Murim Girl
One day had passed since the self-proclaimed Demon Lord left.
I spent the entire day curled up under my blanket, trying to calm my trembling heart.
If I’d still been in the body of Song Daehyeon, a man in his thirties, I would’ve shaken it off with a drink and tried to get on with living.
Instead, here I was, burrowed under a blanket like a coward, just waiting for the danger to pass.
“This is so damn annoying.”
Grumbling, I sat up in bed.
“Ugh.”
My whole body ached.
Probably because I’d been so terrified yesterday that every muscle in me had locked up and started screaming.
Looks like I’d have to skip my health exercises today.
Grrrumble.
“I’m hungry.”
I had to eat to live.
Clutching my protesting stomach, I forced myself to move.
Fortunately, there was still some rabbit meat left over from yesterday.
It had sat at room temperature for a day in a murim world with no refrigerator, but it was still good enough to eat.
I’d lived like this for over thirty years already.
After my body became that of a beautiful girl, I hadn’t felt the slightest resistance until my modern knowledge came back to me.
Honestly, it’s a little unsettling.
Too much knowledge was a kind of curse in itself.
As I grew more and more in tune with this beautiful girl’s body, memories of modern life became sharper and sharper.
And the more that happened, the more uncomfortable everything in this murim world became, one little thing at a time.
“Damn murim. I wish it would just die.”
What would happen if murim died?
I blurted out the frustration that had been building inside me, then immediately wondered about it.
That was a pointless thought, with no answer waiting anywhere inside it, so I lit a fire and started roasting the meat.
If there was one advantage to life in the mountains, it was that I’d learned a lot of survival skills.
Sizzle, sizzle.
The rabbit meat skewered on the stick was cooking nicely.
“Smells good.”
I stared into the fire, dazed, and let time pass.
Yesterday’s incident had been a shock.
No, let me correct that.
Being TS’d from an old man into a beautiful girl was mentally even more shocking.
The only difference was that my life had also been threatened.
And more than anything else, the fact that someone had read my cringey past was so humiliating I could barely stand it.
Sizzle, sizzle.
I turned the meat over and fell back into thought.
I’d seen people die more times than I could count.
This was a world where lunatics who went around stabbing strangers still rambled about their own code of chivalry.
I’d already resigned myself to the fact that someday I, too, would just collapse and disappear like any other ordinary nobody.
But when the moment actually came, I hadn’t been able to do anything at all.
“It’s all because this body is too weak.”
I squatted down and poked at my small breasts with my finger.
Why had I ever been so obsessed with this kind of thing?
Now that I had them, they were just soft and bouncy and utterly useless.
Flap!
“Eek!”
A bird suddenly burst out of the brush, and I let out a girlish scream before toppling onto my backside.
“Damn it…”
Face burning red with embarrassment, I sprang up and glared at the undergrowth.
Of course, there was nothing there.
It had just been some wild animal.
...
Don’t sneak up on me like that.
I’m so wronged.
The world had wronged me.
Overnight, I’d become this body.
My cringey past had somehow been distributed to the masses, and some insane woman had actually read it and come all the way to my house.
And in a world like this, what was I supposed to do with such a frail body?
It was obvious by now: the only ending waiting for me was getting violated by some bastard mountain bandits.
“I’ve trained every day, and I still don’t have the slightest bit of inner energy.”
I’d repeated the movements of Wolhameiingyeong for three months, and all I’d gotten out of it was a tiny warmth settled somewhere in my dantian.
No matter how much I sat cross-legged and concentrated, that little warmth in my dantian didn’t move at all.
What good was it if I had it but couldn’t use it?
If it couldn’t be expelled or gathered properly, then it was worthless.
Right now, I was full of the urge to just dump out some inner energy and be done with it.
I was boiling mad, but what could I actually do?
I just gnawed on the fully cooked rabbit meat and glared at the sky.
Fine. If heaven had made me this way, then I’d enjoy it better than anyone else.
I stuffed myself with meat and determination in equal measure, then went back inside.
...Was rabbit meat always this chewy?
My jaw hurts….
***
Three more days passed.
“I think I’m losing my mind.”
Human beings were truly lazy creatures.
I’d taken one day off from my health exercises, and suddenly I’d been full of the desire to rest another day.
Then, naturally, after taking that extra day off, I wanted to skip the next one too.
Honestly, wasn’t it fine if I just stopped now?
No matter how I looked at it, the movements of Wolhameiingyeong were the source of some TS disease that turned men into women.
Doing them in reverse wouldn’t change anything, and it certainly didn’t seem like they’d make already-transformed me stronger.
Maybe they were just making me even more girly.
“That’s it!”
I bolted upright from where I’d been rolling around on the bedding and glared at the book lying on the floor.
This bastard was the culprit.
It hadn’t just turned me into a beautiful girl once.
It was still trying to transform me into something even more beautiful.
The start of it all.
Thud-thud-thud.
I grabbed the book and ran to the campfire, lifting my arm high.
...
But I still couldn’t throw it.
This was my mother’s keepsake, after all.
And if this was the only cause of the current situation, then wasn’t it also the only clue to solving it?
What if I was about to destroy my last resort just because of a moment of emotional stupidity?
After wavering indecisively for a while, I lowered the arm I’d lifted.
...I hate this.
Even my indecisive personality was definitely the influence of all that overflowing estrogen.
Song Daehyeon, that manly life of mine, had never been like this.
Sure, I’d made stupid choices sometimes.
But I’d spent my years moving forward with clear goals and firm conviction.
This kind of hesitation didn’t suit me at all.
To relieve my useless frustration, I picked up a rock beside me and hurled it into the brush.
Whoosh—
Clack.
“Gaaah!”
“Huh?!”
A scream came from the brush where the stone had flown.
Shivering, I looked toward the sound, and a man with a fierce, ugly face emerged from the undergrowth.
“What the hell, who threw a rock at me? ...Oh, it’s just a woman?”
I knew that face.
A thug who’d started showing up about a year ago.
There was no way a bandit camp would be sitting on Mount Hua, a famous Daoist peak, so he clearly wasn’t anyone important.
He was just some low-life parasite who shook down civilians like me for money.
He’d always had a foul personality, and even if you tried to calm him with conversation, he’d just go ahead and steal your food anyway.
There was no question how a bastard like that would react to a body like this.
“Oh, ho. You’re actually pretty cute.”
Lust ignited in the eyes of the nameless thug staring at me.
I was screwed.
I’d let my guard down because he hadn’t shown up for a while.
And now I’d run into him at the worst possible time.
So this was how I ended up as a thug’s broodmare?
One moment of carelessness, and this was the result.
I was worrying so hard my eyes were practically rolling around in my skull when I realized something.
My body isn’t shaking?
There was no fear trying to take control of me.
Instead, I could feel the warm energy that had been quiet in my lower abdomen spreading up my spine.
As if it were trying to stand against the threat in front of me.
An instinctive reaction that had nothing to do with my own will.
It was completely different from when I’d faced the self-proclaimed Demon Lord not long ago.
The moment I noticed that, my churning emotions forcibly settled and my mind went ice-cold.
“Looks like you’re not one of those Mount Hua bitches, huh.”
At least the guy wasn’t a complete idiot.
Rather than rushing blindly at a beautiful girl he’d found in the mountains, he seemed to be trying to figure out who I was.
So what the hell was the actual Mount Hua Sect doing if they weren’t dragging off bastards like this?
“Hey. What’s a girl like you doing with some scrub living in this house?”
The thug edged closer to me.
He probably thought he had nothing to fear, remembering how I’d cowered in front of people like him in the past.
I understood the filthy desire burning in his eyes after he saw my transcendently beautiful face.
Any man would be tempted.
I was pretty.
“His daughter.”
I said whatever came to mind.
Even to my own ears, it sounded vicious.
He ignored my tone completely, his gaze sharpening instead.
“His daughter? She doesn’t look anything like him…”
I thought the same thing.
Step.
Step.
As he came closer, I felt a primitive rejection rise in me, and before I knew it, I’d taken a step back.
Strangely enough, I felt nothing else beyond disgust.
What the hell is wrong with my body?
It was too different from before.
As the bastard’s stench drew closer, my mind only grew colder and colder.
Something inside me was surging with confidence.
“Heh-heh. This big brother will take good care of you, so why don’t you come here quietly? Then I’ll even forgive you for throwing the rock.”
He licked his lips as he approached, a sleazy smile sliding over his face.
Disgusting.
While I was choosing what to say back, a curse surfaced in my mind—the kind of insult that hit mountain-dwelling trash exactly where it hurt.
I pinched my nose and said, “You stink.”
For some reason, people who lived filthy lives in the mountains always cared about that sort of thing.
If it bothers you so much, then wash up.
At my one line, his face twisted into a snarl in an instant.
“You... you fucking bitch!”
He charged at me.
Just a simple brute-force attack, with no technique behind it.
I ducked lightly under the hand he swung at me and avoided it.
Too slow.
I could see every movement clearly.
As he flailed and lost his balance, I shot my leg toward his chin.
The same I-frame balance pose I always did.
Only a little faster.
Crack!
I heard something shatter.
The man didn’t even have time to scream before the blow landed on his jaw.
Thud.
His massive body crashed straight to the ground.
End of situation.
He didn’t move at all.
“Did he die?”
Looking down at him, I slowly lowered my leg.
I carefully approached and reached out to check him, and he was still breathing faintly.
“Uh… um…”
I was flustered.
First, my body had turned out to be far stronger than I’d expected.
Second, I was wondering what the hell I was supposed to do with him now.
He was a low-life thug who preyed on ordinary people.
No affiliation, no goals, just a drifting parasite fueled by greed.
If I dumped him somewhere in the mountains, nobody would ever know.
But I’d spent the past thirty years living as an ordinary, decent civilian, and that left me with a resistance to murder.
I really am too soft.
This was murim.
To bare your teeth at someone here meant you were prepared to die.
A grudge left unfinished always came back to bite you.
Once a grudge was born, the right thing to do was settle it cleanly.
That was a murim truth I’d agreed with countless times in modern life.
And the moment I remembered that, my coolness came back in an instant.
Maybe it was because of this new body.
I didn’t feel any resistance to my own decision.
Putting my doubts aside for a moment, I grabbed the man’s clothes and started dragging him along.
Scrape, scrape, scrape.
The sound of his heavy body sliding across the ground followed us.
But he didn’t feel as heavy as I’d expected.
Before long, I’d reached the cliff I often came to just to admire the scenery.
“Don’t blame me.”
You know why, don’t you?
Charging at a woman alone in the mountains meant that if she happened to be a hidden expert, you could easily end up dying like this.
That was the sort of place murim was.
Whoosh—
I lifted his limp body and flung it straight off the cliff.
His hanging weight was lighter than I’d expected, and it startled me.
In novels, the protagonist always fell off a cliff and survived by getting caught on a tree.
This guy didn’t look like protagonist material to me, but just in case, I threw him a little farther.
Drawn by gravity, his heavy body vanished from sight in an instant.
If he survives that, then I’ll give him credit.
I stood at the edge of the cliff for a while and looked down at the scenery.
The vast landscape of Mount Hua spread out below, and for some reason it made my chest feel strangely clear.
It was huge.
Thinking about it, it was almost unfair to expect the Mount Hua Sect to manage this whole enormous mountain, their own ancestral headquarters, without a single bandit on it.
And besides, these thugs only started showing up recently.
If the first bandit I’d met after coming to live on Mount Hua was just this one guy, then maybe the security here was actually pretty good.
I turned away from the cliff.
Maybe it was because I’d already steeled myself for a life of killing and being killed someday.
Even though this was my first murder, I didn’t feel a single shred of regret or fear.
This really is completely different.
What’s going on with this beautiful girl’s body?
Until now, it had been such a delicate, fragile little thing.
And then, in one instant—
Tap, tap, tap.
I walked back up the mountain path and returned to my little home.
My body still felt light.
And my mind felt lighter than it had since coming to murim.
Could this beautiful girl’s body have been born with a talent for killing?
You know, like some kind of Heavenly Killing Star.
It was exactly the sort of thing my middle-school chuunibyou self would’ve loved.
I searched through the contents of the book I always read, but I couldn’t even remember the word “heaven,” let alone any Heavenly Killing Star.
Well, of course. It hadn’t even said a single thing about the important fact that I’d been TS’d, so there was no way it would have any later settings either.
I calmly looked around me.
The cabin was quiet, as if the uproar from moments ago had been nothing but a dream.
The plum tree planted beside the cabin had spread around it like a guardian.
Soon, it would bloom into lovely flowers.
The sight of plum blossoms scattering in the wind last year had been so tranquil it was almost intoxicating.
Come to think of it, this plum tree had grown unusually fast and started blooming in no time at all.
When I first planted it beside the house after coming to Mount Hua, it had only been about as tall as I was, and now it was already big enough to block the cabin.
“I guess Mount Hua really is a famous mountain.”
Maybe it really did have some mysterious Daoist power to it.
Shaking my head to clear away the useless thought, I picked up the book that had been lying by the campfire.
Tap-tap.
I brushed off the dust and studied it closely, but it was just a shabby old book.
No matter how many somersaults I turned while looking at it, it was still nothing more than a bundle of worn paper.
But apparently it wasn’t just a book that turned an old man into a beautiful girl.
I wasn’t weak enough anymore to be bullied by some street thug.
Were all the books I’d written like this?
Come to think of it, the self-proclaimed Demon Lord I’d met not long ago had also said something about help.
Could it be that…?
I wouldn’t recklessly try something just because I’d picked up a secret manual, not if I had even a shred of common sense, but what if someone else did happen to follow it?
“I made this mess, so I should clean it up.”
Nodding, I steadied my resolve.
My cringey past was probably far larger than I could even imagine.
Before there were any more victims, I had to recover every last one of them.
To be honest, it was also embarrassing as hell knowing other people were reading them.
Yeah, that was actually the biggest problem.
Why would anyone read this and copy it?
It was obviously weird.
Did they have nothing better to do?
At this point, my private information had already been leaked enough to bring a fake Demon Lord all the way here.
Staying in this cabin any longer didn’t seem like a good choice.
So, Song Daehyeon, man of men.
After thirty-three long years, I’d finally found the will to step out into murim.
“But first, I should wash up.”
I sniffed and lifted my hand to check.
It smelled like I’d soaked it in the stench.
Disgusting.
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