Murim School Record - Chapter 7

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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 7: Tiger and Dragon Collide (1)

There exists a code in the Kangho.
Regardless of righteousness or villainy, one does not kill ordinary people ignorant of martial arts.
To a warrior, such a violation is shame that cannot be undone—a stain on honor itself.
Byeok Ma-su, who had slain Sae-myeol and Sae-ryong, drove that pale hand straight toward Yi Mo-baek’s heart.
Fast. Far too fast.
Yi Mo-baek shifted his stance.
Not because anyone commanded it, nor from any conscious thought of evasion.
A single step—one he had practiced whenever opportunity allowed, the footwork known as the Bulyeong-bo.
Without thinking, he set down that one step.
Crack!
It felt as though a lump of metal had struck him square in the chest.
Yi Mo-baek screamed and flew backward, landing in a thicket some twenty paces distant.
Whoosh!
Byeok An-mi-hui launched herself forward on a single leg.
She moved through the tall grass—dense as human height—searching.
When she turned right, she found Yi Mo-baek there in the vegetation, breathing in ragged gasps.
Gasp-gasp-gasp!
Each breath came labored, blood spilling crimson from his mouth.
Byeok An-mi-hui’s eyes widened.
He was still clinging to life despite the Seven-Star Byeok Ma-su.
Even a master of considerable skill would have perished outright from a direct hit.
She had aimed for his heart, but the blow had landed slightly off.
As she stared down at him, her eyes clearing now, Yi Mo-baek’s brow furrowed.
“Just… finish it in one… please… it… it hurts?”
Pain choked his words, leaving them scattered and incomplete.
“It hurts so much… please… quickly.”
“Hah-hah! All right, I understand.”
Byeok An-mi-hui raised her right hand.
Yi Mo-baek fumbled for words.
“Don’t use that. Strangle me with your hands instead.”
“Hah-hah, you really are my type.”
Byeok An-mi-hui bent at the waist and wrapped her right hand around Yi Mo-baek’s throat.
Thud!
She never saw it coming.
Even in her wildest nightmares, she had not imagined such a counterattack.
Yi Mo-baek’s right fist drove straight into Byeok An-mi-hui’s Danjeon as she bent forward.
The Danjeon.
Located three inches below the navel—the Jehah Samchon—it is the source of a warrior’s power and the reservoir of their very life.
What is called Naegong originates, accumulates, and explodes from this point.
It is also known by another name: the Gihae.
“Ugh!”
Byeok An-mi-hui staggered backward from the shock.
Crack!
Yi Mo-baek rose to his feet and struck her Danjeon a second time.
Because she was supporting herself on one leg rather than two, she could not quickly recover her balance, and Yi Mo-baek seized that opening to land another blow.
Thump!
Byeok An-mi-hui fell hard, stumbling backward onto her rear.
Now!
This was the chance.
If not now, he truly would die.
Yi Mo-baek threw himself upon Byeok An-mi-hui where she sat fallen.
Smack!
Crack!
He crushed her against him as they both tumbled to the ground.
“You… damn—”
Byeok An-mi-hui, pinned beneath him, hammered her fists at Yi Mo-baek’s face.
But Yi Mo-baek kept his grip locked firmly around her waist.
He couldn’t let his arms slip free.
Crack!
Thud!
Smash!
Her knuckles found their mark—his nose burst crimson and his eye socket split open.
As a fighter, he’d learned long ago: squeeze the waist hard enough, and even the strongest man on earth goes limp.
And Byeok An-mi-hui had taken his strike directly to her Danjeon.
It wasn’t the kind of blow a supreme master of Kangho might deliver—shattering the Danjeon outright and killing her, or scattering her Naegong beyond repair. But the crucial fact remained: a punch of considerable force had struck her vital center.
Of course, before arriving here, she’d taken grievous internal injuries from her clash with the Hang-ma Yeon-hwa-dae.
These were the final two blows of a life-or-death struggle.
So even with her face battered several times over, she wasn’t dead yet.
“Arrgh! You bastard—I’ll tear you to shreds!”
Thwack!
The instant her fists hesitated, Yi Mo-baek seized the gap and drove his forehead down against the face beneath him.
Crack!
Crunch!
The head strikes with three times the force of a fist.
Yi Mo-baek pressed his advantage, ramming his forehead down again and again.
“Aaaagh!”
“I’ll… I’ll rip you apart!”
Pinned on her back, Byeok An-mi-hui drove her knee upward at his groin.
Slam!
Yi Mo-baek clamped his teeth down on her nose.
With his arms locked around her waist, the only weapons he had left were his head and his teeth.
“Gaaahhh!”
A piercing scream tore from Byeok An-mi-hui’s throat, echoing across the mountainside.
Shake-shake-shake!
Still biting down, Yi Mo-baek thrashed his head from side to side like a dog.
Rip-rip-rip!
“Ahhh! S-s-stop!”
Her screams trembled in her own voice.
Rrrip!
The sound of flesh tearing filled the air as the cartilage of her nose snapped between his teeth piece by piece.
“Ughhhh~”
A long, drawn-out moan began to leak from her lips.
The two punches to her Danjeon had inflicted serious trauma, and Byeok An-mi-hui could no longer control her Naegong freely.
The slightest exertion sent pain through her Danjeon as if it might tear itself apart.
The internal injuries from her battle with the Hang-ma Yeon-hwa-dae warriors, compounded by these two surprise blows to her vital center, made her—though called a Master—lethally vulnerable in her wounded state.
Unless one possessed the Geumgang-bulkwae, the Danjeon was a warrior’s most critical and carefully guarded vital point.
Riiiip!
Tearing sound!
Like stripping cartilage from a rib, he finally tore her nose clean away.
Yi Mo-baek did not stop there.
Now he set upon her full lips, biting and tearing them mercilessly.
“Blub-blub-blub!”
A bestial shriek escaped from Byeok An-mi-hui’s mangled mouth.
Rip-rip-rip!
Unlike her nose, her lips tore easily.
“Die—dieeeee!”
Byeok An-mi-hui’s rage broke through her agony.
She pummeled Yi Mo-baek’s face with both fists, savage and merciless, her long nails raking bloody furrows across his skin.
Yi Mo-baek tore with his teeth; Byeok An-mi-hui struck with her fists.
Both their faces had become utterly mangled.
“Uuuugh!”
Neither stopped their assault, even as they screamed.
Byeok An-mi-hui’s blows grew weaker, slower.
Yi Mo-baek too seemed exhausted, still driving his forehead forward, though no longer with enough force to overwhelm her.
“S…stop…”
Byeok An-mi-hui’s screams ceased as she stopped striking him.
Stopped, rather, because she had no strength left—her limbs had gone slack.
But Yi Mo-baek did not stop.
Without pause, he drove his forehead against her face.
Stop and you die.
Relentless forward momentum.
Crack!
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
Watching Yi Mo-baek’s assault, it looked almost like he was performing an endless, rhythmic prostration.
“Stop… stop… you bastard! I swear I won’t kill you!”
Yi Mo-baek’s right hand, which had been wrapped around her waist, groped frantically at his surroundings.
His left arm kept her pinned while his right hand scrabbled blind until it closed around a large stone.
“Die, you wretched woman!”
He brought it down on Byeok An-mi-hui’s face.
“No!”
Smash!
Crack!
“Stop… please stop!”
Byeok An-mi-hui thrashed beneath him.
In that moment of struggle, Yi Mo-baek succeeded in pinning her fully beneath his weight.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
Gripping the stone in both hands, he began to pound her repeatedly.
It was like using a mortar and pestle.
Byeok An-mi-hui was a master of the Kangho.
Even if her resistance had weakened, one could not afford to relax vigilance.
With breath still in her body, she possessed the ability to kill one or two ordinary men without martial skill as easily as drawing breath.
The Seven-Star Byeok Ma-su extending outward with murderous intent.
The very thought of it sent ice through his veins.
He’d put on a show of courage, but only he knew the true depth of his terror, how his whole body trembled from within.
He struck again and again.
Thud-crack!
Thuu-ooom-crack!
Perhaps she was feigning death.
He was far from done.
Yi Mo-baek continued pounding, again and again.
Thud-clack!
Thud-clack!
He lifted the heavy stone with both hands and brought it down once more.

Dang Du-chun sent men to search for Yi Mo-baek’s whereabouts.
There was no word from Byeok An-mi-hui, and Yi Mo-baek did not return.
“Aaaaagh!”
Then a man came running from the forest where he’d been sent to find Yi Mo-baek, screaming in horror.
In truth, Dang Du-chun had wavered for a moment, however brief.
He’d considered whether, while Byeok An-mi-hui had slipped into the woods to finish Yi Mo-baek off, he should take his men and flee.
It seemed disloyal on the surface, but a leader’s thinking must differ.
He must prevent greater harm to the whole.
The Peach Tree Freezes in Place of the Plum—sacrifice the one to save the many.
A path to victory by offering up the smaller piece.
But in the end, he had abandoned the thought.
Loyalty weighed on his conscience, and fleeing would be futile in any case.
With their current strength, even if they died and came back to life, they would not escape from Byeok An-mi-hui’s hands.
He’d never consoled himself with the thought that there was honor in death, but he found something repugnant about the idea of perishing in a desperate flight.
“Ugh-ugh-ugh!”
The man gasped for breath in rough, jagged bursts.
“Vice commander, Vice commander!”
His companions all gathered around him.
“What is it?”
“Something is wrong!”
“What?”
“Hah—hah—hah!”
The man steadied his ragged breath as he spoke.
“Yi Mo-baek is pinning her down and smashing her with a stone.”
Freeze.
Dang Du-chun’s brow furrowed.
“What did you just say?”
“I saw it with these two eyes, clear as day. Yi Mo-baek is sitting on her belly, pounding away with a stone like he’s working a mortar.”
“P—pounding away with a stone?”
Seol Yeo-chul’s eyes widened.
“His face is a wreck, but it’s definitely Yi Mo-baek. Why not go see for yourself?”
“You’re saying Yi Mo-baek is winning?”
“That’s what I’m telling you—unbelievable as it sounds.”
Yet no one moved to rush over.
“I’ll go look.”
Dang Du-chun stepped forward.
“I’m coming too!”
Seol Yeo-chul followed.
“Keep your guard up. Stay hidden and wait—just in case.”
Dang Du-chun and Seol Yeo-chul walked into the forest.
Gulp.
Both men swallowed hard, their nerves pulled taut.
Crack.
Seol Yeo-chul snapped off a dead branch, trimmed it to length, and gripped it tight.
Useless as it might be, it beat having nothing in hand.
Rustle.
They crouched low and crept forward.
Peck!
Peck-peck-peck!
The sound of a bird pecking at wood echoed through the trees.
Hidden behind a trunk, the two men listened intently.
Seol Yeo-chul shook his head—that didn’t sound like a bird at all.
Dang Du-chun felt it too. He pressed forward.
“Die, you witch. Please die. Die now!”
They froze, startled, and ducked behind cover again.
“Dead! Die-ie-ie-ie!”
“That’s Yi Mo-baek’s voice.”
Both men quickened their pace, pushing through the brush into a small clearing.
Gasp!
Shock!
They recoiled.
A man whose face was utterly caved in sat astride a woman in white, methodically destroying her face with a stone.
The woman’s face had become a rag. She lay motionless, as though dead.
“That’s Yi Mo-baek, isn’t it?”
Dang Du-chun’s voice trembled.
“But who’s the woman? She’s wearing white—looks like that woman, but…”
The two rushed forward.
“Yi Mo-baek!”
At the call, Yi Mo-baek did not turn his head.
He only continued, mechanical and relentless, crushing Byeok An-mi-hui with the stone in his grip.
“Yi Mo-baek, stop!”
Dang Du-chun shouted with all his strength.
Thud.
Yi Mo-baek ceased his motion and turned his head.
“Ahhh!”
Dang Du-chun let out a cry of horror.
It was not a face.
Yi Mo-baek’s visage—shredded by Byeok An-mi-hui’s fists and clawed by her nails—hung in tatters.
“B—brother!”
“W—who are you?”
“That woman, Byeok An-mi-hui.”
“B-b-b-Byeok An-mi-hui!”
Seol Yeo-chul stammered, trembling so violently he could barely form the words.
Byeok An-mi-hui’s martial prowess had been truly catastrophic.
And yet Yi Mo-baek had subdued her.
He knew Yi Mo-baek had stolen and was secretly studying the Baek-bo Sin-gwon, but that hardly accounted for overpowering such a demon-woman.
How in the world was he now pinning down this world-shaking assassin and smashing her with a stone?
Byeok An-mi-hui’s face was gone.
Obliterated.
Like minced garlic beaten to pulp.
Thud!
Yi Mo-baek raised the stone again.
The work wasn’t finished yet.
“She’s dead!”
Dang Du-chun called out.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
“She’s dead. Stop it, Mo-baek.”
Dang Du-chun grabbed at Yi Mo-baek’s arm.
“She’s dead!”
“She’s dead. She’s not breathing!”
At Dang Du-chun’s words, Yi Mo-baek finally stopped and dropped the Stone.
“D-d-dead!”
Collapse!
He uttered the word and toppled sideways, spent.
“Yeo-chul, go fetch the medicine!”
Seol Yeo-chul took off running the way he’d come.

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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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