Murim Login - Chapter 466
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 466
Without relying on martial power and merely controlling my strength appropriately, I had already transcended the boundaries of human capability through pure physical force alone.
Thwack!
My fist connected squarely with the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder’s face, and his entire body jolted backward. From his perspective, it must have felt like being struck by an iron club.
His blackened pupils trembled violently for an instant, and blood-stained yellow teeth tumbled from his gaping mouth like a cascade.
‘One more.’
Crack!
The Dongjeong Fisherman Elder, spouting blood like a waterfall from his mouth and nose, staggered and flailed his hands desperately.
Though the movement was subtle, my acute senses perceived everything unfolding around me with crystalline clarity.
Whoosh!
Something fine yet razor-sharp cut through the air, targeting my back. I already knew what it was.
‘Heavenly Silkworm Thread.’
Rather than evade, I seized the wrist of the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder holding the Black Wood Cudgel and twisted it.
With a sickening crack, the bone shattered, and the Black Wood Cudgel slipped from his weakened grip. Simultaneously, the Heavenly Silkworm Thread, which had been infused with martial force, fluttered away harmlessly.
“What tricks are you pulling, you bastard? Do you take me for a fool?”
Instead of a reply, a heavy palm strike came hurtling toward me.
Whooom!
The Dongjeong Fisherman Elder unleashed a palm strike with terrifying momentum. But I had already anticipated it and calmly raised my hand to meet it.
Boom!
A swift and decisive strike of the Flame Divine Palm.
When the two streams of martial force—one white, one blue—collided in midair, a blade-like wind erupted outward.
Between my wildly whipping hair, I fixed the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder with a cold, piercing gaze.
“What’s wrong? Can’t handle someone without a full head of hair?”
“…!”
No answer was necessary.
I already knew what had to be done, and my foot, moving with lightning speed, was already sweeping toward the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder’s knee.
Crack!
The sound of bone splintering accompanied his stagger, blood pouring from the corners of his mouth.
The violent impact momentarily disrupted the flow of his martial power, causing the Hand Barrier forming on his palm to fade and blur.
“Now then, let’s settle this once and for all.”
The scales had already tipped. I interlaced my fingers firmly with his, then wrenched with all my might.
Crunch!
Damn it. In all my years, I’d never even held a woman’s hand, yet in the Martial World, I’ve locked hands with men by the truckload.
Of course, given that these affectionate hand-locks were infused with the resentment of a lifelong virgin, the results were always decisive.
Just like now.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
A scream of agony tore from the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder’s mouth.
Toward him, his blackened eyes wide with pain, I unleashed a barrage of punches.
Crack, thud! Thud-thud-thud!
Under the relentless downpour of strikes and palms, the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder’s resistance gradually weakened and faded.
No, it was the moment I thought it had subsided.
“Kueeeeek!”
What could it have been?
Complacency from completely securing victory? Or confidence that I could capture rather than kill?
Whatever the reason, I had been thorough enough, and that created an opening.
Splaaaash!
My vision flooded crimson. The viscous blood the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder spewed drenched my face, momentarily freezing my body.
And the counterattack of a supreme master clinging to life was far more ferocious than I anticipated.
Boom!
With the sound of compressed air detonating, a strand of force flowed through the surface of the Flame Dragon Armor and lashed across my upper body.
My vision blurred in an instant. Among the scenery rushing past, a thought flickered through my mind.
‘Damn it. Internal Heavy Palm Technique.’
He still possessed this much power.
I swallowed the blood surging up my throat and drew upon my inner force.
Though I had allowed an unexpected strike, compared to the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder’s condition, this was nothing.
The fact that I suffered only minor internal injuries despite being caught off-guard by the Internal Heavy Palm Technique was proof of that.
Whoooosh!
I instantly channeled the severed force through the hundred meridians of my limbs.
The damaged meridians affected by the Internal Heavy Palm Technique complained with slight pain, but that was all.
Just as a carp in a pond does not die when a single bucket of water is drawn from it, neither would I.
‘End this.’
I flipped my rapidly ascending body in mid-air. I gently stepped on the cave wall that had suddenly appeared before me, then detonated the force flowing from my toes.
Crack!
With a sound as if the heavens were splitting, the rocks of the impossibly hard wall burst outward.
Hundreds, thousands of stone fragments tore through the surroundings, but I was already gone.
Shrieeeeek!
Heavier than stone, faster than wind.
When I rocketed through space several times faster than when I had bounced back, my entire body carried the weight of ten thousand pounds.
“Dongjeong Fisherman Elder!”
My roar burst from between my lips, shaking the vast underground cavern. The force-laden voice suppressed the water and pushed the rocks aside.
And at the end of it all, there was one person.
“…!”
The Dongjeong Fisherman Elder, who had just withdrawn the White Flame piercing both his shoulder and the rock wall, discovered me and opened his eyes wide. His blackened pupils trembled, and white flashed across them.
His remaining front tooth quivered pitifully in his chattering, gaping mouth.
“D, d, d, don’t….”
Don’t come? Fuck that.
I didn’t know why the bastard who had been acting insane moments ago was trembling so badly, but I had already made up my mind.
‘I tried to bring him back intact if possible… but it won’t work.’
It’s too late to regret now. The Dongjeong Fisherman Elder should have regretted it long ago.
Before he grasped Dark Heaven’s hand, before he brutally murdered innocent civilians and children, he should have repented and reflected.
Having come this far, there is no need for remorse. All that remains is punishment for the crimes he has committed.
‘You’re… dead.’
It matters not if I crush his limbs to dust. I can pluck out every hair and tooth, drive stalactites through his buttocks—as long as breath still clings to his body, it suffices.
Taking his life will come only after he has divulged every secret concerning Dark Heaven.
Barely enough breath to sustain life. And only enough to diminish, even slightly, the fury born from what the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder has done.
With precisely that measure of force, I launched my strike, and in the decelerated world, I extended my fist.
‘Extinction Flame Divine Fist.’
Whoooosh!
A ferocious cyan-white calamity flame consumed the palm strike the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder managed to extend with his broken hand.
The river water, now murky as silt, shattered and evaporated under the heat. Beyond the relentless wind and brilliant flashes, my fist, wreathed in flames, shattered the protective qi surrounding the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder.
Crack! Boom!
The Dongjeong Fisherman Elder, his eyes wide with burst capillaries, spewed blood as he was driven into the cavern wall.
Spider-web cracks spread across the stone wall of the underground cavern, swiftly becoming massive fissures that reached the ceiling.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
The ceiling collapsed and the ground fractured. As the rocks that had endured the tremendous water pressure from the depths of the vast freshwater lake known as Dongting Lake began crumbling one by one, water jets erupted from countless fissures.
‘Collapse.’
This space, created at some unknowable time, would soon crumble to ruin—much like its master, who would never return to his secret place.
‘I must hurry.’
Tap-tap-tap!
I pressed the acupoints of the already-unconscious Dongjeong Fisherman Elder to stop his bleeding, then sealed his meridians so he could not move a single hair as a precaution.
Then, hoisting his diminutive form onto my shoulders without hesitation, I drove my fist forward.
Crash! Boom!
The rapid current visible through the sinkhole-like opening in the floor below. I took a deep breath and leaped toward the rushing waters.
Splash!
As the cold river water enveloped my entire body, a familiar message resonated in my ears.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
–
[Water Rescue Specialist]
title effect has been activated!
– The special skill embedded in the title is now applied!
–
[Water Rescue Specialist’s Webbed Feet]
have been generated!
–
[Water Rescue Specialist’s Gills]
have been generated!
–
[Remaining Duration: 18 hours 43 minutes 32 seconds]
Time is sufficient. I moved my body powerfully with the current.
And not long after, witnessing the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder ceaselessly expelling foam from his mouth and nose, I realized a fact I had momentarily overlooked.
‘What in the… Oh.’
No matter how skilled a practitioner of water techniques might be, that only applied when they possessed sufficient cultivation and a clear mind to wield such methods.
Unlike me, who breathed through gills, if they remained underwater too long, they would surely perish.
‘Wait, then…’
In that instant, a thread of realization flashed through my mind.
At the same moment, I began swimming with all my strength. I could surrender my hands clasped together, but not even my first kiss to this madman.
Especially not to a lunatic nearly a hundred years old!
* * *
Kuguguguung!
The vibration that erupted from somewhere deep within the water was so tremendous that those on the ground above felt it as well.
At this sudden calamity, the Old Boatman shrank back with eyes full of dread, while the other three’s faces turned rigid.
“Say, something seems…”
“It appears to have finally begun. Or perhaps it’s already ended.”
Gung Ki-bang answered Chung Poong’s murmur in a heavy voice.
Hyuk Moo-jin, who had been watching the trembling cliff and river with growing anxiety, suddenly spoke.
“I have to go down there.”
Gung Ki-bang’s brows narrowed.
“What?”
“Something’s definitely happened to the captain. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“But Jin Tae-kyung, that bastard…”
“He told us to wait without moving. I know.”
“Then why?”
“I’ve never been good at listening to people anyway.”
“Damn, that’s pride talking.”
“Isn’t it better than sitting here sucking our thumbs?”
At Hyuk Moo-jin’s words, Gung Ki-bang gnawed at his lower lip.
He too had been feeling uneasy since earlier.
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it started, but his heart was pounding fiercely and his senses had sharpened to a knife’s edge.
‘Why is this happening? Has something really occurred to that bastard?’
One face flashed before his eyes.
Shanxi Sleeping Dragon—no, the Blazing Divine Dragon, Jin Tae-kyung.
A man who would crawl back alive even if cast to the very depths of the underworld. More ruthless than a hungry ghost, capable of striking down even the Yama King himself.
‘I’ve never once imagined that man dying… but nothing is absolute, so could it be…?’
Gung Ki-bang had not dismissed lightly the words Jin Tae-kyung spoke before entering the river. Through their journey together, he had come to understand that everything this man said carried purpose.
Yet now he could not help but waver.
‘This damn mess. The weather’s gone mad too. What the hell should I do?’
Rumble, crash!
Just as the Old Boatman had said two hours ago, the climate of Dongting Lake had become worse than dire.
Howling tempests and descending lightning.
Gung Ki-bang, his gaze troubled as he surveyed his surroundings, finally opened his mouth. Or rather, he was just about to.
“It’s fine.”
“Huh?”
“What?”
Gung Ki-bang and Hyuk Moo-jin turned their heads in unison.
A figure beaming with a bright smile entered their field of vision.
In the corner of the small island where they stood, Chung Poong—who had been lying prone on the ground listening to something—brushed the sand from his ears and laughed with a goofy grin. “Our benefactor is here.”
A benefactor is coming.
And in the next instant.
Splash!
A figure erupted from the water alongside a towering spray and landed roughly on the sandy beach.
A muscular young man carrying a diminutive old man on his back.
It was Jin Tae-kyung.
“Team Leader!”
“You came!”
“Our benefactor!”
“Don’t come near me. You three little peppers. If you try to embrace me, all three of you will be beaten to death today.”
Jin Tae-kyung held back the three figures rushing toward him with cries of joy, his tone grave as he continued.
“We don’t have time, so I’ll ask directly. Raise your hand if you’ve kissed someone here, or if you want to. Hands up.”
Two of them were quick to catch on; one was hopelessly oblivious.
As Gung Ki-bang and Hyuk Moo-jin quietly stepped backward, a clear voice rang out and one hand shot up.
“Me, me! I’ve never even kissed anyone before!”
“Thank God.”
“What?”
Toward the bewildered Chung Poong, Jin Tae-kyung—his face radiant with a brilliant smile—extended the Dongjeong Fisherman Elder.
“Your wish has just been granted.”
Thunder rumbled and crashed!
Divine lightning and thunder roared across the heavens and earth.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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