Murim Troubleshooter Dan Mujin-Chapter 122 : Survival of the Fittest

Chapter 122: Survival of the Fittest
It was not that the strong survived; it was that the one who survived became strong. So-called survival of the fittest.
Whoosh!
“Quite a convincing saying, Captain. But why did you snatch the grasshopper…? Uwaaah.”
Ilhong had turned her head in shock when I brought the snatched protein to my mouth.
City girls, honestly. They were scared by something so trivial.
I wondered how they had gotten through their messy years.
“What does it taste like? It sounded crunchy.”
By contrast, Jo Harang, who had grown up in the mountains, looked at me like I was a curiosity and asked for my impression.
She really was a girl from the backwoods.
“Like a grasshopper.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“If you roast them, they’re a surprisingly nice treat.”
“Oh, I’ll have to try that later.”
When I mumbled, she swallowed and only then did Ilhong turn to me with a disgusted expression.
“Thanks to the advance pay, we grabbed plenty of food. Why did you have to snatch that and eat it…?”
“Because the pain that failed to kill me made me stronger.”
“…What on earth are you talking about.”
I wiped the residue from the corner of my mouth with a serious expression.
“No matter how much a person resolves, they grow lax as time passes. Sometimes you need to replenish your poison like this.”
As we retraced the path we had fled, memories revived one by one.
I had sworn on this land—biting on grass roots—that I would survive by any means.
Lately there were few customers and my wallet had been thin; I’d been content with cheap noodles and bitter tea leaves.
Looking back now, even that felt like a luxurious indulgence compared to then.
“Replenish poison? Captain, are you a jar full of parasites?”
Ilhong said, incredulous, watching me pick this and that like some survivalist.
“Mujin, give me one.”
Jo Harang said she used to eat these a lot with her master in the mountains. She sidled up and grabbed the mushroom I’d been eating, popping it into her mouth.
“…You don’t get a stomachache or anything from that?”
It had been a poisonous mushroom I’d eaten in my ignorance back then.
Jo Harang shrugged as if it were nothing and said, “It’s got a tingle; it just tastes good.”
She seemed to have an unusual constitution like mine—absurd durability and some tolerance to toxins.
“…If you ever plan to make money off eating that prickly stuff, tell me. I’ll set you up.”
If Tang Yeo-hye heard this, she would probably sparkle with curiosity.
She might even offer a fortune to commission research.
“People actually pay big money just for eating stuff like that?”
“I’m telling you, that’d be a goldmine.”
“A goldmi…? Don’t know what that is, but sounds good.”
“Right?”
She should be careful out there not to be scammed. She believed whatever she heard without suspicion.
“You mean Tang Yeo-hye, right? And you believe whatever the Captain says without question.”
Ilhong, who had often watched me add strange things to food to experiment, said with narrowed eyes.
“Oh, is that so.”
Her faith in me felt excessive. What had I even done?
Anyway, we headed to the rendezvous marked in the client request to meet the named client.
The journey continued for quite a while.
I navigated the terrain as if I knew Liaoning Province backwards, and the two women following me shot me puzzled glances.
After we crested a high hill, a winding river came into view.
Just by the sound it was no ordinary torrent; a fierce rapid curled along a crooked path, wrapping the mountainside as if swallowing everything.
It looked like it would devour and crush something, and I stopped without realizing it.
“It’s incredible. Why’s that river so wild?” Jo Harang muttered, amazed.
Seeing the river that flowed down from the cliff, the Murong clan people must have been certain I was dead.
“Captain, why are you staring at the river like it’s your mortal enemy…?”
Ilhong looked at me pityingly from the side, saying she couldn’t understand someone holding a grudge against nature.
“What do you think happens to a person who’s swept in a rapid and slammed against rocks all day?” I asked.
“Well… normally they die, right?”
“Right, they croak.”
Back then the rain had poured like a waterfall and the torrent had rampaged like a wild horse.
Swoosh—
The life had stirred; as if the memory surfaced, the red energy flared up.
It puffed crimson as if to demand gratitude.
‘Gratitude for what? You wanted to live and saved me because of that.’
It had twisted and mended to possess this body.
So as soon as my breath cleared somewhat, it had tapped my head seeking a place to slip into.
Swoosh.
‘Ungrateful…’
It was a ridiculous thing. Ungrateful—what mercy? I had never been shown any.
“If we head down a bit more, there’s a narrower section. We’ll cross the river there.”
Once we crossed this cursed river, the rendezvous point would be right ahead.
“Why do you know this terrain so well, Captain?”
I didn’t feel like answering that.
Soon it was time to meet the client who would dredge up all my traumas.
People sometimes ran into their pasts unawares as they lived.
Some recalled happy moments fondly.
Others suffered, replaying times of regret and pain.
Rustle. Rustle.
Here, a woman climbed the steep ranges of Liaoning Province.
With eyes glossy like black pearls, her tail-bound horsehair, and a worn uniform of the Demon-Slaying Unit’s vice captain.
She walked slowly, as if re-treading the very path where she had once stabbed and let her brother fall.
With each step the memory came alive.
The cold body and blood that had been chilled by the torrential rain and had flowed from the blade. Her brother’s wide, startled eyes and the last image of him throwing himself away with a wounded face.
“I only… I only wanted to keep my promise…”
Whenever her brother trembled with fear, she had promised she would protect him no matter what.
Then her brother, Murong Cheongjin, had said to her as well.
If he were ever captured by the Evil Star and the moment came when reversal was impossible—
If a time came when he truly burned the world and even tried to kill her—
At that time, he had told her not to hesitate, but to stab him.
“But then, Cheongjin… what was that last look supposed to mean…?”
Her younger brother, desperately crying out that it was a misunderstanding, that he wasn’t the Heaven-Slaying Star, that he wanted to live.
He had looked as if he had regained his senses, and she had been stricken with fear.
“It’s hard to believe, but if you truly are alive…”
Even though the star had lost its light, the Blood Cult still searched for him, convinced he was somewhere.
If that child truly was alive, and yet no great disaster had been heard of until now… perhaps it was as he had cried so desperately back then—that he had indeed regained his senses.
“In that case, should I… be glad? Or should I grieve that I could not believe in him?”
The closer she drew to the cliff where it had all happened, the heavier her steps felt, as if weighed down by a thousand catties.
Wanting to recall bittersweet memories, she could not even bring herself to unfold her movement arts.
Step by step, she forced her way up to the cliff where her brother had fallen, and the first thing that struck her was its staggering, immeasurable height.
“……”
Swaaa—
The sound of the rapids tickled her ears.
Every time she saw it, she felt sure no one could survive such a fall.
“…Hm?”
But today, she was not the only one who had come to this hidden place.
“How strange. I followed the traces of the Evil Star, and at the end of them stands a martial artist.”
A black-clad figure with eyes gleaming like blood turned to her with a chilling smile.
“Here it is—the place where the vicious qi of the Heaven-Slaying Star raged most fiercely.”
And the elderly man who had followed him spread out a divination board, declaring this was indeed the very place.
“Lord Left Blood Law, that woman… she must be the Evil-Slaying Demoness of the Murong Clan.”
The red-scarfed warriors in black, having confirmed the stranger’s face, hurried to whisper her identity to the one called Left Blood Law.
“Oh?”
Left Blood Law’s eyebrows twitched strangely.
A cliff in a rugged mountain range no one else would come to. And yet here was a woman and a cult force, climbing at the same time as if by appointment.
Confirming that each harbored dangerous intent, tension instantly flooded the cliff top.
“The Evil-Slaying Demoness. That madwoman who stains every place she goes with villains’ blood.”
“Yes, sir. Thanks to the blood she spilled, it was said that in this region of Liaoning, villains were completely wiped out.”
At his subordinate’s words, the master called Left Blood Law bared his yellow teeth in a grin.
“To slaughter villains with such zeal… surely she could not restrain her killing intent.”
As if certain of something, his blood-red eyes flared ever more sinisterly as he stared at her.
“And such a one, who has killed endlessly, just happens to come here—to the place where the Heaven-Slaying Star’s qi lingers most strongly?”
Coincidences repeated become inevitabilities.
As if realization had dawned, his ominous smile deepened.
It was the face of someone who had at last found what he had long yearned for.
“You, I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep your senses… but haven’t you perhaps embraced the Heaven-Slaying Star?”
At those words, every Blood Cultist present turned mad eyes upon her.
“……”
Feeling their greedy, grotesque gazes, Murong Cheonghye silently drew her white sword.
“What are you people, and for what reason do you seek the Heaven-Slaying Star here?”
“Heh heh, there are many purposes, of course…”
Left Blood Law sliced open his subordinate’s palm and scattered blood on the ground, as if to work sorcery.
“But chiefly, it’s that we need that body of yours. I’d prefer you quietly dedicate it to the great cause of the Blood Cult.”
These were surely the same Blood Cultists who Cheongun Sword Namgung Jin had warned me were seeking the Heaven-Slaying Star.
And it seemed they had gravely misunderstood something.
But whether her brother was still alive, or only a corpse, she could not hand him over to them.
“Today this Evil-Slaying Demoness shall perform a sword dance for you.”
The fierce light of the Sword Flash of Heaven and Earth blazed from her fingertips.
A breezy hill in Liaoning Province.
Not far from the cliff where I had fallen, we finally met the long-awaited client.
“Ah, you must have had a hard time coming such a long way.”
The client was a frail-looking old man, flanked by men who appeared to be bodyguards.
“You must be the young hero Dan Mujin, the Dog-Beating Dragon, renowned in Beijing?”
He asked with a genial smile.
Had our reputation already spread as far as Liaoning? That seemed unlikely yet.
“Yes, that’s right.”
What could he want, summoning us to such a remote, desolate range?
“Heh heh, I’ve heard you’re most skilled at finding things.”
With a friendly look, the old man and his party approached us.
“Well, I’m decent at such things.”
Feigning modesty, I conducted the meeting as usual—when suddenly, a crimson aura flared before my eyes.
It pointed toward them like a warning finger.
‘Yes, I felt it too.’
Sensing something off, I opened the Heaven-Slaying Eye. In that instant, there was no hiding their killing intent.
That strange sensation when someone intends to kill—
I began to see red streaks of murderous intent drawn toward me.
These bastards must have lured me here for a reason.
Not good patrons, then.
Whoosh!
And indeed, as they stepped within three paces, they shed their faces and thrust daggers at me.
Chaaeng!
I blocked the attack with the Dog-Beating Staff and fell back.
My companions behind me flinched in alarm.
“Harang.”
There were sometimes clients who turned like this.
Perhaps thanks to her years of wandering, Jo Harang quickly grasped the situation and, at my call, nodded with rising battle spirit.
“Go ask them.”
“I’m not a hunting dog, Mujin.”
Her broadsword was heavy enough to shatter even iron, and yet she wielded it as if it were a mere chopstick, brimming with extraordinary force.
“She’s the Tiger of Mount Sung—!”
Jo Harang charged at the enemies like a starving beast.