Chapter 233 — The Great Khan's Question 2
"And another matter?"
The Great Khan's question continued.
In those words, a slightly deeper expectation was mixed with light curiosity.
Everyone wants to hear signs of the future they desire.
That is because people know that sincerely wishing for something to happen cannot be achieved by their sincerity alone.
They have put in everything they can put in, and there is nothing more to add.
The future we hope for does not come easily.
Yeongu thought for a moment, then said,
"I met my senior brother and asked his opinion."
"You have a senior brother too?"
"We serve the same master, so I call him senior brother."
"Hm. He must be just as remarkable."
"For reference, my senior brother can read the heavenly flow."
At the words heavenly flow, the Great Khan's eyes widened slightly.
"To think there is still someone in this age who knows the heavenly flow."
"He is a genius of Qimen Dunjia."
"Oh, such a person exists?"
Yeongu continued as if it were nothing.
"According to rumor, he is one of the few people who remembers a previous life.
Like a high lama of Tibet, he knew in advance where he would be born again and left word of it.
Master followed that word, found him, brought him back, and taught him.
He still has the appearance of a young boy, but after several years of cultivation, they say he has recovered most of his former memories."
The Great Khan closed his mouth.
There was no reason to believe such a story exactly as told.
In the world, many transcendent things are created to comfort the hearts of those who have lost someone.
Whether such words are believable or not is sometimes not important.
For a person who runs a country, it is an unnecessary expectation.
What use would such a story have for a person who lives in the world through rational thought?
Even so, when Yeongu spoke so naturally, his ears were drawn to it.
Yeongu was not a man who tried to obtain what he wanted through false words.
Nor did he invent vain tales.
So even if the words themselves were not believed, it was difficult to ignore whatever those words pointed toward.
The Great Khan asked,
"So that person also requested that slaughter be prohibited?"
"Yes. He said that if we do not do so, we will not last long. He asked why I would bother going to help something that would not last long."
The Great Khan was not a man who believed in the future.
Yet the painful words not last long drew his ear.
"How long is that long?"
"The sense was that it would not last a hundred years, and perhaps not even several decades.
He said Liao lasted two hundred years, and Jin would not even reach half of that."
The smile vanished from the Great Khan's face.
"He knows the future, but it is not fixed?"
"He said the world is governed by causality. I think that if one could calculate all those countless causes and effects, one might be able to know. That is my thought."
Yeongu laughed awkwardly.
"Hehe. But how could anyone calculate all of that? So he said he sees the flow. He sees the great causes and the great flow. My learning is shallow, so it is very difficult to explain."
The Great Khan slowly stopped walking.
From one side of the unfinished palace fortress came the peaceful sound of craftsmen trimming wood.
They had only just founded the country and were raising the palace fortress, yet someone said it would not last long.
He thought of the successor states of Balhae that had risen and vanished again and again.
They truly had not lasted long.
He listened to that sound for a moment and sank into thought, then asked again.
"I would like to see him. If such a person exists, you should have brought him."
Yeongu shook his head.
"Are you interested?"
"Of course I am curious. We must cut through a world in which nothing is certain with courage alone…"
Yeongu wanted to agree with his words.
In the time when death had stood right before his eyes, he too had truly wanted to believe in something and lean on it.
"We should be grateful merely that he answers questions. He is not someone who comes because he is told to come.
Such people devote themselves to study in the mountains. They do not come out into the world. Never."
He laughed, looking a little troubled.
"I call him senior brother because we share the same master. But if you add in the memories of his previous life, even calling him senior brother is not easy. It means he has lived several hundred years with the same consciousness. But do you know this? That gentleman now looks barely twelve or so. He has the body of a child."
The Great Khan grinned.
In that smile, belief and disbelief were mixed in equal measure.
It was an explanation difficult to accept according to the laws of the world they lived in.
But the fact that it was difficult to accept did not make the interest disappear.
"So. What does that fortune-teller say will happen to Liao?"
Yeongu answered at once.
"Liao will fall. Its lifespan has already ended. Two hundred years is a long time."
The Great Khan slowly nodded.
Those words sounded less like prophecy and more like a conclusion drawn from reading the world before them.
Liao was shaking badly.
"And Song?"
"That place is still difficult, but he said it will continue for about as long as it has existed until now."
"It has lasted about one hundred and fifty years, so another one hundred and fifty would make three hundred?"
"Yes."
"And Goryeo?"
Yeongu hesitated over whether he should say this.
To recommend union to the Great Khan, who had only just founded a country, might sound like an insult.
Yet he ignorantly believed that not speaking was also a form of lying.
"That was a conditional statement."
The Great Khan drew a deep breath.
"A conditional statement. What is different?"
"He said Goryeo will last five hundred years, but if it unites with Jin, it will last a thousand years like Gyerim."
At the words Gyerim and a thousand years, the Great Khan stopped walking.
"Unites?"
Yeongu gave a faint laugh.
"Did you not call us brother countries? But it is a story with no possibility at all. We cannot unite as equals, and naturally there would be a principal side and a subordinate side. Who would wish to become the subordinate? So there will be no union, and he said Goryeo may last two or three hundred years more."
The Great Khan chewed over those words.
Jin and Goryeo unite.
The words were absurd.
Yet within that absurdity, there was a strange force.
Between Liao and Song, between the steppe and farming lands, if two countries of different blood, different laws, and different tongues looked in one direction, what kind of world would open?
The thought was laughable, yet it did not easily disappear.
The Great Khan asked,
"What is that man's name?"
"Oryang.
They say he is called Oryang because he lives on Mount Oryang."