323.
The Night of Silence
Night fell again.
As the lights died down and the drums faded, the plain was left with corpses and traps.
Xu Da stood before it all, wordless.
His hands were empty.
He had lost an absurd number of soldiers.
This was not the texture of battle.
His fingertips trembled.
The tremor was no longer anger.
A deputy at his side spoke cautiously.
"General, we will prepare another assault at dawn."
Xu Da said nothing.
He only stared at the ground before him.
From beneath the blackened, scorched field, the arms of the dead jutted out grotesquely.
It looked like a place haunted by spirits.
The living stepped on those arms as they passed.
Xu Da muttered low,
"Is this war?"
He drew a breath and continued,
"This is death."
Lower still, he said,
"We are dying one-sidedly."
Then—
From the city wall, riding the wind, came a familiar voice.
Xu Da lifted his face.
"Xu Da. You are moving only within my calculations."
It was faint, but it pierced his ear with precision.
"You move when you want revenge. I make sure your anger never cools."
"Go on. Move."
"Again."
Xu Da's pupils shook.
There was no visible presence on the wall.
But the voice continued.
"Every time your soldiers die, I read your decisions."
"Your rage flows across my military map."
Xu Da bit down on his lip.
Blood ran.
He ground his teeth.
"He mocks me."
But another voice whispered inside him.
He is telling the truth.
Xu Da turned around.
The eyes of the soldiers in the camp were extinguished.
Some covered their ears.
Some stared only at the sky.
In the firelight, their shadows wavered like the dead.
A deputy called to him.
"General."
He continued, voice breaking.
"Our endurance is gone."
"Morale has hit bottom."
"The men are sick of one-sided slaughter."
"Discipline is collapsing."
Xu Da laughed instead of answering.
A short, exhausted laugh.
"We're already broken," he said.
That night, Xu Da could not reach sleep.
Whenever he closed his eyes in the darkened tent, the dead officers lined up before him.
One had no hands.
Another cried with half his head burned away.
They looked at him and asked,
"Why did you send us in there, General?"
"Why did you push us into those traps?"
"Why couldn't you catch him?"
Xu Da shouted,
"Enough!"
He shouted louder,
"Enough!"
His voice tore through the tent.
Outside, it was silent.
At dawn, he stepped out of the tent without armor, his hair loose.
The wind blew, and the lights atop the city wall flickered.
They struck him like mocking eyes.
Xu Da muttered,
"Park Seong-jin."
Then he said,
"You don't fight battles.
You play with people's hearts."
His knees buckled.
Even knowing the grain of psychological warfare, his body shook first.
That was why it was terrifying.
If his own heart was like this, the hearts of soldiers and officers would collapse even sooner.
He braced a hand against the ground.
Cold earth clung to his palm.
In the smell of soil, he felt a strange calm.
A calm like the dead lying upon it—
one he almost longed for.
A smile crept to Xu Da's lips.
"Today is the fortune of my death."
The smile drifted away from anything human.
On the wall, Park Seong-jin leaned against the watchtower.
Far off, the lights of Xu Da's camp trembled faintly.
Park Seong-jin closed his eyes for a moment.
"Anger is fire," he said.
"Fire reaches only ash."
He finished quietly.
"His fire has gone out."
An aide beside him asked,
"Shall we pursue?"
Park Seong-jin shook his head.
"It ends here."
Then he added,
"He died inside himself."
Dawn broke.
With the stench of blood, Chizhou's banners snapped in the wind.
Far away, in Xu Da's camp, drums and commands sank into silence.
The Collapsed Camp
By morning, Xu Da's camp no longer resembled an army.
Banners were torn.
Horses stood masterless.
Soldiers sat on the ground, having forgotten one another.
Grain carts burned.
Weapon piles lay scattered everywhere.
From Park Seong-jin's city, no sound came.
That silence itself was the blade Xu Da's army found hardest to endure.
A deputy approached Xu Da.
"General, the soldiers are scattering."
He continued his report.
"Over a hundred heading north."
"Dozens south as well."
Xu Da's voice split.
"Don't stop them."
He said it again.
"Wherever they go, this battlefield is finished."
The deputy asked,
"Then we…?"
Xu Da answered,
"We're only breathing."
The deputy could say nothing more.
At that moment, in the distance, soldiers were seen burning their own banners.
Flames mixed with the smell of blood, sending up gray smoke.
By noon, the camp had completely collapsed.
The chain of command vanished, and soldiers scattered in every direction.
Some ran barefoot, unable to mount horses.
Some stripped armor from corpses just to survive.
"We have to live!"
"We can't run into this slaughter-house to die!"
The cries spread like screams.
The routes of retreat had been severed by Park Seong-jin's forces.
Brutal killings continued everywhere.
He let no one pass freely.
It was groundwork for later battles—
a terrifying intent, meant to stop reckless advances.
Dead horses littered the hillsides.
Rain began to fall.
Mud mixed with blood streamed down the paths.
"Where is the General?"
"Haven't seen him since last night."
"I heard he fled."
The rumor spread from mouth to mouth—
that Xu Da, still alive somewhere on the battlefield, had run.
People wanted to believe it.
And with that belief, the last light in the remaining soldiers' eyes went out.
Xu Da was alone.
He abandoned the camp and followed a thread of rain into the northern forest.
He had lost his helmet; his armor straps were undone.
His hands were empty.
He sat beneath a tree as rain soaked his shoulders.
Blood and mud mixed in his palms.
He no longer knew how far he had come.
The landscape did not enter his eyes.
Lightning flashed in the distance.
In that brief light, Park Seong-jin's face appeared to him.
Xu Da laughed softly.
"So in the end, I lost to myself."
A low breath slipped from his throat—
shallower than a sob.
Before that breath reached its end, the last words he murmured were a single line:
"今日是死運也."
Today is the fortune of death.