The auxiliary infirmary was built like a forgotten annex, its walls pressed against the outer edge of the Azure Sun Sect as though the entire structure had been shoved aside to make room for something more important. The lanterns inside burned low, their flames tinged green by cheap oil, giving every face a sickly hue.
Mu-Hyuk stepped across the threshold without hesitation. The Murim Dominator System tightened its passive distortion field around him, not enough to erase him, but enough to blur his existence at the edges of awareness. Passing medics felt no urgency to question him. In a place like this, unfamiliarity was normal.
Cots filled the narrow hallways in tight rows. Every bed held a disciple who had failed in some quiet way — a crushed foundation, ruptured meridians, crippled limbs, shattered cores that would never recover. They were alive, yet no longer part of the sect's future. The system tagged each one as Mu-Hyuk passed, recording pulse patterns, qi residue, irregular nerve response.
[Physiological Archive – Expansion Ongoing]
[Cultivation Collapse Profiles: 114 and counting]
Yoo Seol-Ah slowed beside him, her medic instincts warring with the dread crawling up her spine. She recognized faces. People who had laughed with her in the refectory. Disciples who had once trained beside Mu-Hyuk in the outer halls.
"They don't move them," she murmured. "I was told they'd be transferred when stable."
Mu-Hyuk stopped in front of a cot where a middle-aged disciple lay staring blankly at the ceiling, his chest rising in shallow increments. The man's qi had once been powerful. Now it scattered like mist the moment it circulated.
"They don't move people they don't expect to see again," Mu-Hyuk replied.
He placed two fingers lightly against the man's wrist. The system unfolded the inner damage layer by layer — torn qi pathways, spiritual core fragmentation, micro-failures propagating endlessly through a body that still pretended to live.
[Sample Acquired – Type: Advanced Foundation Collapse]
[Data Classification: High Value]
Yoo Seol-Ah flinched when Mu-Hyuk withdrew his hand. "You're treating them like components."
"They were treated like trash first," he said calmly.
They reached a small desk cluttered with ledgers and half-filled treatment forms. Mu-Hyuk picked one up and flipped through it, eyes moving too fast for any human reader.
[Record Scan – Administrative Anomalies Detected]
[Inconsistency Ratio: 63%]
Names were missing. Dates overwritten. Injury descriptions reduced to vague phrases like "stabilized" or "no longer responsive."
"This is how they erase people," Mu-Hyuk said. "Not with blades. With ink."
Yoo Seol-Ah stared at the pages. "They're hiding the scale of the damage."
"They're hiding the fact that their system eats its own," he replied.
A junior medic looked up from across the room, eyes briefly resting on Mu-Hyuk before sliding away, interest fading instantly.
[Concealment Authority – Sustained]
They left the infirmary without resistance, but the weight of it followed them into the night.
They paused on a stone bridge overlooking one of the sect's internal ravines. Lantern light from the upper compounds shimmered on the distant walls, outlining the silhouette of the Azure Sun Sect in calm, ordered beauty.
"This place isn't failing," Yoo Seol-Ah said slowly. "It's rotting."
Mu-Hyuk nodded. "And rot spreads quietly."
[Strategic Objective Registered: Data Destabilization]
She turned to him. "You're not planning to attack elders head-on. You're planning to hollow the sect from inside."
"Power doesn't collapse from force," Mu-Hyuk said. "It collapses when its records stop aligning with reality."
The system pulsed faintly in approval.
Below them, the ravine swallowed discarded tools and broken training weapons tossed aside by careless hands.
Mu-Hyuk rested his palm on the railing, feeling the vibration of life still humming through the sect.
"They threw away trash to preserve order," he said. "Now their order is built on lies."
Yoo Seol-Ah didn't answer. But she didn't leave either.
And in the infirmary behind them, the ones who hadn't died yet waited — unaware that they had become the cracks in the foundation.