What flew first were our arrows.
At a distance of little more than a hundred paces, before anyone could catch their breath, hundreds of iron shafts tore through the sky at once.
Peeeing—
A short, razor-sharp sound split the air. Metal ripped at the wind in rapid succession, and arrows slammed into stone and shields along the wall, bursting apart like fragments.
Then Hwang Hyeonpil's shout exploded.
"Reload! Align—left blind sector!"
The soldiers stepped back in unison and set their arrows.The wooden bows, swollen with damp, felt heavy—but no one stopped.
Seongjin shook his fingers and exhaled roughly.
Shooting a bow was harder than killing.
To strike a living target meant denying, with one's own hands, that the person before you was still alive.
At last, smoke rose from the wall.
The enemy, who had endured in silence, returned fire.
Following the arcs we had sent skyward, thicker, heavier iron bolts sliced through the air and poured down.
Kwaang!
An arrow shattered against stone.A nearby shield split, an arm was pierced, and a short scream slipped out.
"Medic!"
Someone shouted, but the voice was swallowed by the roar of metal.
When the rain of arrows paused, a brief stillness fell.
Even in that narrow gap, black dots already crowded the ground—broken shafts, fallen feathers, trampled footprints.
But the quiet did not last.
Puuuuu—
From atop the wall came a long, low blast of a horn, stirring the stench of blood across the field.
"Everyone—behind shields!"
At Hwang Hyeonpil's command, soldiers rolled and dropped flat.
The second strike fell.
This time, it was not arrows.
Boom!
A fire-laden projectile crashed into the edge of the camp.
A cart burst apart as if exploding. Within the flames, a single arrow caught fire and shot straight into the sky.
That burning arrow looked like a signal.
"Shoot! Shoot them down!"
O Jincheol snarled through clenched teeth.
In that instant, the sky darkened again.
Iron bolts from the crossbows fell first, and over them the arrows of bows layered thickly.
Through smoke and flame, a rain of metal once more swallowed the walls of Yoyang Fortress.
The enemy could not be seen.
Even unseen, they were shot.
Seongjin's arms were already numb.
Still, he could not lower his bow.
Even as the string bit into his fingers and tore the skin, he kept firing.
Each arrow felt like pushing his own death a little farther away.
No—in the very moment of release, the feeling that I am still alive was unmistakable.
From the wall came the sounds of collapse—stone breaking, bodies falling, lives ending—all tangled together.
The wind carried the smell of blood and iron.
In that haze, Seongjin felt a strange certainty.
Today, I will not die.
That single thought held him upright for a moment.
But the exchange of fire did not end.
This was only the beginning.
The White Lotus Sect had not begun as a rebellion.
It was a language of despair.
When the Southern Song fell and the Yuan took its place, the world changed too quickly. Law grew distant. Officials grew greedy. The people fell silent.
And silence meant being unheard.
Those who are unheard must find words with which to save themselves.
That was how the name of Amitābha began to be spoken.
A wish to be reborn in the Pure Land.A hope that in the next life, there would be no suffering.
The White Lotus Sect was where that hope gathered.
It spoke of equality and compassion. It believed that anyone could be saved.
That alone made the world uneasy.
The moment the poor spoke with one voice, power saw not faith, but threat.
Prayer did not last long.
Prayer became questions.Questions became anger.
Why must we only wait for salvation?Why is this world so rotten?
The moment those questions sought answers, a blade was laid beside the sutras.
Chanting turned into shouting.The Pure Land became something to be built here and now.
The world of Maitreya—
It was a word of hope, and at the same time, the language of war.
Men with red cloth bound around their heads appeared.
Called the Red Turbans, they cried out that they would burn the old world to summon a new one.
The fires spread. Government offices burned. Fortresses fell. People swung blades while chanting the Buddha's name.
But the world did not change easily.
The flames consumed everything—and what remained were ashes and corpses.
The defeated were driven north.
Fleeing Yuan pursuit, they crossed rivers and mountains—into Liaodong, across the Amnok, and into Goryeo.
Once, those red banners reached even the skies over Gaegyeong.The king fled. Cities burned.
The common people dying in the streets also cried out the Buddha's name.
No one could tell what was salvation, and what was ruin.
They were finally driven out.
But they did not disappear.
Faith does not go out.
Defeated faith only changes shape—new names, folded banners, gathering again.
Thus the names White Lotus and Red Turbans returned, wearing different faces in every age.
They always spoke of a "new world."
But that new world only ever appeared atop the wreckage of the old.
Those remaining in Yoyang Fortress were part of that same line.
The last embers of the White Lotus.A group with only the shell of faith left.
They spoke of devotion, but in their eyes there was neither Maitreya nor Buddha.
Hunger and rage had already taken their place.
The Pure Land was no longer a promise of the next life.
It was an excuse to survive tonight.A reason to grip a blade.
They had once been people of the Central Plains.
Now they belonged to no country.
Driven out, crushed, clinging at last to faith—only to turn that faith itself into a weapon.
When the Goryeo army halted before Yoyang Fortress,those inside already knew:
This was not a war to summon salvation.
It was a battle to snuff out the last remaining embers.
Yoyang Fortress was burning in many places.
The walls were blackened, the boundary between stone and ash blurred. The pillars of the towers, rising like spires, were half-melted. From afar, it looked like a collapsed temple. Up close, it still seemed to hold the warmth of human bodies.
Layers of scent hung in the air—rotting blood, burned grain, and strangely, incense.
The smell of sutras turned to ash.
Park Seongjin stared at the fortress for a long time from horseback.
Above the gate still hung the banner of the White Lotus Sect.
Not red cloth, but fabric soaked in blood, darkened to near black. Each time it fluttered in the wind, it looked less like a flag than an open wound.
Beneath it, people were shouting.
At first it sounded like chanting.But the longer he listened, the more it was not prayer—
ragged cries, words losing rhythm, voices forcing out despair.
"Maitreya is coming! Maitreya is coming!"
The echo rolling down from the wall sent a cold line of sweat along Seongjin's spine.
Why would a Maitreya descend for you?Self-serving faith—then or now, it was no different.Arms always bent inward.
This was not belief.
It was clinging.
Not the voice of those awaiting salvation,but the voice of those denying the end.
"Devotion…,"he murmured.
But that devotion sounded like the last dry cough of a world already burned to death.
Those who had once believed in salvation were now killing others to prove it.
Inside the fortress, flames surged again.
Whether oil had been poured, the fire crackled upward, dyeing the metal embedded in the walls red. The glow reached the dawn sky, painting even distant soldiers' faces in bloodlight.
O Jincheol spoke low beside him.
"These are the dying embers of faith. If you don't put them out, they'll flare up again."
Seongjin did not answer.
He only stared at the fire.
In the flames, the faces of the dead flickered—and among them, his own.
A world where the living and the dead, prayers and screams, writhed together in fire.
That was Yoyang Fortress now.