Murim School Record - Chapter 33

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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 33: Mungong Academy (1)

He’d barely found his footing when Yi Mo-baek slashed again, and Il-gwang tumbled to the ground.
Il-gwang did not rise easily.
His hands fumbled across the earth before he grasped the nearby tree and began pulling himself up.
Chaos.
How could such a situation even arise?
Il-gwang fought to gather his scattered wits.
“What—”
Yi Mo-baek questioned him.
“Sandalwood that burns in the main hall without going out—are you some kind of Buddhist monk?”
Hah!
Il-gwang laughed.
Yi Mo-baek picked up the sword Il-gwang had dropped.
Then, as if embracing the tree that Il-gwang was using to rise, he drove the blade straight through the man’s back.
Once he’s on his feet, everything changes.
So he wouldn’t be given the chance to rise—that was the true intent.
Thud!
“Gahhh!”
Il-gwang’s body convulsed.
He shuddered in spasms for a moment, then went limp.
The sword driven through his back had pierced clean through his chest and lodged in the tree.
Though he dangled from it like a hooked fish, Il-gwang’s body remained transfixed upon the blade.
Cough-cough-cough!
Yi Mo-baek spat blood.
Sometimes it was easier to let it out than to hold it in.
Then the sound of hoofbeats reached him.
As he turned, a carriage appeared, and three riders came galloping up.
Blood.
They were drenched in it.
Even Suk Ji-un, sitting on the coachman’s bench and holding the reins, had become a vivid scarlet, and the three horsemen wore what appeared to be crimson robes.
“Captain!”
Suk Ji-un called out in a voice tinged with excitement.
“We’ve won. I thought it was hopeless, but I managed to capture the last one myself.”
Hack!
He spat phlegm onto the ground—dark with blood.
Yi Mo-baek looked at the three men.
Their appearance was beyond description.
Torn, slashed, beaten—they were the very picture of ruin and devastation.
Yet they sat upon their horses with unshaken composure.
A surge
of heat rose from his chest.
Grim. Beautiful.
But not one of them showed a frown or any sign of weariness.
“There’s still a long road ahead. Will you be alright?”
“Let’s go.”
Jong-bae grinned and spoke.
“Move out!”
Yi Mo-baek mounted the horse that had followed the carriage.
The party crested Changsa Ridge and vanished beyond.

‘Good. Very good.’

Yi Mo-baek murmured to himself.

It was when they crossed Changsa Ridge and arrived at Dunxi in southern Anhui Province.
To be precise, it was when they passed through a small village called Jichuan, about ten li before Dunxi.
“Wait!”
Suk Ji-un, who had been driving the carriage, brought it to a halt.
At that, everyone stopped and looked back.
“Hm, hm, hm.”
Suk Ji-un swayed his upper body.
“What’s the matter?”
Jong-bae asked.
“The carriage is shaking.”
In an instant, all eyes turned toward the carriage.
Sway, sway!
It was not a particularly noticeable tremor, but a faint sound escaped from within.
Thump!
Suk Ji-un dismounted from the driver’s seat and turned around.
Whoosh!
He pushed aside the tightly bound curtain and saw the chest loaded inside.
The chest was shaking.
At that moment, Yi Mo-baek and the other three men descended from their horses and approached, alarmed at the sight of the trembling chest.
The chest was securely bound.
Of course, it had been secured so that it would not move side to side even if the carriage shook, and it was quite large.
Clang, clang!
It was clear that someone inside was thrashing about.
Leap!
Yi Mo-baek climbed onto the carriage, gazed at the quaking chest for a moment, then drew a Portable Blade from his sleeve and without hesitation cut through the rope binding it.
Snip, snip, snip!
As the rope gave way, the chest thrashed more violently.
Yi Mo-baek, looking down at the chest with a stern face from close by, grasped the lid with both hands and lifted.
But it did not budge an inch.
“They drove nails through it.”
Beyond merely binding it with rope, the lid had been nailed shut.
And yet the chest continued to shake.
That shaking meant there was life inside.
Whether beast or human remained unclear, but from the tremors of the chest, it seemed more likely to be human than animal.
At the thought that someone had been locked away and nailed in, Yi Mo-baek’s expression grew cold.
Heave!
He pulled with all his strength, and the lid began to open.
Creak, creak, creak!
The driven nails tore free as the lid opened.
Thud!
With that sound, the lid opened fully, and Yi Mo-baek, peering inside, caught his breath.
A woman in black lay within, stretched out flat.
The space was so cramped—left, right, top, and bottom—like a coffin, that she could not rise, only writhe and squirm.
She thrashed as if pleading for life, tears like droppings streaking her eyes.
“Ah, good heavens.”
Yi Mo-baek sighed at the absurdity of the situation.

The woman in black who lay within was named Yeo Cho-ran.
She was sixteen years of age this year, and her home was Datong in Shanxi Province.
She had been born bearing the Seven-Sound Severed Meridian, a curse that would not allow her to live past seventeen.
Which meant she had less than a year left to live.
The Horse Meridian Point and the Dumb Acupoint had been sealed.
During transport, the swaying carriage and its jolts had loosened the Horse Meridian Point, causing her to thrash about.
Yi Mo-baek released the Dumb Acupoint first.
“Uh… uhhh, uhhhhh.”
With the Dumb Acupoint freed, she began to cry aloud.
“Uhhh… mother!”
The girl in black burst into uncontrollable wailing.
An awkward situation.
No one had anticipated what was unfolding.
Cargo that weeps(?)
I’d suspected the chest was more than it appeared on the surface, but I never imagined there was a person inside.
A woman in the bloom of her budding years, no less.
“But you said she was sold. What does a mother who sold her own daughter want to see her for?”
Suk Ji-un burst out in anger.
Yeo Cho-ran’s parents were tenant farmers who worked a small plot of land.
In recent years, the harvests had dwindled due to drought, yet the landlord seized his share without mercy.
The tenant farmers’ portion inevitably shrank, and three years of relentless drought had driven the entire family to the brink of starvation.
On top of that, there were four younger siblings below her.
Many mouths and little food.
Bandits roamed freely, and come nightfall, there were countless people scaling neighbors’ walls.
Breaking into the wealthy’s storehouses was no simple task.
Most who attempted to scale walls were hunted down and killed by the swordsmen those wealthy families employed.
Yeo Cho-ran’s father had died scaling a rich man’s wall.
Then one day, a renowned physician from Datong—the very doctor who had examined her illness as a child—came calling and met her mother.
When her mother had brought him a newborn child who had turned blue and stopped breathing, his mouth had delivered words like a clap of thunder from a clear sky.

‘The Seven-Sound Severed Meridian.’

A curse. She would not live past seventeen.
She must never see sunlight.
Surviving until seventeen was only possible in a space utterly sealed from light.

‘One hundred silver taels.’

The money he placed in her mother’s hands when even her next breath seemed uncertain.
As the eldest daughter, she had been prepared to make any sacrifice for her siblings’ sake, but the betrayal and shock her mother’s eagerness to sell her had inflicted—and the sorrow that followed—transcended imagination.
“So where is she going now?”
Yi Mo-baek asked.
“I don’t know. We were simply loaded like goods, and here we are now.”
Everyone fell silent.
Yet their faces were drawn tight, each searching for clues by connecting the circumstances before and after.
Then Yi Mo-baek recalled something.

‘It’s highly likely that each chest in the remaining twelve carriages contains a woman like Yeo Cho-ran.’

Women afflicted with the Seven-Sound Severed Meridian—where were they being transported?
Yi Mo-baek pulled out the map again and studied it.
The destination was not far.
“Let’s go take a look.”
Yeo Cho-ran sat in a spacious carriage instead of the chest.
Creak-thud!
The carriage set off once more.
On the northern border between Fujian Province and Jiangxi Province rises a majestic mountain.
Wuyi Mountain.
The mountain stands tall and its valleys run deep, but thick bamboo groves blanket its every slope, earning it also the name the Immortal Bamboo Mountain.
A mountain where immortals feast on dew.
Whether immortals truly dwell there is uncertain, but one fact is beyond dispute.
It was where the most retired masters of Gangho chose to live in seclusion.

‘Draw a sword carelessly on Wuyi Mountain and you’re likely to lose your head.’

It meant that even those who spoke as simple villagers and behaved like ruffians might in truth be supreme masters of Gangho from days long past.
The carriage came to a halt before a small manor—modest in scale, yet radiating a subtle weight that caused anyone entering to adjust their collar.

‘Mungong Academy’
was inscribed on the entrance pillar.
It was a seowon known as the place where the Southern Song philosopher Zhu Xi had brought together his learning and taught his followers.
With a creak-thud, the carriage moved again.
Moments later, beneath a banner bearing the name Jeoksan Pyoguk, the carriage rolled into the academy grounds.
Just then, an elderly man in his seventies who had been sweeping fallen leaves in the courtyard straightened up at the sight of an approaching carriage.
“Where have you come from? This academy closed its doors long ago.”
It was his way of saying the institution no longer functioned as a place of learning.
Thump!
Yi Mo-baek vaulted down from his horse.
He swept his gaze across the surroundings once, then fixed his attention on the old man holding the broom.
But there was a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“What relation do you have to Mungong Academy?”
“I wouldn’t call myself a steward exactly—I’m descended from the honorable Zhu Xi.”
“So this is merely a place of study, then?”
“Correct.”
“Yet everyone acknowledges Mungong Academy as the Greatest Literary Family Under Heaven. How can it be so deeply entangled in Gangho affairs?”
The old man who had claimed descent from Zhu Xi narrowed his eyes.
He studied Yi Mo-baek for a moment in silence, then murmured softly.
“So there is a tiger living in Jeoksan.”
Jeoksan referred to the Jeoksan Pyoguk.
He meant he had not known there existed a master of such formidable martial skill in the Jeoksan Pyoguk.
“All you needed to do was hand over the cargo and leave.”
The old man’s face began to shift.
Pop!
Crack-crack-crack!
Sounds issued forth as the muscles of his face twisted and bulged, reforming into an entirely different visage.
Still in his seventies like the academy master, yet with completely different features—
It was U-gun, one of the Mugeuk Four Generals, known as the shadow of Murim Alliance Master Moyong Cheon.
“There are boundaries in this world. Especially ones that must not be crossed—they must be observed without fail.”
“Are you saying that as a pyo-sa, I have overstepped such a boundary?”
“Indeed.”
“Ji-un, fetch the young lady from the carriage.”
Suk Ji-un descended from the driver’s bench and drew back the carriage curtain.
“Please come down.”
Moments later, Yeo Cho-ran emerged from the carriage.
At the sight of her approaching, U-gun started visibly.
“Since you are one of the Mugeuk Four Generals, you would certainly recognize that this young lady possesses the Seven-Sound Severed Meridian constitution.”
Gasp!
U-gun’s eyes widened in shock.
Yi Mo-baek surveyed the grounds once more.
“The academy is so orderly and quiet it appears only we have arrived.”
That meant twelve of the thirteen carriages had been completely destroyed along the way.
It also meant that while the routes differed, the final destination had been this place all along.
U-gun’s eyes grew colder still.
“Three years have passed since the attack by the Greatest Blade Under Heaven, and the fact that he still cannot rise from his bed suggests that Bun-gwang Kwae-geom’s sword carried some entirely unexpected hidden technique.”
“You wretched—”
A cold voice rang out, and another elderly man appeared.
It was Pung-gun.
Of the Mugeuk Four Generals, Seol-gun and Ha-gun had died by Bun-gwang Kwae-geom’s blade, leaving only Pung-gun and U-gun alive.
Pung-gun was the eldest of the Four Generals.
“How much do you know?”
Pung-gun asked with a hardened face.
“More than what the two of you suppose, I’m afraid.”
Pung-gun regarded Yi Mo-baek with sharp, piercing eyes.

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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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