Even with a black silk blindfold tightly tied across her eyes, Gyeong Hwa glided through the jagged ice fields with an otherworldly grace. Though she couldn't see, she felt the "Flow of Fate" around her.
But now, that flow was tainted with red. Blood soaked through her white immortal robes. Behind her, the Heavenly Eye Hunters which is an elite group of high-tier cultivators thundered through the mist.
"Hand over your eyes, Gyeong Hwa!" their leader howled. "You're blind and broken! You can't run forever!" Gyeong Hwa stumbled as her internal energy flickered like a dying flame. Ahead of her lay a massive presence...not a mountain, but a wall of "Non-Existence."
Leaning against the rough, frostbitten wall of the cavern, Han Gyeong Hwa's breath came in strained, crystalline gasps. The echo of the Heavenly Eye Hunters' boots reverberated ominously through the tunnels, drawing closer...
They could sense the celestial energy flowing from her wounded shoulder. "The girl is trapped!" a voice growled from the shadows. "This cave is a dead end! Get the spirit shackles!"
Gyeong Hwa remained composed. Beneath her blindfold, her Eclipse Pupils didn't see darkness instead, she perceived the world as an intricate web of glowing white lines. However, at the cavern's end, those lines twisted into a daunting knot of golden energy that radiated imminent disaster.
She reached out, her fingers trembling, and brushed against a cold, metallic spike that jutted from the heart of that knot. "Stop!" she murmured to herself, but her body crumpled forward. Her blood rich with immortal vitality streaked across the metal.
The sound wasn't an explosion. It was akin to a billion shards of glass shattering all at once. The spike of Root Nail didn't just drop. It disintegrated into a fine silver mist. The immense wall of ice behind it groaned and turned translucent, revealing a figure sitting cross-legged within.
His long, obsidian-black hair was partially held up by a golden hairpin shaped like a dragon's claw, gripping a shard of Absolute Zero crystal.
The Hunters rushed into the chamber, their weapons ignited with fierce golden Qi.
"There she..."
The Hunters' leader was cut off. His sword, a high-grade spirit tool, began to crack. The golden light was devoured by an all-encompassing darkness emanating from the centre of the room.
The Emperor of Night had awakened.
The figure in the ice opened his eyes not as flesh, but swirling spheres of golden nebulae. He rose with serene grace, reaching for a white jade fan at his side. His Midnight Silk robes were unwrinkled, as though 500 years of entombment had merely been a brief nap within a library.
Runic patterns of a majestic, winding Five-Clawed Dragon adorned his robes, embroidered in heavy 24-karat gold thread. The dragon's eyes were small polished rubies, glimmering even in the depths of darkness.
Framed by geometric golden patterns depicting the "Seven Constellations," he spoke with a calm, chilling resonance. "I was enjoying a wonderfully structured dream about the stars," he remarked, "until someone decided to bleed all over my palace."
Hyeon Muk snapped open his fan. The sound resonated like a thunderclap in the confined cave. "Senior! Please… Help me!" Gyeong Hwa gasped, clutching at his robe.
Though she couldn't see his face, her Spiritual Truth Vision revealed a being of such immense power that the Hunters behind her seemed scarcely more than swarming gnats.
Hyeon Muk regarded the blindfolded girl, noting her blood and the delicate black silk. Then he turned his gaze to the Hunters. "Hunting a lady in the dark?" he mused, his expression tinged with scholarly disappointment. "That reflects rather poorly on your education."
"Who are you?!" roared the Hunter leader, swinging his massive blade. Hyeon Muk did not draw a weapon. Instead, he merely waved his fan in a gentle and horizontal arc.
The air didn't stir the essence of heat, but rather vanished from the front half of the cavern. In an instant, the Hunter's sword and the very air he breathed solidified into a block of dark blue ice. There were no screams. No struggles. Only a statue of frozen regret.
The remaining Hunters fled, their screams echoing until they were swallowed by the advancing frost. Hyeon Muk turned back to Gyeong Hwa, kneeling as the hem of his black robe brushed against the blood-stained snow.
He reached out, gently touching the edge of her blindfold. "You have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen," he observed.
"And I wield the Hands of the Absolute. It seems the universe has a peculiar sense of irony today, little Immortal."
...
The cavern was silent, save for the sound of the Hunters' bodies turning into brittle salt.
Seo Hyeon Muk stood amidst the wreckage of his own tomb, the golden dragon on his black silk robes shimmering like a living thing in the dying light of the Hunters' lanterns. He didn't look like a man who had been entombed for five centuries.
He looked like an emperor who had simply stepped behind a curtain for a moment of reflection. He looked down at the girl huddled at his feet.
Han Gyeong Hwa was a vision of broken elegance. Her white immortal robes were shredded, and the black silk blindfold across her eyes was damp with blood. Yet, even in her weakened state, she radiated a cold, celestial authority that matched his own.
"You possess the Eclipse Pupils." Hyeon Muk said. His voice was a calm and scholarly baritone. He flicked his white jade fan open, the sound echoing like a gavel in a silent courtroom. "That explains why my seal felt like it was being unravelled by the hands of fate itself."
Gyeong Hwa looked up, though her eyes remained hidden behind the black cloth. "I saw... I saw a hole in the world." She whispered, her voice trembling. "I didn't know it was a person. I didn't know it was you."
"A hole in the world," Hyeon Muk mused, a faint, amused smile playing on his lips. "A rather apt description of my current state."
He reached out, his hand clad in a black silk glove with golden thread embroidery hovering near her face.
Suddenly, a pulse of dark purple light erupted from behind Gyeong Hwa's blindfold. It didn't burn but it pierced. For a split second, the Eclipse Pupils activated in a reflexive surge of self-defence.
Through their proximity, Hyeon Muk didn't just see Gyeong Hwa. He saw through her eyes. The cavern walls faded away, revealing a complex web of sapphire-blue ley lines. He caught sight of the six remaining Spirit-Nails embedded in his own body, glowing like miniature suns filled with hatred.
And Gyeong Hwa saw him not as a scholar but as a vast, infinite ocean of silver-ice energy stretching into the cosmos. He was the "Absolute Zero," the end of all motion.
"Your eyes are quite loud, little Immortal." Hyeon Muk whispered, the purple glow reflecting in his black hair. "They are revealing things about this world that I find... very objectionable."
The sound of boots echoed from the tunnels, signalling the approach of the second wave of the Heavenly Eye Hunters, led by the Captain.
Hyeon Muk closed his fan with a definitive snap.
"They crave the truth hidden beneath your silk," he remarked, stepping over her to face the tunnel entrance. "And I seek the heads of those who turned my empire into this... wretched place."
Without turning back, he extended his left hand toward her. "I have no desire to be a saviour again, but I am curious to see what your eyes will reveal when I finally extinguish the sun from the sky."
Gyeong Hwa reached out, her blood-stained fingers grasping his gold-cuffed sleeve. The instant their skin touched, the temperature in the cave plunged so low that the very shadows on the walls froze in place.
"Tell me where to strike," Hyeon Muk commanded, his black and gold robes billowing in a wind that seemed to come from nowhere. "And I will show you why night was once the only thing the gods truly feared."