Murim School Record - Chapter 10

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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 10: That and Mine (2)

Cheong Buk Seonsa gazed at Cheong Dong Seonsa.
“I worry about your junior’s hasty temperament. Isn’t he the sort who throws a fist before thinking?”
“You’re too harsh. He assures me he now leads with reason over emotion.”
Cheong Dong Seonsa’s face clouded with displeasure.
“Is Wol Gong outside?”
Click.
The door opened, and a lean-framed monk stepped through.
It was Wol Gong Seonsa, the foremost of the Thirty-Six Arhats of Shaolin who guarded the Abbot’s Quarters.
“Go at once and convey this to the Eighteen Precept Enforcers. From this hour forward, no one is to leave or enter beyond these doors.”
The Eighteen Precept Enforcers administered all law and precept throughout Shaolin.
“Yes, Abbot.”
Wol Gong Seonsa departed.
The chamber fell quiet again.
Since Bodhidharma’s time, nothing of this magnitude had ever occurred.
There had been attempts by thieves seeking the Great Elixir, the Jade Buddha’s Scripture, the Muscle Change Classic, or the Marrow Washing Scripture—all of which failed to breach Shaolin’s formidable defenses.
Two centuries past, the Demonic Cult’s invasion had razed many halls and claimed hundreds of disciples, yet the Janggyeong Pavilion stood untouched and secure.

‘Amitabha Buddha.’

Cheong Ak Seonsa rolled his prayer beads, eyes closing.
In his tenure, Shaolin’s spotless history faced an irreversible stain.
Something that should never come to pass.

The axe cleaves through the wind.
Crack!
Thud!
One blow suffices.
In a single stroke, gnarled ancient trees toppled without resistance.
Half the usual time elapsed before the backpack frame stood laden with firewood to the brim.
His strength ran like an active volcano.
Thump.
I Mo Baek set the heavy axe aside and bared his chest.
He dropped to the ground, gazing at the distant sky as if lost in thought, then rose unhurriedly.
He leaned the axe against one leg of the backpack frame and left the valley.

Sungru Hermitage lay in silence.
Though he had always sensed it, the hermitage’s builder remained a mystery.
In the unfathomable whirlwind of Nak Wol Ae, the hermitage seemed ready to crumble at any moment.
“Are you there?”
He spoke toward the closed door.
“Master, are you in?”
Receiving no answer, I Mo Baek considered leaving, then pushed the door open and entered.
Hiss.
The room was utter chaos.
Overturned liquor bottles lay strewn, and considerable heaps of excrement lay piled in the upper corner.
The blackened hue suggested several days had passed since it accumulated, yet in this filthy place an old man slept on, oblivious to the world.
It was Cheong Mong Seonsa.
He lay sprawled in a large X, snoring loudly.
I Mo Baek looked down at the unconscious Cheong Mong Seonsa and called out once more.
“Master! Master!”
No response.

I remember it clearly.
My eyes were so swollen I couldn’t see properly.
Because it was Cheong Mong Seonsa’s voice, I forced my eyes open stubbornly and saw him looking down at me through the haze.
When the medicine wouldn’t go down as planned, Cheong Mong Seonsa chewed it in his own mouth and fed it to me like he would a small child.
When he even spat it into my mouth, my insides lurched and I nearly retched, but Cheong Mong Seonsa pressed a pressure point and stopped it.
And then he disappeared without a word.
“Who in blazes are you!”
I nearly stepped on his hand while trying to cover the blanket he’d kicked aside.
The sleeping Cheong Mong Seonsa sprang up like a coiled spring.
“Come on! Fight me!”
He snatched up a Gourd Bottle lying nearby and glared at me.
“Eh—what!”
He recognized I Mo Baek and startled.
“You…you’re the one who mocks Woo San.”
He was referring to that song I Mo Baek liked to sing—the one about the pig-backed Woo San.
I Mo Baek said nothing and turned to leave the room.
“Why are you going? If you came looking for me, you must have business.”
I Mo Baek spoke from the courtyard.
“I’ll just be on my way.”
I Mo Baek pressed his palms together lightly, bowed, and turned to leave.
“Why did you come? Hey, I’m asking why you came. Damn rascal—”
I Mo Baek, who had taken a few steps, stopped.
“Do I look like a millet to you? Do you know who I am?”
“Yes!”
“Who?”
“The greatest elder in Shaolin.”
“Don’t talk back to me, boy. One word from me and you’re done for. Why did you come? Tell me.”
His expression was curious.
I Mo Baek smiled lightly.
“I originally came to pay my respects, but I suddenly felt ashamed.”
“Ashamed of what?”
“Embarrassed, and… grateful to you.”
And he turned to go.
This time Cheong Mong Seonsa didn’t try to stop or call him back.
He simply watched I Mo Baek walk away with a quiet gaze.
“Wait. Let me ask you one thing. There’s something else in your body—what is it?”
I Mo Baek stopped walking again.
“Something else?”
“A remarkable energy. It couldn’t be a legacy your father left behind—he spent his whole life as a servant at Shaolin Temple.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind if you don’t know. In any case, do well with it. If that and mine come together, your whole body will be bursting with power.”
I Mo Baek, who had been looking at Cheong Mong Seonsa for a moment, turned and walked away.

‘That and mine.’

Mine must refer to the thing Cheong Mong Seonsa had dissolved with his saliva and fed to me—but what could that be?
The meaning was clear: he had discovered something inside my body.

‘What is it?’

Curiosity gnawed at me.
There was no way eating rice crust could grant any mysterious power.
After I Mo Baek disappeared, Cheong Mong Seonsa rose and walked outside.
Standing at the edge of Nak Wol Ae, he stretched as the wind blew against him.
“Ahhhh!”
He raised both arms and stretched with a shout, then muttered to himself.

‘Shaolin’s luck hasn’t run dry. All the disciples are blockheads, but a fine material has come in. Isn’t he part of the Shaolin family too? Hehehehe.’

Cheong Mong Seonsa launched himself into the air.
He vanished beneath Nak Wol Ae, that bottomless gorge whose depths no one truly knew.

Crash!
An enormous quantity of wood tumbled out as if a cart had tipped its entire load.
After dumping the firewood, I Mo Baek wiped the sweat from his forehead with the towel draped around his neck.
“Now they can’t say a damn thing.”
Even by his own reckoning, the pile was roughly twice what the other monks had stacked.
“Pig of a monk, cursed Woo San.”
Thump!
I Mo Baek set the backpack frame aside and paused to catch his breath, his breathing still rough.
“Shaolin’s finest, that mountain pig Woo San.”
For some reason, Woo San Seonsa always seemed to have it out for him.
The moment I Mo Baek would stop to rest after working himself half to death, the man would appear like a ghost.
While everyone else labored and sweated, he’d skulk about shirking, and they’d treat him like filth for it.
Once, consumed by the unfairness of it all, he’d dared to talk back—and for that, he’d received the terrible punishment of cleaning out the latrines behind the Arhat Hall.
For ten days straight, he’d had to clear nearly three hundred monks’ waste, until he’d nearly wept tears of blood.
The stench was so acrid it felt like needles pricking his nose, and the monks in the Arhat Hall had continued using the facilities the entire time, so he’d had to work frantically to keep up.
He still dreamed of shoveling filth even in his sleep.
“Crazy dog of a monk, cursed Woo San.”
Startle!
Without meaning to, his emotions had spilled over into his song, his voice rising, until he heard someone running toward him and quickly fell silent.
“Mo Baek!”
The figure that appeared was Seol Yeo Chul.
“You hear the news? We’re being sent on assignment to the Murim Alliance.”
“Who’s going?”
“Us.”
“Why the Murim Alliance all of a sudden?”
“Their kitchen master died, apparently. Some kind of plague is going around—several people have fallen to it, lots from other sects too.”
I Mo Baek furrowed his brow.
Kangho practitioners rarely fell ill.
Their bodies were protected by the Inner Energy within them, placing them in an entirely different realm from ordinary people.
“So who all is going?”
“You!”
“Me, alone?”
“And me! And Dang Du Chun as the head kitchen master. The three of us together.”
I Mo Baek studied Seol Yeo Chul for a moment.
“Senior…”
“Hmm?”
“Is it good, going on assignment?”
“I haven’t been on one before, so I couldn’t say. But at least we won’t have to look at that pig—and that’s got to count for something, right?”
“Pig?”
“Woo San.”
“Oh!”
I Mo Baek’s face brightened.
But half an hour later, his expression had turned rigid.
“Mo Baek, I found you.”
Seol Yeo Chul approached as I Mo Baek was chopping wood.
Thud!
I Mo Baek set his axe aside and wiped his sweat with the worn towel around his neck.
“What’s the matter?”
“You look exhausted.”
“What? Has that pig been nagging you again?”
“I’ve been asking around. Apparently the Murim Alliance is quite chaotic.”
“Of course it is. Every sect under heaven has gathered there, so there’ll be fights breaking out constantly.”
“What I mean is—even a humble thatched hut feels like home. Here, we eat our fill and stay warm. But once we get there, they’ll look down on us as mere servants. There’s no honor in that.”
“But we’re still disciples of Shaolin. Surely they wouldn’t—”
“Shaolin is Shaolin, but it doesn’t make us any different in their eyes. Haven’t you heard what Hyang Don said when he came back from his assignment? He said the place was so contemptible he couldn’t bear it there. When they pass you by, they don’t even use your name—just ‘Hey, you.’ What kind of thing is that? What is that?”
I Mo Baek’s face turned sour.
It was clear he didn’t welcome the prospect at all.
But Seol Yeo Chul was different.
The mere thought of stepping outside Shaolin Temple—that suffocating, cramped cell of a place—made his chest flutter with anticipation.

Un Woo Seonsa, the keeper of the Janggyeong Pavilion, entered the room.
“Sit.”
The Abbot, Cheong Ak Seonsa, gestured to the seat across from him.
Un Woo Seonsa lowered himself carefully into the chair.
“You’ve found a trace?”
“Yes.”
“Of what?”
“The Shadow Concealment Technique.”
“The Shadow Concealment Technique?”
Cheong Ak Seonsa’s eyes widened in alarm.
There were two ways to master the Shadow Concealment Technique.
One was to study the martial arts associated with it; the other required one’s Inner Energy to reach nearly the Exit Tenth Enter Eleventh Stage.
A supreme martial art where the human body becomes a shadow like smoke or mist, slipping through impossibly narrow spaces or traversing vast distances—the Shadow Concealment Technique.
Cheong Ak Seonsa’s expression hardened.
Impossible.
Shaolin Temple possessed no martial arts texts concerning the Shadow Concealment Technique.
If that were the case, it would mean the work of a supreme master whose Inner Energy had reached the highest echelon.
Neither he nor anyone else in Shaolin—no one of such supreme mastery existed.

‘The Shadow Concealment Technique!’

He himself had only heard of it in tales; he had never witnessed it with his own eyes.
An art by which a master of the highest order transforms his body into a transparent shadow, forcing his way through the narrowest of crevices.
What made the Shadow Concealment Technique so terrifying was that, never having been seen, it remained all the more difficult to discern.
Some spoke of it as resembling the heat shimmer rising on an early spring day, while others said it resembled the cold wind seeping through a window crack.
“Abbot, Master Mu Sang Seonsa of the Eighteen Precept Enforcers has arrived.”
Wol Gong Seonsa, the commander of the Abbot’s Quarters guard and leader of the Thirty-Six Arhats of Shaolin, spoke from outside the door.
“Noted. You may go. Have him enter.”
Un Woo Seonsa bowed and departed; moments later, a towering monk with broad, splayed shoulders—easily seven feet tall—stepped inside.
This was Mu Sang Seonsa, the senior master of the Eighteen Precept Enforcers.
“How proceed the entry and exit controls?”
“Both sky and earth are under thorough surveillance, Abbot. Yet I have uncovered something most extraordinary.”
“Speak.”
“Some days ago, Cheong Mong Seonsa—the eldest of all within these temple walls—visited the Infirmary.”
“Is my senior brother ill?”
“No, Abbot. Rather, he wished to see a boy named I Mo Baek, and so Cha Ul escorted him. And then—”
“Why do you hesitate?”
“The very next morning, I Mo Baek walked out of the Infirmary on his own feet. Yet until that previous day, he could neither open his eyes nor speak.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Byeok An Mi Hee did indeed pummel him until his whole body was bruised as dough, that much is true. But he also suffered a Wall Impact Injury. As you know, Abbot, no one survives a Wall Impact Injury. Not one person has ever recovered from it.”
Thump!
Cheong Ak Seonsa shot to his feet.
“Come!”
“Where?”
“Where else? The kitchen.”
Creak!
Cheong Ak Seonsa thrust the door open with force and strode out, Mu Sang Seonsa following close behind.

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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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