Word of the man in the desert spread like a disease.
They didn't come with honor or intention. They came desperate. Orphans cast out by their sects. Elders who had lost their cores in failed breakthroughs. Young geniuses crippled by jealousy and betrayal.
They came to die or be reborn.
They found him in Black Sand Valley, sitting beneath a dying tree, his eyes closed. The first to approach him, a blind swordsman, asked no questions. He knelt and waited.
Mu-Won said nothing. A day passed. Then three. On the fourth, the man collapsed from thirst. Mu-Won finally spoke.
"You lasted longer than most." He pressed his palm to the man's chest. "Now you'll learn to see."
The man's vision returned that moment. But it wasn't sight—it was qi sense. Pure, terrifying awareness.
Others followed. Dozens. Then hundreds. They didn't build temples. They didn't raise banners. They trained under fire, on cliffsides, inside caves. They fought animals with bare hands, meditated in poison pools, and shattered their own bones to rebuild stronger ones.
He didn't call it a sect. But the world did.
The Demon Sect.