Murim Login - Chapter 689

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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 689
Patter. Tap-tap.
Cold.
That was Yo-hee’s first thought as her eyes fluttered open.
As she gazed blankly at the water droplets falling onto her forehead, fragmented memories she had forgotten began to resurface one by one.
‘This is…’
Now it returned to her—who she was, what life she had lived, what had transpired in the Yao Seo Tribe, and what she had witnessed in the Poison Blood Land.
And…
‘I love you, Yo-hee.’
The face and voice of a man whose mere recollection sent shivers down her spine. Behind him lay the massive form of Baek Ho and a young man, both collapsed.
All of it.
“Gasp…!”
Yo-hee jolted upright like lightning, barely stifling the scream that threatened to burst from her lips.
Now that she had recovered all her memories from before losing consciousness, she was seized by wariness and dread as she surveyed her surroundings.
‘Where am I?’
It was an unfamiliar space. Murky darkness and oppressive silence blanketed everything. Without sufficient light to discern details clearly, one thing was certain—she was enclosed on all sides.
Like a prison someone had prepared.
‘Hyuk-ung.’
No—the man who had stolen that name.
Recalling the man whose very existence had been a lie, Yo-hee instinctively reached toward her waist.
She sought the soft sword she always wore like a belt as a precaution, but instead of the familiar weight, her fingers found only silk damp with blood and earth.
‘Ah. That moment.’
The memory returned—she had dropped the soft sword while intoxicated by some unknown poison.
Since she had never taken the antidote from the beginning, her martial power naturally remained sealed…
“Huh?”
Yo-hee let out an involuntary sound, then hastily covered her mouth. Yet the shock she could not suppress was plainly visible in her wide-open eyes.
‘How is this possible?’
Yo-hee forced herself to calm down and carefully examined her body twice, then three times, until certainty crystallized within her.
‘The seal on my martial power… it’s been released.’
It was undeniable. She could feel the abundant qi accumulated in her lower dantian through countless tonics.
The question was why, and how.
‘Everyone, including myself, should have been captured by Hyuk-ung.’
For Yo-hee, the situation made no sense whatsoever.
Being left alone in this sealed chamber, the seal being lifted—none of it added up.
In that final moment, there had been no one capable of stopping Hyuk-ung.
Jin Tae-kyung, bearing grievous wounds, would remain unconscious for days at minimum, while Baek Ho, the spiritual creature capable of matching a peak master single-handedly, was on the brink of death from a sudden ambush.
As for her, who had collapsed without even drawing her blade once under the influence of the poison—there was no need to speak.
‘Yet how could the seal be released?’
Moreover, she was not even bound by rope or iron chains. Though Yo-hee’s martial skill was not exceptional, she had reached the threshold of the peak realm.
This was far too crude and strange a measure to be the work of Dark Heaven.
‘What if.’
Yo-hee swallowed her unspoken words along with a dry gulp, then carefully rose to her feet and examined her surroundings with meticulous attention.
As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and her inner energy sharpened her vision, her enhanced sight pierced through the gloom to reveal the landscape beyond.
‘This is….’
The moment Yo-hee confirmed the true nature of the space where she stood, her breath caught in her throat.
It was a vast expanse. One that seemed impossible to have been constructed merely to confine a single person.
Yet if it had only been spacious, she would not have felt so suffocated. Even at a glance, the area appeared to span several hundred paces in radius—but that was not the true concern.
The problem was that cold, damp stone encased her on all sides—floor, walls, and ceiling alike.
Like an impregnable fortress that no one could enter or leave.
‘What is this place.’
Yo-hee stood speechless as she gazed upon the stone walls surrounding her and the thick vines that draped across them.
Whoooosh.
A wind from somewhere stirred the vines.
With her mouth agape, Yo-hee felt a cool breeze sweep across her entire body, and instinctively reached upward as something fell toward her head.
Swish. Tap.
Something caught between her slender fingers.
It was a leaf that had fallen from the vines, brushing past her silken hair as it descended.
Unlike what she had seen in Poison Blood Land, this was a verdant leaf brimming with vitality.
It was at that very moment.
As Yo-hee stared blankly at the leaf in her palm, a sudden realization struck her like lightning.
‘Wait. A breeze?’
In a sealed space, wind could not blow. This meant there had to be an opening—a gap through which air could enter.
And it would need to be a substantial one, large enough for such a powerful wind to shake those thick vines.
Yet despite her reasoning, no matter how thoroughly she searched, she could find no such opening.
‘This cannot be.’
She touched the stone walls that blocked her on all sides and even struck them with her inner energy.
More than that—driven by desperation, she even attempted the Wall-Clinging Technique, which she had never properly learned, scaling the vines in hopes of finding an escape above.
Perhaps there was an opening at the top that would allow her to flee this place.
But all her efforts proved futile.
Now, rather than despair at being captured by Dark Heaven, she felt only bewilderment at finding herself in this incomprehensible space.
‘At the very least, there should be an exit.’
It was true. Since awakening, Yo-hee had wandered for more than two hours, yet she had found neither a crack nor anything resembling an exit.
Then who had imprisoned her here, and how?
Overwhelmed with confusion, Yo-hee collapsed to the ground and leaned her back against the stone wall. The warm, soft sensation transmitted through her back lifted her spirits somewhat.
“Hmm?”
Something felt strange.
Yo-hee blinked for a moment, then slowly tilted her head back while remaining in her reclined position.
And in the murky darkness, her eyes met with a pair of pale blue irises gazing down at her.
“Ah.”
– Growwwl.
A suffocating silence descended in an instant.
As Yo-hee slowly pushed herself upright, she alternated her gaze between the sheer rock wall looming like a cliff behind her and the colossal Mu Ya-ho, whose upper body jutted out as though severed mid-torso by some invisible blade.
And she thought.
‘What in the world is this.’
Yo-hee forced herself to calmly assess the present situation.
First. This place is a vast space of unknown origin.
Second. As if trapped within a cliff, the stone walls barred even the sky, and no exit was visible.
Third. From those stone walls emerged Mu Ya-ho, his torso cleaved in half. No—he suddenly erupted forth.
Fourth. In such circumstances, the answer could only be one of two things.
A dream. Or the afterlife.
Without hesitation, Yo-hee drove her head against the stone wall.
Thud.
The fact that she remained conscious despite the ringing pain in her skull confirmed the latter beyond doubt.
And for good reason—the sight of that Mu Ya-ho, hovering like a phantom with only his upper body visible, was disturbingly familiar.
‘That’s him. It’s definitely him.’
Fur as white as silver, eyes of pale blue.
No mistake. The very Mu Ya-ho that the Palace Master Ya-ryul Mok treasured so dearly.
The fact that Mu Ya-ho, who should have been dead long ago, stood before her without a single wound, tilting his head with brazen nonchalance, convinced Yo-hee utterly that this was indeed the afterlife.
‘No wonder there’s no exit.’
She had never been to the afterlife before.
The tangled threads of her thoughts began to unravel. With this revelation came understanding, and Yo-hee’s shoulders began to tremble.
“Ugh. Hic. Hyuk-ung, you bastard….”
The crisis befalling the Southern Wilderness? The dignity she must uphold as the Great Chieftain of the Yao Tribe?
What did any of it matter now. She was already dead.
The only witness to her current state was a halved tiger’s ghost.
And when she thought of her mother, who had passed twenty years ago, tears streamed down her face.
“Hic. Waaaaaah!”
At the sound of her wailing, which resembled the roar of a beast, Mu Ya-ho approached with an expression suggesting he wondered if she were perhaps his kin, and licked away her tears.
– Grrrrr.
The rough sensation swept across her entire face.
For a ghost, the sensations felt far too vivid, though upon reflection, the notion that one loses sensation after death was merely the prattle of those who had never visited the afterlife.
Yo-hee buried her face in Mu Ya-ho’s soft fur and wept bitterly.
At least until something soft and billowing came into her grasp.
Snap.
–
Growl.
At first, she was too absorbed in her tears to notice, and then she wondered what it was.
When she lifted her head at the sharp cry that Mu Ya-ho released, Yo-hee could see it.
The long, pristine white tail of Mu Ya-ho gripped in her own hand.
‘Oh, it was his tail. What did I think it was.’
Yo-hee muttered inwardly, burying her face in the fur once more before lifting her head again moments later.
A shocking realization had struck her like a blow to the back of her skull.
‘Wait. Why does it have a tail?’
Under normal circumstances, this would have been unremarkable. Even ordinary tigers possessed tails, as did the countless rats that infested the Yao Seo Tribe’s granaries.
Yet the fact that Baek Ho’s phantom—which moments ago had drifted about as merely an upper body—had now reformed into a complete entity was an entirely different matter for Yo-hee.
‘Could it be?’
Yo-hee scrambled to her feet and reached toward the dark stone cliff where Mu Ya-ho had first revealed himself.
Tap.
Cold and unyielding, just as she had observed before. The thickness was impossible to gauge, and not a single crack was visible.
Yet there was no cause for despair.
‘There’s something I don’t understand. Something definite.’
Her recovered reason spoke clearly.
This was neither a dream nor the afterlife. It was merely a situation so strange and wondrous that the human mind could scarcely comprehend it.
And as though reading Yo-hee’s very thoughts, Mu Ya-ho, who had been circling her, began to move.
–
A low growl rumbled forth.
The massive white tiger lowered its hindquarters at an angle.
Yo-hee, catching a faint glimmer of intent in those crystalline pale-blue eyes, asked with an expression of disbelief.
“You want me to ride? On your back?”
–
A deeper growl answered.
“Well.”
She had heard tales of its cleverness, but not to this degree.
Regarding the white tiger before her with newfound appreciation, Yo-hee carefully climbed onto its back.
The moment she grasped the snow-white fur, one of its massive front paws extended toward the cliff face.
A heavy step.
Given the creature’s enormous size, a single stride brought the stone wall within arm’s reach, and Yo-hee squeezed her eyes shut.
‘Please.’
The instant her heart cried out desperately—
Whoooosh!
With a peculiar sensation as though being drawn into some unseen void, Yo-hee slowly opened her eyes. And without thinking, she gasped.
“Oh.”
Infinitely bright and warm.
Light instead of darkness. Vibrant trees instead of cold stone. A place overflowing with flowers rather than vines—it was an entirely new world.
One that captivated Yo-hee so completely that she momentarily forgot all her circumstances, surrendering to peace and beauty.
“What… what is this place?”
To Yo-hee’s trailing question, Mu Ya-ho offered no answer this time.
The snow-white tiger’s form shot forward without hesitation toward a path woven through vegetation and flowers.
Patter, whoosh!
A refreshing wind swept across her entire body, and beyond the rapidly passing scenery, countless creatures of every kind watched them with curious, gleaming eyes.
Mountain birds nested in trees so impossibly tall they seemed to pierce the heavens. A deer and a wild boar basking together in the lush grass, enjoying the sunlight as one.
And even a bear lending its body as a resting place for this mismatched pair.
‘What in the world am I witnessing?’
Yet the thought that echoed through Yo-hee’s mind was swiftly erased.
Why the food chain was defied? She didn’t know. More importantly, it didn’t matter.
Simply existing in this space made everything feel natural and inevitable.
‘This… this is utterly impossible.’
The moment the words “dark sorcery” flashed through Yo-hee’s consciousness—
The path that seemed eternal came to an end, and a small pond revealed itself.
And there… a figure stood.
“Jin Tae-kyung!”
Unmistakably him.
The perfectly balanced musculature, the crimson armor draped across his upper body—so distinctly visible even from a distance—he lay half-submerged in the clear water, unconscious.
Only some dozen paces remained between us.
Yet despite Yo-hee’s urgency, Baek Ho’s footsteps, which had pressed forward without pause until now, froze as if rooted to the ground.
—
Krrrgh.
A low growl as if calling to someone. Sensing something in that instant, Yo-hee turned her gaze to follow those pale blue eyes and saw it.
Or rather, felt it before seeing it.
Whoooosh.
Along with a chilling wind carrying an inexplicable force, azure leaves cascaded down from the colossal Ancient Tree unlike anything she had ever witnessed.
And in that moment—
Swish.
Beneath the vast shadow cast by the towering tree, a Black Tiger, dark as shadow itself, rose to its feet.

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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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