Murim Login - Chapter 718

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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 718
“Despite so many deaths, the grief that took the greatest hold in my heart was for a single man—Baek Sang.”
A low voice that pierced my ears. After a moment of silence, I opened my mouth.
“So you left. Because you thought your feelings were wrong?”
“To become the Palace Master of the Southern Beast Palace means… prioritizing this land and its people above all else. Yet I was consumed by personal emotion.”
A massive back, towering like an ancient stone monolith. But the silhouette of the giant who had sustained the Southern Wilderness through countless ages now appeared pitiful—small as a child.
“Do you know what I was thinking when I faced Baek Sang for the last time?”
I could guess well enough. But I chose not to speak.
No one knew him better than I did, and no one suffered more from it than the man standing before me.
“I wanted to save him, no matter what.”
“….”
“Even in that horrific scene, I wanted to rescue that wretch Baek Sang—who had betrayed me and all of this land—and help him escape far away.”
Though no blood bound them, they were sworn brothers in all but kinship.
Beast King Miao Wang would have done anything to save Baek Sang.
Holding his supposedly dead son hostage, forced to serve as Dark Heaven’s hunting dog all these years—he would have wanted to grant that man absolution.
But it was Baek Sang himself who refused.
“That wretch must have known. Known that I was hesitating. That’s why he made that choice.”
Beast King Miao Wang’s laughter scattered into emptiness.
The emotion in his voice was the anguish of having to sever with his own hands the life of a sworn brother he cherished more than his own existence, and the self-recrimination of having abandoned his duty as Palace Master to personal feeling.
“One diseased tree killed the forest. Yet the forest keeper who should tend it now stands wandering before that fallen, rotting tree. Can you truly call such a man a forest keeper?”
I, who had been quietly listening to Beast King Miao Wang’s words, broke the long silence and spoke.
“Beast King Miao Wang, I’m asking this with complete sincerity…”
My words grew blurred without my realizing it.
Honestly, even now I’m uncertain whether I should say such things. But I had to somehow lift this forest keeper whose mind had shattered.
Even if I had to cross the line—just a little, or perhaps far more.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“…!”
I felt undeniable agitation emanating from Beast King Miao Wang’s back. But having started down this path, I pressed on without hesitation.
“Is the Palace Master some celestial deity? Does he have no human emotions?”
“You…”
“Let’s be honest. Someone you’ve spent your whole life with—family in all but blood—just died. Who in this world could possibly be unaffected? Should you grieve more simply because others died too?”
Beast King Miao Wang, who had fallen silent under the torrent of blunt words, finally spoke.
“Jin Tae-kyung, are you also mad?”
I nodded.
“Of course I am. What makes someone like me so special?”
“….”
“Even if people around you praise you as a hero or a great master, you’re still human. Does being a Palace Master make you any different?”
At my answer without a shred of hesitation, the broad back moved.
Slowly.
A head turning gradually to face me.
Since I first set foot in this Abandoned Shrine, the Beast King Miao Wang’s complexion had never looked more haggard.
“They too were people of the Southern Wilderness that I had to protect.”
“And you did protect them. Even after being branded a traitor, you returned at great risk. The fact that so many others could be saved—that’s all because of you.”
I continued quietly.
“The diseased trees have already fallen, but the forest still lives. In fact, it needs a forest keeper more than ever.”
Many had perished in this affair. Yet paradoxically, the Southern Wilderness would grow stronger for it.
In this vast forest called the Southern Wilderness, Baek Sang was not the only diseased tree.
‘The other tribal chiefs. No—the traitors.’
If Baek Sang had joined hands with Dark Heaven for his son’s sake, they had merely followed him for their own comfort and power.
They were the trees that should have been felled long ago. Trees infected with the disease of greed.
More than twenty tribal chiefs, intoxicated by avarice, had waved the branches attached to their own bodies, and countless leaves had rolled through blood—yet the forest did not die.
No, under a single banner called the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, it would flourish more united than ever.
And there was only one person who could raise that banner before all the people of the Southern Wilderness.
“Let us depart now. That way, those two can rest at peace.”
Though my words were directed at the Beast King Miao Wang, my gaze was fixed elsewhere.
The Beast King Miao Wang, noticing where my eyes rested, asked quietly.
“You knew?”
“It caught my eye the moment I entered. Everything in this shrine is covered in dust, but those—they were pristine.”
I walked forward slowly.
Between the faded murals and dozens of stone statues of unknown origin, there lay two ancestral tablets that I had not seen on my previous visit.
Two tablets with no names inscribed upon them.
Yet I already knew who their owners were.
‘Baek Sang. Baek Hui.’
Those names—which even the one who had carved these tablets could not bring themselves to inscribe—I recited silently in my heart. Then I prostrated myself.
Once. And again.
When I rose after the two bows, the Beast King Miao Wang’s rigid face awaited me.
“Why do you look at me that way?”
“…It’s unexpected.”
“Did you think I might overturn the tablets?”
“You could. Especially considering the crimes that Baek Sang committed.”
Damn it. That’s true enough.
Given everything that has transpired, spitting on Baek Sang’s tablet after splitting it in half would be justified self-defense.
But…
“I simply wanted to do this. That’s all.”
What is this feeling—so filthy and yet so bitter?
Turning my gaze back to the tablets, I suddenly seemed to understand this emotion.
Perhaps it was something that should be called pity or empathy.
‘It is too late. I have walked a path that cannot be undone, and I will never stop.’
The voice I had heard in that dark Underground Prison echoed faintly in my ears.
I gazed at the tablets bearing not a single character of a name and posed a question that would go unheard.
‘If I had been you, what path would I have walked?’
And no answer to that question came from anywhere.
Not from the ancestral tablet, but not even from the depths of my own heart. Yet suddenly, such a thought occurred to me.
If such a thing as an afterlife existed, I wished that wretch—whom I wouldn’t mind tearing to shreds—had lived an ordinary life different from this one.
A peaceful existence where no one was lost, where no one was sacrificed, where he could have been with the child he yearned for so desperately.
‘Damn it. How many people died because of that bastard?’
I know. There’s no villain in this world without a story.
But the reason my mood was so foul was simple.
Perhaps I too had walked the same path as Baek Sang.
I understood well enough how desperately he must have struggled within the circumstances given to him.
And so all I could say was this much.
“…Don’t commit sins there. You wretched bastard.”
Just as I muttered softly, a reddish light flowing through the gap in the Ancestral Shrine’s door illuminated two ancestral tablets.
As if answering in their stead.
And in the next moment, a deep voice pierced my ears.
“The sun is already setting.”
Creak.
The worn floorboards cried out. Geo Han, finally rising from his cross-legged position, fixed me with calm eyes.
“If we head to the Inner Palace right now, we might still manage dinner together.”
“…!”
“Let’s go. We shouldn’t return any later than this.”
Watching Beast King Miao Wang, I chuckled softly and nodded.
The Forest Keeper of the Southern Wilderness had returned.
* * *
Two days had passed.
When the Palace Master, who had vanished without a word, returned, the leadership that had fallen into chaos swiftly regained stability, and Beast King Miao Wang, who had taken a brief rest at everyone’s urging, summoned me the next day.
Or rather, precisely, both Jeok Cheon-gang and me.
And when Jeok Cheon-gang arrived at the hastily prepared Council Chamber seven days later, the moment he saw Beast King Miao Wang seated there, he spoke thus.
“You’ve grown quite a bit, our Beast King. Sitting in the seat of honor and all.”
“…Ah. My apologies. Purely habitual.”
“No. I understand well enough. So understand too the old man’s habit of hurling flame deities at impertinent fools.”
Whoosh!
Beast King Miao Wang, who had already experienced that habit during the Jeong Ma Great Battle.
Swiftly moving his bandage-wrapped body, he vacated the seat of honor and gestured politely to a chair.
“Please be seated, Elder Jeok.”
“Heh, never mind. A man with an injured body shouldn’t fuss like this.”
“….”
“That’s enough. Sit down. I don’t much like that a greenhorn with blood still wet on his head is telling me to come and go, but for now, just speak freely.”
For Beast King Miao Wang, bewildered by this gangster-like manner of speech, I opened my mouth with measured courtesy.
“You may simply speak. At this level, it means he’s ready to listen.”
“…Then Jeok, might this junior offer a word?”
“I despise being questioned. Your body still hasn’t fully recovered—if you don’t wish to suffer further harm, speak plainly.”
“…Understood.”
Beast King Miao Wang glanced cautiously at Jeok Cheon-gang, whose appearance had grown considerably younger than he remembered, before carefully opening his mouth.
“I have invited you both here to inquire about a matter of grave importance.”
“A grave matter?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“Everything has been proceeding smoothly with the aftermath thus far. Have you perhaps stepped on Dark Heaven’s tail?”
“I wish it were so simple, but regrettably, it is not. However, in another sense, this is a far more troublesome problem….”
“Your preamble grows long. Speak the heart of the matter before your life grows shorter.”
This old man remains unchanged.
Beast King Miao Wang regarded Jeok Cheon-gang with that very gaze, then withdrew something from his robes and placed it upon the table.
Thud.
Something wrapped in thick cloth. Yet all of us present—myself included—could sense the ominous aura flowing from beyond it.
And within the suddenly heavy silence, Jeok Cheon-gang murmured like a whisper.
“…Demonic Qi?”
Beast King Miao Wang nodded with a hardened expression.
“Indeed. Exceedingly pure and potent demonic qi at that. Unable to entrust it to another in the Southern Wilderness, this junior has been carrying it personally.”
Their voices felt distant, as though echoing from far away.
I sensed where this demonic qi originated and what lay hidden beneath that cloth.
And the final roar of that existence, reverberating through the deep darkness, echoed once more in my ears.
“A Divine Stone. The one Su-ho-ryung possessed.”
“Your suspicion is correct. Though it is no longer a Divine Stone now.”
Swish.
Beast King Miao Wang answered in a somber tone and unwrapped the cloth, revealing a stone that held turbid darkness instead of warm, brilliant radiance.
Having absorbed all the demonic qi flowing from the Rift, it was now something that should be called a Demonic Stone, and Beast King Miao Wang’s gaze upon it was deeply sunken.
“For now, I suppress the demonic qi, but I cannot leave it as it is indefinitely. Thus, I have summoned you and Jeok to discuss what must be done with this.”
In that instant.
Ding.
A clear bell tone, contrasting with the turbid darkness before my eyes, rang out as a hologram window materialized in the air.
Quest,
[Fallen Divine Object]
Do you accept?
Y / N

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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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