South of the Sapphire Plains, beyond the scorched dunes where caravans avoided travel, Mu-Won walked alone under a molten sun. Heat waves shimmered around him. Sandstorms howled in the distance.
It was there he found the boy.
Collapsed near a jagged stone outcrop, skin burnt and blistered, the child was breathing shallowly. His meridians were twisted, shattered by force-fed techniques designed to mimic tiger cultivation. Brutal. Ineffective. Common among sects desperate for quick results.
Mu-Won knelt beside him.
"You're not a tiger," he said, pressing two fingers against the boy's chest. "You're not a beast. You're a human. Learn to act like one."
His qi seeped in. He didn't heal the boy—he realigned him. He tore out the artificial beast imprint embedded in the child's qi root and reshaped the boy's meridian flow entirely. It took less than ten breaths.
The boy coughed violently. Then blinked. "You saved me."
"No," Mu-Won said. "I removed the lie inside you."
The boy sat up, trembling. "Please… teach me. I don't want to be like them. I want to be real."
Mu-Won turned his back.
"Then throw away everything," he said. "Your past, your pride, your pain. If you follow me, you follow truth. That's the only thing I teach."
The boy staggered after him, barefoot in the sand.
So began the first disciple.