760.
Everyone nodded along in words.
But almost no provincial governor stepped forward to actually provide troops.
No one failed to understand why.
Those who had sent armies before had vanished into the whirlpool of power struggles.
They had not died on the battlefield.
They had not been defeated.
What greeted them on their return was not reward or honor, but purges and political ruin.
At the peak of that pattern stood the incident in which Empress Ki struck down Chancellor Toghto.
With Toghto's fall, hundreds of thousands of troops disappeared.
After that day, no one drew out forces lightly.
Everyone knew they could not raise an army the way they had then.
So the line—"Let the three legs of the tripod stand firm"—sounded noble.
Its underside was simple.
It was an admission that Yuan could no longer wield the power it once had.
The great cause was high and vast.
Now it could not be held in the hand.
In the council, the hawks' argument rang out again.
Recover the lost lands.
Lift the blade again in the empire's name.
But that cry grew lighter by the minute.
"Who will provide the troops?"
Someone asked quietly.
No blame.
No mockery.
"If you recover it for us, who bears responsibility after?"
The words did not continue.
"If we march without compensation and take the south back,"
another added,
"then what will you do afterward?"
No answer came.
No promise to redistribute domains.
No pledge to bear costs.
No plan for postwar order.
Only the demand: recover it for us.
In that moment, many understood.
This was not strategy.
It was pleading.
Private losses, wrapped in the empire's name.
Diplomatic language was cruel.
It did not refuse directly.
It erased possibilities one by one.
"The cause is lofty."
"But a cause without responsibility cannot become resolve."
"Troops can be gathered by command.
Trust cannot."
The tone was courteous.
The sentences were long.
The conclusion was one.
No one would give away their forces, for free, for another's land anymore.
That age was over.
The council went quiet.
The hawks' cries were no longer rebutted or debated.
They simply dispersed into air.
Through it all, Park Seong-jin sat in silence.
He offered no opinion.
He did not raise a hand.
He did not nod.
Not even a small word.
He was simply there.
And that was enough.
The rumors had already spread as far as they could spread.
No one in that hall did not know his "non-action."
What happened in the Empress's palace.
The courtyard of the Queen's Hall.
The story that one man nullified an entire force.
Some called it exaggeration.
Some called it myth.
No one denied it.
At some point, eyes began to drift away from the center of debate.
They moved from those who spoke—
to the one who did not.
A hwagyeong master.
And the name that had stuck: the strongest under heaven.
But no title was enough to describe him now.
A wordless absolute.
A free man who took orders from no one.
A presence all respected, and none could follow.
Descriptions multiplied.
He wore none of them.
He sat at the edge of the council.
His posture did not loosen.
Even his breathing stayed calm.
It was as if the arguments and calculations in this place belonged to a different layer of the world.
And yet everyone knew the opposite truth as well.
All these arguments only held because he existed.
Among those glancing toward him were faces soaked in unease.
People who once tried to approach him.
People who had tried to tie a line with soft words.
People who had mistaken themselves for clever enough to use him.
They could no longer speak to him.
They avoided even meeting his eyes.
What if he turned his head.
What if his gaze landed on them.
That possibility alone raised cold sweat along their backs.
He said nothing.
But the fact that he was listening made every word in the hall cautious.
Park Seong-jin did not speak to the end.
Yet the one who "said" the most, that day, was him.
Because he did not move, no one dared move rashly.
Because he was silent, everyone began weighing their own words and choices more heavily.
The hall was still noisy.
But under the noise, one recognition lay quiet and firm.
All of this is permitted only in front of that man.
And Park Seong-jin proved it by doing nothing at all.
With Park Seong-jin at his back, the Goryeo king pressed forward boldly.
Politicians were quick to read the room—and shameless.
They often did foolish things even while fully understanding.
If that was a talent, it was their talent.
Even those who acted as if they understood nothing
often acted that way precisely because they understood too well.
They were fast-eyed, and skilled at controlling their faces.
The king saw it.
The eyes that shrank under Park Seong-jin's power.
The lips that swallowed words after choosing them.
The nods that measured others' reactions before committing.
He did not waste the moment.
He immediately pressed the recognition of the new southern empire—Daehan—
and the tripod balance built upon it.
Goryeo was the weakest of the three.
But that weakness had already been supplemented by a different kind of strength.
The pacification of the south.
The recovery of Liaodong.
And the subjugation of Wa.
These were not mere victory reports.
They were a declaration: you cannot discuss this order without Goryeo anymore.
So the Goryeo king began to be recognized not as the ruler of a minor state,
but as a crucial pillar of the structure.
The southern war had already concluded in defeat,
and the armies that had marched then were in disarray.
Now the problem was that no one would march at all.
No one wanted to provide troops.
What they feared was not another defeat.
They feared the collapse of the system that had just begun to form.
That was why the Goryeo king's proposal was genuinely tempting.
It meant the southern empire would not strike north.
Peace was not a one-sided concession.
It was a promise set atop mutual calculation.
So only those who had lost land—provincial governors and princely houses—kept shouting for war.
The quriltai had always been that kind of place.
Spite and jealousy, power struggle tangled together.
There had never been "principle" here.
So the only principle this council had ever recognized was strength.
And under the pretext of "proving" that strength,
the quriltai often became a stage that incited the next struggle.
Empress Ki had once ruled that stage like a final victor.
But this time was different.
Because of the attempt on Park Seong-jin, dozens—no, hundreds—had fallen.
As a result, she no longer had a voice.
No one openly gagged her.
And yet no one included her words in their calculations.
There is no glory to place atop a defeated name.
The quriltai was the place that proved that fact most coldly.
The Goryeo king stood at the center of the ringed tents.
Flags swayed low.
Horse cries and human breathing overlapped, then settled.
He did not climb a platform.
He did not borrow height.
Standing in the middle was enough.
"This is not a place to choose a victor."
His voice spread slowly.
Not loud, but clear.
His gaze passed the hawks, swept the doves, and reached the rim of the circle.
"I have come seeking peace."
"And to obtain that peace, I fought to the very end in the south."
A pause.
That silence weighed more than speech.
"What we gained is not retreat."
"It is a boundary where we agree not to cross one another."
"If that boundary collapses, blood will flow again."
He raised a hand and drew a circle.
"This circle is the three states."
"Each holds, each checks, each keeps the others alive—balance."
The hawks twitched.
The doves nodded.
"You say reclaim the south."
His voice dropped.
"I ask you."
"After you reclaim it, who will hold it."
"Who pays."
"Who bears responsibility."
No answer.
"Peace is not free."
"It was obtained by fighting, and it is kept by knowing how to stop."
"The peace we have now is not light."
In that instant, Park Seong-jin—at the edge of the hall—came into view.
Still silent.
The sword put away.
His posture loose.
Yet the air changed simply because he was watching.
The Goryeo king felt that gaze, and grew a beat more solid.
"I am the king of a weak country."
Then he added at once.
"And so I know the value of balance."
His gesture indicated north and south.
"Yuan cannot do everything alone."
"The south does not intend to do everything alone."
"Between them, Goryeo becomes the tuner."
A low ripple ran beneath the tents.
No rebuttal came.
Only calculation moved.
Finally the king lifted his head.
"If we agree today, tomorrow's war will stop, and a hundred years of peace will come."
"If we fold away greed today, tomorrow's domains will be kept."
He stepped back.
He did not add more.
And then—naturally—eyes turned to Park Seong-jin.
He still did not speak.
He did not nod.
He only watched the center of the hall.
That silence, that support, that presence—
turned the king's rhetoric into reality, not by words, but by the world itself.