286
Afterward — Reporting to Lee In-jung
Night had deepened, and even after the council ended, the lamps were not put out.
After long thought, Park Seong-jin went to the senior general's pavilion.
Lee In-jung sat with his sword laid beside him, still unable to take off his armor.
"What is it?"
His voice carried fatigue.
Carefully, Park spoke.
"I've organized our assessment of the three southern powers—Zhang Shicheng, Chen Youliang, and Zhu Yuanzhang."
"Go on."
Park explained without hesitation.
Lee In-jung did not interrupt even once.
When the words ended, silence lingered.
Lee In-jung let out a low laugh.
"If anyone else had said this, I wouldn't have listened.
But your words hold no private motive.
I see only the state in them."
He rubbed his chin.
"It was my mistake to reach for the easiest hand."
Park bowed his head.
"I made the same error."
"Still, it's not too late."
Lee In-jung rose from his seat.
"We won't rush a judgment. We'll need a plan.
But… this head of mine isn't made for a civil official's work."
Park said,
"If the head can't keep up, then we must seek the wise."
"Can we find them?"
"If we can't find them, we make them."
Park drew a breath and added,
"My teacher once said, 'The wise are born from the courage of those who ask.'"
Lee In-jung chuckled softly.
"The courage to ask… that rings true."
He set his sword down.
Outside the tent, the night was still dark.
Yet within their exchange, a different kind of light was quietly kindling.
"I'll look into it."
"Where?"
"By asking."
Lee In-jung frowned.
"With whom would you discuss the affairs of the realm?"
Park bowed instead of answering.
His face held the look of someone who had already found what needed to be done, before words.
Seeking a Strategist in Jiangnan
That night, the wind in Yangzhou was unusually damp.
As fighting paused and the scent of blood thinned, a deeper hollowness settled in its place.
Soldiers polished their blades.
Generals waited in silence for battles that did not come.
Inside his tent, Park Seong-jin unfolded a book.
Not a battle report, but texts: The Art of War, Wei Liaozi, and Wenzhongzi.
His fingertips traced the old paper slowly.
"I understand… but I haven't made it my own."
At that moment, Lee In-jung entered.
Fatigue lay across his face, yet his eyes were clearer than before.
Song I-sul's words were still striking his mind, again and again.
"We'll do as you said."
"What do you mean?"
Lee In-jung's voice was low, but resolve was firmly set within it.
"You said that if the head can't keep up, we must seek the wise.
We've reached a point where strength alone won't suffice.
Swords can no longer divide this situation.
It's time to fight with words and writing."
Park lifted his head.
Lamplight grazed the edge of the pages, revealing the grain of the paper.
After a moment's silence, he spoke slowly, as if drawing out words long prepared.
"In Jiangnan, many scholars are scattered.
After the collapse of the Great Khanate and the fall of the Southern Song, learning and talent flowed into the Huai and Yang regions.
Among them are many who have not found a state to which they can commit their will."
"Men who wish to save the world, yet have found no lord to serve,"
Lee In-jung murmured.
Then a more practical doubt rose in his throat.
"Would they help us?
For what reason?"
"For peace."
Park did not answer hastily.
He took a breath first.
He had already learned that on this battlefield, words were more dangerous than blades.
"We have no ambition on the continent.
And they, too, would not 'help' us so much as 'use' us."
A calm smile crossed Park's face.
"Even if we are used, we can learn.
Their wisdom once moved the Central Plain.
Even grasping its remnants would be worth it."
Lee In-jung fell into thought.
His hand touched the end of the scabbard without realizing it.
All day long, he had repeated the same habit.
Gripping a sword calmed the mind—but this board began where swords were set aside, and his hand had nowhere to rest.
"Whom can we seek?"
Park shifted his gaze to the map.
The points of Jiangnan seemed to stir strangely beneath the lamplight.
Between those points, where one stood could decide the fate of countless lives.
"There is a Daoist named Yun Dam, living in seclusion near Huai'an.
He passed the examinations during the Southern Song, but abandoned office.
Both Zhang Shicheng and Zhu Yuanzhang tried to recruit him, yet he never emerged."
"What sort of man is he?"
"He speaks of Laozi's 'emptiness and stillness' and the military doctrine of configuration together."
Emptiness and Stillness (虛靜): a core Daoist discipline in which one empties the mind and brings stillness to its utmost, uniting with the Dao—the source of all things—and realizing a life of nonaction aligned with nature. By clearing subjective desire and maintaining inner quiet, one perceives the principles of change and responds with flexibility.
"In short," Park said,
"one who wins without fighting."
Lee In-jung raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
"A Daoist would not step into worldly affairs."
"Precisely why we need him."
Park nodded.
"One without desire looks not to profit, but to configuration.
The eye that sees configuration—that is exactly what we lack now."
He added,
"What if we go and ask him?
Like the Three Visits to the Thatched Cottage."
The Three Visits (三顧草廬): the episode in which Liu Bei of the late Han personally visited Zhuge Liang's thatched hut three times to recruit him.
Lee In-jung was silent for a long while, then finally nodded once.
"Good.
Find him.
Set the terms and meet him once."
"Shall we bring him to the camp?"
"Yes."
Lee In-jung turned his head and glanced into the darkness beyond the tent.
A general leaving camp created a weakness more dangerous than battle itself.
"Three visits, perhaps—but I cannot go myself.
A general cannot easily leave his lines."
"Understood.
I will carry out the order."
Park stepped outside.
Dawn mist was settling in.
Huai'an was not far.
No—far, yet close compared to Goryeo, and almost within reach when set against the vastness of the Central Plain.
Gouyi, once a battlefield, lay just north of Yangzhou.
Beyond it was Huai'an.
To the west stretched Hongze Lake, endless.
Where sky met water, one could lose the way even with a map in hand.
To seek a Daoist was less a matter of walking roads than of trying to understand a layered, entangled world of geography and intent.
Only one who knows the land can find a person, and only one who finds the person can obtain the path.
Park moved through the camps, asking locals for rumors and routes to Yun Dam.
People gathered.
Everyone said they knew.
Even those who did not, said they did.
In Goryeo, such eagerness might be called zeal.
Here, it was grounds for suspicion.
If money was to be made, anything would do.
They claimed knowledge they lacked, and offered sincerity only to the weight of coin.
By night they vanished; by day they returned under different names.
There were exceptions, of course.
But to trust one exception required enduring ten failures.
Such was the human landscape of Jiangnan.
Park chose, and chose again.
Still, he found no guide he could trust.
At last, he sighed.
"Even chosen, this land is a field of sand."
He boarded a boat with Song I-sul, a handful of warriors, and a small detachment of soldiers.
Horses were loaded, provisions bound, and the boat slipped onto the night river.
Then the guide cried out in panic.
"The waterways… I don't know them!"
Park turned sharply.
"What did you say?"
"I've only traveled by land.
I didn't know we'd go by water…"
A suffocating silence fell.
They were the sort who raised their hands first, claiming ability they did not have, money clinging to them like a hungry spirit.
Only when the moment came did they begin listing excuses.
Park pressed his brow.
"This isn't war to you—it's business."
He dismissed the guide.
There was no turning back, yet going on blindly meant not a path, but death.
He searched again for someone.
Then the boatman who had been tying up nearby spoke carefully.
"I know of Daoist Yun Dam.
I don't know his exact dwelling, but I know the ferry where those who sought him disembarked."
For a long moment, Park was speechless.
He could not trust it.
But he could not turn back.
"Very well."
He gave the order.
"Depart."
The boat pushed out into Yangzhou's water-mist, carrying dozens of soldiers, horses, and a single handful of hope.
The waterway led north.
A junior officer asked quietly,
"What should we do with that man? Kill him?"
"The army has many tasks," Park replied.
"Put him to work as a bondsman."
"Understood."
Moonlight trembled on the surface of Hongze Lake*, its shimmer stretching ahead of the boat like a road.
* the fifth-largest freshwater lake in China. Although it is known to have existed from antiquity, it drastically increased in size during the Qing when the Yellow River—then still flowing south of Shandong—merged with the Huai.
Watching that wavering light, Park slowly shook his head.
"The path is always like this," he said.
"Never quite visible."