Murim School Record - Chapter 37

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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 37: Love at First Sight (1)

Jong Bae nodded slowly.
“Do you remember what you said to me back then?”
“What?”
“You said it while watching Yi Pyotdu — how he wouldn’t leave no matter how many times you told him to go.”

I remember.
The two of us had finished dinner and were taking a walk, talking about this and that, when the conversation turned to Yi Pyotdu’s affairs.

‘I can’t figure out what he’s thinking. Is he going to Mun Gong Seo Won or not? If it were me, I’d see such an opportunity as pure luck and jump at the chance to shake hands with Mo Yong Cheon.’
‘True enough. Shaking hands with Mo Yong Cheon means stepping into the ranks of Gangho’s finest.’
‘Maybe his thoughts aren’t settled yet. Perhaps he’s hesitating while he works through something.’

Bo Hae Man continued.
“Now that I think about it, this Trade Post Head must have spent the entire month preparing his conditions.”
“Conditions?”
“Something like this: very well, I accept your proposal. However, I too have certain demands.”
Whoosh!
Jong Bae drew a sharp breath.
“Are you saying that the idea of placing no restrictions on qualification for the martial tournament to select the next Alliance Lord came from this Trade Post Head?”
“What do you think?”
“Working with Yi Pyotdu for this short time, I’ve come to feel something. Do you know what? He’s brilliant at quick thinking.”
Jong Bae listened with a grave expression.
“Anyone can spend two or three days wracking their brains to devise a good strategy. But the ability to instantly find a breakthrough when circumstances suddenly shift — no one can match Yi Pyotdu in that. I’m certain of it. This didn’t come from Mo Yong Cheon’s mind. Yi Pyotdu must have insisted on it.”
Jong Bae lifted his gaze to meet Bo Hae Man’s eyes.
Bo Hae Man spoke with conviction.
“Don’t you think my reasoning holds up?”
Jong Bae glanced ahead at Yi Pyotdu, who was strolling along at a leisurely pace.
Bo Hae Man’s words were not wrong.
Yi Pyotdu calculated quickly.
Watching the flow of circumstances, he drew conclusions on the spot about what response would be most advantageous.
For an escort guard, finding a good Trade Post Head was truly a blessing.
Depending on which Trade Post Head one served, the silver coins flowing into one’s purse could vary greatly.
Of course, official salary and bonus payments based on experience were already fixed.
But the lifeblood of cargo transport was speed.
A difference of half a day or a full day could mean tens of taels gained or lost in bonus pay.
At first, many guards had avoided him and refused to work with him because of his short track record, but that was before.
Now they sought him out, wondering how they might get a position under Yi Pyotdu.
“Where do the carriages come from?”
A shout loud enough to echo across the valley rang out.
As they climbed the steep slope, a wide, level plain opened before them, and some two hundred paces ahead stood a great mountain lodge.
Stationed at the distant main gate were martial artists carrying weapons with an elongated appearance.
As the distance closed, large characters reading “Premier Spear Sect of Central Plains” came into view on a boulder as tall as the cliff face itself.
The spear is the third most commonly used weapon in Gangho.
The first is the sword, the second the saber.
There is a saying: “One hundred days for the saber, one thousand days for the spear, ten thousand days for the double-edged sword.”
A saber can be wielded after a hundred days of training, while the spear requires a thousand days to master its advantages and limitations.
Of course, the double-edged sword demands ten thousand days to comprehend its depths, which means in any case the spear is not a simple weapon to use.

‘Yangshi Spear Clan’

These characters were carved deeply into a rock on the left.
Yi Pyotdu produced the Jade Medallion from his mount, a token marking him as Trade Post Head of the Jeoksan Trading Post.
The martial artist examined the medallion, then counted the escort guards.
He was verifying that the numbers matched those he had been informed of.
“Correct. Please enter.”
Clatter!
Two carriages rolled through the gates of the Yangshi Spear Clan.

The compound was far larger than it had appeared from outside.
Warriors passed by with spears slung across their backs, their eyes sharp as they tracked the carriages.
Their gait was purposeful and commanding; clusters of thirty or so practitioners drilling Spear Technique throughout the grounds radiated the power of the Premier Spear Sect of Central Plains.
A broad intersection appeared ahead.

Jeongbidang

read the directional marker, pointing left.
The carriage turned, and after traveling a short distance further, a massive main hall came into view, flanked by warehouses both large and small.
Inside the warehouses, workers moved about with purpose.
Some hammered chipped spear blades in the glow of crimson fires, others honed broken tips, while still others struck whetstones with mallets, sharpening blades until they gleamed razor-sharp.
“Welcome.”
A sturdy man in his late fifties approached.
He introduced himself as Yang Chil Gok, the master of Jeongbidang.
His face bore numerous scars both large and small, which Yi Pyotdu recognized as the mark of those who worked with fire.
Sparks flew so often in the forge that the smiths bore the scars to prove it.
“Set aside your work and gather at the carriages.”
All twenty or so men who had been laboring at their stations ceased their tasks and converged on the wagons.
With a rustle, the curtains parted.
Yi Pyotdu drew back the canopies of both carriages.
Inside lay thick ingots of metal—each as broad as a child’s forearm and roughly two feet in length—stacked high.
At a glance, they appeared to be iron destined for spear-blade smithing.
Bundled in sets of five, the workers began unloading them, shouldering two bundles at a time across their broad backs.
Yi Pyotdu watched them labor, his thoughts turning inward.

Red Sand Cold Iron.
An extraordinarily rare metal.
Beyond the Tian Shan Mountains lay Tapul Jeogong Twe, a hillside where the sand itself ran red.
Red Sand.
It resembled ordinary sand, yet every grain was iron tinted crimson.
When heated in fierce flames and compressed into chunks, it became Red Sand Cold Iron.
It was as hard as the legendary ten-thousand-year iron, but with one crucial difference: its edge remained sharp.
Moreover, it resisted breaking or dulling under ordinary impact—a property few materials possessed.
One question had haunted him the entire journey.
Why would the Yangshi Spear Clan, the Premier Spear Sect of Central Plains, acquire such vast quantities of Red Sand Cold Iron—a material as precious as most gemstones and notoriously difficult to obtain?
It was common enough for martial sects to purchase iron for crafting weapons.
The problem was that this was Red Sand Cold Iron.
It was scarce in Jungwon and rarely traded in iron markets, available only in the most minimal quantities.
A single blade forged from Red Sand Cold Iron commanded twenty times the price of an ordinary Blue Steel Sword.
Fine weapons were every martial artist’s aspiration.
The term “Treasure Weapon” did not arise by chance.
The power of a weapon could prove decisive in victory or defeat.
Long ago, a rumor had swept through Gangho that four legendary blades had surfaced—the Gan Jiang and the Mo Ya among them.
The bloodshed that followed exceeded all imagination.
Both Orthodox and Heterodox sects,
consumed by greed, killed and were killed in turn.
Later, the truth emerged.
The story, compared to the chaos it had spawned, proved absurdly mundane.
A merchant from the Western Regions who had come to sell carpets in Jungwon had boasted that even the Gan Jiang and Mo Ya could not cut his wares.
He had merely meant to praise the durability of his carpets, but the claim had been distorted and spread as legend.
The first principle of a Trading Post was discretion.
The confidentiality of goods under escort could never be disclosed to outsiders, under any circumstance.
It was a covenant with one’s clients.

‘War preparations, then.’

War preparations by a prestigious clan of Yangshi Spear Clan’s standing were no trivial matter.
Though a renowned house, the Yangshi Spear Clan lacked the independent military strength to dominate all under heaven on its own.
But if they had joined hands with another power, the situation changed entirely.
The Yangshi Spear Clan was a faction of the Murim Alliance.
If that were the case, one would expect to hear rumors of some military movement from within the Murim Alliance itself, yet nothing of the sort had reached his ears.
True, within the Murim Alliance there were families who stood closer to one another, and those whose connections remained fraught with suspicion, all tangled together in a web.
But not so deeply locked in hatred or resentment as to drive someone to murder another and erase them from the world.
“Master!”
Yang Chil Gok, who had been directing the unloading, suddenly rushed to one side and bowed at the waist.
Two figures were approaching.
A sickly-looking middle-aged man in black and a portly elderly gentleman walked forward.
Yang Chil Gok’s bow was directed toward the middle-aged man.
He was too small of frame to be a true martial master.
His face was pale, and his rough complexion bore unmistakable signs of illness.
Then the sickly-looking middle-aged man could be none other than Yang Woo Bi, master of the Yangshi Spear Clan.
“So the Red Sand Cold Iron has arrived.”
“Yes, as you can see, it has just arrived and we are unloading it now.”
Yang Woo Bi approached slowly.
He gazed at the Red Sand Cold Iron the men were unloading from the wagon.
Then he reached out and withdrew a single heavy lump of metal from the cargo on the cart.
It bore no rust, and when ground, it became sharper than any other metal.
A weapon’s sharpness was understood to mean the ability to carve deep wounds into an opponent’s body.
There was something called Body-Protecting Qi.
It was what a martial master of the highest attainment used to protect their body—drawing upon their own vital energy to defend against enemy ambush or assault.
Of course, the firmness of Body-Protecting Qi varied with the depth of one’s internal cultivation, but ordinary weapons could never pierce it.
Thus, people began searching for weapons that could penetrate Body-Protecting Qi.
There was a man called “Flying Dart Heaven.”
A short projectile, barely a hand’s breadth in length—
The Soul-Stealing Dart.
Perfect accuracy without fail.
What made the Soul-Stealing Dart fearsome was that it pierced specifically through Body-Protecting Qi.
Countless masters of Gangho had fallen to his Soul-Stealing Darts.
It was said that the legendary Four Great Swords—Gan Jiang, Mo Ya, Long Quan, and Tae A—could cleave and penetrate Body-Protecting Qi like paper.
The pursuit of sharper weapons was a martial master’s destiny and dream.
Yang Woo Bi set down the Red Sand Cold Iron and turned his palm upward.
Tap-tap-tap!
Then, clasping his hands behind his back, he watched the men continuing their unloading work.
Swoosh!
He turned his body.
Then his gaze fell upon Yi Pyotdu’s group, seated in the shade of a tree and waiting for the unloading to finish.
That was when the portly elderly gentleman accompanying Yang Woo Bi began to tremble.
“Uh… uh… uh… uh…”
He did not appear to be mute, yet his words came in disjointed fragments.
“What is it? Why the sudden distress?”
Yang Woo Bi’s face showed some bewilderment at this strange behavior, which he had never witnessed before.
“For… Fortune of Ten-Thousand Successes.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is surely Fortune of Ten-Thousand Successes, sir.”
Yang Woo Bi blinked, still not grasping the meaning at once.
Following the gaze of the portly elderly gentleman, Man Bi Wong, he turned his head.
Man Bi Wong was looking toward the tree under which Yi Pyotdu’s group rested.
“Observe the man leaning his back against the pine tree with his eyes closed.”
Flash!
Yang Woo Bi’s eyes blazed with light.
The moment he saw Yi Pyotdu’s face, he understood what Man Bi Wong had just spoken of as Fortune of Ten-Thousand Successes.
He shifted his position sideways a few steps.
From this more direct angle, he could see clearly.
The man’s eyes were gently shut as if weary, his expression like a mask.
Man Bi Wong, the Military Strategist, was a master of Physiognomy.

‘People play the part they’re born to play.’

Man Bi Wong’s unshakeable philosophy.

‘Every person’s fortune and misfortune is written in their face.’

Remarkably, Man Bi Wong had never been wrong.
Of course his word was trusted absolutely.

‘The finest fortune in Physiognomy is the Fortune of Ten-Thousand Successes, and the worst is the Fortune of Ten-Thousand Failures.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Fortune of Ten-Thousand Successes means everything you touch turns to success, while Fortune of Ten-Thousand Failures means everything you attempt twists and crumbles, until at last you’re crawling on your belly like a leech.’
Gulp.
He swallows hard.
His own eyes cannot be certain.
Yet now Man Bi Wong trembles, foam flecking the corners of his mouth like a man seized by epilepsy.

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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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