750.He had cut the empty space.
Park Seongjin drew the reins.
The horse stopped.
He remained still for a moment, letting the momentum rolling in beyond the dust fill his eyes to the end.
The shouting swelled.
Hooves pounded the earth, a wave pressing closer and closer.
In the middle of that sound, he slid down from the saddle, slowly.
Iron boots met dirt.
Thud.
Even inside the noise of the field, that single sound rang clean.
He released the reins and stepped forward.
He did not run.
He did not hurry.
His pace stayed even, his breathing unbroken.
He looked less like a man walking into battle than someone crossing a courtyard long left empty.
Behind him, hundreds of gazes gathered on his back.
Goryeo soldiers' eyes.
The king's.
Yi Injung's.
The fixed stare of men who had just gripped their blades.
Someone swallowed without meaning to.
Because it suddenly felt real—
that a small back was facing a wide plain and a great many enemies.
His shoulders did not shake.
His spine stayed straight.
Yet he was not large.
There was no display of martial grandeur, no theatrical gesture of a commander.
Only one man, one warrior, walking out alone.
That step was solitary.
An army stood behind him, yet his stride borrowed none of its force.
The instant his feet touched ground, he was alone.
He knew it himself.
So he became slower—
and surer.
Even the raiders sensed something wrong.
Their roar wavered.
The lead horses shortened their stride.
Men with spears glanced sideways at one another.
A single small human was walking toward them, alone before hundreds.
It was not a threat they understood.
It was a scene that did not fit.
Park stopped at the edge of distance.
Dust swirled around his waist.
Wind brushed his hem.
Only then did he set his hand on the sword hilt.
He did not draw yet.
He dipped his head slightly.
One last look across the plain.
The roar was about to burst again.
He drew.
There was no sound.
No ring of steel.
No shout.
A motion so short it seemed to vanish.
He cut once, as if drawing a line through empty air.
It looked slow—
yet held no hesitation.
No one understood the next instant.
The air split first.
A white flash.
A disk of light spread outward, level with the horizon.
Not an explosion—
flash, and then thud-thud-thud,
a low dull rumble following,
the ripping sound of cloth scraping the sky.
A beat later, the truth appeared.
He had cut the empty space.
His blade had not aimed at a man, nor at a horse.
It had swung into the world itself.
In that moment, space cracked thin and wide—
like a sheet of glass shattered across a broad surface.
The white disk surged forward like a wave.
It broke into brilliance before the raiders,
scattering the way surf scatters at a shore.
And the encirclement tore.
Lines tightening from front, flank, and rear burst all at once.
As if a curtain ripped.
As if a wall collapsed.
The field opened in every direction.
The raiders' roar died where it stood,
as though their momentum, will, and frenzy had all been severed together.
Lead horses folded their forelegs.
Some dropped to their knees.
Some pitched forward.
Hooves skidded, scraping earth.
Bone and dirt ground together.
Dust leapt high—
then hung, suspended, as if the air had forgotten to breathe—
and only then fell late.
No one had been cut, yet the formation was already broken.
It was the people first.
Mouths shouting shut mid-sound.
Faces clenched in resolve twisted.
Eyes widened until the whites showed.
Bodies reacted half a beat too late.
Then the horses screamed.
Shrill whinnies overlapped and spread.
Legs meant to flee did not obey.
Joints misaligned could not hold weight.
Bodies tipped and collapsed sideways.
Weapons and armor reacted last.
Blades warped as if wrung.
Metal held—then failed with a snapping cry.
Spear shafts bent, their inner grain exposed.
Leather and iron plates curled and folded in on themselves.
There were no cuts.
No slash marks.
What broke was not what had been struck.
What fell was the place force had passed through.
Sound arrived late.
The impact of bodies hitting ground.
The heavy crash of horses going down.
Then groans and crying layered over it.
The first roar was gone.
Across the plain, only suffocated sound drifted.
The air turned pale and blurred.
Dust, sweat, and iron stench mingled.
Red spread here and there.
Black shapes lay strewn across the ochre ground.
Sunlight glinted through torn armor gaps.
No one had been cut, and yet the battle was already over.
Only one fact remained—
that something had just passed through this place.
Park had already straightened his posture.
His blade was returning to the sheath.
The motion was unhurried, the flow smooth.
As though an aftertaste still lingered in the air.
The Goryeo soldiers who had been about to advance stopped.
Some froze mid-step.
Some loosened their grip on spears.
They had not met the enemy—
and yet the fight was finished.
Understanding could not keep up.
Yi Injung shouted.
"Hold formation! No pursuit!"
His voice packed surprise down hard.
What they needed now was order.
The soldiers obeyed.
Feet that had started to scatter stopped.
Spearpoints lowered.
Only the after-echo remained on the plain.
The king let out a low exhale.
Awe slid immediately into thought.
A future he had deemed impossible was tilting—
because this man stood beside him.
"Even if we are pressed, we must still clean the site, yes?"
At Park's words, the battlefield returned to reality.
Yi Injung drew a deep breath.
"Yes."
Orders overlapped.
The escort troops began to move.
Bodies that no longer moved were left across the field.
It would take time.
Yi Injung muttered,
"This will take hands."
Park dipped his head.
"I apologize."
Yi Injung did not continue.
He knew an apology did not fit this place.
Only silence and aftermath remained on the field.
—*
They halted and cleared the site for more than two sijin.
However vile they were, people were still people.
They could not be left on an empty plain to become beasts' feed.
As they buried, burned, and gathered what remained, smoke lay low.
Horses stood with heads bowed, silent.
When the work neared completion, the leadership gathered in one place.
"This is strange," reported the officer who had managed the cleanup.
"Bandits moving in groups of three or four hundred is nearly unheard of."
"Multiple groups combined," said Jonghui.
"Someone ordered them to gather, or there was a clear profit."
"You mean it may not be profit?" the king asked.
"Yes," Jonghui replied.
"Bandits do not move in groups this large. They do not need to.
If they can move this many men, they are not the ones hunted.
Merchant caravans on the Liaodong road delay departure for this reason—
they wait until their column passes a certain size."
"Once it passes that size, bandits do not attack?"
"Because the loss outweighs the gain."
"And besides—this column is mostly soldiers. Normally they would never dare."
"There is something behind this."
A shadow fell over the king's face.
No one needed to say "politics" for the meaning to settle.
This was the road to the Kurultai, where the king of Goryeo would attend as the Great Khan's son-in-law.
If someone had mobilized bandits to block that road, the purpose was plain.
Park spoke.
"Your Majesty—might there be a reason you must not go?"
"Reasons enough to drown in," the king answered shortly.
Park, not versed in politics, could add nothing.
The Goryeo king—son-in-law of Prince Wei, Beyr Temür; husband of Princess Noguk—
just enumerating ties made the head spin.
In the end, judgment belonged to the king.
Park asked again.
"Do you have a guess who it is?"
The king returned it.
"What, you want to go kill him?"
"No," Park said.
"I'm not that sort of man."
"That makes you sound even more like that sort of man," the king said with a bitter smile.
…"I have a suspicion," the king continued.
"But I have no intention of answering with force in the same way—especially now that you are at my side."
Short words.
Enough meaning.
Sensing the king had hold of the thread, Park stepped back half a pace.
"I understand. Give the order, and I will follow."
"For now, we go," the king said.
"On the road—at Dadu, in Beijing—something will show itself."
"Loyalty."