Murim Login - Chapter 637

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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 637
It was my first time.
Crossing a swampland this vast and expansive.
Breathing in poison mist like morning air while battling creatures that were anything but human.
Screech!
A sound erupted from behind me without warning. I pivoted smoothly and brought my hand blade down in a clean arc.
Slash!
Even at a glance, the creature’s body length exceeded thirty feet.
But neither its razor-sharp teeth nor its armor-thick hide could withstand the energy infused in my hand blade.
A massive crocodile—the kind you’d see in Amazon documentaries—split in half and fell onto the darkened water’s surface.
Splash!
The metallic stench of blood and an even fouler reek wafted up, but after a brief wave of nausea, I found it far more bearable than expected.
I’d long since been covered head to toe in slime and gore far more repugnant than any filth.
‘Not exactly fighting fire with fire.’
A pro tip from the Southern Wilderness survival guide: if stench bothers you, just get used to something even worse.
“…Damn it.”
A moment of despair struck, but the wretched Poison Blood Land granted no respite—not even a brief pause for reflection between shifts.
Whoosh!
A serpent hidden among the swamp reeds shot toward my neck like an arrow.
And in the instant that creature with its black, venomous fangs bared its jaws toward my thigh—
Crack!
A finger thick as an ancient tree branch flicked the triangular head away.
Death without question. Beast King Miao Wang, who’d seized the serpent’s limp tail and hurled it into the swamp, opened his mouth with a grave expression.
“Don’t lower your guard.”
“Lower my guard? What do you mean?”
“Stay alert.”
“…Ah, yes.”
Roughly translated: don’t relax your vigilance. Be careful. Something along those lines.
The Southern Wilderness’s greatest warrior, well past eighty years old, had the pronunciation of an eight-year-old schoolchild—all because of the poison-neutralizing pearl lodged in his mouth.
“There’s more coming.”
That last pronunciation felt oddly familiar.
I wanted to ask if he was from Gyeongsang Province, but I held my tongue. Neither the situation nor Beast King Miao Wang’s words permitted it—the swampland was truly ending.
But that didn’t mean our circumstances had improved.
‘Quest window open.’
Ding.
Quest
[Friend, do not cross that swamp]
You have entered the Poison Blood Land.
Ai-nao Mountain, once the headquarters of the Five Poison Sect, harbors within its deepest and most concealed reaches creatures unknown and unrecorded—beings that live and breathe in this forsaken place.
A cursed land saturated with poison-laden mist and the vengeful spirits of countless dead.
No one can tell you what awaits beyond this point. You must see it with your own eyes and verify it yourself.
Rank
: Supreme
Restriction
: Jin Tae-kyung
Objective
: ???
Reward
: ???
Failure
: Death
“….”
No matter how many times I see this, it’s still absurd.
It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered a Quest window this sparse. The objective and reward are both unclear, yet failure guarantees my demise.
But when I think about it, it’s always been similar. Whether in the Gates of the Modern World or here in Murim, it was always the same.
‘Win and live. Lose and die.’
A simple yet cruel logic.
Hunters or martial artists alike—we all walk through life with one foot already on the River of Three Paths.
And just as always, I had no intention of dying this time either.
Squelch.
As the Swampland ended, relatively softer ground appeared. With each step Beast King Miao Wang and I took, a foul-smelling viscous liquid dripped down, staining the already dark earth beneath us even darker.
“Ghastly.”
Beast King Miao Wang spat out a mouthful of poison and continued, surveying the surroundings.
“This is only the second most terrible place I’ve ever seen.”
“What was the first?”
“The Great War of Zheng and Ma. Everywhere you looked, it was like staring into hell itself.”
Compared to that unprecedented war where hundreds of thousands slaughtered one another, there was no need to elaborate on what the Poison Blood Land truly was.
Whoooosh.
A poisonous mist rolled across the blackened earth, and Beast King Miao Wang swallowed hard at the desolate sight.
“Damn it. If I’d known this would happen, I should have trained in poison techniques when I was younger.”
“But you didn’t know it would come to this, so you didn’t learn it, right?”
Beast King Miao Wang nodded with a rueful expression.
“True. I thought my martial skills alone were sufficient. That’s why I never bothered learning beast taming techniques that everyone else studied.”
“Well, that makes sense. Why learn something you don’t need?”
I felt an unexpected kinship with him.
If the Modern World had math quitters and English quitters, the Southern Wilderness had poison quitters and beast quitters. For the record, I gave up on every subject during the college entrance exam.
“Still, I thought people from the Southern Wilderness basically learned poison techniques.”
“Then wouldn’t it be called the Southern Poison Palace instead of the Southern Beast Palace?”
“…Ah.”
“It’s a prejudice held by Central Plains people. While the Southern Wilderness’s terrain does make poison easily accessible, most tribes primarily deal with beasts. After the Five Poison Sect rose to prominence, poison was even more rejected. You can tell from the sacred artifacts passed down through our palace’s generations.”
“Ah. I see… Wait?”
What did he just say?
I froze for a moment, staring intently at Beast King Miao Wang, and he furrowed his brow in response.
“What?”
“No, what you just said.”
“About rejecting poison techniques? For our palace, which suffered severe damage, it was only natural.”
“Not that. The divine artifact. The divine artifact.”
“Ah. So that’s what you meant. I wondered what else you were referring to.”
Beast King Miao Wang answered casually, but from my perspective, this was hardly something I could simply brush aside with an “I see.”
“Does the Southern Beast Palace also possess a divine artifact?”
“Any faction with a tradition has at least one divine artifact. From what I’ve directly witnessed and experienced, the Central Plains are even worse in this regard.”
That wasn’t wrong. Even modest martial sects, let alone local martial halls, would hang some rusty iron sword on their walls and call it a divine artifact just to appear impressive.
But among all of them, there were items that truly deserved to be called divine artifacts.
The Jade Buddha Staff of Shaolin Temple—a divine artifact that had maintained its lineage for a thousand years as the pillar of the Murim—was one such treasure.
And for some reason, Dark Heaven was targeting precisely these divine artifacts. So much so that they orchestrated the catastrophic event known as the Shaolin Blood Massacre.
‘But the Southern Beast Palace also possessed such a divine artifact?’
As far as I knew, the history of the Southern Beast Palace spanned over three hundred years.
This faction of Sae Oe, formed by the alliance of dozens of tribes, had emerged from their struggle against the Five Poison Sect and eventually became the supreme power of the Southern Wilderness.
It wasn’t strange for them to possess a divine artifact, but… the crucial point was that I was hearing about something this important for the first time.
“I’ve never heard of the Southern Beast Palace possessing a divine artifact.”
Beast King Miao Wang nodded at me as I spoke, deliberately maintaining my composure.
“That’s natural. It disappeared not long after our palace was established.”
“Pardon?”
“Or perhaps it never existed in the first place. The existence of the Beast King Stone has only been passed down as legend among successive palace lords, so even whether it actually existed remains uncertain.”
“The Beast King Stone…?”
The name alone was extraordinary. Beast King Miao Wang nodded at my quiet murmur and continued.
“As I mentioned, it’s merely a legendary tale. A divine artifact that the first palace lord supposedly possessed—one capable of commanding all the fierce beasts under heaven. After he fought to a mutual defeat against the first sect master of the Five Poison Sect, it vanished.”
A single stone imbued with the mysterious power to command all the fierce beasts of the world. It was truly a legend beyond legends.
Moreover, it was a tale passed down through oral tradition for centuries.
If I started fabricating stories now, in a few hundred years I could claim I was born from an egg.
‘Well, I should keep the existence of the Beast King Stone in mind, but…’
For now, the Nantian Demon Empress’s objective seemed more credible as creating a “rift” in the Southern Wilderness rather than pursuing the Beast King Stone—a legendary artifact whose very existence remained uncertain.
“But here’s the thing.”
“Yes?”
Beast King Miao Wang suddenly spoke, alternating his gaze between me and Dok-mu, his words hesitant.
“That thing. Don’t you have another one?”
The “thing” he was referring to was none other than the Ten Thousand Poison Antidote Pill.
I answered decisively.
“I don’t.”
“Then could I borrow it for a moment…?”
“Hey, Jang. Stop spouting nonsense and drink the antidote.”
“…What did you just say?”
“Ah. My words came out wrong for a moment. If you don’t want to be poisoned, keep drinking the antidote.”
Beast King Miao Wang glared at me with a displeased expression, but soon without further complaint, he placed a large antidote gourd to his lips.
Though he held a lower rank, he was a master worthy of belonging to the Ten Kings.
With his lofty martial cultivation and formidable inner strength, poison would not easily claim him, yet even the most skilled required precautions.
‘A high-grade antidote should prevent most toxins from penetrating.’
Of course, I had no such concerns, wearing the Sichuan Tang Sect’s prized treasure, the Ten Thousand Poison Nullifying Pill.
Beast King Miao Wang, regarding me with envious eyes, stepped into the poison fog.
Thud.
Each footfall echoed unnaturally loud.
The deep emerald mist enveloping all directions was so thick that one could not see even an inch ahead, and it possessed an eerie stillness.
‘Like something watching its prey.’
It was strange. Though I could sense something’s gaze piercing through the thick poison fog, the surroundings were quieter than when we had been in the Swampland.
And I was not alone in sensing this atmosphere.
– About ten zhang away. Small grass thicket to the northwest. Are you aware?
A voice transmission pierced my ear. I nodded slightly.
– The grass thicket beside the boulder, correct?
– Yes. Something is there. Perhaps….
I recalled the Spirit of Mount Aenoe. The phantom-like aura and movements swift as light that I had sensed from it.
– It is not that one. Even if it were, at this distance we could not capture it.
– That depends on how one approaches it, does it not?
In the same instant, Beast King Miao Wang extended a palm strike with the speed of lightning.
Boom!
Compressed air exploded outward, and the thick mist scattered in a fleeting moment.
Beyond the temporarily brightened field of vision, a tremendous palm force swept through the grass thicket like a tempest.
And….
“Cough!”
A scream. Not of a beast, but unmistakably of a human.
“…!”
“…!”
In that instant, Beast King Miao Wang and I locked eyes wide with shock, then rushed toward the source of the scream with the speed of lightning.
Whoosh!
In the fleeting moment of crossing the mist, countless thoughts flashed through my mind.
And the first two characters that came to mind were Dark Heaven.
‘It’s them.’
Ai-nao Mountain, the forbidden land of the Southern Wilderness. Why would there be people in the Poison Blood Land?
Something sharp seemed to pierce through my entire body.
I felt my heart pounding violently as I closed the distance of ten zhang in an instant.
And the moment I confirmed the source of the scream that had been hurled from the grass thicket, I inadvertently let slip a vacant cry.
“What in the…?”
Dark crimson blood smeared across my lips. Eyes wide open.
It was unmistakably a human corpse, yet it wore garments that were all too familiar to me and someone else.
“…A White Tribe Warrior. Why is one here?”
Like Beast King Miao Wang’s hollow voice laden with confusion, the corpse that had been alive mere moments ago was indeed a White Tribe Warrior.
And his body, draped in pure white robes like a burial shroud, was tightly bound in something viscous and tenacious.
‘Rope. No, thread?’
It was precisely when my eyes and Beast King Miao Wang’s pupils dilated wide in the face of this incomprehensible situation.
Rustle. Rustle rustle.
When had they been hiding? Where?
As countless presences converged from all directions, I suddenly felt darkness descend upon my head. Lifting my gaze, I could finally see them.
Ssshhhhh!
Ghostly figures descending from an Ancient Tree so massive its age was beyond reckoning.
Black bodies and countless legs. Upon spotting those creatures with their stiff fur, Beast King Miao Wang let out a groan.
“…Thousand-Year Spider.”
A monster from Poison Blood Land had appeared.

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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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