Chapter 363
A Night Staring Toward the End of Supremacy
As the night deepened, the lights of the camp went out one by one.
Yet Jin Youliang remained awake.
He rolled the carved horse markers across the map with his fingertips,
then suddenly stopped.
One piece had halted near Yingtian, unmoving for a long while.
"Where… does the contest for the Central Plains truly end?"
War was a vast chase for supremacy.
At its finish line, only one banner would be planted.
With the Yuan dynasty's decline now undeniable,
only three names remained.
Zhu Yuanzhang.
Zhang Shicheng.
And Jin Youliang himself.
One of them would seize control of Jiangnan.
For a long time, Jin Youliang had believed that man was himself.
Even when he suffered defeat, he held the conviction that he would eventually stand at the front.
He had taken Taiping.
Broken through enemy positions.
Won the cheers of the masses.
He proclaimed the state of Han and ascended the imperial throne.
That day, he felt as if half the realm already lay in his grasp.
If only Yingtian fell, the flow would be complete.
Yet now—everything was wavering.
The weight of the words "Assassination is impossible."
Yoon Dam had not merely delivered a refusal.
His words sounded like a declaration that Heaven's flow itself could not be touched.
To say assassination could not be done did not mean the blade could not reach.
It meant Heaven's current did not permit that direction.
The echo of it would not leave Jin Youliang's ears.
"If Heaven seeks to raise him…
how can I stand against that?"
For the first time, a possibility crossed his mind.
That the final seat of this war might not be his.
It was not the fear of death.
It was the sensation of being excluded from supremacy—
the realization of not being the chosen master.
"Why did I fail to secure Yoon Dam?"
His thoughts turned to the strategist.
"Why didn't I hold on to him back then?"
Sharper than any blade.
Deeper in calculation than any army.
A man who could alter the battlefield with a single line of speech.
The fact that such a man now stood beside Goryeo gnawed at him.
"Is it because Goryeo may become the master of the age to come?"
Yoon Dam's refusal to stand on any side only deepened the unease.
Those who choose sides can be calculated.
Those who do not are watching the flow itself.
"Does this mean I am not the center either?"
"And if so… does that mean Zhu Yuanzhang is not the center as well?"
At the end of that thought, Zhang Shicheng's name naturally slipped away.
As that intuition sharpened, Jin Youliang's breathing grew shallow.
Because he sensed that the remaining answer would be the hardest to accept.
The world suddenly felt unfamiliar.
Scholars argued their doctrines.
Generals shouted of victory.
The people wavered, unable to find where they belonged.
Maps, armies, reputation—
even his certainty in himself had lost its center.
He tapped the table twice, slowly.
"By what measure… does one weigh the realm?"
No answer gathered easily.
That night, a single sensation settled in his chest.
Fear.
Jin Youliang covered Yingtian on the map with his hand.
A place that once felt like the final key to the world
now seemed strangely distant.
As if veiled in mist.
"When the wise shake their heads,"
he recalled,
"their words are usually right."
Then another thought surfaced—
that Heaven's mandate might be tilting toward Zhu Yuanzhang.
Under the moonlight, the dream of grasping supremacy quietly retreated.
"Then what… am I?"
Staring into the empty air, Jin Youliang repeated the question inwardly.
"Am I… the master of the realm?"
It was a question he had long avoided.
Only now did it take root deep within him.
Moonlight flowed on,
and the wind of the battlefield subtly changed direction.
It felt like a silent signal from the current of the world itself.
A chill ran down Jin Youliang's spine.
Meanwhile, on the plains near the enemy camp.
The open field lay in silence.
Mist from the river drifted at waist height,
and beyond it, an endless plain breathed slowly in the dark.
Park Seongjin and his group had advanced nearly to the center of that field,
dozens of li away from their main force.
There, they lit a single small fire.
Like a lone peony blooming through the night,
the fire dyed its surroundings red.
A whole wild beast was set atop the flames.
Each drop of fat sent sparks flying,
and the scent of burning oil spread far into the darkness.
The higher the flames rose, the clearer the smell became.
"They won't be able to endure that,"
one subordinate said quietly.
Others lounged around the fire, singing.
A long, drawn-out Goryeo melody.
The stretched syllables rippled through the air.
The smell of meat.
The glow of fire.
The sound of song.
A perfect triad of provocation before battle.
Yet the enemy camp did not stir.
Beyond the hazy edge of concealment where enemy soldiers would be hiding,
not a single figure emerged.
It was the posture of those who knew that moving meant death.
Like stone, they held themselves rigid, letting not even a trace of presence leak out.
Watching the fire, Park Seongjin spoke quietly.
"Formidable."
Song I-sul crossed his arms and chuckled.
"If they can sit still despite the smell,
they're either not interested in food—"
"Or," he continued,
"they've received different orders."
Park Seongjin narrowed his eyes as he felt the subtle flow of wind.
That wind carried a human presence.
Not the presence of ordinary soldiers.
It was thin and elongated—
not the heavy breathing of warriors,
but the restrained breath of masters hiding the edge of their blades.
A chill brushed his wrist.
It felt as though someone far away was lightly pressing their fingers to his pulse—
an observing intent.
"They're not waiting for us to come,"
he murmured.
"They're watching us."
A subordinate flinched.
"Horses? Heavy infantry?"
Park Seongjin shook his head.
"No."
"Martial artists."
"Not ordinary ones."
"Masters."
His gaze turned toward a darker patch of night.
Nothing was visible to the eye.
But in terms of momentum, it was unmistakable.
Those who had swallowed their breath completely.
Those who pressed killing intent flat against the ground
and erased themselves atop it.
"They're there," he said.
"The ones who swallowed their breathing."
Song I-sul lifted his head, the humor gone from his face.
"…Men of the martial world."
"Zhu Yuanzhang called them," Park Seongjin said calmly.
"This isn't a move to lure us out."
"It's a test."
"They're observing—measuring our momentum."
The silence of the enemy camp was not waiting.
It was preparation.
Turning the meat over the fire, Park Seongjin suppressed a smile.
"If they'd rushed us, it would've been easier."
"They're holding back," Song I-sul muttered.
"Not because the bait is weak,"
"but because they're still cautious."
The fire burned quietly.
Smoke stretched long into the darkness.
The smoke became a path.
The path became a trace.
And the trace became calculation.
Park Seongjin felt it.
This flame was not a provocation.
It was a gesture.
A gesture exchanged between equals.
Softly, he said,
"The enemy's masters have begun to move."
As his words fell, the pattern of the wind shifted ever so slightly.
Even without wind, a single blade of grass changed the direction it lay.
That tiny change boomed in his perception like a war drum.
The silence of the night deepened into a long, even breath.
A breath heralding the first clash
with the masters to come.