339.
After Taiping — A Stalled Front**
Instead, Chen Youliang sent envoys to Zhang Shicheng, urging him to attack from the east.
It was a demand that the promise of alliance be turned into action.
Words can bind agreements, but battlefields do not move by words alone.
To Zhang Shicheng, it likely sounded like nothing more than nagging.
Even so, Chen Youliang acted as Yoon Dam had advised.
Meanwhile, Zhu Yuanzhang—caught between the two warlords—judged the situation a crisis.
The notion of ambitious leaders seeking to pacify Jiangnan by joining hands could exist in words, but in reality it was unstable.
In the end, it was a situation where future enemies temporarily clasped hands.
Whether such a bond could last was uncertain.
It might have worked in the days when they fought against Yuan despotism.
When the Northern and Southern Red Turban forces allied, shared cause bound people tightly.
That alliance had truly existed, and while fighting the Yuan, it had even reduced real losses.
But the moment Zhu Yuanzhang turned his blade on Chen Youliang, the standard changed.
Chen Youliang's army fought remnants of the Yuan.
Zhu Yuanzhang raised his sword against fellow Red Turbans.
It was a kind of betrayal—and also a transformation of the war itself.
That single choice reshaped the board in Jiangnan.
From then on, the same banner was no longer a safe shelter.
What began as the uprising of the Red Turbans had turned into a contest for kingship.
Profit, betrayal, promises, alliances, and countless subtle schemes were all brought into play.
A structure formed in which three powers checked and confronted one another.
This entire flow could not be blamed on Zhu Yuanzhang alone.
Waves of war do not rise from a single decision.
But one thing was clear: the binding power of legitimacy had weakened.
When legitimacy weakens, alliances corrode quickly.
Those with quick calculations are the first to smell that corrosion.
Many feared a pincer attack by the two sides.
Liu Bowen, however, reached a different conclusion.
He looked first not at possibilities, but at human temperament.
"The likelihood of a simultaneous attack is low," he said.
"If they fight here, they can turn their troops and deal with the other side afterward.
Zhang Shicheng is not in a position to commit fully to either.
A situation where we must face both fronts at once will not come."
He added one more sentence.
"Still, we should send someone to placate Zhang Shicheng."
Zhu Yuanzhang judged this acceptable and acted at once.
An envoy bearing gifts headed for Zhang Shicheng's camp.
They could also invoke the precedent of having aided each other during the Battle of Liuhe City.
The purpose of the gifts was not to imprint a debt,
but to loosen the human heart.
A loosened heart draws its sword more slowly.
In Zhang Shicheng's camp, envoys and gifts from both sides arrived day after day.
The Stillness at Taiping — A Halted Front
Expectations were not wrong.
Zhang Shicheng did not move.
He answered in words, but his feet did not follow.
Envoys were sent again and again, yet the reply was always the same.
"We will do so."
Just a single sentence.
It signaled only that he had heard—not that he understood the message, nor that he would honor the promise.
It was merely a reply designed to avoid danger,
fear wrapped in calculation.
His intent became clear.
He would repeat the same words until the two others fought themselves into mutual ruin.
He would keep his head low until a victor emerged, then tilt toward that side.
Suspicion of secret contact with Zhu Yuanzhang passed between Yoon Dam and Park Seong-jin.
Suspicion shakes a battlefield even without evidence.
It spreads faster than arrows.
Chen Youliang did not act rashly.
He accepted Yoon Dam's judgment.
He halted the momentum that had been carrying them toward Yingtian.
He remained at Taiping and reorganized his forces.
Troops were allowed to rest.
Supply lines were retied.
The river's flow was studied again.
This was not ending the war, but regulating its breath.
That decision alone made the balance of the realm tremble.
To Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes, Chen Youliang's great army camped at Taiping looked ready to cross the river at any moment.
Even without movement, the stationary force itself was pressure.
A still blade is more threatening than a moving one.
A moving blade reveals its direction.
A still blade can strike anywhere.
Before a threat with every possible direction, people waver first.
As the front line froze, other changes appeared.
Gunfire and drums faded, and secret exchanges began between city and camp.
Where war paused, humans entered.
Messages traveled.
Some returned under the names of family and kin.
Spies multiplied, and information begot more information.
Even brokers emerged to mediate dealings between the two sides.
Human movement is more persistent than war.
At night, soldiers on both sides looked at each other under torchlight.
Some faces smiled; others remained silent.
Distance was kept, yet faces began to register as human faces.
In the brief truce born of exhaustion, people drew closer.
A battlefield without combat took on a strange warmth.
Warmth invites carelessness.
Carelessness takes more lives than blades.
From afar, Chen Youliang watched the scene.
Only now did he clearly realize:
his opponent was not Zhu Yuanzhang alone.
Zhang Shicheng, too, was unmistakably an enemy.
The two did not confront each other directly.
In effect, a situation formed where two faced one.
Two against one—the cruelest ratio on a battlefield.
With every victory, the enemy's calculations grew more precise.
Though he held initiative on the front line, initiative over the situation itself was slipping away.
The blade pointed forward, but the board moved from the side.
That night, Chen Youliang sat long over his maps in a tent without light.
His vision was dim, but his thinking grew sharper.
What people truly look at is not what lies before their eyes,
but fear and desire.
His fingertip passed over Yingtian and stopped on Zhang Shicheng's territory.
"Winning battles alone…" he murmured softly,
"…is not enough to go all the way."
A long breath flowed out.
For the first time, he rolled the word tianxia—the realm—inside his mind.
The realm is not completed by a single great victory.
It is like a living thing, formed by hundreds of hesitations and thousands of calculations layered together.
What lives does not move according to ledgers alone.
Mist still hung over the river at Taiping.
Carrying ash and blood from the war, it drifted slowly toward Yingtian.
Soldiers rested.
Horses fed.
But Chen Youliang's nights grew longer and longer.