Murim Login - Chapter 708
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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 708
Thwack!
With a sharp, ear-piercing sound of flesh tearing, the world around the Nantian Demon Empress froze.
Only the vivid sensation of a cold blade sinking deep into her back remained crystal clear.
Why. Who. How.
Countless questions flooded her mind through the haze of excruciating pain.
Yet instinct, faster than reason, commanded her body to move. The Nantian Demon Empress spun around with lightning speed and thrust out her palm.
Whoosh!
Primordial Qi. In the instant her hand—channeling a portion of unprecedented power—struck the crumbling debris heap.
Boom!
With a deafening roar, thousands upon thousands of pounds of rubble exploded outward.
And hidden within those countless fragments lay the answer to the question that had seized her mind moments before.
“Cough!”
A figure tumbled helplessly through the blast, swept away by the shockwave.
One sleeve of the white garment, stained with blood and dust, hung empty, while blood poured from the gaping, irreversible wound carved across the chest.
Yet the eyes, cold and resolute, remained fixed upon the Nantian Demon Empress.
Those eyes, burning with an immeasurable fury and regret, seemed to whisper to her.
That he had waited for this moment alone, for so very long.
“Baek Sang…!”
A name torn from someone’s lips like a scream. In that same instant, the Nantian Demon Empress felt the wind rushing down upon her from behind and her eyes snapped wide.
Whoooosh!
The moment lost to that unexpected strike was but an instant.
Yet that single blink of time became fortune for another and calamity for the Nantian Demon Empress.
Gulp.
Swallowing the viscous blood, the Nantian Demon Empress drew the blade from her back with blinding speed and turned to face them.
Three entities descended upon her like a tempest.
Beast King Miao Wang, Su-ho-ryung. And Jin Tae-kyung.
The moment her eyes beheld them, the vital meridians within her, shattered by Baek Sang’s strike, convulsed.
She could feel the flames of mutual destruction—kindled by sacrificing life itself—flickering like a candle before the wind.
Pain surged again, and her vision blurred.
Yet she could not stop. She must not stop.
Certain death.
With that singular resolve, the Nantian Demon Empress clenched her teeth and extended her hand.
Toward the three figures now before her eyes, toward those enemies who dared obstruct the great work the Heavenly Master sought to accomplish.
Gooooong.
In the slowed world, unprecedented power flowed through her blood-soaked grip and into the blade. The sword, now with a new master, descended at an angle.
Shhhhwack!
And the Nantian Demon Empress could see.
Beyond the warping space, three pairs of eyes widening slowly, and a verdant, formidable force rising like an iron wall to shield them all.
But….
‘It’s over.’
As the Nantian Demon Empress’s silent curse reached me, a blinding flash consumed everything.
Boom!
* * *
It was a catastrophic explosion—one no soul on this land had ever witnessed.
Crash, rumble rumble!
Even Yo-hee and Mu Ya-ho, who were evacuating the survivors alongside countless beasts.
Even the thousands of warriors standing siege around the darkened Inner Palace, their weapons raised high and dripping with blood.
And even the tribespeople fleeing toward the hillside beyond the Outer Palace—all beheld the spectacle and grasped the same word.
A cataclysm that shook heaven and earth.
There was no other way to describe it. The blinding flash and violent tremor rippled far beyond the Inner Palace, endless and all-consuming, and all who felt its power froze.
No—their very souls trembled with terror that bound them fast.
“Ah, ahhh…!”
The cries that poured forth from every direction pointed toward only one place: the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace they had fled.
Rumble. Rumble rumble.
It was collapsing.
The pavilions and dwellings their ancestors had built through generations of blood and sweat, the homeland where they had been born and raised—it was crumbling before their eyes.
What more needed to be said?
Thousands upon thousands of vacant eyes fixed upon the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace.
To burn into memory the final image of their beloved homeland—the place they could never return to.
Yet the thick despair that shrouded their vision soon transformed into hope.
Rumble rumble rumble….
The tremors gradually subsided. The ground that had seemed ready to swallow the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace whole ceased its movement, and the dwellings and pavilions that had swayed as if about to topple merely tilted.
A calamity beyond imagination. And the miracle that followed.
Those who witnessed this impossible sight were drenched in relief and joy, while the one whose mortal form had unleashed such devastation trembled with agony and rage.
“This… this is impossible… Cough!”
Drip drip drip.
Crimson blood spilled from the corners of her mouth.
Within the hollow space where everything within fifty paces had been obliterated and scattered to the winds, the Nantian Demon Empress surveyed her surroundings with eyes blazing red with blood-light.
It had been a single strike—one final, certain opportunity.
Even if she perished, it mattered not. She could never return alive anyway, and had she lived, she would have endured the remainder of her days in this withered, hideous form.
Yet… she had survived.
She, who should have been consumed and obliterated in the explosion, had shamefully lived on.
“Baek Sang! You dare! How dare you!”
Rumble rumble!
A roar laden with terrible fury erupted, and the energy wave it released shook the very space itself.
Baek Sang’s unexpected strike.
That single blade, likely drawn from his remaining strength, had twisted everything.
In that instant, the tangled qi within her meridians prevented the Nantian Demon Empress from channeling all her innate power into one blow, and while this saved her from obliteration, the same held true for ‘them’.
“Cough.”
Thud.
Dozens of paces away, a half-white giant collapsed to one knee, spewing blood mixed with fragments of his internal organs.
Behind his broad back, riddled with countless shards, the massive white tiger and a young man lay motionless, drenched in blood—a sight that burned itself into the Nantian Demon Empress’s vision.
“Ya-ryul Cheok, you bastard…!”
With a voice thick as blood, the image of the Beast King Miao Wang from that final moment flashed before her eyes.
That last instant. The way he had stepped forward without a shred of hesitation to shield Jin Tae-kyung.
‘Why? Why in all the heavens?’
She could not comprehend it. The Beast King Miao Wang, Ya-ryul Cheok—he who had earned the title of one of the Ten Kings in the distant Central Plains. Why had he made such a choice?
And the same held true for that foul-smelling beast.
‘Wagering their only life? For nothing more than a mere child?’
In the same breath as her confusion, one certainty seized the Nantian Demon Empress.
Jin Tae-kyung. That wretch had to die by any means necessary.
The Palace Master of the Southern Beast Palace—a ruler equivalent to a king of nations—and the white tiger bearing divine power had both wagered their lives for him. This marked him as the most dangerous possibility in this place.
And the Nantian Demon Empress still possessed power she had yet to unleash.
The final strength born from burning away her very life.
‘Heavenly Master, I beseech you. Forgive this disloyal servant who dares defy your will.’
Step.
The moment the Nantian Demon Empress murmured softly in her heart and took a heavy stride forward, a piercing sound of air being torn apart rang out.
Whoosh, crack!
A spear that had come from somewhere trembled in the Nantian Demon Empress’s grip.
She shattered the steel spearhead with her bare hand, her eyes blazing crimson.
“Do you all wish to die?”
Where that desolate voice was directed, a middle-aged guard stood firm, his armor torn to shreds.
But he was not alone.
Thud. Thump.
In the already devastated space, roughly a hundred warriors staggered to their feet, gripping swords and spears, gathering behind the middle-aged man.
Despite their position further back, each bore wounds both great and small, yet they blocked the Nantian Demon Empress’s path to fulfill the mission given to them.
Clang.
The middle-aged man lifted something from a pool of blood and bound it tightly around his forehead, his gaze steady as he faced the Nantian Demon Empress.
On the worn silk, three characters were inscribed—blood could not conceal them.
Baekcheon Brigade.
That was Wang Ho’s answer to the question posed moments before, and the will of all surviving members of the Baekcheon Brigade.
And in the next instant.
Screeeeeech! Boom!
The Evil Demon known as the Nantian Demon Empress charged toward them.
* * *
Flash. Then explosion.
That was the last memory remaining in my mind, and I thought that when I opened my eyes next, everything would already be over.
Either alive. Or dead.
The outcome of battle is always one of those two.
But as I opened my eyes after that brief darkness, I realized my assumption had only been half correct.
I had survived, yet the battle was far from over.
Crash! Crack! Crunch!
“Aaahhh!”
“Stop it—!”
Screech!
“No!”
As my senses returned from their brief absence, I could see.
Blood spraying skyward and limbs erupting upward. And someone’s body, crushed beneath a tremendous force, bouncing away as a mangled pulp.
Whoosh! Boom!
Splat.
Blood erupted from mere steps away, splattering across my face.
As I stared blankly at a warrior whose chest had been torn clean through, their breath stolen, a feeble voice reached my ears.
No—it was someone’s intent, transmitted directly to my mind.
–
Human.
Only then did I realize what was supporting my back. And whose warmth that was.
And in the next moment, as I turned my head, breathing in the thick scent of blood that seeped deep into my nostrils, I was left speechless.
“…!”
A massive body trembling intermittently within a deep pool of blood.
The silver fur that had seemed almost mystical was now drenched in crimson, and those pale blue eyes blinked laboriously toward me.
–
You sleep long.
“…What is this.”
–
I do not regret. Neither do I.
A single memory suddenly surfaced. In that moment when a brilliant flash had painted my vision, the green energy and silver mane that had shielded my eyes.
‘Surely not.’
As always, my grim premonition proved accurate.
The moment I turned my head, I saw a man’s massive back.
Beast King Miao Wang, kneeling on one knee in a state resembling a blood-soaked figure, had already lost consciousness.
The fragments of sword blades embedded throughout his entire body had surely been blocked in place of someone else.
“This is insane. Why on earth…!”
–
Go.
“What?”
–
Leave now. There is no time.
Toward me, rendered speechless, Su-ho-ryung moved his head with great effort and expelled something.
Whoooosh.
The Divine Stone, now no larger than a child’s fist, emitted a faint glow.
Understanding Su-ho-ryung’s intention, I clenched my teeth.
“Don’t spout such nonsense.”
–
If they fall as well, you’re next. But if you flee, you can certainly survive.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
“Krraaaaaaagh!”
As the earth trembled, another’s scream followed in succession.
With every vein in her body bulging, the Nantian Demon Empress burned through her final life force, tearing through over a hundred White Heaven Squad warriors in my field of vision.
“…!”
Before that overwhelming power, a chill seized me. In that frozen moment, Su-ho-ryung whispered urgently.
– Go. Now!
I knew. I understood well enough that Su-ho-ryung’s words were right.
The Nantian Demon Empress didn’t have much time left, and if I fled alone, I could certainly survive.
But….
‘I would regret it for the rest of my life.’
Muttering vacantly, I seized the Divine Stone. Then I rose to my feet and charged forward.
Not toward the Outer Palace, but toward the Nantian Demon Empress.
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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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