Toqto — The Weight of an Empire
Toqto remained mounted.
The battlefield unfolded before him in layers—
smoke, stone, men, and will.
Gaoyu still stood.
The flag of Great Zhou fluttered, scorched but unbroken.
It was not the wall that troubled him.
Walls always fell.
What resisted was time.
The siege had gone on too long.
Too long for an imperial war.
Toqto had learned this early:
when a war drags, it is no longer decided by force alone.
It becomes politics.
Faith.
Numbers written elsewhere.
He had sent tens of thousands south.
Enough to crush a city twice this size.
Yet the walls endured.
Not because Zhang Shicheng was a great general.
But because people remained inside.
Toqto had seen this before.
Cities held not by soldiers, but by meaning.
He rested one hand lightly on the reins.
The horse sensed the stillness and did not move.
Behind him, the Yuan army waited—
disciplined, exhausted, obedient.
They would advance when told.
They would die when ordered.
That was not the problem.
The problem was that killing them would not end this war.
Toqto knew the south.
Jiangnan was not the north.
It did not break under hooves.
Water remembered footsteps.
Marshes swallowed formations.
Villages did not flee—they watched.
And Zhang Shicheng had understood this first.
Salt merchant.
Commoner.
King.
A man who did not command by banners,
but by distribution.
Grain moved.
Salt flowed.
Taxes remained predictable.
That alone made him dangerous.
Toqto closed his eyes briefly.
In the capital, the emperor's breath was shallow.
Poison had brushed too close—twice in one month.
The court whispered.
Factions shifted.
Victory here was not optional.
If Jiangnan's grain did not move north,
markets in Dadu would starve before armies did.
Salt stopped.
Coin followed.
Then soldiers stopped moving.
Empires did not fall to swords.
They suffocated.
That was why Goryeo had been summoned.
Not for numbers.
For a different kind of blade.
Toqto opened his eyes.
The Goryeo general stood below—
Yi In-jung.
Dust on his armor.
Back straight.
Eyes steady.
Not ambitious.
Not fearful.
Useful.
More importantly—
detached.
Men like that saw battle as structure, not glory.
Toqto respected that.
He shifted his gaze past Yi In-jung.
There—
among the quiet figures near the edge of the camp.
A young man.
Not watching the walls.
Not watching the siege engines.
Watching people.
The boy's posture was loose.
His presence was not loud.
Yet the space around him felt… intact.
Toqto narrowed his eyes slightly.
That one does not burn quickly.
Interesting.
He turned his attention back to the city.
Zhang Shicheng had built order from hunger.
Toqto would dismantle it with precision.
Break the flow.
Cut the routes.
Force the choice.
Not a massacre.
A collapse.
Toqto spoke, his voice carrying just enough.
"We will open the way."
This war would not be won by strength alone.
It would be decided by
who understood how people endured—
and how long they could be made to wait.
Above the smoke, the flag still waved.
Toqto watched it without hatred.
Only calculation.