358
Between Justification and Defying Heaven
That night, after finishing his conversation with Yoon Dam and stepping out of the command tent,
Park Seong-jin felt his heart still trembling faintly.
A cold wind brushed past him.
It felt as though the wind were prying open the thoughts he had tried to keep hidden.
If I truly killed Zhu Yuanzhang,
even if it were defying Heaven—would Heaven not understand?
He tried to offer himself an excuse.
If the blade were raised to reduce bloodshed.
If it were for the sake of the people.
Would that not mean Heaven itself lent a hand?
He stared at the back of his hand for a long moment, then quietly shook his head.
In the end, it was nothing more than cheap consolation granted by one who carried a blade.
A temptation of the heart—wanting to say I am right in order to endure the battlefield and justify blood.
The moment one places the name justice upon that temptation,
the danger deepens.
Even now, in places I cannot see, Heaven's current is flowing.
From far beyond the battlefield that sustained the war,
he sensed as though a massive hand were touching the flow itself.
The grain of Heaven did not move by the will of a single person.
The instant declarations of right and wrong were laid upon it,
humans became cruel.
The suffering of the people.
Their anger.
The conditions of countless regions.
Centuries of resentment and fate.
If all of that tangled together to form Heaven's current—
would killing a man like that truly make things better?
Park Seong-jin asked himself again.
"Does the world truly become peaceful only if Zhu Yuanzhang dies?"
The question rang within him like cold metal,
sending a subtle counterforce through his thoughts.
The death of a single man might not be the answer.
Kill one, and another—worse than the first—could stand in the same place and press down upon the world once more.
Perhaps death itself stood apart from the seat of the answer.
A thought surfaced.
If the Yuan dynasty's exploitation was unbearable,
and so the age demanded crowning someone slightly less cruel—but equally vile—
was that what Heaven's Mandate meant?
Between those who move toward good and those who move toward evil,
to whom does Heaven's current truly gather?
In this war, even good and evil were blurred.
Both sides screamed and struggled to kill each other—
where, then, was good and where was evil?
Dividing the world by good and evil was the easiest way.
Calling things right or wrong was even easier.
Everyone spoke of righteousness.
Everyone spoke of the people.
They had chosen Jin Yuliang.
Yet there was no guarantee that Heaven's current gathered to him either.
Jin Yuliang fought the Yuan.
Zhu Yuanzhang attacked Jin Yuliang.
Thus they believed Jin Yuliang stood on the side of justice.
They judged, by the situation, that Jin Yuliang would become the ruler of this land.
They believed peace would follow.
Zhu Yuanzhang, however, would not stop at Jiangnan—
he would carry the flames of war in all directions.
The thought chilled Park Seong-jin's chest.
"Then what are we, in this battlefield?"
He answered himself.
We are merely one fragment being tested by Heaven's flow.
Perhaps life itself was always like this—
countless innocent lives swept away within a vast current,
before any purpose or meaning could even be assigned.
Then another realization followed.
"Heaven does not choose someone.
Rather, when the flow gathers, that person becomes the master of the world."
If so, then Jin Yuliang's current advantage was merely borrowed wind.
Zhu Yuanzhang's persistence seemed less like Heaven's will
and more like momentum he had forged himself.
Park Seong-jin remained lost in those thoughts for a long time.
"Then what meaning does this flow hold for us now?"
He rubbed his palms together.
They were warm.
With these hands, some would live, and some would die.
But for the consequences of these hands to grow large enough to alter Heaven's current,
more time was needed.
Slowly, he reached a conclusion.
"I still lack the qualification to touch Heaven's current.
Therefore, the justification to raise my blade in the name of defying Heaven is weak."
And finally, he murmured quietly,
"My task is not to defy Heaven,
but to watch the flow, and hone myself until the moment it reaches me."
He stood and grasped his blade.
The dawn air seeped along its edge.
In that moment, Park Seong-jin understood.
True defiance of Heaven was not raising a blade to cut the sky—
it was choosing a path beyond what one could bear.
The eastern sky began to brighten.
Park Seong-jin stepped quietly into that flow.
The Peace of a Frozen Front
A battlefield where fighting had stopped was, paradoxically, peaceful.
Where blades once clashed,
where black smoke and the stench of blood once rose,
now only wind passed through.
When blood cooled, even the soil grew still.
When the drums stopped, the sky, too, seemed to breathe.
The fierce momentum of both armies pushed people away from that land.
Neither side dared touch it.
To do so would invite collision—
and collision meant battle.
Land abandoned by human footsteps returned swiftly to nature.
Grass grew waist-high within days.
Rabbits, badgers, great deer unbothered by the metallic scent of weapons,
even crows and hawks claimed the ground.
The safest place in the world
was the boundary of a battlefield.
Park Seong-jin loved that place more than anyone.
After meals, he walked there.
For brief naps at midday, he rested beneath its trees.
It was where he could breathe fully
in the heart of war.
His time deepened especially at night.
The Night Boundary — Park Seong-jin's Perception Covers the Battlefield
When the sun set, the current of the front changed completely.
By day, dust, sunlight, and noise scattered intent.
By night, those currents gathered, dense as black silk.
Across them, Park Seong-jin's perception spread wide.
At first, it was close to hearing—
filtering footsteps, movements, even breath.
Soon, it shifted to reading.
Before breath sounded, the intent to inhale appeared.
Before a foot landed, the will behind it brushed past.
At last, not the blade itself,
but the minute tremor of killing intent before the blade was drawn
caught in his awareness.
He moved freely even near Zhu Yuanzhang's forward camps—
approaching unnoticed, withdrawing unseen.
People left traces.
Momentum erased them.
Park Seong-jin's movement was such that momentum opened the path first,
and his body flowed along it.
Zhu Yuanzhang's scouts could not approach.
When patrols failed to return once, twice, repeatedly,
Zhu Yuanzhang pulled his reconnaissance ten li back.
The front had not retreated—
only its eyes and ears.
Within Park Seong-jin's perception, their fear spread like ripples.
In words: The boundary is dangerous.
In momentum: Do not enter that place.
"A ghost-like bastard who comes unseen and removes us one by one."
The assessment matched the reality of the battlefield.
The night battlefield had already fallen into his grasp.
A Shift in Momentum — Unfamiliar Breaths
Then, one night—
The wind stilled.
The battlefield grew unnaturally quiet.
Park Seong-jin spread his perception once more.
This, too, was training.
As the world seeped into his sharpened senses,
his own grain became clearer.
At that moment, a single, minute tremor brushed past from afar.
First came the texture of breath—
the current of someone drawing a deep inhale, slicing through the layers of night.
Then followed the faint pulse unique to those who had wielded killing intent before.
It was the grain of one who made a living by killing.
An unfamiliar martial presence.
It carried the scent of the northern regions—
the momentum of those who lived by brutal work on the outskirts near the capital.
They were called bandits by some,
and righteous outlaws by themselves.
In truth, it was the grain of thieves.
Flowery names were often just devices to hide ugliness.
The strange bitterness of Sichuan martial artists pricked his senses.
Different grains overlapped, forming an eerie killing wind.
Park Seong-jin's eyes opened slowly.
"They've come."
The certainty in his voice preceded any information.
Zhu Yuanzhang had drawn in external experts—
that fact arrived through momentum before reports ever could.
This was not the scent of an army.
It was the scent of hunters.
Of thieves and brigands.
Of those who had lived by the blade.
People who could be killed.
Or rather—
people who lived having already accepted death.
They fed themselves on the deaths of others.
They could be killed without regret.
A brief wind passed.
The battlefield returned to stillness.
A faint, ash-colored smile spread across Park Seong-jin's lips.
It was not fear.
It was anticipation.
At last, opponents worthy of testing his blade were approaching.
In the darkness, his momentum rose clear and steady—
deeper than the petty bandits the battlefield had shed until now.
Upon the silence of war and the peace of nature,
a new killing intent settled.
Park Seong-jin rose slowly and said softly,
"If Heaven has sent them,
then I am being given the chance to become that much stronger."
The wind brushed the grass.
Beasts withdrew into the forest.
What they sensed was not only Park Seong-jin.
Another beast
had stepped onto this battlefield.
Within him, joy pooled quietly.
Pleasure spread, restrained but growing.
Expectation took shape.
He waited for the moment
when the future would touch the present