Lee Hui’s plan to stir up a spectacle by establishing a military encampment before the imperial capital dissolved into nothing.
The General’s banner was lowered, and before dawn he changed his clothes.
He had only the inner martial robe he wore beneath his armor, so there was little to change into.
The military uniform and armor were all granted by His Majesty.
He carefully folded them and placed them on the table, laying down even the sword bestowed by the Emperor.
When he fastened at his waist the dark, heavy blade he had carried in his years as a wanderer, the preparations were complete.
There was nothing to take with him.
A departing life is filled only with things to lay down.
Perhaps because he had removed his armor, his body felt lighter.
He summoned a civil official, explained the situation, and handed over his duties.
He had arrived with nothing and now rose with nothing.
He pretended not to see the tears pooling in the official’s eyes.
When he stepped out of the tent to depart, more than a hundred soldiers of the White Dragon Corps were kneeling on one knee in the open ground outside.
All of them had removed their armor and wore simple martial garments, looking like common civilians.
“Allow us to go with you.”
Ga Gyeong-pil called out loudly from the front.
The General had submitted his resignation and meant to return home alone, yet the soldiers who had marched with him now asked to follow him together.
“Well, well. Is this your doing?”
Jin Mugwang turned to Lee Hui.
“No. I only informed them of the circumstances. They submitted their own resignations and changed their clothes.”
Where Lee Hui pointed, resignation letters lay stacked, held down by stones against the wind.
They too had laid everything down.
They had set aside their weapons and placed their resignation letters on the ground.
That was all.
There were no tears, no complaints, no words of betrayal or disappointment.
“Raise your hand if you have parents, a wife, or children waiting in your hometown.”
Jin Mugwang’s low voice carried clearly to all hundred men.
Not a single hand rose.
“Are you all orphans?”
“We will go with you.”
“We will go with you.”
Their voices were filled with loyalty.
Lee Hui handed his own resignation to the remaining civil official and mounted his horse without a word.
The White Dragon soldiers mounted as well.
It would have been proper to leave the horses behind, but without them they could not move, so they rode out of the camp.
The encampment, the weapons, the armor—everything remained where it stood.
After a long night of anguish and wakefulness, dawn broke dim and gray.
“Let’s go.”
More than a hundred riders spurred southward along the main road.
They were heading toward the fertile southern lands, where the General’s ancestral home lay.
As the saying goes, the fallen leaves return to their roots.
Going home might not have been the right answer.
No one knew what command the Emperor might issue.
A judgment made in fear rarely follows common sense.
Decisions born of dread and uncertainty cannot be predicted.
Yet once everything had been laid down, there was nowhere else to go.
They rode where their hearts led them.
Resignation (辭職) — The Palace Decision
The Emperor did not read the resignation in full.
He stopped midway.
It felt long.
Too many words.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Too much emotion.
Too much loyalty.
But emotion was not what the Emperor looked for.
When does he leave.
Why does he leave.
Is the post empty immediately.
That was all.
The Emperor did not believe that the reason was “his father’s illness.”
He knew the Chancellor did not believe it either.
Each knew the other’s lie, yet they adopted it as an official reason.
That was the court.
The Emperor slowly set the resignation down.
The eunuch swiftly unfolded it and laid it neatly upon the desk.
“His father is ill, you say.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Grave enough that he cannot even attend the welcoming banquet?”
No welcoming banquet had ever been planned.
But the Emperor said it deliberately.
He meant: Is it so urgent that he must refuse even ceremony?
The Chancellor bowed and answered slowly.
“He fears he may not see his father’s final moment.”
Silence lingered.
The Emperor’s eyes rested on the Chancellor.
It was a gaze asking for the true reason.
The Chancellor bowed lower.
A posture that requested the question remain unasked.
“Heaven is without mercy.”
The Emperor spoke.
Then immediately took up the brush.
“I grant it.”
Ordinarily, the imperial seal is not personally stamped upon such resignations.
A eunuch could have handled it.
But the Emperor lifted the seal himself.
He brought it down heavily.
Thud.
Then again.
Harder than necessary.
The sound was not mere approval.
It was anger, resignation, and wounded pride striking together.
“Grant General Jin Mugwang the title Defender-Guardian Grand General and bestow ten thousand pyeong of land.”
A reward.
A promotion.
Outwardly, an imperial favor.
But all present understood.
It was elevation for removal.
Not to the battlefield, but to the margins.
The Chancellor bowed deeply.
“Your Majesty’s grace is boundless.”
The Emperor’s gaze sharpened.
He had ordered the man killed.
Now he resigned instead.
The pretext for execution had vanished.
The court was full of officials.
Secret orders could not be spoken aloud.
Words exchanged behind screens do not belong to the open air of the throne hall.
The Minister of War stepped forward.
“Your Majesty, the Northern Route Army was once the weakest, yet it has become one of the strongest. It is fitting to appoint a successor swiftly, and that all previous edicts be delegated to the new commander.”
It was not a calculated remark.
Yet formally, it was correct.
The Emperor paused, then said,
“Very well. From this moment, all previous orders issued to the Northern Route Army are rescinded.”
On the surface, it was administrative.
But the Chancellor understood.
The assassination order was included.
That command too vanished with the words.
The Emperor turned his head slightly.
A subtle movement.
But sufficient.
The armed retainers behind the screen,
the eunuchs,
the master of the shadow blades—
they understood the signal.
The Chancellor bowed deeply once more.
By evening, the Emperor would summon him again.
Before then, Jin Mugwang must have covered at least two hundred li.
With that distance secured, immediate pursuit would be difficult.
Even if another order were issued, death would not come at once.
Time to flee—
that was the most he could give.
He straightened slowly.
Politics always stands between delayed justice and immediate fear.
- An Encounter with Bandits
Jin Mugwang and his company drove their horses hard toward the south.
No one spoke the word flight, yet all of them knew it for what it was.
As long as the Emperor’s mind could turn without warning, the only safety lay in distance.
After riding two or three hundred li without rest, the horses’ breathing grew ragged, and it was Yi Hui who finally slowed the pace.
“General, at this rate the horses will collapse before we do.”
“And?”
“We must eat something.”
“Was there anything left to eat?”
“We left everything behind. With the uniforms.”
“So we fast?”
“Is there another way?”
“We can buy food. Or hunt. I am not particular.”
“There are more than a hundred of us.”
The sun had tilted red in the west, and the road seemed layered with fatigue, broken only by the dull rhythm of hooves.
As they crossed a small ridge, about ten men stepped out and blocked the official road.
They wore animal hides and carried axes and crude spears.
“Halt!”
The shout was forced, the threat miscalculated.
They had counted the first five riders and thought that was all.
Then more appeared over the ridge.
And more.
When the full company crested the slope, the bandits’ faces stiffened.
Ga Gyeongpil looked down from his saddle.
“Who are you?”
“We are the masters of this mountain. Leave everything you carry and you may pass.”
“And if we refuse?”
“You will leave a hand and a foot behind.”
“Why not the head?”
The large bandit chief tightened his grip on his axe, yet his eyes were already counting the riders behind Ga Gyeongpil.
Ga urged his horse forward slowly, closing the distance.
“You say you are the master here. Then you have a stronghold.”
“That cannot be told.”
The man seemed oddly simple, answering each question as though compelled to do so.
“How many men?”
“Many. These are not all.”
“Then call the rest.”
“You mock us?”
“Of course.”
The bandits’ threat weakened quickly under the weight of numbers.
“Then… just pass.”
“We cannot simply pass.”
“Why?”
“You tried to rob us. Now we shall rob you.”
“Rob bandits?”
“One meal. Provide it, and you live.”
The chief flushed red.
“You press your advantage with numbers. Fight me one-on-one.”
“Very well.”
“Dismount.”
“Just the two of us.”
“Agreed.”
Ga Gyeongpil slipped from his saddle lightly.
The moment his feet touched the ground, his body leaned forward in motion.
The chief raised his axe in a broad, slow arc.
Ga stepped in half a pace sooner, twisting the man’s wrist inward.
The axe’s path faltered.
His left fist struck the jaw with a dull crack, snapping the man’s head back.
The large body did not fall easily.
Still gripping the axe, the chief tried to drive forward with brute weight.
Ga pivoted, letting the force slide past, and drove his knee up into the man’s abdomen.
Air burst from the chief’s lungs.
As the axe lifted again, Ga’s fist plunged deep beneath the solar plexus.
He did not yield an inch.
He drove the blow in with his full weight.
The axe slipped from the chief’s hand.
The giant body wavered and collapsed backward to the dust.
Ga stepped close, grabbed the man by the collar, then let him drop.
“You lost.”
The chief nodded weakly, tears leaking from his eyes.
“I lost.”
“Will you bring the food, or shall we come fetch it?”
“W-we will bring it.”
When all ten bandits began to move, Ga raised a hand.
“Two go. The rest stay.”
“We go to fetch food…”
“Two are enough. The rest—faces to the ground.”
The eight remaining bandits lay flat in the road, pressing their foreheads into the dirt.
They cast furtive glances, but there was nowhere to flee.
The riders were armed, bows visible among them.
Soon women from the mountain stronghold came down carrying bowls and baskets.
They looked no different from villagers.
There was coarse rice, wild greens, and salted meat—nothing more.
Yet for a hundred riders it was enough.
They dismounted and ate by the roadside, quickly and without ceremony.
Afterward, Ga Gyeongpil grinned at Yi Hui.
“Perhaps we should become bandits. We would do better than these.”
Yi Hui replied dryly, “We leave because we will not serve traitors and usurpers, and you would turn outlaw?”
“I jest.”
“This is no trade. A trade serves some necessity of the world. For them, perhaps this is necessity.”
Jin Mugwang listened in silence, gazing toward the distant hills.
It had not even been a full day since he resigned.
Men who once stood beneath the banners of the capital now bargained for a meal with roadside bandits.
Without armor, reality was stark.
They mounted again and turned south.
The bandits did not raise their heads.
Thus the general who had left the capital, and the soldiers who followed him, rode on—not under the name of the court, but into dust and sweat.