The compound at the edge of the outer district did not appear on any current map of the Azure Sun Sect.
Mu-Hyuk confirmed this three separate times as he studied the projections unfurled across his vision. The Murim Dominator System overlaid archived schematics with present-day patrol routes, yet the sealed structure below the ridge existed only in outdated blueprints, its designation removed from all active infrastructure records.
[System Mapping: Discrepancy Detected]
[Facility Classification: Legacy Containment Node – Status: Abandoned]
Abandoned was the word the sect used when it wished to forget.
Mu-Hyuk watched from the shadows of a pine grove as two instructors patrolled the compound's perimeter, their movements rigid with unease. They did not look like men guarding criminals. They looked like men assigned to protect something they did not want to understand.
Yoo Seol-Ah crouched beside him, her knees pressed into damp soil. "They told the discharged disciples they were being relocated for 'rest and reassessment,'" she whispered. "That building doesn't even have windows."
Mu-Hyuk didn't answer. His focus was on the faint qi fluctuation bleeding through the stone walls — not the turbulent flow of cultivators, but the weak, broken residue of people who had once tried to circulate energy and failed.
[Ambient Qi Analysis: Residual Trauma Imprint – High]
"This isn't a holding facility," he said at last. "It's a warehouse for mistakes."
They waited until the moon slipped behind the clouds.
The system thinned their presence until the guards' gazes passed over them without recognition. Mu-Hyuk approached the compound wall and pressed his palm against its surface. The stone rippled faintly under his touch as internal stress points were highlighted in pale red.
[Structural Weakness Identified]
[Breaching Probability: 96%]
The wall opened with a soundless fracture, not shattering but parting, creating a narrow aperture just large enough for a person to pass through. Yoo Seol-Ah followed him inside, the air immediately changing from night-cooled freshness to the stale odor of confinement.
They were in a corridor lined with heavy doors. Each bore a faded inscription: intake dates, disciplinary codes, all scratched out or overwritten multiple times. The compound had been repurposed so often that its original purpose had been buried beneath layers of administrative lies.
[Internal Registry Corruption: Severe]
A voice called out weakly from behind one of the doors. "Is… is that another review?"
Mu-Hyuk stopped.
He opened the door.
The room beyond held twelve people.
Some sat against the walls, clutching small cloth bundles. Others lay on the floor, too drained to rise. None of them looked dangerous. They looked like people who had been told, too many times, that they no longer mattered.
A woman with greying hair pushed herself upright when she saw Mu-Hyuk. "We were told we'd be evaluated," she said. "But no one's come back. Not even the guards talk to us."
Mu-Hyuk's system flooded him with status overlays — malnutrition markers, stress-induced qi stagnation, identity talisman severance.
[Mass Neglect Condition: Confirmed]
[Life Expectancy Projection: Declining Rapidly]
Yoo Seol-Ah stepped past him, kneeling beside a man whose hands trembled uncontrollably. She reached into her satchel without hesitation, offering water, whispering reassurances she wasn't sure she believed.
Mu-Hyuk watched her for a moment before turning back to the group.
"You were discharged," he said.
They stared at him blankly.
"No," the grey-haired woman replied slowly. "We were never released. We were… misplaced."
The word stung.
Footsteps echoed faintly from the corridor outside.
Mu-Hyuk closed the door and turned back to the room.
"You can't stay here," he said. "This place is designed to make you disappear."
A murmur rippled through the group.
"Where else do we go?" someone asked.
Mu-Hyuk hesitated.
The system's interface flickered, running calculations far beyond simple extraction.
[Strategic Branching Detected]
[New Pathway Option: Independent Civilian Node Formation]
[Risk Assessment: Extreme]
For the first time since awakening, the Murim Dominator System offered him a choice that was not strictly violent.
Yoo Seol-Ah looked up at him, her eyes shining with something dangerously close to hope.
"Mu-Hyuk," she said quietly, "you opened the door. That has to mean something."
He closed his eyes for a single breath.
Then he spoke.
"I don't have a place for you," he said. "But I can give you time. Enough to leave the sect before they realize you're gone."
The room was silent.
Then the grey-haired woman bowed deeply, her forehead touching the floor.
"You remembered us," she said. "That's more than anyone has done in years."
[Dominator Authority – Expansion Triggered]
[New Condition Registered: Voluntary Allegiance – 12 Subjects]
The system pulsed, not with command, but with recognition.
They moved the group through the breach in staggered pairs, timing their exits with patrol gaps mapped precisely by the system. Each person that slipped past the compound walls was another variable removed from the sect's accounting nightmare.
Mu-Hyuk watched the last of them disappear into the treeline before sealing the breach behind him, the stone knitting itself whole as though it had never been broken.
Yoo Seol-Ah stood beside him, her hands still trembling.
"You changed the equation," she said.
Mu-Hyuk stared at the now-silent compound.
"No," he replied. "I started one."