So she's from moolim/murim aka the martial arts world? And she's chinese? Like real life chinese? Or is she from a wuxia-esque fantasy world...? I'm a little confused... Thanks for the update though!
God, I love this series and the characters. I don't look forward to it being licensed and have the names ruined and have to wait for license to catch up to the translations.... so many series lately with that. It's great they get licensed, but ruining the character names AND making us wait weeks or even a year+ to get caught up? Sucks
@MzDoomsayer: It's not referring to a specific location in the world, but rather the martial arts world, the kind with super human strength through training in techniques or breathing or whatever.
Like if a wizard from Harry Potter world introduce themselves as being from 'that side' sort of thing.
Usually they are aware of the damage they can cause in modern world so they try to avoid society and form their own little society, that's Murim.
Example: https://thebreaker.fandom.com/wiki/Murim
So rather than Moyong 'family', it'd be more appropriate to use 'Clan' I think.
Basically after Serenia's self-introduction, Valerie realized Serenia isn't just a tomboy heroine of a romance novel, she's a very much trained warrior and could very well be that 'tiger on fire' her teacher prophesied about so she left in a panic.
@Newbii@Kuraiaku Murim (무림) is the martial arts world, yes. "Moolim" is one way to approximate the original word using English letters, although it doesn't seem to be a popular one.
More in-depth answer: Japanese and Korean use a single sound for "r" and "l" that's sort of halfway between them, so it gets translated differently depending on the context and the "style" for romanization that the translator prefers. (This is why Light Yagami's name is technically also "Raito Yagami"; the first letter can be interpreted as either sound.) So the original word (무림) can be "murim," "moolim," "moorin," or "mulim." They're all equally correct, but in cases like these there's usually an unspoken agreement to use the same one as everybody else so that readers recognize it from story to story and don't get confused. "Murim" is the spelling that most translators use; Peerless Dad and The Breaker are some prominent examples of manhwa that use this spelling.
The martial-arts world that this term refers to is a whole Thing in Korean martial arts/fantasy stories; it seems to have its roots in Chinese martial arts fiction, where it's Wulin (武林, like the TL note says) because pronunciation differences between Chinese and Korean changed the "wu" to a "mu" in Korean. I don't know a lot about the genre(s?), personally, so if you want more detailed information I'd suggest asking about it in a martial arts manhwa's comment section reading @WhimsiCat's post below.