The skies above the eastern ranges boiled with pressure. Rumors had swirled for weeks—of sects falling, of lone cultivators torn apart by invisible forces. In the capital of the Dawn River Province, where the Heaven's Eye Sect ruled with rigid control, those rumors reached the ears of Sect Master Yun Chae.
He dismissed them.
"Ghost stories," he told his disciples, sipping orchid wine as he reclined under the jade canopy of their inner sanctum. "Let peasants gossip about demons. We wield heaven's truth. Let the heavens themselves answer if this threat is real."
The heavens did.
That night, the stars above Heaven's Eye turned red.
The clouds writhed like serpents, parting with unnatural silence. A presence fell—not like a storm, but like an execution. The disciples of Heaven's Eye woke to their protective barriers crumbling, their ancestral formation destabilizing with no warning.
A ripple tore through the sect's main courtyard.
Jin Mu-Won walked in.
He didn't break down the gates. He didn't fly through the air. He walked, as if taking a stroll. No one recognized him until the pressure crushed their knees to the ground.
Sect Master Yun Chae appeared, clad in his ceremonial robes, arms aglow with qi threads. He floated down from the central pavilion, followed by the sect's three guardian elders.
"You've made a mistake, whoever you are," Yun Chae said. "This is sacred ground. Our eyes are those of heaven itself. We see all."
"Then you saw this coming," Mu-Won replied.
The first strike was so fast, only the result registered.
One elder fell, chest imploded inward. No scream, no struggle. Dead before he hit the floor.
Yun Chae roared and unleashed a wave of golden qi. It spiraled like an archangel's spear—divine, trained, perfected over sixty years. Mu-Won raised one finger.
The spear shattered.
The second elder fled.
The third tried to activate the sect's defensive totems. He got as far as turning before his spine was crushed by Mu-Won's gaze alone—a directed pressure that made the air congeal into concrete.
"I was sealed beneath Guhwa when you were still learning to tie your robe," Mu-Won said. "And you claim heaven's sight?"
He turned to Yun Chae, whose hands now trembled.
"We see you," Mu-Won said. "Now see me."
With a single motion, he extended his arm—and the Heaven's Eye Sect's central tower collapsed inward, pulled into itself by an invisible force. A vortex of shredded symbols, broken spirits, and failed doctrine.
The sect was gone before sunrise.
Mu-Won stood in the rubble, and for the first time in centuries, he spoke to the sky.
"One heaven down," he said. "Eight remain."
Then he vanished.
The world woke to a new nightmare.
The Heavenly Demon wasn't just returning.
He was counting.