Murim Login - Chapter 151

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 151
The Pavilion where I currently reside is a newly constructed building completed only days ago.
On the first day Jin Moo-kyung returned to the Taewon Jin Family, he wreaked such havoc that the old Pavilion had to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch.
‘What matters is that I now have a Training Ground.’
Jin Wi-kyung, who would make my younger siblings green with envy, would never have built it carelessly.
The interior of the Pavilion, furnished far more lavishly than before, was one thing—but now I possessed my own private Training Ground.
“We invited renowned carpenters and stonemasons from the surrounding regions to construct it.”
“Is that so?”
I toured the Training Ground while listening to Hyuk Moo-jin’s explanation, delivered with the manner of a real estate agent.
High walls shielded the space from prying eyes, and the expansive Training Ground held practice weapons—the legendary Eighteen Weapons—mounted on racks in one corner.
“Particularly here. Notice how the Training Ground floor has that bluish tint?”
“It does. Looks like stone, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s called blue stone, and it’s far more than just aesthetically pleasing. Would you like to see?”
Boom! Boom!
“Hey!”
I cried out in alarm at Hyuk Moo-jin’s sudden, violent stomp with all his strength.
This bastard was acting like this wasn’t even his own Training Ground.
But Hyuk Moo-jin gestured at the floor without concern.
“Now, before you grow angry, look at the floor. It’s perfectly fine.”
Seriously?
Given Hyuk Moo-jin’s level—sufficient to earn recognition as a first-rate martial artist—the fact that only minor scratches remained suggested considerable expense had been spared.
“Quality blue stone is extremely durable and won’t shatter under ordinary circumstances.”
“I see.”
“Wow, something like this exists? I’ve always trained only on dirt floors.”
Chung Poong, examining the floor with curiosity, lightly rolled his foot across it.
Crack!
“Wait? It broke?”
“….”
“….”
You bastard, who told you to channel your inner force through your feet?
I stared at the Training Ground floor, now shattered before I’d even properly tested it, with sorrowful eyes, then turned my gaze toward Hyuk Moo-jin.
“I, I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You just cursed at me with your eyes.”
“Want me to do it with my mouth too?”
“…No. Then I’ll take my leave. I just remembered something urgent.”
Look at him trying to sneak away.
I caught the back of the fellow’s neck as he attempted to slip out.
“Why, why are you doing this?”
“Where are you going? You’ve got nothing else to do anyway.”
“Nothing to do? I’m hardly a man of leisure. I have important business to attend to.”
“And yet here you are, loitering in my Pavilion for the second day straight?”
“….”
“You received commendation leave, didn’t you? Your Elder Brother mentioned it.”
Chung Poong threw his hand up dramatically.
“Wow, commendation leave! I’d love to get that myself!”
“…Are you mocking me right now, Chung Poong?”
“Why don’t you focus on cleaning up those shattered blue stone fragments?”
“Oh, yes, sir!”
Truly, an unnecessarily cheerful fellow.
Meanwhile, Hyuk Moo-jin, whom I had pinned down and who was thrashing his legs, let out a heavy sigh.
“Sigh… fine. Just hit me and get it over with.”
“Why would I hit you?”
“Isn’t that why you grabbed me?”
“Of course not. Do I really look like someone violent enough to strike people without good reason?”
“Yes.”
“Some say one word from a man can pay a thousand taels of debt, yet you earn a thousand blows with your mouth.”
Smack!
“Ugh.”
“Don’t be such a crybaby.”
Hyuk Moo-jin rubbed his swollen forehead as he spoke.
“I’ve taken my hit, so I’ll be going now.”
“Where do you think you’re going? Stay here.”
“What good is my staying here? You’ll just have me running errands anyway.”
When I simply stared at him without answering, Hyuk Moo-jin continued with a grumble.
“The team leader seems to have forgotten, but I’m a martial artist too. I need rigorous training to become Gate Master.”
“Who said you shouldn’t train?”
“Pardon?”
Whether he was truly dense or simply hadn’t thought it through, I clicked my tongue at Hyuk Moo-jin’s continued confusion.
“Train here with me.”
“…Me? Here?”
The fellow, whose expression had been utterly bewildered as he looked between me and Chung Poong, stammered out his words.
“Is… is that even allowed?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. You don’t mind, do you, Chung Poong?”
Chung Poong, who had been contentedly regarding the blue stone fragments he’d carefully reassembled, nodded his head.
“I don’t mind. But buy me plenty of Bing Tang Hu Lo later.”
“…Is there perhaps a ghost attached to you that died from not eating Bing Tang Hu Lo?”
“A ghost? Benefactor, do I have a ghost attached to me right now?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Wow! A ghost! A ghost!”
“Wow, this is driving me crazy.”
This guy is completely insane.
I shook my head and turned my gaze away from Chung Poong. Hyuk Moo-jin still stood there with a bewildered expression.
“So what? You don’t want to do it?”
The fellow snapped back to attention and shook his head vigorously.
“I’d love to, truly I would… but are you really sure I can join?”
“Of course you can. What crime did you commit?”
“Still, it’s an unwritten rule of the Murim not to reveal one’s martial arts to others….”
It’s the same not just in the Murim, but among hunters as well.
The Murim, where humans kill and are killed by each other, is far more brutal, but the reluctance to display all of one’s abilities exists just as clearly among hunters.
‘And the higher-ranked the hunter, the more pronounced this tendency becomes.’
Low-rank hunters without money cluster together like a neighborhood gym to train, but mid-rank hunters with some wealth naturally prepare private training rooms as a matter of course.
“The team leader and Chung Poong are masters who inherited their respective sects’ secret techniques, but I’m different. I won’t be of much help to either of you in your training.”
“Hmm. That’s true enough.”
“…Yes.”
I continued speaking as I watched Hyuk Moo-jin lower his head with a dejected expression.
“That’s exactly why you should learn well from this opportunity and be of use.”
“Pardon?”
“How long are you going to keep living under someone’s roof? Is serving the Gate Master your life’s goal? If you want to venture into broader waters with me, you need to become stronger too.”
“…!”
“Just train hard. Instead of worrying about qualifications and such, seal your mouth shut, steel your face, and practice even while sleeping.”
That’s what I did. For years, I struggled to survive one more day.
I even attended to senior hunters, desperately trying to absorb every scrap of knowledge, and through blood and sweat, I made what I learned my own.
Because of that experience, I understood Hyuk Moo-jin’s hesitation, yet at the same time, I found it frustrating.
‘He has exceptional talent at that level.’
Martial artists and hunters are different. Hunters are granted abilities overnight, but martial artists build their strength from the ground up, piece by piece.
In that sense, Hyuk Moo-jin’s talent is considerable.
‘You can see it just by comparing him to the chaff of the Sanseo Five Gates.’
Born into martial families and trained in martial arts from childhood.
Yet Hyuk Moo-jin entered the martial path at a late age when his bones had already hardened, and reached the first-class realm in just five years.
Of course, this is only considering raw level, but even in actual combat, I could easily suppress those fellows.
‘It’s not just talent… he has a killer instinct.’
Five years—the time it took for a cloth merchant’s son to become a first-class master. During those five years, Hyuk Moo-jin never once visited his main residence, or so I’d heard.
I recalled words I’d heard a few days ago.
‘I started martial arts quite late, you see. To catch up with others, what choice do I have? I can only work ten, twenty times harder.’
It’s easy to say, but it’s not something an ordinary person can do.
It means he’s persisted through blood-soaked effort, even sacrificing sleep. In that sense, Hyuk Moo-jin and I are definitely alike.
‘The problem is we share the same inferiority complex.’
That’s why he can’t easily accept the goodwill from Chung Poong and me. He knows it’s a good opportunity, but he wonders—can someone as unremarkable as me really belong here?
Those feelings are what hold Hyuk Moo-jin back. I stared directly into his eyes.
“I made my proposal, and the decision is yours. I won’t stop you even if you proceed as planned.”
“…Um, may I ask just one thing?”
I nodded, and after a brief silence, Hyuk Moo-jin finally spoke.
“Why do you show me such kindness?”
“Didn’t you say you were my right arm? Or was it my heart?”
“Pardon?”
“Don’t ‘pardon’ me. You’ve been going around saying exactly that yourself.”
“And every time you told me to stop spouting nonsense.”
“That was just something I said. If I disliked you, would I have kept you by my side all this time?”
“Wasn’t it just because you were bored? And occasionally you enjoy the satisfaction of striking when your hands get itchy.”
“….”
Just how much of a wretch did this bastard think I was?
When I glared at him, Hyuk Moo-jin hastily changed the subject.
“Ahem. Ahem….”
“Listen, if I hadn’t intended to raise you, I would have traveled alone long ago. What use is dragging around dead weight like you?”
“Dead weight? Can you really change your words so easily? Just moments ago you were calling me your right arm and your heart.”
“Right arm, my ass. At your current level, I’d say you’re more like my pinky toe.”
“Wow, that’s too much. Really.”
He spoke as though displeased, but he couldn’t hide the corners of his mouth rising upward.
Whether right arm or pinky toe, the fact remained that both were vital parts of the body.
Feeling oddly embarrassed, I barked out loudly.
“So! Are you going to do this or not!”
“Actually, since I’m a martial genius, I could copy everything anyway. Is that alright?”
“Stop talking nonsense. Copy it if you can.”
“Really?”
“Ask me one more time and you’ll regret it very much.”
Hyuk Moo-jin answered with a broad smile.
“I’ll do it.”
His voice carried the lightness of someone who had shed a heavy burden.
* * *
Hyuk Moo-jin and I sat on the floor of the Training Ground, watching Chung Poong. Before beginning the formal instruction, sitting was essential.
“Well then, shall we begin?”
“Thank you. Chung Poong.”
“Yes, yes! Huff, huff….”
Each time Chung Poong drew a ragged breath, cold winter air poured from his nostrils. Why was he suddenly like that?
“Um, are you alright?”
“I’m fine!”
“You startled me. Why are you suddenly like that?”
“Oh. Well, that is….”
Chung Poong, who had been hesitating, opened his mouth with his face flushed crimson.
“This is my first time teaching anyone, so I’m incredibly excited and nervous… Oh, just a moment please.”
“….”
“….”
I knew it would be like this. Still nervous, Chung Poong opened his mouth with a trembling voice.
“S-so, I’ll begin then.”
“Please don’t be so stiff about it. Just relax and be comfortable.”
“C-comfortable?”
“Yes. Comfortable. You can teach me using whatever method you’re most familiar with.”
“A method I’m most familiar with….”
“The way your grandfather used when he taught you.”
“Ah. Such a simple approach!”
Hyuk Moo-jin and I exchanged glances, our expressions mingling anticipation with curiosity as we looked at Chung Poong.
The Sword Saint’s teaching method, no less. How exactly did that great warrior cultivate this prodigy?
‘It can’t be that different, can it?’
Just then, a smile bloomed on Chung Poong’s lips as he emerged from his contemplation. It seemed to be a teaching method that brought him joy merely to think about.
“Ah, I just remembered something. This training will probably be quite beneficial for both of you as well.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm? What is it?”
“Do you see that over there?”
We turned our heads in the direction Chung Poong was pointing.
Hyuk Moo-jin spoke first, and I followed his lead.
“That’s….”
“The Training Pavilion.”
It was roughly two hundred paces from the Training Ground. Having a good sense of what kind of training this would be, I let out a quiet laugh.
In other words, mark and return. The classic method of repeatedly running to a destination and back until you’re ready to collapse.
‘I expected something different from the Sword Saint, but it seems rather ordinary.’
Certainly it was classical, but it was indeed a decent training method for building endurance and strengthening the lower body.
I rose from my seat and began stretching leisurely.
“So I just go there and come back?”
Chung Poong tilted his head.
“Hmm? Have you done this before?”
“I’ve done it until I was sick of it.”
“Ah, I see. That’s fortunate then.”
Chung Poong smiled brightly and pointed to Hyuk Moo-jin and me in turn.
“Then I’ll give each of you half a double hour and a full double hour respectively.”
“…?”
“…?”
“Why?”
I asked, feeling confused.
“Half a double hour? What do you mean by that?”
“Didn’t you say you’d already pushed yourself to the point of exhaustion? That should be sufficient, shouldn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but… ah, I see. So I need to make continuous round trips for half a shichen without rest?”
“No. For now, just once will do. I’ll be waiting at the summit.”
“Pardon? The summit?”
“Yes. Over there.”
This time I could see it clearly. Chung Poong’s fingertip, raised high into the air, was pointing directly at the cliff face behind the Training Pavilion.
Moo-jin and I both dropped our jaws simultaneously.
‘What the hell is that.’
A height so vertiginous that my vision swam and my hands trembled. A sheer cliff face hundreds of zhang high, by my estimation, left me feeling faint and weak-kneed.
If I felt this way, there was no need to speak of Moo-jin’s state.
“You’re saying we should… climb that?”
“Yes! It happens to be about the same height as the cliff I used to climb every day as a child, so I chose it.”
“….”
“….”
“Ah, it brings back memories. I fell halfway down a couple of times and nearly died. It really hurt back then.”
“…!”
“…!”
He’s insane. The Sword Saint is insane, and this bastard is insane too.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————