked his eyes onto Choi.
"He told me the quality of the arrangement dictates the quality of the prescription. Only when we present the absolute highest tier of variable will the purity of the drug that floods my neural network reach its absolute zenith.
My life, and the future of this H Group, rests entirely on that lineup. Do you understand?"
Chief Choi saw the madness bordering on pure obsession and terror flashing within the Chairman’s eyes. This was no simple curiosity or business venture. It was the desperate thrashing of an absolute ruler fighting to maintain his lifeline.
"……I will compile a list of the most rigorous and authentic caliber. I will select the first target and report back within the week."
As the Chief of Staff bowed deeply and withdrew, a heavy silence settled over the executive office once more.
The old leader in the mirror drew sharp breaths, staring at his own veins. It was the night the two titans commanding South Korea's greatest corporate axes became completely domesticated, drawing themselves into the chain of greed engineered by a forty-three-year-old scientist.
At that exact hour, having emerged from the center of the vortex of greed spun by those giants, Seo-han’s Grandeur sped toward the Gangbyeon Expressway.
A total of 200 million won in war chest funds, extracted by squeezing the windpipes of the very men who commanded the nation's two greatest pillars. The weight of the crisp new banknotes was heavy, yet the countenance of the man gripping the steering wheel held not a single trace of excitement or satisfaction.
This money was shadow capital, unable to mingle even as a single cent within Aether Bio’s official accounts.
Evading the dense nets of the National Tax Service and the Financial Supervisory Service, it would remain strictly isolated as a private war chest—true private research funds meant to covertly abstract and experiment on the immunotherapies and anti-aging mechanisms mapped inside his mind.
Seo-han stepped on the gas.
Emitting a worn engine note, the Grandeur glided into the cold night scenery of the expressway. Opening the window minutely, the pungent exhaust of the cityscape and the chilly river wind sharply entered his senses.
In the shadows, the tycoons who commanded trillions in capital were ready to sell their souls for a single needle, hanging onto his every word. Yet, the reality awaiting Seo-han in the light on Monday morning was still unyielding.
Waiting for him was a corporate balance of 6 billion won, bleeding out ruthlessly by 330 million won every month. The countdown timer of that 18-month runway was hammering his neural pathways at this very moment.
The pressure of Phase 2 interim data and the close-quarters combat of the upcoming funding round against the frozen VC analysts of Teheran-ro awaited him.
Once again, the god of the shadows put on the mask of a struggling startup founder, steering his car toward Teheran-ro at the absolute peak of its ice age.
Through the windows, the skyscraper forest of Gangnam emitted a cold, dry blue light. Yet, a firm tension locked into the fingertips of the man holding the wheel, and a faint, icy smirk settled onto the corner of his mouth.
The predators of capital had already begun to move within his orbit. Armed with the absolute detachment of a man who had burned his bridges, he accelerated straight into the heart of the frozen biotech winter.
The moment the heavy soundproof door shut and Seo-han's presence vanished completely, a bizarre heat lingered in the sitting room.
Jeong Ui-hyun rose as if possessed, approaching the large mirror mounted on the wall. With a trembling hand, he traced the contours of his own reflection.
The heavy aura of age that had weighed around his eyes just an hour earlier had thinned. The chronic fatigue and cerebral fog that had tortured him for years had lifted.
In its place flashed the predatory drive of a tycoon who had once dominated global markets.