348.
Seeing Momentum First**
It was the southern riverbank at Taiping.
The front appeared to have stalled.
Yet what had truly stopped was only the great war drums.
Across the river, small skirmishes between forward scouts never ceased.
By day, the two sides faced one another, wearing expressions that seemed to ask, "Not today?"
By night, blood was spilled in the reed beds, on sandbars, and in the shallow channels.
Recon cut supply lines.
Supplies cut formations.
Formations cut resolve.
So the war continued even on days it seemed still.
Losses mounted along the routes.
Zhu Yuanzhang's advance scouts slipped into the river paths whenever they found an opening,
cutting reins, stealing horses and provisions.
We struck their choke points in return.
But there was no end to it.
Block one route and another appeared.
Sever one path and a new one opened.
Paths regrew like river water.
Park Seong-jin went out himself.
A general does not usually involve himself in such matters.
Minor clashes are left to junior officers;
a general holds only the greater board.
But that day was different.
Reports that "the routes are dying" came in several times a day.
Horses collapsed, wagons vanished, and the light in men's eyes dried out.
The soldiers were winning, yet growing exhausted.
They had the edge in battle, but the sense of survival was fading.
Night mist lay low.
The wind stirred the surface in uneven ripples.
The current was invisible, but the grain of the wind traced thin lines upon the water.
Moonlight scattered, glittering like silver scales.
Ordinarily, tension would have come first—
breath quickening, shoulders tightening, eyes digging into the dark.
But that night, Park Seong-jin's mind was still.
Just as the inner method he had recited at dawn.
If the mind is like an empty valley.
Within that stillness, the air changed—
not in sound, but in texture.
Not the direction the reeds swayed,
but the way the layers of air between them compressed and released.
A minute gap left behind as the wind passed.
There came a moment when that gap shifted
from a fissure of nature
to one made by human presence.
…Three. Over there.
There were no signs yet.
No footsteps.
No friction of wet cloth, no breathing, no metal brushing metal.
And yet it came first—
as if the wind itself had touched him to give notice.
From behind, Song Yi-sul asked in the lowest voice,
"Do you feel it?"
Park Seong-jin answered briefly.
"Yes. That way."
Song Yi-sul asked no more.
This was not confirmation.
It was the signal to begin.
The reeds split apart.
The enemy's vanguard burst out—
they had been hiding at close range and attacked the moment they closed in.
Spearpoints thrust forward, tearing at the dark,
with blades following close behind.
A silent charge makes its first move deadly.
Kill with the first strike, and there is no need for the second.
Normally, the body would have reacted first,
or the mind would have judged.
But that night, neither had time to step in.
Within movement, guard stillness.
As the spear aimed for his left shoulder,
Park Seong-jin's body was already elsewhere.
It was less the intent to dodge
than the sense that he simply was not there.
The spear struck empty air.
The enemy lost balance.
A spear is heavy.
When heavy things miss, recovery is slow.
That slowness was the gap where life slipped away.
Park Seong-jin himself was startled.
I didn't move.
Qi had opened the path first.
His body followed.
It was not movement made to evade.
It was movement born because a place to stand had already appeared.
The second enemy swung his blade.
Dust leapt up.
Sounds tangled in the dark.
And yet Park Seong-jin did not waver.
It felt as though he was floating above the ground.
Within stillness, contain movement.
He drew his sword slowly.
Not fast.
Not violent.
Yet within that unhurried motion, momentum burst open—
not speed, but alignment.
The blade parted the dust
and cut cleanly through the opponent's wrist.
The man fell without even opening his eyes.
Song Yi-sul murmured under his breath,
"…That isn't a simple strike. Your qi moved the sword."
The third enemy charged, swinging his spear wide.
At the same time, two more closed in from behind.
It was a melee.
Ordinarily, victory here would border on chance.
One misstep, and a blade slips in from the dark.
But to Park Seong-jin's eyes, everything was visible.
The path of the spear.
Where each foot would land.
The tremor of breath.
The height at which blades were held.
The habit of shoulders lifting first.
The tendency of knees to bend too early.
Everything spread out
like ripples on a quiet lake.
He did not draw forms first.
Qi flowed first.
The body followed.
The sword moved like running water.
Before the spearhead passed,
the empty space in its momentum appeared.
One cut.
The spearman's throat was severed.
It was not a cut driven by strength.
It was a division along the grain.
The remaining man screamed and recoiled.
The moment he saw it, he understood.
"That's not human movement."
The words were fear.
Fear is faster than any blade.
A sword cuts one man.
Fear binds ten.
Park Seong-jin did not seize that fear.
Do not leave one thought. Do not dwell in one thought.
He did not grasp it.
He let it go.
The fight ended.
Yet his heart did not surge.
Even if more came, there was no fear.
Only inwardly did he murmur,
When qi flows, the battlefield flows.
That sensation—
in the greater battles to come—
would become a decisive move.
From across the river, a report came up.
"They've vanished."
That Night**
That night, twelve of Zhu Yuanzhang's advance scouts crossed the river and slipped into the reed beds.
It was a preliminary probe.
On a frozen front, such probing was common.
They did not return.
No signal.
No torchlight.
Not a single horse came back.
At first, the commander thought little of it.
"They must have lost their way in the dark."
But as time passed, his expression hardened.
"Those men do not lose their way."
A second scouting party was sent in.
Thirty men.
They did not return either.
Only then did a chill spread through the camp.
Forty men vanishing without a sound was rare.
If there had been a fight, screams would have remained.
If arrows had flown, there would have been noise.
But there was nothing.
As if the air itself had swallowed them.
At dawn, when the muddy current along the riverbank settled,
the bodies were found.
They floated face-down among the reeds,
caught between water and stalk.
All were the same.
Their throats were cut.
A single stroke.
There were almost no signs of resistance.
The unit commanders fell into confusion.
"The cut marks are identical."
"It looks like one man did it."
"One man… against thirty?"
One thing, however, was certain.
They had all died to the same blade,
by the same grain.
That sameness was what inspired fear.
An ambush leaves variation.
When many strike at once, traces mix and scatter.
Here, nothing was mixed.
It was one line. One rhythm.
The council chamber froze.
A veteran accompanying warrior turned one of the bodies over
and traced the cut at the neck with his fingertips.
His face stiffened.
"…This is not the work of an ordinary martial man."
"How can you tell?"
"The blade did not waver. One breath. One grain.
Even I— even my master— would struggle to cut like this."
The commanders drew in their breath.
Even the old hands felt a cold creep along their spines.
"A master."
"There's a master in the enemy camp."
The moment those words were spoken,
Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes narrowed.
He did not trust talk of masters.
War, to him, was a board of numbers, roads, and grain.
Yet now the battlefield was beginning to tilt—
slowly, imperceptibly—
around a single unseen man.