Murim School Record - Chapter 1

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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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Episode 1: The Axe of Songshan (1)

Flowers bloom and mountain birds sing.
Sunlight glimmers like shattered glass, and on the warm spring breeze thick with the scent of new growth, a song drifts from somewhere.

‘Round and round, you shaggy-haired monk, struck by lightning Woo-san.’

Tap-tap!
A boy leaning against a rock, striking the ground with the handle of an A-frame backpack.

‘Wherever else, he lives at Shaolin Temple.’

He appeared to be about sixteen years old.
With one A-frame loaded high with enormous bundles of firewood, sitting in the sun, he sang lustily with abandon—his faded hemp pants and undyed vest made him look like a young monk in training, except his head was not shaved.
Yi Mo-baek brushed dust from his clothes and rose slowly.
Hack!
He spat.
“First, I’ll wet my throat.”
Yi Mo-baek walked around the back of a large rock.
There was a small cave.
The cave was not very deep, and light from outside illuminated its interior sufficiently.
Yi Mo-baek slowed his pace and knelt down.
A small pool of water had gathered in a depression, the bottom smooth bluish stone.
As Yi Mo-baek leaned forward to drink, he hesitated.
“Wait.”
Whenever he came here cutting firewood and grew thirsty, he drank from this pool.
But now something occurred to him.
The amount is always the same.
He would drink it down to bare stone and leave, then return the next day parched, only to find it refilled to exactly this level.
“Ah, forget it.”
Glug-glug!
He gulped down the water entirely and rose to head back.

On the A-frame sat thick logs, each as wide as a man’s thigh, stacked high for winter firewood.
Yi Mo-baek crouched low and threaded his arms through the carrying straps, settling them on his shoulders.
“Hngh!”
He hoisted the towering load of logs onto his back as easily as if shouldering the sky itself, then began picking his way down the mountain path.

‘Round and round, you damned pig of a monk, may lightning strike Woo-san.’

Yi Mo-baek descended the steep slope with practiced ease, steadying himself with the carrying pole.
Lost in his own joy, he closed his eyes and nodded his head in time with the rhythm.
Clang-clang!
Partway down, the deep sound of a temple bell rolled up from below the mountain.
“What’s that?”
He squinted.
Looking toward the setting sun beyond Soshil Peak in the distance, he furrowed his brow.
It was still too early for evening devotions.
Yi Mo-baek picked up his pace, wondering what had happened, and quickened his descent.

With a heavy thud, Yi Mo-baek dropped the firewood load.
This place, piled high with logs like mountains, was where firewood for the kitchen quarters was stored.
On one side, logs that had been neatly split with an axe lay stacked in neat rows, and Yi Mo-baek wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
“One load delivered, uff—what!”
As he turned, Yi Mo-baek froze.
A portly monk, who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, stood before him.
“W-Woo-san!”
“What in blazes have you been doing? Why are you only arriving now?”
It was Woo-san, who oversaw all the work in the kitchen quarters.
“W-what do you mean, what have I been doing? As you can see, I’ve brought firewood, haven’t I?”
“You wretch!”
His right hand, broad as a pot lid, looked ready to fly toward Yi Mo-baek’s cheek at any moment.
Flinch!
Yi Mo-baek trembled and shrank back.
Once before, he’d been caught slacking and had taken a blow to the face for it.
That was when he first learned that the world contained countless stars.
As his senses reeled, the stars swam before his eyes—yellow ones, red ones, black ones, white ones.
“Two hours to haul a single load of firewood? Is that what you’re telling me?”
To his mind, it was an enormous amount.
Yet the words “a single load of firewood” rankled him deeply.
The retort—if it looked so easy, why didn’t Woo-san go do it himself?—rose in his throat, but Yi Mo-baek swallowed it back down.
“I… I apologize.”
“Don’t stand there gawping. Get yourself to the kitchen quarters at once and help with the work!”
“Yes, yes!”
A Bu-mok.
Someone who earned his meals by cutting firewood and helping with odd jobs around the temple.
In the kitchen quarters, that was the name they used for people like him.
Yi Mo-baek bolted away without hesitation.
Once Yi Mo-baek had vanished, Woo-san surveyed the massive logs piled before him.
He tilted his head.
The pile was enormous.
After inspecting the logs for some time, Woo-san began loading them onto the A-frame backpack.
As he stacked all the logs Yi Mo-baek had brought, the load rose high above the frame.
He set a large wooden brace in front to keep it from toppling forward.
He tied rope around the brace and secured it to the back so the logs wouldn’t slip and fall.
Woo-san lowered his stance and threaded his arms through the shoulder straps.
Pause.
He tried to straighten up lightly, but the load wouldn’t budge.
He had a robust frame.
People sometimes eyed his stocky body and wondered if he might be secretly eating meat.
Some had even scrutinized him by noting that the mountain beasts of Songshan seemed to have grown noticeably fewer.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
He kept to a strict vegetarian diet and had never violated the precepts with improper meals.
“Nngh!”
He had to draw upon his inner energy just to rise to his feet.
It was heavy.
Genuinely heavy.

Evening meals were being prepared in full swing.
The kitchen quarters was thick with steam as the rice simmered, cooking down to tenderness.
In the midst of it all, a broad-shouldered man as massive as Soshil Peak lifted one pot lid and scooped a few grains of rice with a ladle to check how it was coming along.
This was how he tested whether the rice was done.
Whoosh!
But then another hand slipped in, took the rice clinging to the ladle’s edge, and popped it straight into his mouth.
“It’s perfect.”
Grin!
The broad-shouldered man, watching Yi Mo-baek grin at him through the steam, looked utterly baffled.
“Mo-baek!”
It was Dang Du-chun, third in the hierarchy of the kitchen quarters.
There were two kinds of people who worked in the kitchen quarters.
One kind was ordained monks.
Newly shaven, they performed menial work in the kitchen as a form of ascetic discipline, or they simply lent their hands where more workers were needed.
The other kind was laypeople who came to work at the temple.
Since a temple was a great monastery where the Buddha’s teachings and compassion were put into practice, people sometimes volunteered of their own accord, and poor children often came to earn their keep while helping with the work.
Dang Du-chun was from Luoyang, not far from Shaolin Temple.
His parents ran a fairly substantial inn there, and his devout mother had taught Dang Du-chun to cook before sending him to work in the kitchen quarters at Shaolin Temple.
“When did you get back?”
“Just now? And you’re eating well, brother. It’s amazing. Do me a favor and make some scorched rice for tonight.”
Dang Du-chun had the pot well in hand.
“Got it.”
“Oh, by the way—I was coming back from cutting firewood just now and I heard the bell ring three times?”
“Ah, that!”
Dang Du-chun set down his ladle and stepped out of the kitchen quarters.
“Looks like we came in dead last again.”
“Last place in what?”
“The Martial Arts Tournament.”
“Really?”
“This!”
He held up three fingers.
“Third place again?”
“Shaolin’s glory days are gone.”
“I thought the bell sounded unusually mournful.”
The Martial Arts Tournament is a martial competition where roughly fifteen hundred disciples representing the Nine Major Sects and Five Great Clans—organizations belonging to the Martial Arts Alliance—send forth their best to compete and prove their worth.
Since a sect’s performance at the Martial Arts Tournament becomes the measure by which its future is gauged, all the schools pour their heart and soul into the competition.
Shaolin had placed third in the previous tournament, and now they had placed third again.
“Wudang Sect took first, the Namgung Clan came in second, Huashan Sect fourth, and fifth was—”
Dang Du-chun blinked.
“Who did they say was fifth?”
“Gae Bang!”
A man approached.
Lean and wiry, he came on with what looked like a three-foot length of wood braced like a walking staff in his right hand.
“Mang-woo!”
Twenty-one this year, he was five years Yi Mo-baek’s senior.
He too was a Bu-mok like Yi Mo-baek, though an unusual one at that.
The abbot Qing Wu, who tended the Arhat Hall, had found Mang-woo bleeding and dying by the roadside while running an errand for the Abbot, and had brought him in.
By his own account, he had been a pickpocket—a highway thief of purses.
Pickpockets have set territories.
Cross into another’s domain without permission and you’ll be beaten to death; Mang-woo had suffered that fate and been saved by Qing Wu on the brink of death.
“Sixth was Emei, seventh was the Peng Clan, eighth was the Eun Clan.”
Remarkably, Mang-woo recited the rankings from first through fiftieth place with perfect accuracy.
“How do you know all that so exactly?”
When Dang Du-chun asked, Mang-woo laughed as he walked.
“It’s the basics, what else.”
As he spoke, he swung the wooden rod in his hand.
Whoosh!
A sharp whistle through the air.
Yi Mo-baek’s eyes narrowed as he watched Mang-woo disappear.
The more he saw of this older brother, the more intriguing he became.
The interesting thing was that Mang-woo went around boasting that he would learn the Dharma Triple Sword of Shaolin.
In truth, no one knows whether the Dharma Triple Sword actually exists or is merely legend.
Even Shaolin’s own disciples rarely know of it, and the leadership refuses to confirm or deny its existence.
Even if it did exist, the Dharma Triple Sword could only be learned by the Abbot or his successor—no one else.
And yet there was Mang-woo, insisting he would master it.
It bothered Yi Mo-baek, somehow.
If asked why it bothered him, he couldn’t quite say.
Mang-woo himself simply tugged at something inside him.
“That lumpy pig of a Woo-san—”
Yi Mo-baek muttered as he walked.
“Where are you going?”
Dang Du-chun asked.
“I need to split the firewood I brought in today. Once it dries, it won’t split cleanly.”
Watching Yi Mo-baek go, Dang Du-chun broke into a slight smile.

Yi Mo-baek gripped the axe and began splitting the logs he had brought.
Crack!
The thick log split cleanly in two.
He flipped the split timber over and raised the axe again.
It had to be cut to the right thickness and length to fit the furnace mouth.
“Haaaah!”
He bellowed with such force it seemed Shaolin Temple itself might be swept away.
Crack!
The wood split perfectly in half.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
As Yi Mo-baek continued chopping firewood, a sound of approaching footsteps made him straighten and turn.
About thirty young monks in ash-colored robes were walking in orderly lines, apparently returning from training.
Their robes were soaked with sweat.
Yi Mo-baek watched until they disappeared from sight, then pinched one nostril closed and blew.
Snort!
“Blockheads—we house them, we feed them, all they do is martial training, and still they place third.”
Thud!
He hoisted a thick log and spat into his palm.
Ptoo!
He gripped the axe handle firmly with his saliva-slick hand.
“Give me just one year with them like that. I’d have them winning the Martial Arts Tournament, no doubt about it.”
Yi Mo-baek lifted the axe above his head.
“Idiots who can’t even eat food when it’s fed to them—let’s go!”
With another fierce battle cry, he brought the axe down.
Crack!
The log, thicker than a man’s waist, flipped over with the blow, exposing its pale interior.
He picked up one of the split pieces with both hands and read aloud in a booming voice.

‘Certificate of Champion. Affiliated with Shaolin Temple. Name: Yi Mo-baek. You have overwhelmingly defeated countless competitors and won first place in this Martial Arts Tournament. This certificate is hereby presented. Mo-yong Cheon, Leader of the Martial Arts Alliance.’

Heheheh!
Laughing as if amused at himself, he tossed the firewood aside.
Thud!
Crash!
After cutting logs brought down from the mountain into firewood, he stacked them neatly.
From spring through autumn, the greatest number of kitchen quarters workers were mobilized for woodcutting.
The winters of Songshan Mountain were unusually harsh.
When the grain in ordinary villages ripened in the tenth month, frost already fell on Songshan.
And when the world’s spring was in full bloom, the plum blossoms of Songshan were just beginning to flower.
With half the year devoted to winter, preparing firewood was the kitchen workers’ highest duty and most crucial work.
“You’re brilliant!”
Yi Mo-baek, about to bring the raised axe down, turned his head.
A shabby, withered old monk was smiling, revealing yellowed teeth.
“Welcome, Venerable Master!”
Yi Mo-baek lowered his stance respectfully.
“You’re a natural.”
“At what?”
“Splitting firewood. I’ve watched the workers split wood for over a hundred years, but I’ve never seen anyone with your form—it’s flawless.”
Record of the Martial World
Published │ July 27, 2025
Author │ Wolgwang
Publisher │ Hwang Gwang-yeon
Published by │ Pendrama
Address: [14052] 11-41, 3547-ho, 327 Simin-daero, Dong-an-gu, Anyang-si, Gyeonggi-do
Contact: 070-8623-7577
Email: [email protected]
© Wolgwang, 2026
List Price: Serialization Rate
UCI G720:N+A306-20260625106.0001
※ This e-book is published by Pendrama under contract with the copyright holder, and unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or sharing is prohibited.

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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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