Chapter 168 — Asking the Master
Huiling Prefecture sat beside the river.
The Ashihe River curved southward, and the land along the water lay low, broad, and damp.
Ashihe River: also called the Alechuka River.
The city had been built upon that ground.
It stood where the plain met the settled land.
To the east, the long fields of Songnen opened wide, with nothing to block the view.
With the founding of the empire, construction was underway at the central palace site.
A royal ancestral temple and an altar to the gods of earth and grain, modeled after the institutions of the Central Plains, stood side by side.
The round altar where sacrifices had been offered to Heaven had been swept clean.
Baek Ingyeom was staying there.
"Oh, Youngwoo. You have come. Come in."
He spoke as if he had just seen the young man from next door.
"Have you been well all this time?"
"Yes. I hear your merit in this battle was great."
"It was nothing remarkable. Well, that is how it was."
The master glanced at his disciple.
Seeing that Youngwoo's expression was poor, he waited.
Then Cheolun, chattering like a sparrow, answered in his place.
"He resigned this time."
"Hm. Why?"
"He asked them to stop their atrocities, but they would not listen."
"And what about the Goryeo army?"
The talkative fellow answered that too.
"Jungnangjang explained everything properly."
The master asked, and Cheolun answered in his place.
"So you dragged them all there, and then slipped out alone?"
Youngwoo tried to defend himself.
"Should I have brought them out with me?"
Baek Ingyeom spoke plainly.
"Filthy and sordid things are unbearable for you, but the Goryeo soldiers may endure them?"
Youngwoo knew the world was equal to all, yet it seemed to act more harshly upon him.
The Goryeo soldiers would have seen and known as well.
They simply would not have spoken.
Youngwoo asked,
"What should I have done?"
"A commander of a nation must regard his soldiers as his people and cherish them."
"Should I have turned the army back?"
"The army requires permission from Gaegyeong…"
"Gaegyeong will not be so different. They will think of life and death as someone else's affair."
"Gaegyeong has changed."
Youngwoo distrusted them deeply.
"They are all the same. Men busy climbing upward, wretched men who only want to serve one more day and receive one more portion of salary."
"That is because they have no other path."
"Why would there be no other path? There are other paths. But the others are hard, painful, and shabby, so they cling desperately to their posts. To do that, they sacrifice anything. If turning the army back helps extend their political life, they will do it. If it does not, they will not. Do you know how much they hate reporting things upward? In the old days, that bastard threw a fit because a report was made while I was absent. A comrade was dying. Then should he not report it? Should he have waited until I came back? He was trembling because he feared that if a comrade's injury became known above, it would be read as his own fault. Men like that are above us. Can the Goryeo army run properly? Even if His Majesty wishes to do something, reports must go up. He must know."
Baek Ingyeom remembered something from a few months before and smiled faintly.
Everything was "bastard."
It was not specific, but it was a deeply emotional language of judgment.
"And yet you reported it all, did you not? The problems of the Goryeo army. Perhaps things have become somewhat better."
"I did it because I was angry. What would have become better?"
"His Majesty seemed to be overseeing things directly."
"What you mean is that I should report and return because those bastards may have changed."
"If there is no longer a need for you to remain here."
Youngwoo realized again how precise his master's question was.
"I simply hate it. The cruelty they are doing."
"If they have suffered much, there may be room to understand them. But if you try to understand everything in that same way, would it not be unfair to those who suffer the same thing? If they have changed, I mean."
Were those who had supposedly changed still the same men, risen by the same path in the same way?
Youngwoo did not answer.
Baek Ingyeom spoke as if soothing him.
"In any case, you must go to Goryeo once. If you toss in one letter of resignation and leave your post, how bewildered will they be? At the very least, would it not have been proper to wait until the next man arrived?"
"That is true, but my role is only… jungnangjang. There are many men who can serve as jungnangjang."
He tried to cover his irresponsibility with words, but the words were not enough.
Baek Ingyeom soothed him.
"I am not trying to put you in difficulty. I am telling you what propriety requires. So go to Goryeo once."
"Yes. I understand."
He had no time even to settle himself before he had to set out for Goryeo.
How could he disobey his master's words?
He had only thought of turning back, but old memories came back one after another.
Memories of nearly dying.
Days of betrayal.
A wretched human society.
He could not put it all into words and turned his head away.
The master lightly placed a hand on Youngwoo's shoulder.
It felt as if he were saying, I know what you are thinking.
"Even so, what must be done must be done. Goryeo made a great investment because of you. How can you slip out alone? Go and report what has happened. Receive your order. That is what a soldier does. How can you simply disappear because you dislike something? Whatever the matter may be, you must report it upward. Goryeo will be different now. His Majesty has changed everything himself."
"Yes. I understand."