Murim Login - Chapter 695

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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 695
At first, no one paid it any mind.
Or rather, there was no time to pay attention to anything else.
The succession of momentous events and the mobilization order had swelled our military forces day by day, leaving even the common tribespeople dwelling in the Outer Palace breathless. Ten thousand warriors and beasts now gathered in the Inner Palace, awaiting their new Palace Master.
Yet even amid such turbulence, there were those who remained at their posts.
“I’m dying here. The heat is unbearable, and the atmosphere is so tense. I should’ve been stationed at the East Gate or West Gate where things are quieter.”
At the Young Junior Warrior’s grumbling upon returning from patrol, the middle-aged warrior leaning against the North Gate’s city wall clicked his tongue.
“Tsk tsk, look at you. A young man with a bright future ahead, already thinking of shirking duties.”
“And here I thought you were sitting in the shade while I was out on patrol?”
“I’m old. When else would I rest if not now?”
“Fair point, I suppose.”
The Southern Beast Palace possessed three gates in total: East, West, and the North Gate where they stood.
There was no South Gate. The sheer cliff that stretched behind the Inner Palace was more formidable than any gate.
“How was patrol? What’s the situation in the Outer Palace?”
“Not a single soul on the Street Market.”
“…Yes, I suppose so. Everyone must be anxious.”
The middle-aged warrior exhaled heavily.
The number of warriors now assembled in the Inner Palace alone reached ten thousand—a force substantial enough to be called a small nation.
This was the first time such numbers had gathered since the Great War fifty years ago.
History has a way of repeating itself.
The elderly fell silent, remembering the past, while parents clutched their children and locked their doors.
An overwhelming sense of dread hung in the air—the certainty that a massive war was coming.
“But… are we really going to war with the Central Plains?”
At the cautious question from his junior, the middle-aged warrior answered quietly.
“Who knows. But one thing is certain before that.”
“What’s that?”
“Before we wage war in the Central Plains, blood must be spilled right here in the Southern Wilderness.”
“…!”
“As you know, the former Palace Master still lives, and five tribal chiefs loyal to him have left the Outer Palace. The higher-ups will want to settle internal matters before marching toward the Central Plains.”
This was something anyone with sufficient wisdom and experience already understood.
Civil war. A civil war for the first time in three hundred years awaited them.
To reach the path toward the Central Plains, they would have to tread upon the corpses and blood of comrades they had fought alongside mere days before.
“…”
A shadow fell across the Young Junior Warrior’s usually cheerful face.
Among the five tribes that had left the Outer Palace were close friends he had known since childhood.
Watching the darkened expression of his junior, the middle-aged warrior quietly rose to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve shirked enough duties for one day. Might as well make a round of the city wall. My body’s stiff from sitting so long.”
“Just rest instead. The other squads should be handling the wall anyway…”
“Those fools? They’re probably sneaking down here to sit in the shade just like us. If the higher-ups find out, it’s my head on the block as Gate Commander.”
It wasn’t an incorrect assessment. Since outsiders rarely ventured here, security had never been particularly stringent, but it had grown even more lax after ten thousand troops were stationed.
Even someone desperate enough to court death wouldn’t dare assault the Southern Beast Palace in its current state—it would be nothing short of suicide.
And yet….
‘They must all be unsettled.’
Surprisingly few among them burned with genuine battle fervor.
Ya-ryul Cheok, now branded a traitor who had betrayed the Southern Barbarians, had once been a Palace Master revered by all. The tribespeople who had lived together beneath the banner of the Southern Beast Palace for three centuries, becoming one with each other, dreaded the civil war and great battle looming at their doorstep.
But what could be done? Orders from above were orders to obey.
“Sigh.”
The middle-aged warrior exhaled heavily and ascended the City Wall. As he’d anticipated, the wall was quiet.
Well, one figure remained—though the problem was he was sleeping, snoring loudly.
‘…Yes. Rest while you can.’
The eve of a tempest. Perhaps today would be the last chance these pathetic subordinates had to find peace.
The middle-aged warrior shook his head slowly, standing rigid atop the wall as his gaze swept toward the distant horizon.
It was noon.
The sun, already high in the sky, radiated suffocating heat, and the vast grassland sprawling beyond the North Gate and the elevated Hillside overlooking the Outer Palace shimmered beneath waves of heat distortion….
‘Wait.’
What was that? Had his eyes deceived him?
The middle-aged warrior’s eyes widened with sudden doubt.
Yet even as he blinked repeatedly and rubbed his eyes roughly with his sleeve, the sight before him remained unchanged.
“…What in the world.”
A hollow voice escaped his lips before he could stop it.
And at the far end of where the middle-aged warrior’s gaze fell, an enormous Baek Ho took its first step.
Pad.
Silver-white fur gleamed like moonlight. Its massive foreleg brushed through the grass as it advanced. Simultaneously, wind from somewhere swept across the Forest behind the Hillside.
Whoooosh.
Densely tangled branches trembled, and countless leaves hanging from their tips rustled. And beneath the shadow cast by the lush Forest, another Forest stirred to life.
Rumble.
The earth trembled, the air convulsed, and the wind scattered. Countless vertically-slit eyes gleamed with an eerie, chilling radiance.
“…!”
The middle-aged warrior’s mouth slowly fell open.
Beasts. Countless beasts—a number beyond reckoning.
As merely an ordinary warrior, he couldn’t even begin to fathom it.
How many beasts lurked behind that Forest? Where had these predators with their razor fangs and claws possibly emerged from?
But one thing he could discern.
That the massive horde of beasts—terrifying merely to behold—was being led by what might very well be a human, just like himself.
Whoosh!
A cool wind carried with it large and small silver silhouettes crossing the grassland.
The two Baek Ho, now multiplied in number, halted before the massive iron gate—along with the man and woman they bore upon their backs.
‘That, that is….’
The middle-aged warrior’s pupils trembled.
Perhaps if it had been someone else, they would not have immediately recognized the identities of this man and woman.
But he had been the Gate Commander of the North Gate for the past ten years, and the moment he saw their faces, he felt as though struck in the back of the head by a sledgehammer.
How could he not know?
The woman was one of only four Great Tribal Chiefs in the Southern Wilderness. And the young man was….
‘Jin Tae-kyung.’
Three syllables that stole one’s breath merely by being remembered.
It was unmistakable.
The very outsider who had come to this land for the first time in hundreds of years since the Five Poison Sect’s annihilation. The eye at the center of the colossal tempest that had descended upon the Southern Wilderness.
It was he—Jin Tae-kyung himself—who had sought out the Southern Beast Palace.
And he had come with countless beasts and the Great Tribal Chief of the Yao Tribe, Yo-hee, whom he was said to have abducted.
‘What… what in the world is happening…’
But before the middle-aged warrior’s question could even fully form, the lips of one figure parted, breaking the heavy silence.
“A word of advice. You’d do well to step away from there.”
“…!”
The middle-aged warrior, who had instinctively been about to sound the alarm, froze in place. Watching him, Jin Tae-kyung exhaled a quiet sigh of relief.
‘Thank goodness. We made it in time.’
The moment I saw that nameless warrior’s face, I knew. Dark Heaven’s sinister plot had not yet begun.
If the ‘Rift’ had opened, this place would already have transformed into a hellscape where no living soul could survive.
Yet in this quiet—this ominous, suffocating quiet—I could sense a fuse burning down on a bomb.
“Isn’t that right, Whitey?”
The massive body pinned beneath me stirred slightly.
The Divine Stone Guardian. True to that name, Baek Ho, having reclaimed his former appearance, sent forth a wave of intent.
– …To call me by such a name.
“In the old days, it would’ve been Blackie. Though I’m no racist, mind you.”
– I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re babbling about. You’re like a madman.
A madman. Yes. I’ve heard that more than a few times in my life.
Muttering to myself, I let out a soft chuckle and extended the spear blade in my hand.
Fear about what lay ahead? There was none to be found.
But I had crossed countless lines of death to reach this place, and I had done my utmost with the circumstances given to me.
Baek Sang. Nantian Demon Empress. Dark Heaven.
Now, no matter who stands in my way, it matters not. I simply stand and fight with my life on the line.
‘Yes. With my life on the line.’
This is a battle where tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands—perhaps even more—lives hang in the balance.
In the process, blood may flow like rivers and corpses may pile like mountains.
But….
‘I must see it through.’
Someone once said it.
Do all that is within human power, then entrust the outcome to Heaven and wait. That is the way.
But my thoughts were different. Only by being able to change even Heaven’s will itself can one truly call it will.
‘Is that not so?’
I lift my head and gaze toward the heavens. Instead of an answer, scorching, brilliant sunlight returns to me. On a day like this, I cannot die—not now, not ever.
Of course, the same holds true regardless of the weather. I despise death, and I have no intention of dying.
Even if… the Heavenly Master waits beyond this iron gate.
Screech, crackle!
In an instant, a pale blue-white torrent of force pierced through space like lightning and cleaved the massive iron gate in two.
The Divine Stone Guardian, reborn as a dazzling silver White Tiger, unleashes a roar that shakes heaven and earth.
– ROOOOOAAARRR!
Within the gaping maw of the beast—wide enough to swallow the world itself—lay not merely teeth harder than steel and a crimson tongue.
BLAZEEEEE!
A brilliant pillar of radiance.
In that moment, dazzling brilliance floods the world.
A column of light erupts from the Divine Stone cradled within the Divine Stone Guardian’s jaws, piercing through the City Wall and penetrating the heavens above.
BOOOOOM!
A hundred leagues away—perhaps even a thousand leagues distant—the colossal pillar of light would be visible.
All could witness this extraordinary power, this wondrous spectacle.
The ten thousand warriors gathered in the Inner Palace. And the countless beasts that blanketed the Hillside.
– SHRIEEEEK!
– ROOOOAARRR!
With their roars, an invisible dam crumbles. The beasts, awaiting their master’s command, surge forth like a tidal wave across the vast Grassland.
Boom, boom, boom!
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud!
Beneath the scorching sunlight, the earth trembles and the wind scatters. And at the vanguard of it all stands one figure.
“Advance.”
A low murmur flows from between my lips.
At the same moment, the Divine Stone Guardian stamps the ground with tremendous force.
SCREEEECH!
The beginning of the great war that would determine the fate of the Southern Wilderness.

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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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