- When the Current Turns
The moment he left the gorge, Park Seongjin loosened his grip on the reins.
He aligned the sensations of his entire body with the flow of force.
The wind moved darkly.
The current of momentum was reversing.
The soil beneath the horse’s hooves felt heavy.
Even the angle at which the grass twisted in the breeze was different from before.
“…The force is different.”
Park halted his horse.
Staring into empty space, he murmured quietly.
“When the enemy retreats, momentum settles.”
“But there— the current is rising.”
“And it splits in two.”
The directions were clear.
One flowed north, toward the mouth of Poyang Lake.
The other flowed east, into a space that should have been empty.
There, momentum was gathering.
It was the shape of an army advancing on victory.
“…They are converging.”
Park read the flow.
Zhu Yuanzhang was moving.
More precisely, it was not the man who moved— momentum itself was lifting him.
A battlefield usually moves by human hands.
Very rarely, heaven and earth choose a direction first.
This was the point where that grain had opened.
They say that when cultivation deepens, one touches the boundary of the Immortal Path.
That is why arts like geomancy and concealment are learned not by theory, but through the body.
Park Seongjin had never formally studied such disciplines.
Yet by reading the flow through bodily sense alone, he stood at that threshold.
His perception did not stop at the five senses.
He was receiving the grain along which force itself moved.
“We must hurry.”
There was always urgency in Park’s words.
At first, Yao Zhang thought this simply the temperament of a Goryeo warrior.
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The fighters of Goryeo moved quickly.
They rushed forward, entered the fray themselves, and finished matters directly.
So at first, he thought it merely disposition.
But this time was different.
Park’s eyes were not hurried.
They were fixed precisely on the moment.
Yao Zhang asked carefully,
“Please explain. What is it that demands such haste?”
They had not traveled together long.
But after several engagements and evasions, Yao Zhang already accepted Park’s judgment as the battlefield itself.
Park answered calmly.
“Before they establish camp at Hukou.”
“It would be best if we take position first.”
“And I want to see the flow by which the warships enter.”
He smiled briefly.
“It will be spectacular.”
Then he added,
“Even the Battle of Red Cliffs would pale by comparison.”
Yao Zhang shook his head.
“Red Cliffs was smaller.”
“Now, hundreds— no, thousands of ships are in motion.”
“This time, heaven itself is opening the battlefield.”
Park’s eyes shone.
“Then there is no reason to delay.”
“We should finish here and move at once.”
Yao Zhang knew the words were not light banter.
Beneath the talk of spectacle lay a precise judgment.
One does not call the clash of tens of thousands a sight to behold.
But to one who had reached the realm of Hwagyeong, the battlefield was both a place of danger and a field for reading flow.
Park’s explanations were always concise.
His judgments had never once gone astray.
Where fate’s current was difficult to name, this warrior grasped it first through sensation.
Yao Zhang said quietly,
“…Give me one shijin.”
“One shijin?”
Park echoed at once.
Clearing his throat, Yao Zhang replied,
“That will be enough to finish preparations.”
Park nodded.
“I will return in one shijin.”
Before Yao Zhang could catch his breath, he asked again,
“Where are you going?”
Without a word, Park pointed toward the distant forest.
“I’ll make a circuit.”
“If I can find him, all the better.”
When Yao Zhang looked again, Park was already gone— swallowed into the flow.
Yao Zhang let out a bitter smile.
“…He’s not a man.”
“He’s wind.”
Only then did he understand.
Whenever Park urged haste, it was never impatience.
It was the insistence of one who read the movement of heaven’s mechanism and refused to miss the moment it turned.
*Meanwhile, Yun Dam kept his hand on the map long after folding it closed.
Wind slipped into the tent, thinning the flame of the lamp.
Without lifting his head, he knew.
The flow had changed.
A battlefield usually moves by human desire.
Very rarely, the grain that drives desire moves first.
This was such a moment.
Yun Dam’s fingertips pressed lightly against the northern edge of the map.
The mouth of Poyang Lake, where the river split.
That point grew heavy.
Momentum that should have sunk was rising instead.
“…They are lifting him.”
Yun Dam murmured softly.
Someone— more precisely, a single name.
Zhu Yuanzhang.
Even within the aura of defeat, he had not gone out.
Rather, heaven and earth were trying to raise him once more.
Such a current does not last.
When the Mandate lifts a man, there is always a limit.
Yun Dam calculated it.
One day.
At most, two.
If no conclusion came within that span, the flow would tilt again.
Yun Dam turned his gaze toward the tent’s entrance.
Park Seongjin was already there.
He did not need to see him to know.
That warrior was reading the same current.
Fast.
Yun Dam judged inwardly.
Not through understanding, but through sensation— he had reached it first.
A strategist reads flow through calculation.
A warrior responds through the body.
That was why, in this battlefield, Park Seongjin moved first.
Yun Dam would shape the board from behind.
Yun Dam shifted a single stone on the map.
Minutely.
But decisively.
“Hukou.”
The name already carried the direction of the ending.
Yun Dam thought:
For Zhu Yuanzhang to withstand this current, he would have no choice but to cling to that place.
And at the same time, he was certain.
That place was also where survival lay.
Where the Mandate would split completely.
Yun Dam steadied his breath and told himself,
“For now, we say nothing.”
The moment doubt is spoken, it loses its power.
A strategist does not voice doubt.
He prepares the ground instead.
Yun Dam checked the wind outside the tent once more.
It flowed south to north—
then curved east.
The grain was opening.
“Park Seongjin.”
Yun Dam spoke the name only in his mind.
The first blade of this battlefield was already in that warrior’s hand.