218.
Countermeasures Against Assassination
When Park Seong-jin asked Song I-sul, Song I-sul offered a completely different view.
"You won't catch an assassin that way."
"That's true.
No matter how much I look into it, nothing gets caught in my hand.
Then what should we do?"
Song I-sul thought for a moment, then spoke evenly.
"People die in the latrine.
People die in bed most often.
They die eating from poison, or they grab a railing and get a poisoned needle.
There are endless methods.
If someone truly wants you dead, there aren't many things you can fully prevent.
Since old times, eliminating a rival has always been like that."
"Then what are you saying we should do?"
Song I-sul shrugged lightly.
"Here's what I think.
Clear everything within a hundred jang in every direction and build a single annex in the middle of it.
Stay only inside that.
No matter how they approach, you'll sense them first through awareness.
Setting traps here and there works too.
There are pits you can drop into, snares that yank you up, all kinds of things.
If you lay jillyeo on the ground, they'll step on it, shriek, and hop around like lunatics."
Park Seong-jin looked troubled.
"Wouldn't our own people get hurt?"
"That's why it has to be somewhere with no foot traffic.
A house a little away from the fortress.
No one should come and go."
Song I-sul continued, eyes glinting with mischief.
"And you hang a flag out front.
'Primary enemy of the province: Park Seong-jin—here.'"
"Ah—"
"Or, 'Intruders die (侵入者死).'"
"Then we should just write 'Beware of dog,' shouldn't we?"
"That works too."
A few warriors from the unit nearby burst into laughter.
A ripple of snickering spread as they leaned in and whispered to each other.
"Isn't there an empty house?"
"Inside the fortress is too noisy."
"We'll have to deploy sometimes, so it can't be too far."
To them, this was almost play.
They tossed around the saying that even masters fall to assassins, yet they showed no sign of treating it as a grave threat.
They looked like hunters plotting a fun quarry.
Watching them, Park Seong-jin felt his chest grow heavy.
His life was at stake, yet to them it sounded like idle talk for a boring night.
Without speaking, he turned his gaze away.
Death had been familiar on the battlefield.
But when it rose as casual language in a quiet night, it carried a completely different weight.
And Somehow, a House Appeared
Before long, a house appeared—almost by accident.
The front opened wide, and the mountain behind blocked the wind.
A classic site of baesanimsu—backed by hills, facing water.
The warrior-unit chuckled as they set traps for fun.
They also prepared several devices to lure an intruder.
A large signboard went up, hanging like a plaque:
侵入者死 — Intruders Die.
At the entrance, they planted banners like a temple's, so it would be easy to spot even from afar.
When the wind caught them, they stood out at a glance.
The path leading to the house was deliberately bent and twisted, so no one could charge straight in.
They diverted a nearby stream into a narrow watercourse, and dug puddles throughout.
Because it was a small house—nothing like the great works in Gaegyeong—it did not require enormous labor.
They raised a brushwood fence like a camp stockade, laid jillyeo across the ground, and planted geomachang behind it.
They set up nokgakmok and arranged circular bands of obstacles to hinder entry.
Every device followed the counterbalancing principles of the Five Phases.
Avoid one, and you meet another.
Clear that, and an unexpected mechanism triggers.
It began like a joke.
But the hands involved belonged to hermits beyond the ordinary—men of the uncanny.
It became a game.
Their martial strength made them hard to kill, so the danger felt thin, and only amusement remained.
When they hung a small wooden plaque reading "Hwaju Sochuk (和州小築)",
it looked, unexpectedly, like a real residence.
The inside was even worse—far worse.
There was a floorboard that sank when stepped on,
a heavy ceiling that could drop and crush from above,
and counterweights that tilted and shoved from the side.
These were mechanisms designed to activate at the slightest disturbance.
Even as they explained, more devices were added.
When you turned your head, they had even built a wooden palm that slapped you in the face.
Park Seong-jin's expression hardened by degrees.
"No—how do you even live in that place?
If I walk in, my neck will come off."
Song I-sul replied, utterly shameless.
"You know it all, so you'll be fine.
You're worried because you don't know, that's all."
"How many things did you add without telling me?"
"Better question: isn't it great?
It's become a natural fortress, a heavenly choke point.
And you got a house out of it.
When else would we stroll in a garden this beautiful?"
Park Seong-jin tossed out a remark as if in passing.
"Then it should have the sort of misty river that flows through an immortal's dwelling, shouldn't it?"
At that, Song I-sul slapped his knee.
"Oh—right.
We missed that.
It needs a mysterious corner too."
Before his words even finished, he began arranging objects according to the bagua positions, matching them to the Five Phases.
Was that even possible?
Mechanisms and formation-craft were not an easy discipline.
But they were hermits.
Each had his specialty, and among them was one versed in such arts.
Several rushed in together, tripped something by mistake, and a mechanism fired—
hanging one man upside down.
Even then, everyone cackled, delighted.
Traps that would call death to others—
to those who lived and moved inside them—
were nothing more than a slightly dangerous playground.