Murim Login - Chapter 483

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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 483
“The Nantian Demon Empress…?”
Hong Ran, who now inhabited the body of a young military official—or rather, the Nantian Demon Empress—spoke in a cheerful tone.
“Hearing that epithet from another’s lips feels rather embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing my ass. You’ve been causing chaos in all four directions and got yourself trapped. So the East has its virgin obsession and the North has its dictator Kim clan?”
“The epithets may differ, but you’ve grasped the essence well enough. Cleverer than I expected, aren’t you?”
“…Damn it.”
The Western Heavenly Demon Lord and the Nantian Demon Empress.
Even Mi-mi could deduce that these epithets were crafted with the four cardinal directions in mind.
The Western Heavenly Demon Lord was already a monster barely captured after narrowly escaping death multiple times, yet there were at least three more of these creatures.
But a more pressing question remained.
I stared at the military official, whose expression had gone blank, and opened my mouth.
“How did you manage it?”
“Oh my, what could our young hero be so curious about?”
“You know what I mean.”
A strange light suddenly flickered in the military official’s vacant eyes.
The Nantian Demon Empress, who had been gazing at me intently through another’s gaze, let slip a single word.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
“…!”
“You couldn’t have discovered it in merely two days, and so a spirit recognizes a spirit—is that it? Indeed, a five-hundred-year-old water dragon would certainly possess a spiritual nature.”
Having grasped everything in an instant, the Nantian Demon Empress added smoothly.
“Then you should understand that I will not answer.”
The memory remains vivid still—the traces of the Gate glimpsed through fragments of recollection, and the Water Dragon stained by the demonic energy flowing forth from that place.
It was something that should not exist and could not be allowed to exist.
An incomprehensible phenomenon that could not manifest here in the Martial World.
Yet the Nantian Demon Empress and Dark Heaven had dragged the impossible into reality. I almost wished it were a lie.
“What exactly is your purpose?”
“Purpose?”
In the next moment, clear laughter flowed from between the military official’s lips—genuine, unfeigned joy.
After laughing aloud, the Nantian Demon Empress continued.
“Child, I too am but a lowly servant who moves at another’s command. No one, not even I, can fathom That Person’s will.”
That Person. Everyone in this place knew whom these two words referred to.
Jeok Cheon-gang muttered in a voice like molten lava.
“The Heavenly Master.”
Crack.
With the sound of bones grinding, the head turned like a creaking wooden puppet toward Jeok Cheon-gang.
“I’ve heard tales of a mad old monster dwelling on Jiuhua Mountain. Fire King Red Sky River, your words ring true. It is indeed That Person—one more exalted and noble than any other…”
“I’d burn you alive without hesitation, you wretched cur, daring to wag your demonic tongue so freely before me.”
A brief silence fell at Jeok Cheon-gang’s words, laden with cold flames.
Soon the military official’s tightly sealed lips parted slowly, and a subdued voice emerged.
“You’d do well to choose your words carefully. If you wish to hold onto that stubborn lifeline of yours a while longer.”
“My lifeline?”
Jeok Cheon-gang let out a derisive snort as he asked me.
“Tell me, you brat. What became of those fools who came rushing at me, swearing to sever my lifeline?”
“They’re dead. Every last one of them.”
“Then I’m thinking of adding women to the ledger of slaughter I’ve been writing all these years, not just men. What do you think?”
There was no question about it—I was in full agreement. I thrust my thumb upward enthusiastically.
“You are the true feminist of this age.”
“Feminist? What’s that?”
“It means you’re a fair person. One who treats everyone equally, regardless of gender or age, and crushes them all the same.”
“Is that what you young people call it these days? Regardless, the meaning pleases me.”
Jeok Cheon-gang nodded with satisfaction, then fixed his gaze upon the Nantian Demon Empress dwelling within the Military Official’s body and continued speaking.
“Did you hear that? I, a feminist, shall bring judgment upon you and that Heavenly Master or whatever he is, so wipe your neck clean and wait for that day.”
Ah. I should probably stop this before the Annihilation Flame Divine Fist becomes a feminist fist.
But thanks to this, my chest felt lighter. The tangled mess in my head had cleared up nicely.
‘That’s right, damn it. Just crush them all and be done with it.’
After all, wasn’t that the motto of the Yeolhwa Sect? Destroy, smash, and incinerate anyone you consider an enemy without hesitation.
The Nantian Demon Empress would never answer my questions anyway. So if Dark Heaven was plotting something, I would simply demolish them thoroughly as I pressed forward.
‘I have no choice anyway.’
Riding the tiger—once you’ve mounted the back of such a ferocious beast, only two paths remain.
And rather than dismount, I would smash the tiger’s skull to pieces and end this mad thrashing.
No, I had to do this.
“Huu….”
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and thrust my head forward toward the Military Official. Beyond eyes devoid of their soul, I stared into some distant place and opened my mouth.
“Next time we meet… you will surely die.”
The Military Official’s lips twitched.
“Yes, I too look forward to that day. And when it comes, not a single soul in this room will survive.”
His head turned slowly. Unfocused, pale eyes swept across everyone in the room one by one.
Yet no one avoided that chilling gaze. Moon-kyung was among them.
“It would be wise to cease this meaningless slaughter. The blade always returns to wound its wielder.”
Polite in tone and manner, yet hidden within those words was a blade that only the rarest few could perceive.
It was the true nature of Sal-sung, the supreme martial master who had walked a path drenched in blood alone—the greatest Assassin of all ages.
“…A curious child indeed. Curious enough to make me wonder about this Divine Physician.”
Yet the Nantian Demon Empress, borrowing another’s body, seemed unable to discern Moon-kyung’s true identity.
She might know the surface identity of being the Divine Physician’s disciple, but the thread connecting the Sal-sung who vanished forty years ago to the young physician was far too faint to perceive.
And before the Nantian Demon Empress’s suspicions could deepen regarding Moon-kyung, Jin Wi-kyung opened his mouth with a grave voice.
“By the name of the Taewon Jin Family, I swear—you shall not lay a single hair upon our youngest.”
“The Taewon Jin Family. Can such a meager clan and trivial martial arts truly protect that child?”
“Even a sewer rat will stand against a tiger for its own offspring. If you’re curious, come. There’s no other way to show you.”
Despite the bizarre phenomenon that defied all common sense, Jin Wi-kyung did not lose his composure.
He had barely finished speaking with such calm resolve when Gung Ki-bang scratched his matted hair.
“Master Jin, you mustn’t overlook our Beggar Clan.”
“I forgot about the Beggar Clan. Will you join us?”
“My master once said: a single dog stick can only catch a stray mutt, but a hundred sticks together can bring down a tiger. What then of a hundred thousand beggars united?”
The true power of the Beggar Clan lay in its overwhelming numbers.
Such a staggering force that calling them the hundred thousand Beggar Clan would be no exaggeration.
Hu Gae, standing one step below their apex, Gung Ki-bang, bared his yellowed teeth in a grin.
“She was quite lovely, and it’s a shame it’s come to this. But what can be done? Don’t resent me too much if I strike that fair face with my staff.”
“Resent?”
The Military Official’s lips curled upward ever so slightly.
The Nantian Demon Empress, speaking through the Military Official’s grotesquely twisted smile, addressed everyone.
“There’s no need to be so anxious now. It won’t take much longer….”
A voice fading like a dying campfire.
As dark blood began trickling from between the Military Official’s lips, I seized his wrist without hesitation.
Whoosh.
In an instant, my qi surged from my dantian and flowed into his body, but the death already begun could not be reversed.
Useless things are discarded.
Perhaps the Nantian Demon Empress had kept the Military Official alive for precisely this reason.
‘A puppet to borrow for a moment.’
Gulp. Trickle.
Not just from his mouth.
From his eyes, nose, ears—all the seven apertures of the human body—dark blood poured forth in torrents.
A death that no amount of qi or pressure point techniques could stop loomed before the Military Official’s eyes.
“It’s too late.”
Moon-kyung’s voice echoed in my ears at that very moment.
Between slowly parting lips, along with a rush of blood, came his final words.
“Everything unfolds according to That Person’s will.”
Slip. Thud.
And that was the end.
The Military Official, having exhausted all his life force, slumped forward, his breath ceasing.
As silence descended with one man’s death, the presence approaching the manor house stopped at the door.
“Um, may I come in?”
A familiar voice.
Soon a young man cautiously poked his head through the crack in the opening door and spoke.
“Master, Je-gal Poong is looking for you.”
“It’s Je-gal Poong, not Je-gal Pong.”
“Yes, Je-gal Poong, sir.”
“…Just stop talking.”
I let out a sigh and rose from my seat.
I didn’t even ask where the Crouching Dragon Guest Je-gal Poong was, where I needed to go, or why he was looking for me.
After all, it was I who first revealed ‘that place’ to them.
“So, did you find it?”
“Yes.”
Chung Poong’s eyes gleamed as he continued.
“It’s exactly the place my benefactor spoke of.”
That place—the very location that existed in the Water Dragon’s memories.
Yes, that damned Gate.
* * *
Hong Ran—or rather, the Nantian Demon Empress—opened her eyes.
As she lifted the silk curtains of the gently swaying palanquin, lush grassland came into view beyond the latticed window, along with the perspiring members of the Escort Agency laboring in the humid, oppressive heat of the southern climate.
“Hmm.”
The Nantian Demon Empress, resting her chin in her hand as she gazed out the window, was herself a living masterpiece.
And in that moment, a sharp command fell upon the heads of the Escort Agency men who were gazing at her as if entranced.
“All of you, stop gawking and focus on the transport! Unless you want to die when you meet the Miao Clan in a few days!”
Despite her crude manner of speech, the voice’s owner was a woman of dazzling beauty.
Beneath the bamboo hat she wore low to shield herself from the sun, her nose was sharp as a blade, and her moderately tanned skin was striking to behold.
‘A Female Escort Master? That’s rare.’
It didn’t take long for the Female Escort Master, who had been browbeating the rough men for quite some time, to notice the Nantian Demon Empress’s gaze.
She slowed her horse and, drawing alongside the palanquin, spoke toward the window.
“Is there a problem, my lady?”
“A problem? No, I’m traveling comfortably thanks to your hard work.”
“Then why were you looking at me so….”
“Just because.”
“Pardon?”
The Nantian Demon Empress smiled faintly and added.
“You’re quite young and beautiful. That’s why I was watching.”
“Ah, thank you.”
The Female Escort Master, head of a mid-sized Escort Agency, was flustered but managed to conceal it.
Setting aside the fact that her admirer was a beauty even other women would fall for, she was a passenger who had paid considerable coin, so such courtesy was only natural.
But the next words that followed left even the Female Escort Master unable to hide her shock.
“I’m envious. I’d like to take your face and attach it to mine.”
“…!”
“I’m joking. Just joking.”
Laughter rang out in a clear peal. Toward the frozen Female Escort Master, the Nantian Demon Empress continued in a voice tinged with amusement.
“So, how much longer until we reach Yunnan?”
In this very moment, the Nantian Demon Empress could barely contain her delight—at the screams and deaths that would soon echo from another place.
And at the joy of having encountered a new face.

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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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