756.
He inspected the detached palace.
Signs of assassins hidden throughout were knotted together like a net.
They said it was a summons from the Empress, but this was not a palace with frequent traffic.
It was a fortress, wrapped in countless human curtains.
There was one peculiar point.
Until Park Seong-jin had entered fully, they hid their tells to the very end.
They folded their bodies into the shadows of thick pillars.
On the roof beams they lay low, pressed flat.
They meant to seize him with spear and net woven like a single garment, and finish it.
The layout was clear.
An arrangement built to ensure he would not slip away.
Park Seong-jin read the intent.
Even when he reached the deepest center the heavenly net was aimed at, the Empress was nowhere to be seen.
Only then did he understand.
It was a trap cast in the Empress's name.
They opened the way for him to enter, and the Empress stepped back behind shadow.
The deeper he went, the denser it became.
The human curtains thickened.
Breath and energy layered upon layers until they became a wall.
Hundreds of martial men encircled a single point.
And the moment Park Seong-jin stepped into that center, they revealed themselves at once.
It was so natural, as though they had been standing there all along.
An intention that showed itself only after he had entered the heart.
With no one to speak to, Park Seong-jin stood in the middle of a space ringed by hundreds of fighters.
In the silence, a thought brushed past.
Should he sweep them all away here.
Should he carve a gap and break out.
And one most fundamental question remained.
Where was the Empress.
She had lent her residence, and hidden her own body.
That fact made the whole space feel more damp, more foul.
Then, not far away, Goyongbo appeared.
His pace was leisurely.
The same sly smile hung from the corner of his mouth as before.
Park Seong-jin asked him,
"So this was all your scheme."
Goyongbo chuckled low.
"You're about to die.
Don't rush."
Park Seong-jin tilted his head slightly.
"It's strange.
I can't tell why you're all exactly the same."
Goyongbo frowned.
"The same."
Park Seong-jin's voice was calm to the point of eeriness.
"What you do."
"Killing your companion for political influence."
"Always a trap, always an assassination."
"One motif, and nothing else."
"No creativity at all."
Goyongbo sneered back.
"Creativity."
"What are you talking about."
Park Seong-jin nodded.
"I mean you're all the same kind of men."
He turned once, taking the circle in.
"Looks like you have no method but this."
"A pity, truly."
In that moment Goyongbo felt it.
This man had expected an assassination.
He asked, as if probing.
"So you came knowing."
Park Seong-jin nodded.
"Of course."
"You said you were calling me."
"It was staged as a summons from the Empress, and I came because she wished to see me."
"But the Empress hides, and only this trap remains."
"How much longer am I supposed to keep up the act."
A foul sensation crawled along Goyongbo's spine.
Something was off.
He was far too composed.
There was no reason a man in this situation should be this relaxed.
But he was already here.
He believed there would never be a better chance than this.
Goyongbo's voice sank cold.
"You only need to die."
"And the world will go back to turning as if nothing happened."
A single gesture.
With that signal, hundreds of assassins surged at Park Seong-jin all at once.
The devil's trap opened its mouth.
Countless rivals had likely vanished by this same method.
For them, the idea of a political partner did not exist in the first place.
An opponent was not someone to persuade.
An opponent was someone to remove.
As that choice repeated, the court grew lower and more base.
They even lost the ability to solve a minor matter with words.
A blade came out before conversation.
For them there was only one kind of solution.
Only when one faction erased another completely did it end.
Even when institutions existed for consensus and deliberation, they chose the fight.
They believed a conclusion sealed in blood was the fastest.
Park Seong-jin read that thinking clearly.
For those whom words cannot reach, only one language remains.
When Goyongbo raised his hand, twenty-some assassins rushed first.
Swords and spears mixed.
It was a combination that did not match, yet kept each other alive.
The front line swordsmen spread into a half-moon.
Long blades in their right hands swung left and right at waist height, slicing the field of view.
Their toes never stopped measuring the center of Park Seong-jin's balance.
They did not thrust first.
They meant to cut first, force him to evade, and hunt the instant a gap opened.
From behind, spears came in.
The spearmen matched breath from a step and a half back.
The spearpoints did not tremble.
A straight line of killing intent—
from low to high, or straight into the ribs.
But this time Park Seong-jin's foot moved first.
The sound of his step rang low.
At the same time, sword-energy surged.
Qi rode along the blade, and the air split.
As the first swordsman's long blade dropped, Park Seong-jin's sword swept up from below.
Clang—
not the sound of metal meeting metal,
but metal breaking.
The enemy sword snapped in two above the guard and flew away.
The same trajectory continued and split the man's chest.
A dull tearing sound.
Blood burst a beat late.
A spear came from the side.
A low thrust.
Park Seong-jin did not retreat.
He twisted his wrist and struck the spear shaft with the flat edge.
Boom—
impact ran through wood into bone.
The spearman's hands broke apart.
In the next instant Park Seong-jin's sword cut across.
Shaft and collarbone split together.
Two swordsmen attacked at once.
One aimed for the throat.
One tried to cut the legs.
Park Seong-jin's sword drew a circle.
A single turn.
Sword-energy passed first, the blade following after.
The sword aimed at his neck broke in midair.
The man aimed at his legs slid down, split at the waist.
Iron rang.
Bone cracked.
Flesh tore.
One motion, three results.
He did not so much cut as erase.
The weapons.
The bodies.
Even the very gap they tried to create—vanished.
The air flipped.
From every side of the corridor, from behind pillars, under railings, atop beams where men had been holding their breath, hands shot out at once.
Not one man moved.
A system moved.
First came throwing blades.
Palm-sized iron plates spun in on the snap of wrists.
Tassels and cloth tails cut the air.
Hidden weapons meant to twist on impact and rip flesh.
Daggers threaded in among them.
Short, thick blades drove straight in.
Angles meant to find the seams in armor.
Before that, sand laced with poison scattered.
A method that ended you if it clung to eyes, mouth, or an open cut.
Powder followed.
A poison spread so it entered by breath, invisible in the air.
Flying discs and shuriken-like throws came next—
coin-shaped iron rounds that would not pull out once they bit.
Zi-mu pellets were mixed in.
One large pellet struck, and in that moment smaller pellets hidden inside burst outward in all directions.
A weapon meant to erase escape itself.
Small sounds overlapped.
Whoosh—whoosh—
poison needles shot from blowtubes in straight lines.
From hair-thin needles to ones thick as nails, all were coated.
Cutting through that stream, dart-throws were flung—
small arrows, balanced like darts,
flying true without spin, built to dig into flesh.
Last came a rain of spikes.
Triangular and conical points, cloth tails attached to kill rotation,
aimed at eyes, throat, joints.
Everything poured toward a single point.
In that instant, the air hardened.
The throwing blades stopped.
The spinning daggers trembled as if pinned in midair.
The poison sand and powder lost their wind and hung suspended.
The flying discs and pellets halted before they could touch.
The fine needles from the blowtubes quivered before his face, unable to advance.
The darts and spikes froze with them.
A stillness fell, as if time had snapped.
The hidden weapons filling the air trembled faintly,
then dropped as though they had lost their meaning.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Iron slapped the stone floor.
Needles bounced and rolled.
Coin-like rounds clattered with metallic sound.
Between those falling sounds, Park Seong-jin's sword swung wide.
Sword-energy swept the corridor first.
From behind pillars, beneath railings, atop beams, the men who had revealed themselves split at once.
There was no gap to evade, no time to cry out.
Those cut fell before they could even grasp that they had been struck.
What remained was only the fallen hidden weapons,
and death without words.