The White Lotus Sect was not a rebellion from the beginning.

  It was a tone of despair.

  When the Southern Song collapsed and the Yuan entered, the world changed too quickly.

  The law grew distant, officials grew greedy, and the people grew silent.

  To be silent meant, in the end, not to be heard.

  Those who were not heard had to search for a language with which to save themselves.

  The name of Amitabha was spoken that way.

  The wish to be born in the Pure Land, the hope that the next life would be free of suffering.

  The White Lotus Sect was the place where those hopes gathered.

  It spoke of equality and compassion, and believed that anyone could be saved.

  That alone made the world uneasy.

  The moment the poor spoke with one voice, power saw it not as faith but as a threat.

  Prayer did not last long.

  Prayer soon became questions, and questions became anger.

  Why must we only wait for salvation.

  Why is this world so rotten.

  The moment they tried to answer those questions, a sword was placed beside the sutras.

  Chanting turned into shouts, and the Pure Land became something that had to be made “here and now.”

  The world of Maitreya—

  the words were hope, and at the same time, the language of war.

  Men with red cloth tied around their heads appeared.

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  Called the Red Turbans, they cried out that they would burn the world to summon a new one.

  The flames truly spread.

  Government offices burned, fortresses collapsed, and people swung their swords while chanting the Buddha’s name.

  But the world did not change easily.

  Fire burned everything, yet what remained was only ash and corpses.

  The defeated were pushed north.

  Fleeing the pursuit of the Yuan, they crossed rivers and mountains.

  They flowed into Goryeo through Liaodong, across the Amnok River.

  At one time, those red banners reached even beneath the sky of Gaegyeong.

  The king fled, the city burned.

  The people dying in the streets also chanted the Buddha’s name.

  No one could tell what was salvation and what was destruction.

  They were barely driven out.

  But they did not disappear completely.

  Faith does not go out.

  Defeated faith changes its form.

  It changes its name, folds its banners, and gathers again.

  The names White Lotus Sect and Red Turbans returned that way, with different faces in every age.

  They always spoke of a “new world.”

  Yet that new world only ever revealed itself atop the ruins of a collapsed one.

  Those who remained in Liaoyang Fortress were part of that same extension.

  The dying embers of the White Lotus Sect.

  A group with only the shell of faith left.

  They spoke of devotion, but in their eyes there was neither Maitreya nor Buddha.

  Hunger and anger—those had already taken the place of faith.

  The Pure Land was no longer a promise of the next life.

  It was an excuse to survive tonight, a reason to grip a sword.

  They had originally been people of the Central Plains.

  But now, they were citizens of no country.

  Driven out and pushed aside, the last thing they clung to was faith—

  and even that faith had become a weapon.

  When the Goryeo army came to a halt before Liaoyang Fortress,

  the enemies inside already knew.

  This battle was not a war that called for salvation,

  but a fight in which the remaining embers would finally go out.