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Zhang Shicheng — The Salt Merchant Who Became a King**
Along the roads leading into Jiangnan, his name arrived before the army did.
In every township and village, people spoke it in lowered voices, always with caution at the end of their words.
"Zhang Shicheng (張士誠), they say."
Yi In-jung slowed his steps as he spoke.
"He was once a salt peddler. A wandering trader who hauled goods along the rivers and roads. But the Yuan taxes grew harsher each year—so harsh that even after selling a single dou of salt, he had to surrender half of it in tax."
Seong-jin nodded.
Salt, they said, was the root of life.
That a man who once sold life itself had now founded a country lingered strangely in his chest.
Zhang Shicheng's uprising began where hunger and oppression finally overlapped. At first, he seized salt warehouses. Next, he took control of grain transport ships. Farmers and merchants with nothing to their names gathered beneath his banner.
On that banner, written in red characters, were the words:
"Grain belongs to the people."
That sentence set hearts alight.
The great clans and officials of Jiangnan fled first. Temples opened their storehouses and gave up rice. Village elders came out to the roadside, holding children by the hand, to watch his columns pass.
"Lord Zhang is coming."
He forbade plunder. Wherever his troops passed, he ordered the sealing of farm granaries.
"Grain is the flesh of people. When many go hungry, the enemy is never far."
Because of this, Zhang Shicheng came to be called the Righteous King (義王) among the people of Jiangnan.
But to the Yuan court, such mercy appeared as the seed of rebellion.
The fortresses he built were high, and the hearts of the people who followed him were firmer than soldiers. Yuan first chose persuasion.
"Submit to the court, and you will be enfeoffed as King of Jiangnan."
Zhang Shicheng did not answer.
After that, the number of people gathering under his banner swelled rapidly.
He was unlike the Red Turbans of the north. His army was a mixture—able-bodied men and farmers, merchants and monks. There were more pickaxes than swords, more wooden staves than spears. And yet their eyes held a resolve that went beyond hunger.
At last, he founded a state.
He named it Great Zhou (大周) and proclaimed himself emperor. His era name was Tianyou (天祐)—Heaven's Aid. If Heaven helped, the people would live.
The Yuan court burned with fury.
But the northern fronts were tied down, and the wet fields of Jiangnan swallowed the hooves of northern cavalry. And so they sent envoys to Goryeo.
"Pacify the rebellion in Jiangnan."
That single command became the justification that drew Seong-jin back into war.
The same order went out to imperial princes and tributary states. Goryeo was only one among them. The difference lay in this: Goryeo had persuaded the warlord Naghachu of the Nong'an region and received recognition for occupying Liaoyang and Shenshui—provided they proved their worth in this war.
They had been enticed into it.
Yi In-jung halted and looked out over the fog-veiled riverbank.
"Zhang Shicheng is no tyrant. He is a man reclaiming what was taken. In the eyes of the people, he is righteous."
He paused, drew a breath, then continued.
"And yet the order we received is to strike him."
Seong-jin could not answer.
The words felt like a truth caught on the edge of a blade.
The enemy was not evil—but a man who had lived in another direction.
That night, Seong-jin stepped outside the tent and looked up at the southern sky. The starlight was faint, and from across the river came no sound at all. Somewhere out there, a man was ruling a country.
A country not built by the sword alone, but upon the hunger of the people.
How was one meant to strike such a thing?
After entering Jiangnan, there was no battlefield—only quiet.
The land was peaceful. Forward patrols maintained a taut vigilance, and enemy movements were occasionally detected, but there was no encounter with a main force. Villages stood whole, without signs of fighting, and roads stretched southward unbroken.
That stillness felt foreign.
The paddies were tilled. Waterways had been carefully maintained. The rain had passed and the soil was wet, but the embankments remained firm—clear signs of constant care.
Seong-jin read this from horseback.
The traces of people's lives were clearer than the traces of armies.
In one village, grain lay spread along the roadside to dry. When soldiers approached, several villagers looked up. Their demeanor held neither excessive wariness nor loud welcome—only the natural response of people continuing their daily lives.
Seong-jin loosened the reins.
Beneath a tree's shade, an old man sat repairing fishing nets. He recalled hearing that in Jiangnan, fishing nets were as important as grain. The old man spoke evenly.
"Zhang Shicheng's men take only a fixed share. So everyone prepares in advance."
There was no resentment in his tone, no embellishment—just the face of someone explaining the rules of living.
Paying a little to Zhang Shicheng was better than paying heavy taxes to the state.
Farther down, a granary came into view. Its doors were locked and sealed. The marks were rough and crude—not official military seals—but they clearly showed intent. Someone had deliberately chosen not to violate them.
Seong-jin stared at the seal for a long time.
On battlefields, promises to prevent plunder were always hollow. To keep such promises, one had to bind hearts before enforcing discipline. He had learned that lesson clearly in Liaodong.
Here, he saw no signs of that collapse.
At the village entrance, two children carried water. They paused briefly when they saw soldiers, then stepped aside. When one child nearly dropped the jug, a woman behind quietly steadied it. Her gaze lingered not on the soldiers, but on the child.
Seong-jin watched the scene for a long time.
On battlefields, children were always the first to disappear. But here, they stood within daily life.
That night, Seong-jin sat outside his tent.
He did not draw his sword. He tried to settle his breath, but it did not clear as easily as it had in the mountains. Yi In-jung's words returned to him.
In Jiangnan, you must learn water.
Water flows without revealing sound. If unblocked, it returns. If blocked, it stagnates.
He had heard enough reports about Zhang Shicheng: that he was called the Righteous King, that people followed him willingly, that he valued order over plunder. Until now, those things had existed only as words.
Today's landscape was not words.
Seong-jin looked down at his hands.
The things these hands had cut down, the things he believed he had protected—set against the wholeness of Jiangnan's scenery, they felt uncomfortably intact.
And for the first time, he realized this:
Before fighting, he was weighing the reason for this war.
A fine crack had appeared in the great cause—the righteousness of defending the state. Because to fight a righteous man, they were joining hands with another form of evil.
We are the villains.
Perhaps it was the needless self-loathing of a mercenary. Or perhaps the realization that he himself was part of that current pressed down quietly—but deeply—upon his heart.
Night deepened.
Most of the camp's lamps were extinguished. Only one command tent still held a faint, breathing glow. Seong-jin passed before it by chance. From the slit in the tent, light leaked out, and with it the low voices of two men drifted on the wind.
"In Jiangnan, Zhang Shicheng comes from a salt merchant's roots. A man who sold salt established order among the people."
Silence followed. The lamp flickered, stretching shadows long across the tent wall.
"If we strike him, the flow of goods will be restored and regulated. But the hearts of the people may collapse with him."
Seong-jin stopped walking.
Zhang Shicheng.
Though it was a name he had only recently heard, it felt familiar—like a story that had long settled deep within his ears, echoing heavily. Perhaps it had carried through old cycles of inheritance and rebirth.
Yun Gyeong-bok's voice resumed.
"Those who follow him are not an army. They are the people. Perhaps more numerous than soldiers. I cannot yet judge whether destroying such a man truly means protecting the state."
After a long while, Yi In-jung answered quietly.
"I know. But the order has been given. We are not men standing in judgment—we are soldiers standing in battle."
Those words cut precisely through Seong-jin's chest.
He stood there, breathing out slowly. Inside the tent, the two shadows overlapped on the ground, then separated—sometimes appearing as one person, sometimes as a single fear divided in two.
Strike the righteous man.
Was that truly the task before them?
"Then what do I become?"
Until now, Seong-jin had never doubted his own fighting. He believed he wielded the sword for the country, for the people, to survive. That belief carried him through Liaodong, through Shenshui, and here.
But now, for the first time, it wavered.
Because this war was not his choice.
His hand drifted unconsciously to the hilt of his sword. The cold, heavy feel remained in his palm. It was no longer merely a weapon—it felt like a scale weighing right and wrong.
Inside the tent, the conversation continued.
"If the flow of goods from Jiangnan is cut, the entire empire will shake."
"That is precisely why Zhang Shicheng must be struck."
Seong-jin listened no longer. He turned quietly and walked into the darkness. The sky was thick with clouds, the stars hidden from view.
Even with his ears closed, the words remained.
We fight for peace.
The phrase rang hollow in his chest.
Not for a great cause, but for someone's private gain—we were nothing more than mercenaries fighting under borrowed banners.
War was not a matter of combat, but of politics.
And he was merely a blade placed at the far end of that politics.
The reason these commanders had gathered here, too, felt closer to someone's calculation than to the needs of the state.
Whose peace are we fighting for?
Then, from the distant riverbank, a waterbird cried—low and drawn out, like a sound hauled up from beneath the water.
Without realizing it, Seong-jin murmured,
"If the enemy is righteous, by what name do I raise my sword?"
The words scattered into the night wind.
But their echo did not fade easily.
From that day on, the question remained within him—lingering, and slowly, steadily, moving.