Murim Login - Chapter 486

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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 486
“Mind if we talk for a moment?”
“No. Get lost.”
“I see.”
Without the slightest hesitation, Jeok Cheon-gang drew closer, and Moon-kyung’s eyebrows twitched.
“I said I didn’t want to.”
“I heard. So?”
“Clearly, words don’t reach you. Did you eat your years through the back door?”
“Such insolence from a pup barely dry behind the ears. I’ve lived at least seventy more years than you, boy.”
“Just how old are you anyway…?”
“Old enough. Now stop your prattling, you green whelp.”
“You’re truly insufferable… Never mind. I shouldn’t bother.”
Moon-kyung’s frustration surged momentarily, and he shook his head in resignation.
Outwardly, he appeared as a youth barely past boyhood, yet he too had walked a century-long path through life.
But conversing with Jeok Cheon-gang left him feeling like a child losing his composure.
‘He’s mastered the art of exasperating people. Master and disciple—they’re truly cut from the same cloth.’
Jeok Cheon-gang and Jin Tae-kyung. Either of them could probably kill someone with rage using nothing but their silver tongue.
By comparison, the old disciple tending to the sick in Sichuan by now seemed like the reincarnation of Buddha himself.
‘I wonder how he’s doing. Is he well?’
As Moon-kyung yearned for his virtuous disciple, Jeok Cheon-gang approached with a shuffling gait and settled onto a boulder.
“What were you looking at?”
“I owe you no explanation.”
“Fair enough. Then let’s stay like this until dawn breaks. Two old men, keeping each other company.”
“You know one thing but miss two. I can simply leave.”
“You know two but miss three—do you think I’ll only be like this today?”
“…!”
“Today, tomorrow, the day after. Since I’ve grown old and lost my sleep, I’ve been bored. This wouldn’t be so bad.”
Moon-kyung’s form, which had begun to turn away, froze. His eyelids trembling slightly, he gazed at Jeok Cheon-gang and muttered with a sigh.
“You’re a cunning old devil.”
“Hmm. So you’re finally ready to have a proper conversation.”
“…State your business.”
“The story might take a while.”
“Make it as brief as possible.”
“As brief as possible, then.”
Jeok Cheon-gang, gazing at the dark waters of the river, dropped a single statement.
“Look after that boy from now on.”
“What?”
Moon-kyung’s brow furrowed briefly before he spoke.
“That boy—you mean Jin Tae-kyung?”
“Yes. Who else would I be talking about?”
“Why are you asking me to do that?”
“I’m not entirely sure myself.”
Jeok Cheon-gang suddenly lifted his gaze toward the heavens.
The full moon hung luminously in the sky, and the light pouring down from that unreachable place shone with unusual brilliance.
“A thought suddenly occurred to me—how much longer will the old master be able to remain at that one’s side?”
A hundred years had passed. Truly, an eternity.
Mountains and rivers had transformed, dynasties had crumbled and risen anew. And the young boy had become an old man with white hair.
Moon-kyung, who had been gazing intently at Jeok Cheon-gang, spoke softly.
“You’ve grown old.”
“Yes. I have grown old.”
With the passage of time, it was not merely the body that aged and withered. The invisible emotions and heart too slowly eroded, wearing away to nothing.
A person realizes they have grown old when they suddenly contemplate death, when they wonder how much longer they can remain beside another. Such was the moment of reckoning.
Just as it was for Jeok Cheon-gang now.
And Moon-kyung was the only person who could truly understand what dwelt in Jeok Cheon-gang’s heart at this moment.
“Has the Heart Demon come calling?”
“The Heart Demon… it’s been a long time.”
Jeok Cheon-gang released a self-deprecating laugh.
Ever since his former disciple—whom he had raised like a son, only to see grow into a killing ghost—had departed, a heavy shadow had hung over his heart.
And the sorrow and guilt he felt then had shackled his body and spirit for decades like chains.
Until the day a light called Jin Tae-kyung suddenly appeared and illuminated his darkness.
“Now it is merely a painful memory. I recall it, but it no longer brings suffering.”
“Then why?”
“Because I’ve grown anxious.”
The Heart Demon has no fixed form. It is an obstacle that clouds the mind and impedes enlightenment.
The Heart Demon that now seized Jeok Cheon-gang was the emotion of anxiety itself.
“If only I had met that boy twenty years earlier… or even ten. But it has become too late.”
Jeok Cheon-gang raised his hand to obscure the moon. He despised how that bright, ageless moonlight illuminated his wrinkled face.
“I am no longer as I was. Neither body nor spirit. That I have endured this long is only because he has been at my side.”
During the year spent on Jiuhua Mountain, it was not only Jin Tae-kyung who had grown.
Jeok Cheon-gang too had gained some measure of enlightenment through teaching, and thanks to that, he had been able to arrest the rapid decline of his aging body.
But.
“You already knew, didn’t you? That the old master’s innate true qi had been damaged.”
Innate true qi, or what some call the original true qi, is the source of all that comprises the human body—life force itself.
As Jeok Cheon-gang recalled the events in Hanan, a bitter smile formed at the corners of his mouth.
“I harbor no regrets. I would have done anything to save that child.”
Jeok Cheon-gang’s words were sincere. Even if he could turn back time ten times, a hundred times, he would make the same choice. The situation had been that dire.
Dire enough to draw upon his innate true qi—equivalent to his very life force—to compensate for insufficient cultivation.
Thus, the Fire God’s Ghost Dance that had once dragged the Blood Lord to death’s threshold carried within it the resolve of an old master who had burned his own life force as kindling.
“I was fully prepared for this. I knew that even if he survived, I would never be as I once was.”
Moon-kyung, who had been silently observing Jeok Cheon-gang, opened his mouth and spoke in a hushed voice.
“It would have been. If that fellow hadn’t brought back the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng.”
“Yes, it was all providence. That child finding you as well.”
Yet both men knew the truth.
Even the legendary elixir of the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng and the Divine Physician’s treatment—whose medical arts were said to touch the heavens—could not restore Jeok Cheon-gang’s innate qi.
All of this was merely a temporary measure.
Though a great boulder might plug a crumbling dam, the waters trapped within continued to seep through the smallest cracks, flowing out slowly, steadily, without cease.
“Is that why you sought me out? To ask me to look after that child?”
“Well, what do you think?”
Moon-kyung clicked his tongue softly as he regarded Jeok Cheon-gang’s counter-question, then continued.
“Age has made you worry-prone. Such concerns can wait a few more years.”
Each person possessed a different magnitude of inner force, a different capacity.
Where ordinary commoners or third-rate martial artists were mere streams, Jeok Cheon-gang was an endless sea.
Though he would gradually weaken from the continuous loss of innate qi, Moon-kyung, who had already assessed Jeok Cheon-gang’s condition, felt his concerns were premature.
“I know well enough the state of your body. At least you won’t die today.”
“So stop such idle thoughts and go. Better to spend this time teaching that child one more technique.”
“But who knows what might happen tomorrow.”
“What?”
“Do you think I came because I fear your innate qi will gradually fade until you suddenly drop dead one day?”
Jeok Cheon-gang spoke slowly, his gaze fixed on Moon-kyung, whose brow had furrowed.
“I feel it. The gradual weakening. Even during the Jeongma Great Battle, I’ve crossed the threshold of death countless times without realizing it. Whether this old man can endure the countless battles yet to come… only some damned being watching from the heavens above would know.”
“…!”
“Dharma King Hung-do once said something like that. That the celestial qi has become distorted, and a calamity far greater than the Jeongma Great Battle approaches.”
Dharma King Hung-do’s prediction came to pass.
Barely a year later, Shaolin—the North Star of the Martial World—was drenched in blood and corpses, and the wise elder who loved wine and meat met his end.
By then, the dark clouds of Dark Heaven had spread across Hanan, Sichuan, and Hubei.
And Jeok Cheon-gang could see it clearly. Those dark clouds would soon blanket the entire realm.
“Listen, Sal-sung.”
Deep regret shone in Jeok Cheon-gang’s eyes as he regarded Moon-kyung.
“Incomprehensible things are occurring. Everything we knew is crumbling.”
People commonly compare the Martial World to the Yangtze River.
There is even a saying: “The rear waves of the Yangtze push forward the front waves.” This is why such comparisons exist.
But what Dark Heaven now perpetrates across the realm and the strange phenomena occurring… are not like the Yangtze at all, but rather like defying heaven and earth itself.
Jeok Cheon-gang and Moon-kyung—two elders who had lived over a hundred years—found every law they had known shattered and crumbling.
‘If what Jin Tae-kyung said is true. All the more so. No, no. It cannot be. It must not be.’
Jeok Cheon-gang forcibly brushed aside the thought that flashed through his mind.
It was merely meaningless nonsense, spoken in jest as Jin Tae-kyung always did.
More precisely, he wished to believe it was.
Jeok Cheon-gang, whose body and spirit had already grown old and worn, was not yet prepared to accept such a shocking revelation.
“In any case, it’s an old man’s anxious request. In this godforsaken Martial World, anything can happen. The death of one elderly man growing weaker by the day is hardly surprising.”
Moon-kyung regarded Jeok Cheon-gang with an enigmatic gaze.
The giant known as Fire King appeared unusually small today, and his calm voice speaking of death that might arrive at any moment lingered peculiarly in my ears.
‘Please. I’m begging you.’
It was hard to believe those words had come from Fire King’s own mouth.
Moon-kyung, who had been silently watching Jeok Cheon-gang slowly rise to his feet, murmured inwardly.
‘Ah, I’ve grown old too.’
Though my body had grown younger, my heart had withered.
A corner of my heart that hadn’t shed a single drop of rain for countless years was now growing damp—perhaps for this very reason.
“…Sigh.”
Just as Moon-kyung exhaled softly, Jeok Cheon-gang, having lifted his heavy frame, was already waving his hand and turning to leave.
“I’ll be going now. Enjoy the moonlight.”
“What?”
What was he talking about?
Moon-kyung, whose mind had momentarily frozen, barely managed to open his mouth.
“You’re leaving?”
“Of course. Aren’t you grateful that the nuisance is disappearing?”
“I haven’t given you an answer yet.”
“What are you saying? I think I’ve already heard your answer.”
“Wait. What do you mean by——”
“I heard your answer loud and clear, young friend.”
“What kind of crazy old man is this?”
My composure, which rarely cracked, crumbled to pieces.
Moon-kyung cried out, staring at Jeok Cheon-gang’s receding figure with an absurd expression.
“What am I supposed to do?!”
“Teach me various things. The proper mindset, and if there are any secret techniques worth using from your school’s martial arts, share some of those secrets.”
“Secret techniques of the school? Secret arts?”
Moon-kyung immediately doubted his own ears.
A school’s secret techniques were essentially the crystallized essence of all the insights of one person or an entire sect. They couldn’t be taught even for a fortune, and they were more precious than life itself.
Yet he was asking to teach those secret techniques to someone else’s disciple?
Moon-kyung asked earnestly.
“…Did you perhaps lose your mind and forget what secret techniques are?”
“I know what they are. If you’re just going to keep them around to wipe your ass with, why not teach them to someone?”
“This crazy bastard.”
“Besides, there’s no one else worth teaching them to anyway. Leave the old disciple in Sichuan to keep saving lives—just teach my kid how to kill people properly.”
Was he seriously saying this now?
While Moon-kyung was too dumbfounded to respond, Jeok Cheon-gang, having finished saying what he needed to say, was already disappearing into the distance.
Screeeech!
“This… is ridiculous.”

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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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