539Some resisted. Some knelt of their own accord. The conclusion was the same.
That single day was consumed entirely by dismantling the Ten Great Houses.
Some resisted.
Some knelt of their own accord.
The conclusion was the same.
In one day, the whole of the Ten Great Houses was settled by Park Seong-jin's hand.
The word settled meant different things to different people.
To the houses, it was ruin.
To the court, recovery.
To the common people, room to breathe.
To Park Seong-jin, standing on the ground itself, it was simpler still.
It had to end.
If it did not end, it would spread.
If it spread, blood would follow.
If blood followed, the country would split.
He had seen that chain too many times on too many battlefields.
Each time a house fell, a tide of people followed.
Officials and clerks.
Scribes dispatched from the commissions.
Military officers.
Laborers.
Even private messengers who had caught the scent of rumor and come running.
It was a flood of administration.
When the main gate opened, the record rooms opened.
When the record rooms opened, seals were brought out.
When seals were set on the table, registers were unrolled.
When registers were unrolled, slaves were dragged into the open.
When slaves were dragged out, tenant farmers peered through cracks in the doors.
When the tenants showed their faces, testimony began at once.
"When did this land belong to whom?"
"Whose seal is this?"
"Why was this name changed?"
Verification of land deeds.
Cross-checking population registers.
Reclassification of kin, private soldiers, slaves, and tenants.
Tracing every change in land ownership.
On the surface, it was as crowded as a government banquet.
In truth, it was more exhausting than war.
In war, the enemy comes from one direction.
In ledgers, they come from all sides.
A single plot of land carried dozens of justifications layered atop one another.
Ten contradicted each other outright.
Another ten could barely be defended at all.
In one clan's books it was recorded as a royal grant.
In another's, as a lawful purchase.
In lower records, as "temporary custody."
On the tenant's tongue, only one word remained.
Seizure.
Wailing never ceased throughout the day.
"Why verify anything? You meant to take it all anyway."
"This is tyranny—tyranny!"
Park Seong-jin did not argue at length.
He had already reached the conclusion that this dispute could not be ended with words.
So he threw out a single line.
"If you won't be believed, verification is the only way."
It was cold.
It was simple.
It granted emotion to no one and exception to no one.
The blade they had long swung over peasants and tenants had returned, at the same angle, to hover beneath their own throats.
Each house offered endless excuses.
"Our ancestors earned it through service."
"It is inherited land."
"We only held it in trust."
"It was lent to an official."
"It was payment for protection during the wars."
But the words of those who tilled the soil gathered into a single line.
"That land was ours to begin with."
When those words were spoken, the air inside the hall changed.
Ink on documents grew lighter.
Human breath grew heavier.
The records might say royal grant,
but calluses remained on the farmers' hands.
Those calluses spoke little.
They did not, in the end, carry lies.
Witnesses and testimony.
Documents and seals.
None could justify the encroachment.
It had all happened within mere decades—
excessive seizure, piled upon seizure.
Those who lost their land had fallen into slavery
or become tenants on the same soil, growing poorer as they worked it.
The conclusion was simple.
"If it cannot be proven, it is stripped."
In one day, Park Seong-jin dismantled more than half the roots of ten great houses.
Calling it settlement hardly captured the scale of the collapse,
but he was not surprised by it.
He had seen greater collapses on the battlefield, countless times.
As the Ten Great Houses fell, hundreds of private soldiers were transferred into state registers by royal order.
The sight of them being led away was strange.
Men who had held swords for their lords the night before
stood in line before the state rolls by morning.
Private banners.
Family crests.
Color-braided belts.
They were stripped away one by one.
Holding the new register, Park Seong-jin addressed them.
"From now on, you are no longer private soldiers.
You are soldiers of the state."
At first, their eyes wavered.
Some clenched their teeth.
Some swallowed their resentment.
Some looked lost, unsure where they were meant to go.
Private soldiers had lived not just on stipends, but on belonging.
The numbers were not yet large.
This had begun with the Ten Great Houses.
As the powerful aristocratic clans continued to be dismantled, more private soldiers would gather.
A single wi could number seven or eight thousand at the low end,
up to fifteen thousand at the high.
That much force had been bound to individual nobles.
The fact itself proved how long the country had been leaning toward collapse.
Within the court, opinions split.
"If we break them up and merge them into existing units, the seeds of rebellion scatter."
"If we gather them separately, they become a single blade."
Park Seong-jin cut through it at once.
"If you scatter them, you contaminate sound troops."
He ordered the former private soldiers gathered into a separate unit.
Only carefully chosen instructors were assigned.
First, the memory of whose hand had once placed swords in theirs had to be scrubbed away.
He called the process education, not training.
The reason was simple.
Change the body alone, and they return.
The mind had to be changed as well.
The method was simple—and brutal.
Forced marches lasting over half a month.
Continuous hunting drills.
All-day repetition of horsemanship, sword forms, spear basics.
Rest, and they ran again.
Drink, and they lifted again.
Catch your breath, and you thrust again.
Complaints surfaced in the first three days.
By the fourth, complaints vanished.
There was no breath left for them.
By the end of the first week, the word lord disappeared from their mouths.
Whoever they had once served no longer mattered.
What mattered was surviving the present moment.
When the body breaks down, loyalty in the mind begins to shake with it.
Into that shaken space, Park Seong-jin drove new rules.
"The register is the state."
"Command lies with the unit."
"Reward follows merit."
"Punishment follows crime."
The effect was certain.
Personal loyalty drained away with sweat, blood, and aching muscle.