427.
Park Seong-jin Enters the Heart of the Great Battle
The wind had already changed three times.
In the morning it blew down from upstream.
Near noon it veered west.
Now it blew from the southeast toward the northwest.
It was as if an invisible giant were sweeping its palm across all of Lake Poyang, shaking the battlefield itself.
Smoke, flame, and water mist mixed into a murky curtain.
Ships struggled to hold their bearings.
Even so, Chen Youliang’s great fleet advanced—slowly, very slowly—toward the center of the lake.
Holding formation was difficult, yet they withdrew while maintaining distance, each ship watching the next.
If they ran aground on a sandbank, the enemy would be upon them instantly.
Ming light craft would surge in, drive in grappling hooks, and set the decks ablaze.
“Toward the center of the lake.
Hold the center.”
Yun Dam’s voice was low, yet it carried the force to move dozens of great ships.
“Should we bind the ships together?”
Yi Deuk-myeong asked cautiously.
“At Red Cliffs they chained the ships to maintain formation.”
Yun Dam shook his head.
“If we bind them, we cannot evade fire.
The wind now tests us as well.
If flame takes hold once, every ship will burn together.”
He pointed into the dark fog.
“We survive by moving.
By staying alive through motion.”
That was exactly what they did.
Embracing the wind, retreating inch by inch without breaking formation, Chen Youliang’s fleet pressed toward the center.
When gaps opened, they closed them.
When spacing tightened, they eased aside and flowed past.
Those minute adjustments accumulated into a path leading inward.
At the center, where fire attacks and gunfire collided, the battle intensified.
Enemy ships were close enough to touch at arm’s length.
Both sides fired simultaneously—again, and again, and again.
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Height favored one side.
The wind favored the other.
A black rain of arrows briefly darkened the sky.
They slammed into sails and decks.
The sound was not rain, but nails striking iron.
Ming light craft were fast and agile.
They drove into the flanks, hurled grappling hooks, and boarded.
With a sharp clang, hooks caught on railings and a dozen marines surged up at once.
“Block them—they’re coming up!”
At that moment, Yun Dam’s preparation revealed itself.
Marines waiting on deck thrust long, narrow spears tipped with hooks.
Enemy soldiers climbing up were pierced, torn loose, and hurled back into the lake.
Hook, pull—another spear struck immediately.
Slash. Rip. Thud.
Whenever a hooked spear caught shoulder or arm, the marines hauled back with all their strength.
The enemy screamed and fell into the water.
Sometimes the small axe mounted beneath the hook smashed down onto a helmet.
The great ships were moving fortresses—
walls that advanced while stripping the enemy of footing.
But Ming attacks continued.
Dozens of light craft battered the great ships from all sides.
Hooks flew one after another.
Grabbing, cutting, shoving—hundreds fought and died across the decks.
Flames leapt along the railings, only to be smothered under wet mats.
Each time the fire died, smoke rose.
The smoke blended into the fog, blinding sight.
As vision failed, hearing sharpened.
Metal on metal.
Shouts.
Cannon fire.
The roar of water.
Together they became the heartbeat of the great battle.
Then Yun Dam made his decision.
“Park Seong-jin.
Deploy.”
At those words, the commanders looked up as one.
“Now?”
“This is the deepest point.”
The final weapon, Park Seong-jin, drew one breath and nodded.
It had been Yun Dam who had restrained him until now—
the judgment of one who sees what others cannot.
He saw the shape of the smoke.
The grain of the wind.
Below the lake, the tangled killing intent and the presence of enemy commanders overlapped.
“I will go.”
Those words alone changed the air on deck.
A new phase—one the soldiers did not yet understand—opened before them.
The board Yun Dam had laid was now in motion.
The wind opened a path.
Now Park Seong-jin would enter it.
Chen Youliang’s great ships and Ming light craft were nearly locked together.
Only between them did the water churn violently.
Each collision made hulls groan.
Foam burst up beneath the rails.
Flame and smoke lay thin as mist.
Visibility was short.
Within it were blades and blood.
Park Seong-jin stepped onto the railing and leapt into the void between ships.
The gap was a step and a half wide.
Below yawned the dark lake, deeper and blacker than water itself.
As the wind caught his garments, he corrected his course in midair.
It was as if he stepped once upon empty space.
He landed cleanly on the railing of a light craft.
Thud.
The instant his foot touched, sword energy flashed.
Slash.
The first light craft split sideways like a log cleaved by an axe.
Even a light ship could not survive a single strike.
The deck tore apart.
Men, weapons, and rigging vanished together.
Water did not swallow them—it poured in.
Park Seong-jin leapt deeper.
The second.
The third.
He pierced through the fog.
Each leap parted the black water of the lake, opening a path that vanished as soon as he passed.
“That’s him—Park Seong-jin!”
“A monster!”
His movement lay beyond the scale of battle.
The battlefield itself carried him.
The gaps between ships were stepping stones.
Even as he ran, he read the path.
Each place his foot fell carried a different grain of water and density of wind.
The instant he read it, his body responded.
His final objective was Zhu Yuanzhang’s command ship.
He had been watching it for a long time.
There was no need to confirm.
Within the forest of white flags, one center weighed differently.
Where momentum gathered.
Where commands flowed.
Where gazes inevitably returned.
Park Seong-jin knew it by instinct.
Like a grasshopper, he bounded from ship to ship toward Zhu Yuanzhang’s vessel.
He left no clear path behind him.
A careless sweep of his blade severed a mast.
A hull split.
Dozens of enemy soldiers vanished into the water.
It was not the sound of steel cutting flesh.
It was the sound of wind cutting throats.
Slash.
That single syllable ended dozens of lives at once.
Beyond the smoke, a white flag appeared—
fluttering, bending, bright against the thin wind.
There.
Park Seong-jin kicked off the deck.
He crossed between great ships as if stepping on clouds.
“There!”
“He’s moving—stop him!”
“Arrows!”
“Hooks!”
No one stopped him.
They knew how to stop one man with an army.
They learned, too late, that one man could be faster than an army.
Park Seong-jin was already entering the decisive point
where breath and momentum overturned—
the heart of the great battle itself.
