450.
After a long silence, Liu Bowen slowly raised his head.
His gaze remained cold, but within that coldness there was a tremor.
To Liu Bowen, the word peace had always been distant, even illusory.
Those who staked their lives on grand phrases—righteous cause, the happiness of all under heaven, the well-being of humankind—he had usually regarded as people who did not understand the world.
But today was different.
Those grand words touched something deep within him, gently.
Liu Bowen asked first.
"Did you truly believe that only this would bring peace to all under heaven?"
Park Seong-jin did not hesitate even a fraction.
"Yes."
Liu Bowen lowered his head slightly and asked again.
"Then why me?
Why did you choose Liu Bowen?"
Park Seong-jin gave a low laugh.
"Who else would go?
The moment you go—
the moment you speak—
your head may leave your neck."
Liu Bowen chuckled.
"Do you expect an old strategist to go die?"
Park Seong-jin stepped closer and answered calmly.
"That, too, is why I chose you.
At the very least, you are not someone who will yield your life cheaply.
And you are someone who will speak—
by whatever means it takes."
Liu Bowen's eyes snapped open.
Park Seong-jin continued.
"Great Han's troops were strong, but its institutions were loose.
Orders varied from unit to unit.
The cost of war depended on donations from a handful of wealthy families.
Even the banners were not truly gathered into one.
When winning, it feared nothing.
But once it retreated, it could tilt toward ruin.
That was its army—and that was its country.
Ming was the opposite.
It was firm, and healthy.
You were the one who built such a state.
That is why I esteemed you more highly than Zhu Yuanzhang."
Liu Bowen's lips trembled.
"So you chose me for that."
Park Seong-jin nodded.
"Yes."
He went on.
"It was your hand that gathered that disorder and shaped it into a state."
Liu Bowen murmured low.
"Yet we lost."
Park Seong-jin smiled quietly.
"Because you did not include me in your calculation."
Liu Bowen drew in a breath.
He did not want to accept it, but the words were precise.
If Park Seong-jin had not existed, Jiangnan would have become Ming's.
Park Seong-jin added,
"The overland reinforcements from Nanchang, the ambush at Tiger's Mouth, the fire attack that used the wind—
all of it was the cycle of victory you designed."
He pointed to himself.
"I overturned that cycle."
Liu Bowen sighed as though striking his own knee.
"Hwagyeong…
a warrior born once in an age…."
Park Seong-jin quietly added,
"And King Jin Youliang accepted my request.
He had the breadth to accept.
Zhu Yuanzhang did not."
At last, Liu Bowen bowed his head.
"…So it seems.
There is no reason left to resent defeat."
Park Seong-jin straightened.
With his fist to his chest, he offered a formal military salute.
"If you aid us even now, I will not forget the debt."
Liu Bowen smiled bitterly.
"How can I not fear tosagupaeng—
the hounds boiled once the rabbits are dead?"
In that instant, Park Seong-jin's gaze sank deep.
It was brief, yet it seemed to pierce to the bottom.
"That may happen."
Liu Bowen gave a short laugh.
"You are honest."
Park Seong-jin did not dress it up.
"Even if they do, we will not leave it be."
Liu Bowen repeated.
"We?"
Park Seong-jin answered.
"Goryeo does not view people as mere usefulness.
When we know a favor, we repay it.
We do not forget help easily.
We go to the end."
He paused, then added,
"I do not mean that Jiangnan culture is bad.
The ways here are born from fierce survival.
One must build relationships to live, and often must discard them when they are no longer needed.
That is not a matter of good or evil.
It is a matter of difference."
Liu Bowen looked at Park Seong-jin without speaking.
By habit, he tried to read the man's inner self—
through subtle shifts of speech, through breath, through the scholar's accustomed methods.
But today was different.
It was like mist.
He could not grasp it.
Liu Bowen swallowed a dry breath.
"A man's heart—
I cannot read it.
It's like fog."
Park Seong-jin lifted a hand.
"You will not see it.
One who has entered Hwagyeong now moves within a different current.
A different being."
Liu Bowen murmured low.
"Like trying to read, with divination, the space between a stone and a man."
Park Seong-jin bowed his head.
"You have already stepped to the threshold.
That is why it will pain you more.
A world that cannot be read has opened for the first time."
The garden's air sank further.
Park Seong-jin asked at last,
"Will you take the task?"
Only after a long while did Liu Bowen nod.
"…I will attempt it, thinking of it as this old man's final work."
He added quietly,
"But grant me one promise."
Park Seong-jin asked,
"What is it?"
Liu Bowen's expression was bitter, but his resolve was firm.
"Let Lord Zhu, who was once an emperor of a fallen state, be at ease.
Preserve his life, and at least restore his dignity."
Park Seong-jin answered without wavering.
"There will be no amnesty that returns him to power, no restoration.
But I will do what I can.
I will prevent him from being trampled into further disgrace."
Liu Bowen looked at him for a long time, then said like a sigh,
"If I had met you earlier, I might have placed the realm in your hands."
Park Seong-jin smiled gently.
"I do not regard the realm as a good thing.
I do not desire it."
Then he added,
"Not because I lack desire—
but because I dream of something entirely different."
It was not a sentence meant to persuade a scholar.
It was an echo that rang outside the scholar's language.
Following that echo, Liu Bowen gathered his hands and bowed from beneath the pavilion steps.
A sudden wind rose, and the bamboo leaves shook once more.
The movement looked like a sign—
pen and blade, briefly acknowledging each other's worlds.
Liu Bowen — A final departure past sixty
Past sixty.
At this age, I have come again to aid another country's work.
A strategist of a fallen state goes north as the plenipotentiary envoy of the victor.
When I first heard it, my mind went blank.
They wanted me to go to the Northern Yuan and persuade them.
That road demanded a life.
Persuasion is nearly a decorative word.
That place allows little choice.
The one who holds power demands; the weaker side answers.
Now I was the shadow of the defeated.
They carried the banner of the victorious.
The great enterprise I once chased so fiercely had settled over me like shade.
A life past sixty tilts not toward holding desire, but toward sorting and closing.
Only now do I begin to see the length of a life.
And yet that young Goryeo warrior shook me.
I spoke plainly.
"Bothersome. Truly, very bothersome."
He smiled.
"I see.
Shall I prescribe you a tonic, then?
Something to bring your strength back."
At that answer, absurdity and emptiness surged together.
This youth was treating my despair as if it were merely fatigue.
As if a person's cliff were an old man's back pain.
I could not tell how he was reading me.
They say he reads people as if reading books—
what sentence did I look like to him?
An annoying old man.
An old brick needing somewhere to lean.
A lonely person with regret and resignation half-fermented.
As that thought brushed past, Park Seong-jin ended it decisively.
"I will take that as your agreement."
In that instant I lost my words.
I had not answered, and yet the matter was decided.
"…Yes?"
I did not even know when I had accepted.
I released a long breath.
"Heu…"
In the meantime, he said a few more things—measures, he called them.
Long-term, he would have me treated as a Goryeo scholar.
A residence, a nominal post, even an invitation to enter a scholarly household.
To think such a thing would come at sixty.
A life I thought no one would ever seek again suddenly had use.
Envoy of Great Han
A few days later, the envoy procession bound for the Northern Yuan was assembled.
The day was cold, and the wind that blew from Poyang Lake still carried moisture.
At the dock on the southern reach of Yingtian—on the Jing River—
a small column stood in line.
Neither soldiers nor escort were many.
They did not inflate their show of force.
Too much becomes a challenge.
Too little becomes contempt.
I stood on that narrow balance.
On the banner, four characters were stamped in red ink:
「Great Han Envoy」
Over a light military robe I wore a plain blue cloak.
My leather shoes were old, their color faded.
From afar, it looked like an elderly scholar departing.
And yet the eyes of others lingered.
Jin Youliang's trust.
Park Seong-jin's request.
Yun Dam's backing.
The most tangled of all was me.
At the edge of the dock, someone asked carefully,
"Will you go, Lord Yu?"
I smiled.
"I see no road except the road that goes.
If you mean to remain alive, you must move."
Then I added,
"Still—having work to do is not a bad thing."
I meant it.
For a man past sixty, to whom both death and life had grown calm, work was given again.
It was close to a blessing.
Then Park Seong-jin brought someone onto the ship.
Zhang Hui—
a young strategist of the Later Han camp, a man who had once represented honest counsel in Jin Youliang's tent.
Park Seong-jin said,
"He said he would serve you like an uncle."
Zhang Hui bowed awkwardly.
"I will assist you, Lord Yu."
I let out a short laugh.
"So I truly have grown old.
To receive help from the young."
Yet one corner of my heart warmed.
As age increases, pride thins.
And beneath it, human warmth seeps in more easily.
The ship began to move, cutting the river.
Gray water, a dull sky, mist layered upon mist.
I stood at the prow and murmured inwardly.
Yes—
past sixty, it is not so bad to take on one last great task.
Zhang Hui asked carefully,
"Aren't you afraid?"
I smiled faintly.
"Afraid, of course.
But at this point, not much will change."
Then I added, almost to myself,
"Work can save a person.
Work can kill a person.
This time, I hope it is the saving kind."
The ship departed for the Northern Yuan.
It was an old scholar's final campaign.