753.Revenge waited for opportunity.
After Empress Gi rose to the seat of power, the air of Dadu changed.
Once you passed inside the city gates, the first thing that changed was the smell.
Incense and oil, wet timber, paper and ink, and human sweat layered together.
The palace roads were orderly.
The more orderly the road, the farther the noise of the bottom hid.
On the surface it was quiet.
And the quieter it was, the more it hid.
After Empress Gi rose to the seat of power, that quiet deepened.
Government still turned on documents and rites.
Every morning the same formal greetings.
The same approvals.
The same reports.
Yet at some point, the direction of decisions began to follow one person's memory.
Empress Gi's memory.
She was the kind of person who remembered for a long time.
More than who had saved her, she remembered who had broken her people.
A person with clear enwon—grace and grudge.
That day as well, Empress Gi was holding her brush.
The ink had not dried.
The characters on the paper were only half complete.
The sound of the brush scratching the paper was thin—
but in that room, people heard it loudly.
In the palace, that sound could also mean, "Continue."
A courier entered.
His footsteps were careful.
They were the steps of someone whose throat stiffened once more the moment he crossed the threshold.
He knelt and did not lift his head.
Only after a single breath did he speak.
"They say the king of Goryeo is entering the capital. The attendants are not many."
Empress Gi's hand stopped.
A bead of ink fell from the brush tip and blurred a stroke.
An eunuch moved by reflex—then stopped.
In this place, no one could touch that degree of distortion.
Empress Gi did not wipe it.
That degree of distortion did not matter.
"Entering the capital."
A short line.
Within that line, layers of thought overlapped.
Goryeo.
The name still remained, but to her it was already a place she had passed through.
She remembered being dragged in as a palace woman, starting at the bottom.
Faces, words, emotions she had to throw away one by one in order to climb out of that bottom.
At the end of all that stood the seat of empress.
And on that road there had been names that blocked her.
Gi Cheol.
The moment she thought of that name, her eyes became a human face for the briefest instant—
then hardened again.
There was no crying.
Calculation rose instead.
Who had made this possible.
Who had overturned the board without lifting a blade.
It was the king of Goryeo.
And one martial man standing at his side.
That name rose to Dadu too quickly.
He had played a decisive role in cutting down Gi Cheol's faction.
He had moved while avoiding Yuan's gaze.
And most of all—he had survived to the end.
Empress Gi did not like that fact.
An enemy had to be ended with a period.
A living enemy would someday lift a blade again.
She still saw Goryeo as a tributary state.
That thought was less a political judgment than an old sensation.
The fact that she had come from that land only hardened it.
Goryeo was a root she could not sever,
and at the same time, a place she had to keep pressed down.
"You said a small number?"
"Yes. The escort appears minimal."
Empress Gi nodded slowly.
Fear and confidence were mixed in that response.
If he entered like this, it meant he trusted someone.
And there was no need to put that "someone" into words.
She set her brush down and walked to the window.
The palace courtyard lay below.
Ordered paths.
A still pond.
A landscape that looked as if nothing ever happened.
Yet beneath that landscape, a line had already formed—
by who was called first,
who gained a seat,
who stood outside the invitation.
The Kurultai was no longer a place to ask the will of Heaven.
It was where human arithmetic revealed itself most nakedly.
Form remained, but unity was gone.
And decisions were less made there than confirmed—
as if the grain had already been decided elsewhere.
Empress Gi spoke low, almost like a soliloquy.
"He chose the time when the Kurultai convenes."
Politics moved on legitimacy.
Revenge waited for opportunity.
To Empress Gi, this Kurultai was not a council.
It was a place to settle an unsettled past.
A small party.
A formal escort.
A procession that had only the name "son-in-law of the Great Khan" left to it.
A moment perfectly suited to handle an enemy.
A moment in which she could shake the king of Goryeo once more—
and erase the martial man beside him.
She had not issued an order yet.
She only laughed inwardly at the opportunity.
She let people misunderstand that laughter.
In Dadu, the most work was prepared in the times when nothing seemed to happen.
Empress Gi did not smile.
She only watched the quiet beyond the window—
and in her mind, she had already placed one stone.
It was still early spring.
The cold had not completely retreated, and the morning air still had teeth.
When you drew breath, the uvula stung first.
The leather of the reins had stiffened overnight.
A Kurultai that should have been held in Shangdu or Karakorum was held instead in Dadu—
that alone was irregular.
It was proof the empire's center was shaking,
and also a confession that it could no longer ignore the reality of Jiangnan.
The heart of this Kurultai was clear.
How to deal with the Great Han that Chen Youliang had raised in Jiangnan.
Call it recognition.
Call it toleration.
The weight of the words did not matter much.
Great Han already stood on its own.
There was only one issue.
Would they keep sending troops to break it,
or would they watch for a time?
That decision was needed.
And in that judgment, the one who had spilled the most blood and put in the most hands was the king of Goryeo.
He had moved troops between Liaodong and the Central Plains.
He had endured the Jiangnan war closest to its teeth.
That was why the fact of his entry mattered.
It was not etiquette.
It was judgment.
His talk of a tripartite balance.
Yuan, Goryeo, and Great Han of Jiangnan—each checking the other, each enduring.
Was it merely a concept,
or calculation that pierced reality?
This Kurultai would measure it.
Dadu could not feel safe either.
If Jiangnan endured like that, and Yuan's force was no longer what it had been,
then one day even this city could become a battlefield.
The sense that that day was not far
clung to people's hearts like early spring cold.
So the king of Goryeo's entry was not a simple attendance.
It was a test of whether the empire could still choose—
or whether it was already being chosen for.
When the palace gate of Dadu opened, the air changed distinctly.
The colossal gate, coated in countless layers of red lacquer, split to either side.
From within came a low, long roll of drums.
It was not one drum.
Layers of sound stacked, as if setting the rhythm of footsteps in advance—
when to lift the foot,
where to stop.
A road already decided.
The king of Goryeo's party entered slowly, maintaining a fixed interval.
Ahead stood the Yuan honor guard.
On both sides, red banners and spears with golden tassels lined up.
Whenever the banner tips trembled, the metal ornaments clicked together with a clear sound.
Even in silence, the palace kept proving it was alive.
An official of rites announced in a low voice.
"Three steps, one bow."
The king of Goryeo stopped.
The party stopped with him.
Three steps forward.
A bow.
Step back.
Again three steps.
Again a bow.
At the end, a deep lowering of the head.
This bow was form.
The last shell that showed the empire still stood.
Half a step behind the king of Goryeo, Park Seongjin stood.
He did not wear the black robes of a civil official.
He wore a soldier's dress.
There were no needless ornaments.
Only the sword at his waist quietly said this was diplomacy and the extension of war at once.
Deep within the hall, on a raised throne, the Great Khan sat.
No emotion on his face.
The face of a man who had long learned how to hide emotion.
Half a step behind and to the side stood Empress Gi.
Her gaze was lowered, but her presence covered the entire hall.
When the rites ended, the Great Khan spoke.
"King of Goryeo."
The air in the hall sank once.
"You know why I made you come so far."
The king of Goryeo stepped forward.
"I have come to report the before and after of the war."
The Great Khan nodded slowly.
Then he let his eyes slide sideways once.
"You have brought someone with you."
His gaze moved naturally to Park Seongjin.
"You speak, yourself."
Park Seongjin stepped forward.
"I am Park Seongjin, Jungnangjang of the Yongho Guard of Goryeo."
He bowed, straightened his waist, and spoke.
"The battlefield in Jiangnan was already tilting to one side."
His voice was low, but it did not shake.
"When the Yuan forces arrived, the fortress was on the verge of collapse, and the troops were scattering."
"If we had pressed through as we were, we would have gained merit—
but the troops would have been exhausted, and we would not have had strength left to bear what came after."
After drawing breath, he continued.
"So we chose to end the fighting."
"Instead of cutting everyone down, we made both sides withdraw."
"Jiangnan raised Great Han, and Yuan preserved its forces."
At that, Empress Gi stepped forward.
"And how is that not aiding the enemy?"
Her voice was soft, but a blade hid inside it.
"You recognized rebels and gave them time to breathe."
The air of the hall tightened at once.
The king of Goryeo's voice sprang out immediately.
"That was the path that saves the empire."
Not a fraction of hesitation.
"Yuan today does not have the strength to hold every front at once."
"If we poured our forces into finishing Jiangnan, Liaodong and the north would be left empty."
Empress Gi's eyes narrowed.
"So you mean we should leave rebellion as it is."
"We mean we should buy time."
The king of Goryeo returned, firm.
A brief silence.
The Great Khan watched the two in turn without speaking.
"If three powers check one another, none can fall easily."
The king of Goryeo added, as if hammering the last nail.
"The empire gains time to catch its breath."
"And Dadu remains standing."
No drums.
No footsteps.
The Great Khan tapped the armrest slowly.
"Whether that is true, we will decide at this Kurultai."
Then Park Seongjin spoke again.
A line not asked for.
"We only executed what had already been agreed."
Eyes gathered back to him.
"Jang Sa-seong, Zhu Yuanzhang, Chen Youliang—none of them could be defeated by us alone."
"We had to choose one and lend our strength."
His words were short, and decisive.
"If we had helped Zhu Yuanzhang, he would have marched north the moment he raised a state."
"He was a man who aimed at the whole board."
He paused, then continued.
"Jang Sa-seong was righteous, but closer to a merchant."
"His strength was scattered, and his decision came late."
Then he drove the point home.
"So we chose Chen Youliang."
"He raised Great Han in Jiangnan."
"To question that choice now—after Goryeo completed that course—
is not proper."
Empress Gi's voice snapped, sharp.
"That is only your thought."
"It was my thought, and it was a judgment discussed with the officials at the time. There was agreement."
Park Seongjin's reply was calm.
"I am stating that it was not my sole decision."
Silence again.
The Great Khan raised a hand and cut it off.
"That is why the Kurultai is convened."
Then he added,
"For now, let us end with welcoming the king of Goryeo's entry."
It was a voice with fatigue in it.
A gesture as if all of it was troublesome.
With that, the audience ended.
But no one inside the hall misunderstood.
Today's exchange had not been greeting.
It had been a portent.