353.…You're suggesting assassination?
"Zhu Yuanzhang has formed a special strike unit made up of martial experts," Chen Youliang said.
"They're aiming for your head."
Park Seong-jin accepted it without much reaction.
"So it seems."
Chen Youliang continued,
"Their target is you, Commander Park."
Park Seong-jin placed his clenched fist to his chest in formal military salute.
"I'm honored."
He smiled lightly.
At this point, even so-called experts could no longer touch so much as his sleeve.
Then, unexpectedly, Chen Youliang stepped closer.
He burst into his characteristic booming laugh—the kind that pulled people in.
"Wahaha! General Park!"
Park Seong-jin felt a flicker of discomfort.
He had already heard Chen Youliang's reputation from many sides.
A man whose friendliness concealed calculation.
Whose camaraderie hid appraisal.
A man who spoke warmly—to tools he intended to use.
That texture was unmistakable.
No—
he felt as though he could even read the thought behind it.
The realization startled Park Seong-jin more than anything Chen Youliang had said.
Chen Youliang spoke again.
"If your martial skill is truly that high, wouldn't it be possible to kill Zhu Yuanzhang himself?"
Park Seong-jin paused.
"…You're suggesting assassination?"
Chen Youliang laughed.
"Perhaps it's just wishful thinking. But if it's possible, wouldn't it mean fewer innocent soldiers dying?"
Innocent soldiers.
It was an unfamiliar phrase coming from a commander who normally treated casualties as numbers.
Commanders did not value soldiers.
They valued results.
Park Seong-jin himself had been used as bait more than once.
War was the piling of corpses.
Both sides stacked bodies until one gained momentum.
In the end, it always came down to who could throw more lives into the field.
Like gambling—
the one with deeper pockets always had the advantage.
In such a system, commanders, generals, even kings, treated soldiers as expendable.
They did not mourn blood.
They did not hesitate over lives.
And yet now, an assassination was being justified in the name of reducing "innocent casualties."
The thought sat poorly with him.
Park Seong-jin suppressed his expression and replied calmly,
"…I will consider it."
Chen Youliang clapped his hands together, delighted by the single word—
reconsider—and the sliver of possibility it implied.
"Oh! Consider it?"
"What is there to consider?"
"Just fly in, cut him down, and come back. You're an expert, aren't you?"
As the words fell, Park Seong-jin's gaze slid past Chen Youliang's shoulder.
He saw them.
Quiet, sharp presences hidden in shadow.
Not one or two.
They had concealed their auras, regulated even their breathing, guarding Chen Youliang's back.
Several had mastered the art of suppressing breath to an extreme degree.
Their centers were stable—men who had honed lightness skill and concealment for decades.
Each could face ten men alone.
They stood like shadows.
The old Park Seong-jin would have judged them as worthy opponents.
As capable bodyguards behind a general.
Now it was different.
Their breathing.
The faint vibration leaking from their control.
The way their toes anchored into the ground.
The intervals of breath that carried momentum.
All of it told him clearly.
They are beneath me.
The realization came cold and precise, as if grasped in his hand.
Their killing intent could no longer reach him.
Their attacks no longer frightened him.
He could face them all.
Silently, he thought:
You are shallow in how you use people—yet surround yourself with many guards.
But he did not speak it aloud.
He simply bowed with proper courtesy.
"I will consider it."
Chen Youliang turned away, visibly satisfied.
If it failed, the loss would be a single Goryeo general.
If it succeeded, the war would end.
That calculation clung to his back.
There were many in this world skilled at calculation.
What made it ugly
was that such calculations were always made on the pain of others,
on the sacrifices of people who had no say.
In Park Seong-jin's eyes, the momentum of the guard warriors behind Chen Youliang remained clear.
It was not the momentum of loyalty.
It was the momentum of surveillance.
Seeing it, Park Seong-jin slowed his breathing even further.
心若空谷.
When the heart is empty like a valley, energy finds its own path.
That path could lead to battle,
to people,
to power.
He murmured so softly it could not be heard:
The war has changed.
Now, it is the heart that dies before the blade.