Murim Login - Chapter 455

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

Chapter 455
“Cough, cough.”
The Old Master, bent like a shrimp, expelled each cough with tremendous effort.
With every movement of his body, the biting cold rising from the Underground Prison’s stone floor seeped deep into his bones.
Yet no illness could take root in the Old Master’s frame.
The decades upon decades of martial energy accumulated in his dantian no longer obeyed his command, but it remained sufficient to protect his aging body.
And that very fact only deepened his rage.
‘Damn it all…!’
The Old Master’s already hideous features twisted into something demonic.
Once, he had traversed the Continent, leaving rivers of blood in his wake—yet now he was treated as nothing more than livestock awaiting slaughter.
“Kill me then! Rather than endure such humiliation, just kill me!”
As the Old Master thrashed about with a piercing cry, the iron chains binding his body groaned in protest.
But like the martial energy sealed within his dantian, the dozen iron spheres attached to those chains remained utterly immobile.
“You wretches!”
Though his martial arts were sealed and he could no longer display the might of old, his inherent ferocity remained undiminished.
The Old Master glared through the thick iron bars with bloodshot eyes. Phantom faces of those who mocked him flickered before his vision.
“You bastards…!”
A hatred carved into bone and soul.
Born on the same day, he had spent a lifetime with two brothers—only to lose them to these wretches’ hands. And he himself had been captured, subjected to every conceivable indignity.
They had even crushed his manhood as one might geld livestock. The term “irreconcilable enemy” hardly sufficed.
“Very well then. I shall survive by any means necessary.”
Flames of fury blazed from the Old Master’s eyes.
“I will escape this place and tear you wretches to shreds while you still draw breath!”
It was the very moment his murderous cry echoed through the Underground Prison.
“Your escape vow—I heard it all. Quite moving, actually.”
“…!”
When had he arrived?
The Old Master blinked. One of the phantom faces that had flickered before his eyes moments ago now stood beyond the prison bars, staring directly at him.
A chill ran through his chest at the smile playing on the young man’s lips.
“You… you are….”
“How’s the wound healing? Must hurt every time you urinate.”
The Old Master nearly nodded without thinking.
But this man was one of the names written at the very top of his death list. Someone he absolutely had to kill by any means.
The Old Master glared at the young man beyond the bars with gleaming eyes.
“If you’re curious, lift the seal at once. I’ll show you personally.”
“Well, that doesn’t really interest me….”
The smile vanished from Jin Tae-kyung’s lips as though wiped away.
“You’re going to tell me everything else you know, Sam-gwe.”
* * *
In the Modern World, prisoner torture is classified as an illegal act, and should such facts become known, even great powers face condemnation from the international community.
But this is the Murim. The authority of law grows dim, and the boundary between man and beast blurs into obscurity.
From my perspective, Sam-gwe resembled a beast wearing human skin far more than a man.
‘There is no reason to hesitate.’
This creature had inflicted countless deaths across the long span of years.
An Evil Demon who had claimed hundreds, thousands of lives merely to satiate his murderous impulses.
Along the bloody path he had carved through existence and within this damp, shadowed Underground Prison, morality held no foothold whatsoever.
I fixed Sam-gwe with a gaze as cold as winter frost.
“Hnnngh… heeeegh…”
A body bound to an iron chair, hanging limp and broken.
Blood-tinged saliva dripped from his gaping mouth, while his shattered limbs—torn and fractured—convulsed in agony.
“Well? What is your assessment?”
At my question, the Old Master, who had been observing Sam-gwe intently from the side, scratched his head with a blood-stained metal spike.
“He has reached his limit. At this point, I believe he has divulged everything he knows.”
If I were to rank torture mastery, I would place myself merely at the first tier; the old man before me stands at the pinnacle of excellence.
His handling of prisoners was so devastatingly effective that Je-gal Gong-hu, the Banana Fan Sage King who witnessed his interrogation techniques during the Great War, personally invited him to the Je-gal Family Estate after the conflict ended.
“If we continue the torture beyond this point…”
“Without question, he will die. And in this old man’s judgment, extracting anything further from this wretch would yield nothing of value.”
Certainty resonated through every word the Old Master spoke.
The half-corpse state of Sam-gwe and his vitality—flickering like a candle about to extinguish—lent weight to the old man’s assessment.
Yet this falls short of what I require. I stared at Sam-gwe, whose consciousness hung by a thread as his body trembled.
‘Is this truly all there is?’
In truth, Sam-gwe’s knowledge was not entirely without value.
For the first few hours, he resisted with malice, but as the torture neared its conclusion, he became talkative enough to fill five bamboo slips with dense characters.
Yet the majority proved useless or merely concerned events long past, and the information I needed most never surfaced.
‘The series of incidents unfolding in Hubei Province right now.’
The Hae-sa Bang had collapsed, and the Dongjeong Pavilion had been annihilated.
The death toll had already exceeded a thousand, and among them were innocent commoners who knew not even the most basic martial techniques.
A faction capable of such brutal atrocities and possessing such power…there is only one I know of.
‘Dark Heaven.’
The problem lies in my inability to grasp their trail. Where and how they attacked the Hae-sa Bang and Dongjeong Pavilion. Where they have hidden Jin Tae.
And finally, where these perpetrators of such madness are now and what they are doing.
“This will not suffice.”
With a soft murmur, I seized the wrist pulse of the unconscious Sam-gwe. The Old Master, who had been standing with a listless expression, hurried to stop me.
“Great Hero, if you do that—!”
“It is fine. I do not intend to kill him.”
I channeled my inner force through Sam-gwe’s wrist meridian. As the warm vitality of the Eternal Yang technique flowed through his blood vessels, color returned to his pallid cheeks and his eyelids lifted open.
My face reflected in his trembling gray eyes, which struggled to focus.
“You… you are…”
“You must regain your senses. It is far too early yet.”
“P-please… just kill me instead.”
“If you tell me everything you know, things will go as you wish. But if you keep up this pretense of loyalty to the end….”
I infused strength into the qi I had been releasing in measured streams. With a sharp intake of breath, Sam-gwe’s eyes snapped wide open.
The man, already battered inside and out, couldn’t withstand the intense heat of the furnace.
“Ugh, crack.”
His ragged breathing mingled with the acrid smell of searing flesh. Yet I fixed him with an unwavering gaze.
“That’s not the answer I want.”
“Master, I have already told you everything.”
“That’s not it either.”
“Cough. Please, please.”
“The fact that you’re still holding on means you have a long way to go before death—much like the information I haven’t heard yet.”
“What more could you possibly want me to say…!”
“I’ve already told you countless times. Everything about Dark Heaven. What’s happening in Hubei Province and the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder.”
“I said I don’t know, kuweeeek!”
The more words they exchanged back and forth, the stronger the power of the heat-raising technique became.
Sam-gwe’s lips trembled, his eyes rolled back white, as screams tore from his throat.
“Kill me! Kill me now! Even as a vengeful spirit, I will gnaw upon your bones and flesh…!”
Damn it. This is as far as it goes.
I abruptly withdrew the qi I had been channeling. Simultaneously, Sam-gwe’s convulsing body went limp like a puppet with severed strings.
Shifting my approach to gently stabilize his internal condition, the Old Master, who had been standing ready, quickly checked his pulse and assessed his state.
“He has a long life thread. He’s stopped at the threshold of the underworld.”
I know. I controlled my strength carefully to avoid killing him.
‘This creature cannot be allowed to die just yet.’
Sam-gwe was the Demon Master of the previous generation and a supreme master belonging to Dark Heaven.
If I kept him alive and transported him to Hanan, there might be ways to extract even more information from him.
Of course, I cannot dismiss the possibility that what is written on those bamboo slips represents everything Sam-gwe knows.
No, that possibility is likely quite high.
‘The fact that he refused to speak even after all this… his claim that this is everything might actually be true.’
The willpower and endurance of a supreme master transcend imagination.
That Sam-gwe, who is as much my enemy as anyone, reached the point of begging me to stop and wailing for death, yet still clung to his assertion to the very end.
‘I, I am. My brothers and I merely followed orders under the command of the Demon Master! Regarding Dark Heaven’s headquarters and affairs elsewhere, I know nothing whatsoever!’
Recalling Sam-gwe’s cries that had erupted several times during the interrogation, I called out a name.
“Gung Ki-bang. Any new developments?”
Gung Ki-bang, who had been leaning against the iron bars, shook his head.
“Nothing. Our Hubei division under Bun-ta still hasn’t found them.”
“Three supreme masters, or perhaps hundreds of people and ships were mobilized. They’re bound to stand out, so if we focus on searching for outsiders, the chances….”
“We’re already doing that, but it’s not easy. Hundreds of large vessels pass through the Yangtze River in Hubei Province every day, and the number of people traveling overland is incalculable. Moreover, if this happened ten days ago… there’s an even greater possibility they’ve already escaped Hubei Province by some means.”
“Damn it.”
Unlike Shanxi Province, which is treated as a frontier region, Hubei Province is one of the areas called the Central Plains, with well-developed industries across multiple sectors.
With such vast territory and merchants and travelers constantly flowing in and out, even the Beggar Clan would face difficulties.
Gung Ki-bang, gauging my mood, carefully opened his mouth.
“Since Chung Poong, So-hyup, and Hyuk Moo-jin have gone to the Haowen Sect, we can only place our hopes there. It doesn’t seem like it will be much different from Bun-ta of our Hubei branch… but we must hold onto hope.”
Gung Ki-bang’s words proved true. Half an hour later, Chung Poong and Hyuk Moo-jin returned to the Je-gal Family Estate with a massive bamboo scroll in hand.
And on the cord binding the scroll was written the alias of a single person.
Dongjeong Fisherman Elder.
“This is…”
Hyuk Moo-jin swallowed hard and opened his mouth.
“It appears there was some friction between the Haowen Sect and the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder. According to the Sect Leader’s orders, they have been keeping close watch for several years now… but I think it would be best if you saw it directly first.”
I quickly scanned through the contents of the bamboo scroll.
The records concerning the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder began three years ago, and this scroll in my hands contained only a portion of those records.
And the entries from one month ago until today revealed a single truth.
‘The Dongjeong Fisherman Elder is still within Hubei Province.’
Which meant…
Crackle!
I tucked the scroll into my robes and without hesitation sought out a single person.
The Je-gal Family’s Deputy Patriarch, standing in for the Family Head Je-gal Poong, Shin Ki Myo-ryong Je-gal Gyun, opened his eyes wide at my sudden arrival.
“What brings you here so abruptly? My ancestor Je-gal Moo-hu always said that a gentleman must maintain proper composure and tranquility…”
“Enough talk. Are the people ready?”
“Ah, if you mean those individuals the Family Head mentioned, they have already made their preparations to depart. Shall we set out immediately?”
“Yes. But I think I need to stop somewhere else first.”
“Where might that be…”
“Dongting Lake.”

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