Murim School Record - Chapter 31

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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 31: A Desperate Struggle (2)

He crouched low again, driving his torso forward as his fist shattered toward Hyeong Do-chan’s face.
Belly, face, belly, face.
The same attack repeated in relentless succession.
When you strike the same body part over and over, it’s the same fist, but the impact hits far harder each time.
The pain compounds.
“Aaaaaghhhh!”
Hyeong Do-chan staggered backward, crashing against a roadside pine and sagging against its trunk.
Crack!
Thud!
Yi Mo-baek did not pause.
There was no mercy in him.
Fists drove into belly and face in rapid succession.
Crack-snap!
The massive pine tree that Hyeong Do-chan leaned against shook violently.
Without the tree to absorb the impact, he would have been thrown backward or sent flying, his body spared at least some of the shock.
“Gaaahhhhh!”
Hyeong Do-chan vomited blood and viscera.
“Pyo-du, I’ve prepared the log for your monument,” Suk Ji-un said calmly.
He emerged from the forest carrying a length of wood as thick as an adult’s forearm.
“Give it here.”
Yi Mo-baek extended his hand.
Suk Ji-un handed over the weighty club.
“What wood is it?”
“Hongpyeon Wood.”
It was wood hard enough to be called steel.
That was why it had taken so long to find.
Whoosh!
He brought the club down with all his strength onto Hyeong Do-chan’s head as the man crouched beneath the tree.
The skull split open, bone fragments scattering in all directions.
Crack!
Thud-crack-snap!
There was no restraint, no mercy.
“Splurch!”
A demonstration.
That was why the violence was so savage.
At last his skull cleaved completely, pieces scattering everywhere.
Only Hyeong Do-chan’s headless corpse remained propped against the pine.
The three men watching turned away.
They had killed before, had been called brutal in their time, but they had never witnessed murder like this.
Squelch!
He drove the club—now slick with blood—into the corpse’s solar plexus with all his remaining strength.
The club punctured through Hyeong Do-chan’s chest and embedded itself deep into the pine trunk beyond.
Boom!
The massive tree shuddered violently.

‘Good… God. His Inner Power is monstrous.’

All three were shaken by Yi Mo-baek’s strength.
It was almost unreal.
A man who looked incapable of such force—yet his fist was enough to shake a mountain.
The club had punched through Hyeong Do-chan’s torso and driven into the tree, and now the corpse hung suspended on it.
Shwiiiiish!
Something even more shocking occurred.
Yi Mo-baek ran his palm along the pine above the corpse’s head, and the bark—scaled like dragon hide—peeled away instantly, exposing white wood beneath.
He pressed his right index finger into the exposed wood like a blade and began to carve characters.
Crunch!

‘Insubordination Execution, Jeoksan Hierarchy’

The inscription stated that he had been beheaded according to Jeoksan’s rules in order to establish proper hierarchy between superior and subordinate.
All three men froze.
Not because Hyeong Do-chan was dead.
Not because the message was brutal.
It was the fact that characters carved a finger’s depth into the wood with nothing but fingertips.
That was what they called the Vajra Finger.
It was not a technique anyone could imitate.
It was a different realm entirely.
“Uhhhhh.”
Bo-hae alone swallowed a heavy groan.
Gangho was indeed too dangerous to wander through alone.
People died over disputes, yes, but the Gangho was also a place where men were beaten to death on nothing more than a bad mood.
When he’d been part of the sect, he hadn’t understood, but now that he’d left, he grasped why people sought out the sects and joined them as groups.
The four of them, acutely aware of the need for an umbrella of power, had settled on the Jeoksan Escort Bureau.
They had chosen Yi Mo-baek as well.

‘If you’ve had your eye on a particular escort unit or Pyo-du, let me know. Any preferences?’

Among the Pyo-du of the Blood Response Unit, Yi Mo-baek had the shortest track record.
That meant they would enter as subordinates, but it also meant they could handle him well enough.
It wasn’t a bed of roses, but they’d felt as if they were treading on a silk road.
Then something unthinkable had happened—something they’d never even remotely imagined.
There was a difference between Hyeong Do-chan’s martial skill and theirs.
But that difference was as thin as a sheet of paper.
Which meant that if any of them faced him, they would die with their skulls crushed just like he had.
Yi Mo-baek entered the forest and washed his blood-stained hands clean in the water flowing through a ravine.
He scrubbed so thoroughly the sound squeaked, then dried his hands on the hem of his robe before climbing back up.
“Ji-un.”
“Yes, Pyo-du!”
“Think a display like this will serve as proper education for those who harbor dreams of insubordination?”
“More than enough, sir. Anyone passing through here will see it and think twice about showing disrespect to their superiors.”
“What say you three? Any thoughts, as Pyo-sa?”
The honorific was meant as a Pyo-sa—an Escort.
It was a jab, and a brutal warning wrapped in mockery.
Leap!
Yi Mo-baek vaulted onto his horse.
“Ji-un, let’s move.”
Clatter!
The carriage rumbled to life and began climbing the pass.
The three men watched the carriage pull ahead, their faces grim and unyielding.
“Ungh.”
They could only groan, then kicked their mounts to follow the carriage.

Three days since leaving the escort bureau.
Nam-chang, the great city of Gangseong, teemed with visitors seeking out Payang Lake.
A carriage rolled into the lower marketplace of Nam-chang.
Hanging from the carriage pole was a red flag bearing a Chinese character for mountain—山.
It was the emblem of the Jeoksan Escort Bureau.
“Pyo-du, I’m starving.”
Suk Ji-un whimpered.
They’d been forced to make a forced march, rationing dried meat for meals since the encounter with Hyeong Do-chan had cost them time.
“I was planning to stop at an inn anyway and have a bowl of Pork Belly Soup—steaming hot, steam rising from the surface.”
“Oh, Pork Belly Soup—now that sounds wonderful.”
Suk Ji-un cried out loudly.
It was a rich broth made by stewing the belly of a young pig stuffed with glutinous rice.
Just thinking about it made Suk Ji-un’s mouth water, and he yanked the reins sharply.
“Hya, hya!”
The street was crowded with people.
As the carriage swept past, the crowd scattered in panic, hurling curses at Suk Ji-un.
“Can’t you drive that thing straight?”
“For heaven’s sake.”
The three men escorting the carriage radiated such cold menace that the onlookers swallowed their complaints.

Chunks of suckling pig, boiled until tender, melted on the tongue.
There was almost nothing to chew.
Roll it a few times side to side, and it would slide down the throat.
But then something remarkable occurred.
Yi Mo-baek ordered alcohol from the server.
When the server brought Bamboo Leaf Liquor, Yi Mo-baek set cups before Suk Ji-un and the other three men, filling each to the brim.
Then he filled his own cup.
“Drink up, gentlemen.”
And with that, he drained his cup first.
Suk Ji-un followed suit, emptying his cup at once, but the three men still held theirs untouched.
He’d been clear — no drinking.

‘Ah, yes. They must follow his command absolutely.’

Nothing was to be done without his permission or explicit order.
The awkward atmosphere began to soften as the liquor went down—one cup, then another.
Gradually, conversation began to flow between them.
But no one broached the subject of Hyeong Do-chan, the one thing that troubled him most.
It had been too gruesome.
It wasn’t merely the death of one man.
Hyeong Do-chan had been made an example—a vivid lesson in who Yi Mo-baek truly was.
“Such a thing happened?”
As he finished the food and Bamboo Leaf Liquor and rose to leave, two men at the neighboring table lowered their voices in conversation.
“If the Jeoksan Escort Bureau’s carriages were attacked simultaneously at three locations, surely that’s no ordinary matter?”
“The remarkable thing is that not a single soul survived.”
Yi Mo-baek lowered himself back into his seat.
Escort carriages came under attack often enough.
But if the target was the Jeoksan Escort Bureau, the situation took on a different character entirely—and from what these men were saying, all the escorts had been killed.
If true, it was a catastrophic event.
Three Jeoksan Escort Bureau convoy carriages crewed by first-rate masters of the Gangho, wiped out entirely—this said one thing clearly.
It was no mere bandit raid or common brigandage.
Thirteen carriages had departed four days prior at the Hour of the Rat.
One could easily infer that something extraordinary lay behind it.
An escort bureau dispatches multiple carriages simultaneously for only one reason.
To scatter the enemies seeking the cargo, to divide their focus.
This method was employed often when valuable goods were being transported, and until now it had worked flawlessly.
But not this time.
Three carriages had already been scattered and destroyed, every escort slaughtered.
Glance.
Yi Mo-baek rose again, eyeing the two men.
Both wore swords at their flanks; they appeared to be in their late thirties.
They continued their conversation while eating the dishes that had just arrived.

The carriage left the inn.
It passed along a quiet stretch of the Official Road, where farmers in the roadside fields bent to their work, sowing seeds with steady diligence.
Clatter-clatter!
The men made no sound.
Though they’d drunk Bamboo Leaf Liquor at the inn and might have been expected to chatter idly under its influence, they remained silent.
Despite the liquor they’d consumed, the three men remained vigilant, weighed down by Hyeong Do-chan’s death.
In moments like this, Yi Mo-baek would usually crack a joke or two to lighten the mood, and the tension would dissolve at once.
Suk Ji-un rode alongside him, his gaze fixed on Yi Mo-baek’s back as though he could bore a hole through it.

‘Something’s off.’

He muttered it under his breath.
The Yi Mo-baek he knew was always cheerful.
Never the type to lower his voice or tense his shoulders like this.
He’d freely unleash bawdy jokes without a care.
With a cup of wine in him by now, he ought to be five or six drinking songs into the journey.
The road bent into a mountain path.
Fields and paddies fell away, replaced by a dense forest pressing in on all sides.
“Ji-un.”
Yi Mo-baek, riding ahead, spoke.
“Yes, Pyo-du?”
“What’s the name of this ridge?”
“This ridge?”
He quickly drew out the sheepskin map he’d crumpled into his sleeve and unfolded it.
It was a map drawn with the Official Road at its center.
“Jangsa Ridge.”
“Jangsa Ridge.”
“It’s an extraordinarily steep mountain pass. They say you have to navigate ninety-nine switchbacks before you can cross the summit.”
“Jangsa Ridge,” he repeated.
“Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I just find the name pleasing.”
“The name itself—I must confess it makes me rather uneasy.”
Jangsa Ridge—the Ridge of Burial.
Put plainly, it meant the place where the dead were consigned to the earth.
At the name Jangsa Ridge, all three of them grew unsettled, their eyes narrowing as they glanced nervously at their surroundings.
They’d all heard the talk: three wagons from the Jeoksan Escort Bureau, along with their Pyo-sa, had vanished without a trace.
Clatter-clatter!
The rumble of wagon wheels broke the silence of Jangsa Ridge.
The cargo wasn’t particularly heavy, but the pass was so steep that the horses wheezed with exertion.
Gulp.
Strange.
As they neared the summit, the tension tightened like a fist.
Suk Ji-un found himself resenting his own fear.

‘Damn it.’

The story of those vanished wagons from the Jeoksan Escort Bureau kept circling in his head.
He glanced at Yi Mo-baek ahead of him and grumbled inwardly.

‘You should have listened to me.’

No matter how light the cargo was, this was still an escort run—he’d pleaded with Yi Mo-baek to request five or six additional Pyo-sa as support.
The Jeoksan Escort Bureau had no shortage of Pyo-sa not assigned to regular transport divisions.
They were reserve forces, held ready for unexpected incidents or sudden large-scale cargo requests that might demand more hands than usual.
Other wagons typically had over ten Pyo-sa, but Yi Mo-baek’s escort consisted of only six—including himself.
When he’d raised the matter, Yi Mo-baek had dismissed it without so much as a snort.
“Hold on. Once we clear that winding stretch ahead, we’ll reach the summit of Jangsa Ridge.”
In the distance, a steep bend loomed, rising dust in a russet haze.
Being so high up, the wind tore across with vicious force.
Whiiii!
The dust-laden gales threatened to sweep the wagon away.
Cough-cough!
Suk Ji-un coughed as dust flooded his throat.
Whirrrrr!
The howling wind was so thick with dust that he couldn’t see more than a pace ahead.
Shwook!
From within the dust storm, a sword suddenly flashed into view.

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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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