449.
A confrontation of pen and blade—
Park Seong-jin meets Zhu Yuanzhang's strategist.
After the war, the outer city of Yingtian felt even more sharply quiet.
The smell of burnt wood mixed with wet earth, and every breath caught the refuse of a finished age in the throat.
Receiving Liu Bowen's request, Park Seong-jin avoided the splendid command tents and the grand intimidation of the main hall.
Where hearts gather, words twist.
And when words twist, intent turns turbid.
So he chose the garden of a private residence—an ownerless house.
It followed the garden style then fashionable in Jiangnan, yet seemed long neglected.
That neglect only deepened its stillness.
At the center stood a small pavilion.
A wind passed beneath the steps and brushed the bamboo leaves, setting them trembling.
A moss-covered stone lantern held time with quiet elegance, and beside it a pond held a shallow pool of sky.
This was ground once trampled by bloodied knees, and yet this place, of all places, could return a man to being human—if only once.
A small, lonely refuge where one might live buried for a lifetime and fade away without bitterness.
Park Seong-jin stood in the pavilion.
He did not bring forward sword, armor, or the intimidating bearing of a warrior.
Even standing plainly, his qi seemed ordered.
A moment later, soldiers led in an elderly scholar, gaunt to the point of pity.
"If his hands remain bound, what bursts out first is not speech but suppressed rage.
We are here to speak—so his hands should be freed."
It was Park Seong-jin who asked for that first.
The guards hesitated.
Perhaps the old strategist looked more dangerous once the ropes were loosened.
Or perhaps they were held by the fixed notion that a criminal and an enemy prisoner must be bound.
The courage of the oppressed is rough.
The bearing of the free is cold.
Park Seong-jin wanted to hear a cold truth.
That, precisely, was his intent.
Liu Bowen looked up at Park Seong-jin from below the pavilion.
It was their first face-to-face meeting, and yet they knew each other too well from fighting as enemies.
They already knew which strategies on the battlefield had been born inside the other man's mind.
For a while, neither spoke.
In Liu Bowen's eyes, the ugliness of war had been replaced by a strange overlap—
wariness and respect, at last meeting the man he had long wanted to see.
Liu Bowen asked first,
"Are you Commander Park Seong-jin?"
Park Seong-jin answered with courtesy.
"Yes. I am Park Seong-jin."
Liu Bowen let out a breath like a dry laugh.
"To think someone who looks this young overturned the flow of the world…"
Park Seong-jin bowed his head slightly.
"I am not such a great person.
I am only a warrior of Goryeo."
Liu Bowen shook his head.
"No.
In a war we could not afford to lose, we lost.
Your strategy was formidable."
Then he added, bluntly—
"I have no heart to feel gratitude for praise. We lost.
And the reason no strategy worked… was you."
Park Seong-jin answered with humility.
"I don't know what to do with such excessive words."
"You have already moved an age," Liu Bowen said.
"Some say you read Heaven's mechanism. Some say you have entered Hwagyŏng."
"I had a small awakening."
"It was not small," Liu Bowen replied.
"What shook and overturned history was you."
Park Seong-jin turned his gaze aside.
The sky reflected in the pond trembled.
He disliked the phrase moved history.
It sounded like a fate—being dragged, again and again, into someone else's history.
He let out a short breath.
Then he spoke the sentence he had repeated countless times since the first day he came down into Jiangnan.
"I came for peace.
I believed a threefold balance of states would be peace for the world."
Liu Bowen's eyes quivered faintly.
In this era of struggle for the deer, to speak of peace—
"Peace…" he murmured.
"A fine word.
But doesn't it seem foolish?"
Park Seong-jin continued.
"The peace of the Song era—
a order in which, across the Yangtze, the northern powers and the steppe, the southern empire, and Goryeo did not rashly covet one another.
That is why we entered this war."
His voice remained calm.
"In that time, rather than war, chancellors argued.
Envoys and clerks—those called 'minor sorts'—carried documents across Sichuan, Jiangnan, and Beiping and negotiated.
I saw that order as a peace like three cauldrons standing together.
That peace lasted more than a hundred years.
I earnestly wish for another hundred years—
a northern empire, a southern empire, and Goryeo—
each keeping peace."
Liu Bowen listened as though he were taking dictation, then narrowed his eyes.
"So you aided Jin Youliang."
"Yes."
"So you aided Jin Youliang because you thought peace would come."
"Yes. If Zhu Yuanzhang unified the realm, he would attack the capital at Dadu—Beijing—
and even drive on to Shangdu, Xanadu.
Goryeo could not have avoided that arrow."
Liu Bowen drew in a heavy breath.
He had never seen anyone sketch such a broad design of the world—
and from someone so young.
For a moment, the garden air froze.
Something Liu Bowen had kept pressed down rose and caught on that single word.
He stepped closer and spoke as if carving letters with a knife.
"I will ask one thing—only to confirm."
"Please."
Park Seong-jin lifted his head.
Liu Bowen chewed each word before releasing it.
"If you speak of Song peace—
why did you not aid Ming?
Why did you aid Jin Youliang, and not our Lord Zhu?
We were not mere Red Turbans.
We were the righteous force of the Central Plains that overthrew Yuan corruption.
If you truly sought the peace you describe, should you not have aided Zhu Yuanzhang rather than Jin Youliang?"
In the middle of the garden, scholar and warrior stood facing each other.
Liu Bowen was a man who stabbed with logic.
Park Seong-jin was a man who had cut with a blade.
But today, Park Seong-jin held not a sword, but words.
He steadied his breath and said,
"I did not weigh who was right.
That is not my portion."
Liu Bowen's eyes flashed.
"Then what did you weigh?"
Park Seong-jin tilted his head slightly.
"I watched who could stop."
Liu Bowen repeated, as if incredulous.
"Stop?"
"Yes.
Stop the war.
Stop the momentum.
Stop the greed that comes after victory."
Liu Bowen snorted.
"And how would you know who will do such a thing?
A future not yet arrived?"
"I judged that your lord, Zhu Yuanzhang, would not."
"And you judged Jin Youliang would."
"Yes."
"On what grounds?"
"Your Lord Zhu cared less for righteousness than for the hunt.
It was proved when Ming struck Great Han first.
Before that, the various righteous armies did not attack one another.
One might say he revealed his fangs first."
"Absurd."
"He treated his generals with generosity because he needed them.
But once seated above the throne, he would have killed them all."
"You cannot condemn the present by guessing a future."
Park Seong-jin fell silent for a moment.
Then he spoke very softly, yet firmly.
"He sees the end.
Even when he has desire, he sees the end of desire.
You know this."
Liu Bowen's mouth closed.
For the first time, he did not answer at once.
Park Seong-jin continued.
"But Lord Zhu finds it hard to stop.
Unify Jiangnan, and he will strike Beiping.
Take Beiping, and he will strike the steppe.
Take the steppe, and he will look to the Western Regions—
then Liaodong—
and at last, he will look to Goryeo."
Liu Bowen's eyes widened.
"That cannot be known."
"I did not watch events," Park Seong-jin said, shaking his head slowly.
"I watched momentum."
He tapped his chest once with his fingertip.
"Even if covered with virtue and tolerance, the momentum of desire is hard to hide.
It was the strongest, the deepest, and it reached the farthest.
I aided the one who can stop.
Only then can the threefold balance stand, and all under heaven settle."
Liu Bowen's hand clenched his sleeve.
His fingertips trembled.
For the first time, he received Park Seong-jin's words not as a warrior's excuse, but as a scholar's logic.
His voice sank.
"…I thought you only a man of arms.
But you have seen the realm more deeply than we scholars."
Park Seong-jin shook his head.
"I am not a man who seeks to change the world."
"Then what are you?"
"I am a man who wishes to make himself, even 조금이라도, a better being.
A studying man.
That is why I desire a peaceful world.
I came from Goryeo to here and fought without reward.
Goryeo takes no gain.
What we gain is a hundred years of peace among three states."
Liu Bowen asked again.
"Why is that peace?"
Park Seong-jin did not press his voice.
He lowered it further.
"When the Central Plains and Jiangnan become one empire, Goryeo has always suffered.
It was so in Han times, and so in Tang times.
When the eastern powers fell and the unified empire rose, it turned eastward and invaded.
We learned from history.
The Central Plains must not be unified.
When unified, it torments the surrounding nations."
He spoke while looking as though past the far wall of the garden, toward the east.
"We desire two empires—Jiangnan and the Central Plains.
Let them compete and refine themselves.
Let that competition flow into civilization.
That is the world we dream of."
Liu Bowen lost his words.
The grand language of righteousness he had built for a lifetime suddenly seemed lighter than Park Seong-jin's single line.
Not peace by unification—
but peace within divided rivalry.
Park Seong-jin turned slightly, then faced Liu Bowen again.
"The one who tries to change the world turns the world into an enemy.
But the one who changes himself can hold the world."
A cool wind brushed the pavilion.
Many things were explained.
Why Goryeo had entered this war.
Why a master of Hwagyŏng had come out into the world.
Only then did Liu Bowen bow his head, slowly.
"…If that is so, then I will stake my life to stand before the Great Khan of the Northern Yuan."
"Thank you."
"You thought my going would carry the greatest weight."
"Yes."
"And was that also your counsel?"
"It is embarrassing to admit, but yes."
Liu Bowen added, very quietly,
"If a world exists where a warrior like you exists, then perhaps a peace of three states truly may be possible."