Politics is not killing your opponent.
On one side of the camp, beyond the fence where the horses rested, there was an open stretch of ground.
Low-cut grass spread gently across it, and where feet passed often, the soil showed through.
During the day, the marks of hundreds of feet and hooves had pressed a thin layer of dust into the ground.
Whenever the wind rose, that dust lifted lightly, then settled again.
The sun had already tilted.
Light slid in from the side.
Gold, stripped of red, lay on the tips of the grass.
Far ridgelines looked as if their color had been drained, pressed down into gray.
At the edge of the clearing, a narrow waterway curved as it flowed, and light trembled on its surface.
A place where fire had been built was cooled black, yet a faint scent lingered as if warmth still remained.
The noise of the camp did not reach this far.
Soldiers' voices and the clink of metal were filtered by wind and distance, and instead there was only the sound of grass being brushed and the low breath of horses steadying themselves.
The two men stood at the rim of that open place, backs to the line where sky and earth met.
Nothing blocked the view ahead, and so even short words could stay for a long time.
Night had not yet arrived, but it was clearly on its way.
This was the long-stretched border between day and night.
The clearing held the right width and quiet for stopping, for sorting thoughts.
After Park Seongjin withdrew from the royal presence, Yi Injung called him softly.
Park slowed, expecting scolding again—
but the voice that came was low and gentle.
"Politics is not killing your opponent."
It was calm, like a proposal laid on a council table.
Park bowed at once.
"I will listen."
"Of course, within political struggle there have been assassinations and purges."
Yi Injung chose his words, then continued.
"But if you dislike the Privy Council and wipe out everyone on that side, what happens?"
"Work stops," Park answered immediately.
"Yes."
Yi Injung nodded.
"The core of politics is exchange.
With this matter, it is better to understand it as placing a debt on the other side.
Sweeping everything away is not always the best course."
Park thought, then nodded slowly.
When his senior spoke like this, it was not to press him down, but to teach him.
"You mean I should restrain the urge to uncover the men behind this and erase them all," Park said carefully.
Yi Injung smiled.
"Yes. It will feel suffocating. It may look foolish. Then you'll ask, 'When does it ever change?'"
"That is so."
"But waiting is also a choice."
Yi Injung's voice softened further.
"Politics is different from war.
People clash and strive to win, but in the end they must keep moving together.
You must not cross the line.
They, too, are standing in someone's place.
You cannot erase everyone behind them."
As he spoke, he kept watching Park's face—
as if checking whether he understood, whether he was ready to accept it.
"Even when it is uncomfortable, wrong, full of error."
"Yes."
"Each person, each moment, each issue differs. There is no single rule," Yi Injung added.
"That is why politics has no fixed law."
"I will think more deeply about what it means to be political," Park said.
"I will use this trip to Beijing as a road to learn that choice."
"Heh, heh."
Yi Injung laughed and finally let his breath go.
He was grateful the younger man did not resist.
The caution he had carried—afraid it might feel like interference—loosened at last.
He gripped Park's shoulder once, firmly.
Still small.
Still hard.
Still small.
Why does a master of the Manifest Realm not grow taller…
—*
Park sat staring into the campfire, sunk in thought.
Firelight flickered across his face.
His mind was settling into deeper darkness.
Jonghui approached quietly and watched him.
Between them ran a wordless stillness—
a moment where something clearly existed even without speech.
Flames leapt, and the wind that brushed past shook thoughts loose.
Dust and sparks cut through the air and scattered.
In that scatter, Jonghui smiled faintly.
Park sensed it and turned his head.
"It was extraordinary martial skill."
Park lowered his head without a word.
He recalled old battles.
He had fought to survive, and blood and death always remained at the end.
"It is only killing people."
Jonghui looked at him in silence for a moment.
Park's voice was dry, matter-of-fact, as if stating the world.
Yet beneath that dryness, Jonghui could feel years and weight piled deep.
"You have become an immense master."
Park lifted his gaze to Jonghui again.
A brief ripple moved in his eyes.
He pressed it down and spoke.
"I was glad to be with all of you."
It was not a simple courtesy.
Jonghui felt a strange resonance inside it.
He did not miss the hint of farewell that had slipped into the end of the sentence.
"Why? Where are you going?"
Park paused.
He raised his head and looked up at the sky.
It was not a night full of stars.
Light showed only in patches between clouds, wavering.
"I have a feeling I won't be left alone for long."
"By whom?" Jonghui asked again.
Park pointed at the sky with his fingertip.
"I doubt the Lord of Heaven will leave a madman like this unpunished."
Jonghui swallowed a laugh.
Park's tone held no joke.
"Surely not. You protected Goryeo with that strength. Who would dare say otherwise?"
Park let out a short breath.
"Hiyu."
That one sound carried too much—
battlefields he had crossed, reasons he had survived, anxieties without name.
Jonghui felt its weight.
He took airag from a leather pouch and offered it to Park.
The motion no longer felt unfamiliar.
Among long comrades, such gestures became the body's habit.
Park held out his bowl without a word.
Jonghui poured carefully.
"Thank you."
"I should be the one thanking you. Thanks to you, we rest easy."
Park did not smile.
He looked back into the fire.
Embers were lowering little by little.
This kind of talk was not new.
With Jonghui, words always broke and rejoined like this.
After battle.
During marching.
On nights where nothing happened.
They did not speak long.
They did not ask much.
Yet fragments piled up until they became a single story—
how long they had endured,
what they had seen,
how far they had come—
including what had never been said.
The fire still burned.
The two sat side by side before it.
No one hurried the next sentence.
There was much to ask.
There was much to say.
Yet this was a night where nothing came out.
—*
After Empress Gi rose to the seat of power, the air of Beijing changed quickly.
Administration still ran on documents and rites.
But the true direction of power followed one person's memory.
Empress Gi was a woman who remembered for a long time.
She remembered betrayal more clearly than favor, obstruction more sharply than rescue.
She held grudges and debts with precision.
The name Gi Cheol was blood to her, shield to her, foothold to her.
When Gi Cheol fell, she did not weep.
She calculated—who had made this possible.
Who had overturned the board without drawing a blade.
The answer was the king of Goryeo and the warrior at his side.
In Beijing, their name rose too quickly.
The fact that they had survived to the end scraped her nerves.
She still perceived Goryeo as a tributary state.
That was less a judgment than an old bodily sense.
When news of the Kurultai arrived, her calculation ended at once.
If bandits moved to block the road of the Great Khan's son-in-law, the purpose was plain.
She accepted this moment as a chance to settle the past.
To shake the king of Goryeo—
and erase the warrior beside him.
She did not issue an order aloud.
She only savored the opportunity in secret.
She let people misunderstand her smile.
She knew this:
the calmest times are when the most is being prepared.
—*
Empress Gi had not been an empress from the start.
She had been a palace woman from Goryeo.
Called "Seungnyang."
In Yuan, called "Yang."
To survive there was already near-miracle.
She survived.
She drew attention.
She won the emperor's heart—
not by beauty alone.
She knew how to handle words.
She distinguished precisely the timing of silence and pressure.
Political sense had soaked into her bones.
In court, she never knelt.
She became the Second Empress.
Then took the seat of the primary empress.
When her son was named Crown Prince, she became the center of power.
Her power was built on blood.
Even after becoming empress, she did not forget Goryeo.
Some said she favored her homeland—
but that was only one face.
Gi Cheol and the clan's rise was the foundation of her authority.
That force eventually collided with King Gongmin.
When Gi Cheol was executed, she began calculating again.
From that moment, the king of Goryeo became more than a political rival.
He became an object of enmity.
That enmity was less emotion than will.
Deposition plots.
Puppet enthronements.
Mobilizing Yuan forces.
All failed, yet there was no surrender.
After raising her son to the throne, she became power itself.
Personal grudges outlasted politics.
—*
The Kurultai was no longer the Kurultai of old.
The era when the empire gathered under a single will had ended long ago.
By Toghon Temür's reign, regular convening had vanished.
It was summoned only when someone wavered, when someone could not endure.
Form remained.
The force of unity was gone.
Those who gathered did not gather to decide.
They gathered to measure one another's strength, to probe weakness, to seize position.
At the center was always the palace.
At the very center of that palace stood Empress Gi.
The Kurultai was not the place where decisions were made.
It was the place where one confirmed whether a decision already existed.
In silence, the one who lined the ranks became the victor.
And into that place, the king of Goryeo would enter—
quietly,
and yet far too conspicuously.