Murim Login - Chapter 661

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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 661
Two days later, at noon. And execution.
Those two short words that slipped from between Baek Sang’s lips pierced through my mind like bullets.
‘Execution in two days? Me?’
I swallowed the question that threatened to claw its way up my throat. At least not here, and certainly not in front of Baek Sang where he could see me falter.
Rather than despair, I tried once more—a desperate gamble—pressing against the escape route I’d already attempted countless times.
‘Logout.’
Beep beep!
–
[Logout]
has failed!
– In certain situations,
[Logout]
is impossible!
Damn it. Still won’t work.
I forced myself to speak in the most composed voice I could muster.
“Two days. Faster than I expected.”
“My father always said: once you’ve made your decision, draw your blade without hesitation.”
“That blade—you’re not drawing it alone, are you?”
“I may have grasped the sword first, but when it falls upon your neck, I won’t stand alone. Not even the Palace Master could stop us.”
The blade will not fall by a single hand….
I quietly reflected on the weight of those words, murmuring as if to myself.
“You’ve certainly been busy, haven’t you? Reaching out in all directions.”
Baek Sang answered in a dry tone.
“Twenty tribal leaders, including myself, have already aligned. And the final agenda of the great assembly will be….”
“Jin Tae-kyung of the Taewon Jin Family. Or rather, my execution—now that I’ve become a criminal condemned by heaven and earth.”
“You understand well.”
“If I didn’t understand by now, I’d be an idiot. So that’s why you threw me into the Underground Prison first?”
“Of course. It was the simplest method. Though I didn’t expect you to surrender so easily.”
Baek Sang didn’t deny it. Like a hunter who had captured his prey, he looked down at me, bound by iron shackles weighing nearly ten thousand pounds, and continued in a low voice.
“To catch a tiger, you must venture into the mountains and bear the risk. But a tiger locked in a cage? That’s another matter entirely.”
“True. And if the hunter numbers twenty instead of one.”
The number of tribal leaders following Baek Sang had never been small to begin with. But twenty?
That exceeded half of the thirty members we’d been reduced to after Hyuk-ung and Yo-hee went missing, meaning some of the tribal leaders who had stood with Beast King Miao Wang had switched sides.
“What exactly did you promise them? Something extraordinary?”
“The revival of their clans. Greater influence and vast wealth.”
“Remarkable. I suspected as much, but damn, it’s simple.”
“Yet nothing is more effective.”
Perhaps it was the certainty of being alone with me.
Today, Baek Sang’s answers were more honest than ever, composed of undeniable truths.
Unfortunately, that bastard’s words ring true. The Southern Beast Palace is indeed a tribal confederation, and each tribal leader, having assessed the current state of affairs in their own way, has placed their bets on the side most likely to prevail.
The future of the tribes they rule. The wealth and glory their people would gain.
And….
“Among them all, the one who stands to receive the greatest reward is right before my eyes now. Because I will seize all of the Southern Wilderness. Isn’t that right?”
At my question, Baek Sang closed his mouth instead of answering, and I let out a hollow laugh.
“Fascinating. Rotten to the very core, aren’t you?”
It was at that precise moment. Baek Sang, who had been staring at me with a gaze that seemed to pierce through my very soul, suddenly spoke.
“Have you ever experienced war?”
“What?”
“I asked if you’ve ever experienced war.”
Why was he suddenly bringing this up?
But regardless of Baek Sang’s intentions, I—now caged like a tiger behind bars—had no choice but to listen.
“I have witnessed it all firsthand. Fifty years ago, when I arrived in the Central Plains leading ten thousand warriors alongside the Palace Master, the first thing I beheld was hell itself descending upon the mortal realm.”
Baek Sang continued slowly, his voice steady and composed.
“Fields were trampled and rivers ran red with blood and corpses. Every day—every moment—people perished across the land, and children orphaned by war, gripped by starvation, stripped bark from trees and ate it without even noticing their own teeth falling out.”
War is always brutal. Even when someone emerges victorious, the path to that victory is paved with countless screams and death.
Neither victor nor vanquished can escape it—there is but one road.
“It was a hell I had never witnessed before, neither as myself nor as Palace Master. Yet we had reason to fight, so none of us retreated. If the Demon Cult were to dominate the Central Plains, the Southern Wilderness would be next. We stood there to protect our homeland where our families and friends dwelled.”
Baek Sang’s voice echoed through the dim Underground Prison.
“Countless lives vanished beyond measure. Some fell in combat against enemies on the battlefield, others stared blankly at the sky after the fighting ended and took their own lives, and I myself pressed the death points of comrades writhing in agony to grant them mercy.”
“….”
“As battles repeated endlessly, some died and others grew weary, yet with each turn of fortune in our favor, hope kindled ever brighter in a corner of our hearts. Soon we would return home, we thought. We would see our beloved women, our aging parents, or children who had grown so much.”
Even without experiencing it, I could feel it.
Even without witnessing it, the image formed before my eyes.
Their arrival in the distant Central Plains after crossing through jungles, over the Yangtze River, and beyond plains and mountains. And the sight of battlefields where they clashed daily against a hundred thousand demon cultists pouring in from all directions.
“When I counted the numbers, fewer than a tenth of the ten thousand warriors remained alive. The gradually favorable tide of war stalled at some point, and the Palace Master and I wondered: why must we remain here?”
Time is a law no one can oppose. Before that absolute law that moves mountains and dries rivers, even masters who had reached the pinnacle of cultivation could do nothing.
‘Their spirits must have worn thin. Slowly. Beyond what anyone could endure.’
As I murmured this to myself, Baek Sang’s voice continued.
“Then, after ten years had passed, came the day. The day the Martial God defeated the Heavenly Demon.”
A clash between two absolute beings.
The outcome of this earth-shattering life-and-death duel was the Martial God’s victory, and the Demon Cult, which had once devoured half the world, crumbled like a sandcastle the moment it lost its cornerstone in the Heavenly Demon.
“The remnants of the Demon Cult retreated westward, and the Martial Alliance pursued them relentlessly, seeking to annihilate them completely. Now, with the unstoppable Martial God at the helm, the Three Stars and the Ten Kings, along with countless Orthodox Martial Arts World sects under the Martial Alliance, advanced from all directions. We were no exception.”
The scales that had already been tilting slowly toward the Orthodox Martial Arts World lost all meaning with the Heavenly Demon’s death.
All that remained was to pursue and annihilate the hundred thousand demon cultists, now reduced to scattered remnants, and uproot them from the Central Plains.
“The war was as good as over. Or rather, it should have been.”
Baek Sang suddenly fell silent, his eyes hollow as they fixed on some distant point in the void.
Water droplets seeping through a hairline crack in the ceiling fell onto the cold floor below.
Drip. Pitter-patter.
A heavy silence hung in the air. As I watched Baek Sang, who refused to speak despite the wait, I suddenly opened my mouth.
“Baek Hui. Am I right?”
“…!”
My body stiffened abruptly, my eyes trembling. Watching Baek Sang’s agitation reach unprecedented heights, I gave a small nod.
“Seems I got it right. I was worried I might have confused the name.”
Crunch.
Something shattered between his clenched lips. Baek Sang opened his mouth, his gaze turning glacially cold.
“Where did you hear that name?”
It was Ya-ryul Mok who told me that name, but there was no need to reveal that fact.
I replied calmly.
“Does it matter so much? What’s important is that someone still remembers the name Baek Hui.”
“…A worm like you has no right to speak that name.”
Whoosh!
A blade-like killing intent erupted from Baek Sang’s entire body, shooting through the gaps in the iron bars.
Yet strangely, I felt no fear.
And perhaps that was because of a single thread of pity toward a father who once had to send his young blood away before himself.
Above all else, at least in this moment, it was.
‘Baek Hui.’
White. Radiance.
It was a person’s name. The one and only child Baek Sang cherished desperately, and the name of someone who would have become the Beast King Miao Wang’s son-in-law had he lived.
‘Yes. Had he lived, that is.’
Clicking my tongue softly in my mind, I ignored the killing intent pouring from Baek Sang and asked.
“Did he lose his life while pursuing the Demon Cult? Or….”
Boom! Crash!
A deafening roar swallowed my words. Simultaneously, the Underground Prison shook violently from the tremendous shockwave.
Baek Sang, who had pulverized the prison wall with a single fist, stared at me with eyes sharp as frost.
“Do you wish to die right here and now?”
Given my current circumstances, it was quite a threatening statement. Had it been Hyuk Moo-jin, he would have wet himself and entered silent meditation.
But there are always exceptions.
There’s Chung Poong, who might even feel a slight thrill at experiencing death for the first time….
Well, after rolling around so much everywhere, I too suffer from an enlarged liver.
“That’s not so bad. Besides, you can’t kill me right now anyway.”
“What?”
“There must be a reason you postponed my execution to two days from now. Of course, that decision wasn’t yours alone either. Is it the Nantian Demon Empress’s order? I heard you exchange letters on the first day of every month.”
“…!”
“So stop the bluffing and tell me the story. I’ve been locked alone in this Underground Prison, and it’s been lonely and boring. At least in the Sichuan Tang Family’s prison, there were other inmates to keep things interesting.”
“You bastard!”
A ringing shout echoed like a reverberating bell. Baek Sang, trembling with rage, reached out and grasped the iron bars.
Screech!
Steel as thick as an adult’s forearm bent like taffy. Through the gap, Baek Sang stepped forward, his eyes gleaming with a piercing coldness.
“Hui. Was that child’s death so amusing and intriguing to you?”
A murderous aura emanated from him, as though he might draw his blade and strike me down at any moment. Yet I remained unmoved.
He wouldn’t dare kill me here regardless, if only because the Nantian Demon Empress terrified him. And there was something I needed to know.
“I’m not interested in what’s amusing. But there’s something I want to understand.”
“You dare….”
“Speak.”
I cut off Baek Sang’s words with an emotionless tone, then continued slowly.
“Not how your only child died, but what mad bastards created a madman like you.”
“…!”
“Tell me that.”
And after a silence so heavy that a single second felt like an eternity, Baek Sang’s lips finally parted.
“Gansu. Great Snow Mountain.”
A trembling exhale.
White breath poured into the ice-cold Underground Prison. Like the heavy snow that must have fallen that day.
“Back then, we were leading the Southern Army alongside the Zhongnan Sect.”
At those words that pierced my ears, I instinctively swallowed the cry that threatened to burst forth.
Damn it. The Zhongnan Sect.

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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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