Murim Login - Chapter 699

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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 699
Crack, crack, crack! Boom!
The stone walls of the Inner Palace, unable to withstand the violent tremors, crumbled helplessly, and the iron gate that fell with a dull roar lashed against the ground.
It was as though a small hill had collapsed.
Yet Baek Sang’s form glided past the debris with breathtaking speed.
Whoosh!
Wind swept across my entire body. From my heightened senses came the sharp metallic scent of blood and screams echoing from all directions.
Baek Sang drew a deep breath, feeling the inner energy churning within him.
‘I must not be swept away.’
A colossal cliff stood like a folding screen behind the Inner Palace.
The demonic energy flowing from the fissures in what should now be called a ‘chasm’ was not something Baek Sang could dismiss lightly.
No—precisely because I was a supreme master could I walk freely through the Inner Palace like this.
Had I not walked the path of the demonic arts, even an ordinary internal energy master would have had their power thrown into chaos and lost their composure the moment they entered that realm of demonic energy.
Much like the middle-aged man now staggering before me.
“P-Palace Master? Is that you, Palace Master?”
An unmistakable face.
Greedy like his father, he had inherited the Tribal Chief’s position without any particular talent and lived a life of indulgence.
Which is precisely why he had been among the most enthusiastic in supporting Baek Sang.
Yet the man who had always worn an oily face and offered obsequious smiles to Baek Sang was now bleeding in the Seven Voids, crying out in desperation.
“Please, please save me! I don’t want to die yet…!”
His outstretched hand, flailing desperately, brushed against my pristine robes. I looked down silently at the Tribal Chief who had lost his footing and fallen, then opened my mouth.
“Why should I?”
“P-Palace Master?”
“You must have known. That what I intend to do will bring great calamity upon the Southern Wilderness.”
“…!”
“We exchanged fair compensation for our respective purposes. I trust you harbor no resentment.”
The same applies to me.
Along with the unspoken words that never left my lips, a finger wind erupted from Baek Sang’s fingertips.
Thud, thud!
The Tribal Chief’s form collapsed as his crown point was pierced through.
His eyes, wide with disbelief even in death, seemed to pose a question to Baek Sang.
Why. How.
How could you remain so composed even before this inferno.
And to the question of the departed, Baek Sang answered in his heart.
‘Because I have already resolved myself.’
Yet the breath that escaped between my lips trembled.
Would I have spared him had he begged for the lives of his tribespeople instead of his own?
No—perhaps a merciful death was actually a kindness to one possessed of such mediocre martial skill.
Ten thousand.
A full ten thousand. Warriors and beasts alike, engulfed in demonic energy, bleeding and writhing in agony.
Their screams wrung my heart like a fist, clawing through my mind like sharpened blades.
Yet Baek Sang did not slow his pace.
Whoooosh!
The new form shot forth without hesitation, cutting across the vast Training Ground where cries still echoed.
The stables where I once hid with Ya-ryul Cheok whenever we caused trouble as children, the storehouse where I sneaked in to steal fruit wine—all of it became nothing but wind passing through.
Vengeance. Rage. Regret.
With each step, emotions accumulated over years came crashing down.
If only I had not taken my only son to the Battlefield. If only I had drawn my sword instead of clasping hands on that day when the Nantian Demon Empress came. If only I had laid bare every truth to my sworn brother—the one person who trusted me more than anyone, even more than I trusted myself.
Or perhaps…
If only I had taken my own life and borne all the burden alone.
‘If only I had ended it all myself.’
Thud.
At some point, my relentless steps came to a halt. My eyes, fixed upon the tightly closed door, had long since turned bloodshot.
The voice of the Nantian Demon Empress from last night echoed through my mind.
‘Noon. Tomorrow at noon. Summon every warrior in the Palace to the Inner Palace.’
‘Tomorrow… at noon, my lady?’
‘Yes. Your role ends there. What comes after, we shall handle ourselves…’
‘A promise.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Please keep the promise. The one you made with me long ago.’
‘You dare interrupt an elder? How presumptuous of you.’
The Nantian Demon Empress laughed, and without a moment’s hesitation, I knelt before her.
She watched the new master of the Southern Beast Palace press his forehead to the ground for a long while before finally granting the answer I so desperately sought.
‘A well-mannered child deserves a reward. Very well—when the great calamity begins, return to your Office.’
‘…My Office, you say?’
‘Yes, this very place. The promise I made shall be fulfilled then.’
Her voice, tinged with laughter, scattered from my ears. Slowly, so very slowly, my only hand stretched toward the door, trembling violently.
The question of ‘how’ never crossed my mind from the start.
If the Nantian Demon Empress and Dark Heaven say it shall be so, then it shall be.
Especially when I recall the miraculous and impossible feats they have already demonstrated.
No matter how many eyes were watching the Inner Palace, the promise would be kept.
‘At last.’
At last, I have reached this place. As I closed my eyes, waves of distant memory crashed over me, consuming body and soul.
Long years of endurance and suffering.
Yet even this desolate tale had a final chapter. Opening my eyes as if awakening from sleep, I pushed the door open with all my strength.
Creak.
The door swung wide open.
And in that same moment, the spacious Office came into my view.
Simple yet sturdy furnishings that still held the warmth of the former master, and a table that carried the weight of countless years.
And standing incongruously in this austere Office was a large mirror.
And. And….
That was all there was.
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
The incomprehensible reality crushed down upon me like a ten-thousand-ton boulder.
Baek Sang, whose eyes had been hollow and vacant as he stared at the Office, suddenly let out a bitter laugh.
“Ha. Haha. Hahaha.”
Unable to weep, I laughed. Unable to refrain from laughing, I laughed.
The Nantian Demon Empress had broken her oath. Decades of years scattered like ash. Everything I had done in all that time crumbled to dust.
All of it, in the end, had come to this.
“Ohhahahaha!”
Baek Sang burst into uncontrollable laughter—as if he had returned to his boyhood days. Clutching his belly, rolling across the floor, tears streaming down his face, he laughed.
No, he wept.
“Ohhaha! Ohhahaha! Ohhaaaaa!”
A wail erupted instead of laughter. With fists devoid of even a shred of power, Baek Sang struck the floor and walls.
Crash! Crash! Boom!
Fists unleashed without pause.
What shattered alongside the thunderous blows was not merely the Office.
The callused backs of my hands split open, and between the blood that covered my knuckles, glimpses of bone-white showed through.
It hurt. More than ever before.
Drip. Pitter-patter.
Blood droplets accumulated on the floor, now fractured like a spider’s web. Baek Sang staggered to his feet and approached the window.
Unlike him, who believed the world had stopped, everything beyond the wide-open window continued to spin violently in this very moment.
“Kraaaagh!”
“P-please, kill me…!”
– Crunch, crunch!
Humans and beasts struggling against the demonic qi that consumed both body and mind.
And vast shadows of all sizes rushing toward them, unleashing terrible screams.
Boom boom boom boom!
A multitude of fierce beasts that had scaled the collapsed stone walls, shaking the earth itself, descended upon them—but their purpose was not slaughter, but rescue.
– Kraaaang!</
With the familiar roar of Baek Ho leading the charge, the beasts moved in perfect unison, seizing the arms, legs, or necks of those nearest to them and bolting toward the Outer Palace.
To escape this terrible demonic qi.
To guide them one step further, toward the light.
Crunch.
A fist clenched with all my might. Blood droplets glistened at the tips of fingernails digging deep into flesh.
Baek Sang's gaze, lifted toward the distant horizon, fell upon the light and darkness that swirled endlessly.
Boom boom boom boom!
I felt it. The shockwave of an unimaginable, colossal force.
And with each collision, the light dimmed bit by bit, while one figure continued to plummet.
Crash! Crack crack!
With a thunderous boom, Jin Tae-kyung was hurled backward, plummeting to the ground like a meteor. Two Pavilions crumbled, and the earth trembled beneath the impact.
Yet it was only a momentary respite. The azure flames propelled forward, streaking toward the oppressive darkness.
Without a single instant of pause. As if to incinerate even the death that drew near.
'Jin Tae-kyung.'
Why does he go to such lengths? Why?
The unspoken question lingered in my mouth.
A single phrase heard in the dim corner of the Underground Prison in the recent past echoed through Baek Sang's ears.
'How much more blood will you shed, Baek Sang?'
Baek Sang stared out the window with vacant eyes, offering a belated response.
"I do not know. Neither do I."
It was a secret he could tell no one.
After losing his son, he had dreamed of vengeance; upon meeting the Nantian Demon Empress, he glimpsed hope; and at some point, he discovered himself having crossed a river from which there was no return, and despair consumed him.
And thus, at the end of the thorny path he had walked, he confronted an empty void.
Thud.
Baek Sang staggered backward from the window with unsteady steps.
He could no longer bear to witness the hell-realm he had drawn with his own hands, nor the young foreigner who sought to prevent its completion by sacrificing his own life.
'What was all of it for?'
Along with a question he would never answer, Baek Sang's entire body froze like stone as he turned from the window.
"…!"
Where Baek Sang's gaze had halted, a figure caked in blood and dust stared back at him.
A large mirror in the corner of the Office reflected the visage of an old man who had lost everything and become an empty shell, one who had merely endured as a monster, suppressing the years with lofty cultivation.
Yet what Baek Sang beheld was not merely that.
"Ah."
Hwi.
Along with a call that could not reach, he extended his hand. Or rather, he attempted to.
At least until the surface of the transparent, smooth mirror began to ripple like water.
Slip.
In that moment, Baek Sang finally understood.
Who had gifted him this mirror.
Why the Nantian Demon Empress had said the covenant would be fulfilled here.
'It was not… a false promise.'
Within his heart, grown cold, the embers of hope he thought had vanished began to ignite once more.
And in Baek Sang's trembling eyes, the mirror, now stained with murky darkness, expelled a silhouette shrouded in black.
Along with a blade imbued with formidable force, cold and keen.
Whoosh!
* * *
Pat.
The Nantian Demon Empress extended her foot. A foot smaller even than a boy's palm.
Yet the moment it made contact with the blade's edge, a force mightier than that of a giant surged through her entire being.
Screech, crash!
– Human!
Hearing Su-ho-ryung's cry, I plummeted to the ground and crashed deep into the earth.
The impact transmitted through my back forced my lips open involuntarily.
Cough.
A trickle of crimson blood traced the corner of my mouth.
I had already sustained considerable internal injuries, and the fractured bones groaned with pain with every movement.
'A monster.'
The Nantian Demon Empress was a woman of legendary depravity, but she was also a monster of legendary proportions. A monster possessed of martial prowess greater than anyone I had faced before—even greater than the Western Heavenly Demon Lord.
But….
'I must rise. No matter how many times.'
Even if it were not merely several times, but dozens of times, it would be the same.
There was nowhere left to retreat. A single step backward would be stepping into Hell itself.
Not just for me, but for every living creature in the Southern Wilderness. And the Central Plains would surely be consumed in flames.
'I must stop her.'
I wiped the corner of my mouth with my sleeve and rose to my feet.
And before I could even gather my energy again, I realized that the situation I now faced was still far from being called the worst.
Crack, crack, crack, crack!
Turning my head by instinct, I could see it.
"…Damn it all."
Above the collapsing Inner Palace, a thick darkness descending.

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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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