Murim School Record - Chapter 19

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 19: Those Who Aim for the Nose (1)

Yi Mo-baek regarded the man from Jinjueon with a thin smile.
“Listen, friend—I’ve never seen a magistrate’s post before today, so I can’t turn around here.”
The man laughed.
“You look quite a bit younger than me, and by the way you’re dressed, you seem to be from the Shaolin Kitchen.”
“So what? I can’t go forward, so if you want to stop us, tell your friend up ahead to move on instead.”
With that, Yi Mo-baek climbed back onto the driver’s bench and sat down.
Just then, Seol Yeo-chul approached, carrying two heavy sacks slung across his shoulders.
They were clearly Black Beans and rice.
Yi Mo-baek quickly moved forward and took the sack of Black Beans on the left, hoisting it onto his own shoulders.
He opened the rear door of the cart, and the two of them set the sacks down inside.
Thud!
The cart lurched with the weight.
Huff, huff!
Even with some Internal Power generated through basic martial cultivation, a single sack of Black Beans and another of rice couldn’t be shouldered without considerable strength.
Huff, huff!
Seol Yeo-chul wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, breathing heavily.
“Hey, you from Shaolin!”
The man from Jinjueon swaggered over.
“Get that cart out of the way. I need to station my friend’s cart here. What are you gawking at? Move it, now.”
He barked the words at them.
“Who are you?”
Seol Yeo-chul asked.
Yi Mo-baek explained the whole situation.
“What kind of dog’s business is this? Listen, you there—what gives you the right to tell us to move our cart?”
“And who are you? You look like some underbelly worker from the Shaolin Kitchen yourself.”
“Me?”
Seol Yeo-chul threw a punch.
Already exhausted from carrying the heavy load, he flared up the moment the man spoke to him without respect.
Whoosh!
Crack!
Seol Yeo-chul’s fist missed.
Though he’d extended it first, the man had already slipped aside and drove his fist into Seol Yeo-chul’s abdomen.
“Ugh!”
Seol Yeo-chul doubled over, clutching his stomach.
“Brother!”
Yi Mo-baek quickly moved to support him.
“Are you alright…urgh—”
Yi Mo-baek’s eyes widened.
Blood was trickling from the corner of Seol Yeo-chul’s mouth.
“This way… sit down over here.”
Yi Mo-baek quickly lowered Seol Yeo-chul to the ground.
Spit!
Seol Yeo-chul spat out a mouthful of blood, then sprang to his feet.
“You bastard—if I let you walk away today, I’ll quit the Shaolin Kitchen.”
Whoosh!
Seol Yeo-chul shook off Yi Mo-baek’s restraining hand.
“Let go.”
“Brother, wait a moment.”
Yi Mo-baek pushed Seol Yeo-chul back down to the ground, then stepped forward toward the man.
“I am called Yi Mo-baek of the Shaolin Kitchen. Might I ask your honored name and title?”
The man laughed.
“Mak Sool of Jinjueon.”
“It appears you’re from the Jinjueon Soju Section as well, are you not?”
“That’s right. I came down to Hangzhou to buy supplies today.”
“Then I ask that you apologize to my brother. If you do, we can let this matter pass as though it never happened.”
“So what? Are you saying you’ll erase what happened, or pretend it never was?”
“I’ve heard the Jinjueon clan is thriving these days, but I didn’t think they’d grown bold enough to mock Shaolin.”
He moved like wind.
Yi Mo-baek closed the distance.
Mak Sool flinched.
The man startled violently.
Yi Mo-baek had taken one step forward, and suddenly he was right there.
Mak Sool lashed out desperately, throwing a punch at his face.
Empty air.
Mak Sool’s shock deepened.
His fist had passed through nothing.
A sharp crack.
Almost at the same instant, searing heat burrowed into his face.
Brilliant light exploded.
Fireworks bloomed before his eyes.
He staggered.
As he lost his footing and wavered, Yi Mo-baek’s fist came again, driving the final nail.
A wet, heavy sound.
Mak Sool crumpled like a collapsed wall and went still.
Yi Mo-baek looked at the man who’d claimed to be Mak Sool’s friend, and the fellow’s face drained of color like a thief caught in the act.
“I… I was heading elsewhere anyway.”
The man scrambled into his cart and vanished.
“That’s not Mak Sool.”
“Why is that one lying there?”
Two men from the Jinjueon Soju Section came walking up.
They’d been carrying market goods in both hands, but they dropped everything and ran over.
A gasp escaped them.
The two men froze in shock.
Mak Sool’s unconscious face was crushed—his nose especially had caved in.
“Mak Sool!”
“Brother!”
Mak Sool’s eyes opened.
But he wasn’t fully conscious yet.
“What happened? Where’s your nose?”
He jerked upright.
Something seemed to strike him, and Mak Sool scrambled to sit up, coughing.
His breathing came ragged.
It was difficult to breathe at all.
He reached instinctively to his nose; his palm came away slick with blood.
“Ahhhhh—”
He cried out and searched for Yi Mo-baek, but the cart was already gone.

Color was slowly returning to Woo Gun’s face.
It had been a devastating strike—the Daegeum Yong Sansoo.
Among all the attacks he’d ever taken, this memory of the strongest stood freshly carved into his mind.
“Are you well, sir?”
Ma O looked down at him with concern.
“The physician said the internal injuries are grave. He warned me to move cautiously for some time.”
Woo Gun pushed himself up at once.
He gasped.
Pain wrung a groan from him.
“The Daegeum Yong Sansoo took its toll. Cough—”
When he coughed, blood smeared his lips.
Ma O spoke as he watched Woo Gun wipe his mouth with the cloth he’d offered.
“No one else knows of the Alliance Lord’s situation. Yet somehow Shaolin has found out—how is that possible?”
“Perhaps they merely made an educated guess.”
“Even if they guessed, it seems strange. They’ve overlooked everything else for so long, and now, when he’s tangled up in a fatal crisis, they suddenly appear. Can that really be dismissed as guesswork?”
Woo Gun’s expression grew grimmer still.
If word spread that the Alliance Lord was gone, the entire martial world would collapse into chaos.
A storm of blood would erupt as if waiting for this very moment.
The Demonic Path members operating in the shadows would surge forth like a volcanic eruption, and the real crisis lay with the Orthodox Martial World.
Union and Dissolution.
A fierce slaughter was brewing over control of the Murim Alliance leadership.
The Alliance Lord’s safety was bound to the stability of the realm itself, making this incident all the more critical a secret.
Snap-snap!
In that instant, Woo Gun’s eyes, which had been sunk heavy as an abyss, flared up like frost-blades.
“Wait… could it be that child?”
“Who?”
Woo Gun recounted what had happened during the pursuit of Bun Gwang Kwae Geom.
Ma O’s eyes began to burn crimson.

The cart that had gone to gather provisions returned.
The kitchen staff waiting there began transferring the cargo piled high on the cart.
Items meant for long storage were kept in the underground ice chamber, while ingredients needed for immediate cooking headed toward the kitchen.
“Feeling better in the stomach now?”
Yi Mo-baek approached Seol Yeo-chul, who sat beneath the shade of a tree.
After taking a solid blow to the stomach, Seol Yeo-chul had complained the whole way back about his discomfort.
Crunch-crunch!
Grind-grind!
Grit-grit!
Seol Yeo-chul’s teeth gnashed repeatedly as his anger still boiled over.
“That punch that shattered his nose just now—was that the Baekbo Shinwon?”
“Yeah! Just the beginning stages so far.”
Despite his words, Yi Mo-baek could not shake one fact from his mind the entire way back.
Everything had changed.
Both Buyeong Bo and Baekbo Shinwon were still in their infancy.
Yet today, in the streets of Hangzhou, when he faced that man called Mak Sool of the Jinjueon house—his own martial prowess was something else entirely.
It was far too fast.
Two forces were at war within his body.
One was presumed to be the medicinal essence from the Daehwan Dan that Cheong Mong Seonsa had given him, and the other was a force whose true origin he could not identify.
Bun Gwang Kwae Geom had declared that force to be Gongcheong Seokyou.
The green water he would scrape from the ground and drink whenever parched while cutting wood.
The two forces, which had been operating separately, had become one through the Bun Gwang Naengyeom Simpbeop.
Three forces had merged into one, and through that union, the Life-Death Gate had opened.

‘There is no one in all the realm more fortunate than you.’

Without the Bun Gwang Naengyeom Simpbeop, the essence of the Gongcheong Seokyou and the Daehwan Dan could never have merged.
With such tremendous power as foundation, he had displayed such devastating force.
He trembled.
His entire body churned with excitement.
Internal Power.

‘When Internal Power runs deep, even an ordinary fist carries devastating destructive force.’

This was something everyone knew, whether they walked the rivers and lakes or lived ordinary lives.
That was why the fist of a strong man was all the more terrifying.

‘They say Slow Horse Ten Days Journey—but that’s just nonsense spouted by fools who know nothing.’

One day, Cheong Mong Seonsa appeared before Yi Mo-baek, sweat dripping as he trained the Baekbo Shinwon.
Slow Horse Ten Days Journey means “even a dull horse can travel a thousand miles if it journeys ten days,” an encouragement that steady effort brings results.

‘If effort alone could accomplish everything, I’d have already transcended. Complete madness.’
‘So what—are you cursing me now, sweating buckets as I practice?’

Yi Mo-baek glared with an angry face.
‘Not cursing you—just saying no amount of effort can compete with raw talent.’
‘Who is a genius?’
‘The current Murim Alliance Leader, Mo Yong Cheon, is a genius. I’ve heard he mastered the Four Books and Three Classics before he could walk, and digested his family’s Mugong Simpbeop by the age of ten. But what good is genius?’
‘You’re saying there’s someone even greater than a genius?’
‘There is.’
‘Who? Perhaps someone ten times blessed?’

Yi Mo-baek shook his head at his own words.
He had never heard the term “ten times blessed” used to measure human talent.

‘It’s a man with luck. No matter how brilliant a man is, he can’t beat a lucky one. Luck is utterly unpredictable—it brings me fortune at any time, whether I seek it or not.’

Yi Mo-baek muttered to himself.

‘I am a lucky one.’

By Cheong Mong Seonsa’s logic, he himself was a person favored by fortune.
While chopping wood, he had drunk Gongcheong Seokyou; wandering lost through four directions, he had consumed a Daehwan Dan; he had met Bun Gwang Kwae Geom and merged two forces into one, even breaking through the Life-Death Gate.
Heh!
Not bad at all.
That’s why the laughter came.
When things happen naturally, without effort—what is there to complain or blame?
“Where is that bastard? Yi Mo-baek.”
A sharp voice suddenly rang out from the direction of the Kitchen.
“Yi Mo-baek!”
“Sounds like someone’s looking for you.”
Seol Yeo-chul said.
As Yi Mo-baek rose hesitantly from where he had been sitting, a man approached from the Kitchen.
“Are you not Woo Moo?”
Yi Mo-baek pressed his palms together in greeting.
Thud!
Before he could even dodge, a fist flew at him.
“Ow!”
Yi Mo-baek cried out and staggered backward.
Trickle.
Blood streamed from his nose at once.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
Yi Mo-baek looked at him incredulously, blocking one nostril with his hand.
“That the Alliance Leader was in danger. Why didn’t you report it to me?”
Yi Mo-baek furrowed his brow.
His expression was as if he were being accused of banging on a gate at random.
“Why should I report that to you, Master Woo Moo? I reported it to the Temple Director, Na Ong Seonsa.”
“Damn wretch!”
Crack!
Another fist came flying.
This time, his nose again.
He understood how to inflict maximum suffering with the same violence.
Hit the same spot twice, and the pain wasn’t doubled—it multiplied fourfold, sixfold.
Though he’d sensed Woo Moo’s foul temper when they first met, now Yi Mo-baek found him almost cruel.
Even if they weren’t sworn brothers, weren’t they family under the same roof?
“Master Woo Moo, please lower your anger. I assure you, I will educate him properly to prevent such incidents in the future.”
Dang Du Chun rushed over and bowed at the waist.
“Who are you?”
He had raised his fist toward Dang Du Chun before hesitating.
It seemed he had judged that the Kitchen Director carried more weight than Yi Mo-baek.
“You will remember this.”
Woo Moo fixed Yi Mo-baek, who was bleeding profusely, with a piercing stare, then turned and walked away.
Yi Mo-baek glared at the departing Woo Moo.
“Come on, we need to get you treated at Hwal Ui Dang.”
When Seol Yeo-chul grabbed his arm to lead him away, Yi Mo-baek shook free.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————