The White Lotus Sect was not a group that formed as a rebel organization from the outset.After the fall of the Southern Song, during the process in which the Yuan consolidated its system of rule, it functioned as a faith community relied upon by people pushed out of the social safety net.Faith in Amitabha and the Pure Land was not used as a slogan to overturn the existing order, but as a language to endure suffering.
Over time, however, faith gradually produced organization.Collective chanting and communal living gave rise to questions, and those questions shifted into discontent toward the system.In this process, some groups, combined with belief in Maitreya, began to argue for change in the present world.From that point on, White Lotus–affiliated faith groups were classified by the Yuan court as potential threats.
The groups known as the Red Turbans emerged from this current.Those who used red cloth as their marker rejected the existing order and put forward a new world.Uprisings spread across the Central Plains, and government offices and fortresses became targets of attack.However, the rebellions lacked a unified command structure and failed to establish any long-term vision for governance.
When the counteroffensive of the official armies began, the defeated groups were gradually pushed northward.Crossing rivers and mountains, the remaining factions scattered, and some flowed through Liaodong and into the borders of Goryeo.They were no longer religious communities or reform movements, but closer to armed itinerant groups struggling to survive.
Those who remained and held out in Liaoyang Fortress were likewise remnants of these forces.The administrative system had already collapsed, and the provincial governor had withdrawn.What remained in the city were troops that had broken away from organization, civilians unable to leave, and armed remnants of faith-based groups.
Their retention of the name White Lotus Sect was less for religious purpose than as a marker of cohesion.The Pure Land and Maitreya were no longer promises of the future, but languages used to justify present action.Liaoyang Fortress was not a center of faith, but the final defensive position chosen by a group whose escape routes had vanished.
Liaoyang Fortress lay abandoned, burned in many places.The walls were scorched, blurring the boundary between stone and ash, and the pillars of the watchtowers, rising like towers, had sunk halfway under the pressure of heat.From a distance it looked like a ruined temple, but up close it was a fortress that still retained the heat of people.
The air was layered with mingled smells.The stench of rotting blood, the smell of burned grain, and threaded faintly between them, the lingering scent of incense.It was the smell rising from ash left behind by burned sutras.
Park Seong-jin sat on horseback, gazing at the fortress for a long while.Above the gate, the banner of the White Lotus Sect still hung.The red cloth had darkened to a deep crimson, soaked in blood and smoke, and each time it caught the wind, the edge of the fabric swayed slowly.
Below it, the shouts of people continued.At first they sounded like chanting.Soon, however, ragged breathing and broken phrases mixed in.They were shouts that had lost their rhythm.
"Maitreya is coming. Maitreya is coming."
When the sound struck the walls and echoed back, a cold, settled chill brushed faintly along Seong-jin's back.In that cry, human urgency was heard before the name of any god.It sounded less like faith than a desperate attempt not to fall behind in the reality of the moment.
"Faith…."
He muttered quietly.The word offered neither explanation nor comfort.Inside the fortress, flames were rising once more.
As if oil had been poured on it, the fire suddenly flared up, heating the metal embedded in the walls until it glowed red.In the light that spread up into the dawn sky, even the faces of distant soldiers were stained crimson.
Oh Jin-cheol spoke quietly at his side."Embers. If left alone, they'll catch again."
Seong-jin watched the fire.Human shapes flickered within the flames, and among them his own shadow swayed as well.Liaoyang Fortress was a place where all of it was entangled together.Prayer and shouting, traces of the living and the dead, remained within the fire, unable to be separated from one another.