Jin Mu-Won knelt in the mud, blood dripping from his lips. Around him, clan disciples stood in a half-circle, their sneers sharp as blades. Above them all, on the wooden platform, the Clan Patriarch watched with cold eyes.
"Mu-Won," the old man's voice cut through the storm, "your meridians are crippled. You will never advance in martial arts. You are a burden to this clan."
A laugh rang out from the crowd. Jin recognized it instantly — his cousin, Jin Su-Ren, the so-called prodigy of their generation. The one who had arranged today's "duel."
Su-Ren stepped forward, sword still wet with Mu-Won's blood. "A cripple has no place in our clan. Grandfather, let me finish him now, before he shames us further."
The Patriarch shook his head. "Killing him here would stain our name. Cast him out instead. Let the world devour him."
The disciples jeered. Some threw mud at him as the guards dragged him to the gates.
They hurled him into the wilderness with nothing but torn robes and a body full of bruises. The gates slammed shut.
For a long moment, Jin Mu-Won lay still in the mud. The cold bit through his skin, but his heart burned hotter than ever.
"Crippled?" he whispered, coughing blood. "A burden?"
His lips twisted into a bloody smile.
"They'll regret those words."
The wilderness was merciless. Wolves circled him that night, their eyes glowing in the dark. Jin picked up a broken branch, his arms shaking from weakness. He laughed bitterly.
"Come then," he muttered. "At least you beasts are honest. You want flesh, not honor."
The wolves lunged.
By dawn, the grass was stained red. Jin staggered away from the corpses, his body shredded but alive. His hands trembled, not from fear — but from exhilaration.
He had survived.
At the edge of a cliff, he collapsed against a half-buried stone tablet, the carvings on it long eroded by time. By chance, his blood seeped into its cracks, and faint characters flickered to life.
"Heaven and Earth are but a furnace. To survive, refine yourself. To dominate, refine the world."
Jin Mu-Won stared at the glowing words. His laughter echoed across the valley, hoarse and mad.
"So be it. If heaven calls me a cripple, then I'll cripple heaven itself."
That night, under a sky split by thunder, the boy who had been cast out began walking the path that would make him feared across Murim.
Not as a hero.
Not as a demon.
But as the mind that defies heaven.