The Sword Spirit

When I was young I loved to roam, and my footsteps have covered the better half of the empire. In my twentieth year or thereabouts, I took boat from Jingxiang and went south, passing through the deeps of Wan Mountain. Wan Mountain is a place of much rain; and on that day, toward dusk, black clouds pressed upon the peaks and suddenly the rain came down like a poured-out bowl. The boat could not go on, so I made fast to the bank beside a ruined temple. The temple board read "Returning Cloud," though how long it had stood deserted no one could say. After the fires of war, only two or three broken walls remained, and one battered Buddha whose gilding had peeled away, its face at once like weeping and like laughter. A single old monk, thin and deaf, lived in the western cloister, boiling wild millet for his meal. I spread my straw mat under the cloister and slept.

At midnight the rain ceased, and a cold mountain air came in. I was drifting toward sleep when I heard, from the wall, a single clear ringing - as if someone were drawing a fingernail lightly along iron, long and unbroken. I threw on my clothes and rose to look. Moonlight came through the broken tiles, and there in a broken niche lay an object: its scabbard wholly rotted away, the blade out some three inches, of a blue that struck the eye, lighting my face as with frost. I wiped the dust with my sleeve; the blade was cold as autumn water fresh from the whetstone, and along its spine were two seal-script characters: "Autumn Water." The old monk told me: "This sword, no one knows from what age. The rebel soldiers passed here and cast it into the niche; it has lain a hundred years and more. On every wind-and-rain night it rings of itself; the old monk has long ceased to wonder at it." My heart was moved. I paid two hundred cash and made it mine, wrapped it in cloth, and hung it on the boat's cabin wall.

From then on, whenever the sky grew dark and rain threatened, the sword would give a faint ring, thin and long, like a complaint, like a longing. At first I was afraid; later I grew used to the sound, and came to understand that old things, having gathered breath through long years, can speak - only the human ear cannot wholly understand.

On the journey home, leaving Wan Mountain, we passed Poyang by night. Suddenly a strange wind rose on the river; the mast leaned, the oars broke, and the boat all but overturned. I clasped the sword and crouched in the hold, and felt its body grow gradually warm, a light leaking from the cloth seams, blue as a bean of firefly. In a moment the wind stilled. The boatman cried: "A great rock stood up out of the water ahead - touch it and we were smashed; how we missed it, I cannot say!" I looked at the sword; its light had drawn in, yet on the blade were tiny drops of water, like sweat. I thought to myself: can this sword have knowing, that it shielded me in the perilous waves?

I. The Sword Obtained, and the Passage Through Peril

When Autumn Water was forged, its year cannot be known. It is said that in the late-Tang troubles a smith without a name, fleeing into the Chu hills, built his hut by a hidden stream, took the fine iron of the brook and burned the charcoal of Kunwu, and for three years shut his door upon the world - seven times returning it to the fire, seven times quenching it in cold spring - and so made one sword. When first it was done, its light was blue as autumn water newly ground, and the old folk of the wilds named it for that. The smith, having cast it, said his heart's blood was spent in it, and within three days coughed blood and died; and the sword went out among men.

II. Pei Zhao - The Beginning of the Spirit

Its first master was Pei Zhao, a border general of the Tang. Pei was a man of Liangzhou in the river's west; orphaned young, he took soldiering on the frontier, and was known for both daring and prudence. After the Guangming troubles, when the Emperor Xizong fled west and the regional warlords fell upon one another, the Sha-tuo horsemen came down from the north, laying waste wherever they passed. Pei then held a certain pass east of Yanmen, walling his city of stone with fewer than a thousand men, yet tens of thousands of households leaned on him as on a bulwark. Pei stroked the Autumn Water sword and swore to his men: "The city lives, I live; the city falls, I fall with it - Pei Zhao shall not die by a rebel's hand." From then through scores of battles great and small, wherever the sword reached, armor split like rot, and how much blood it drank none could number; its edge was chipped yet would not curl.

In his command Pei prized saving over killing, and spared many. Once, on patrol, he came upon an enemy camp's castaway child wailing by the road and would not leave it; he dismounted, took the child in his arms, and brought it back to be raised in the camp. A soldier asked: "It is the seed of the foe - why keep it?" Pei said: "What fault of the child's? The misery of war lies precisely in our failing, with the sword, to keep men alive. To keep one child alive today is worth more than ten rebels slain." Thereafter many were spared in his camp. Though the Autumn Water drank blood, no vengeful air clung to its blade - for its master's heart was clean.

In the year Jia-Chen, the enemy came with a hundred thousand iron cavalry and ringed the place round, their camps piled tier on tier like hills. Pei called his officers by night; under the lamp they faced one another, his beard and hair all white. He gave the sword to his nephew Tong the Seventh, saying: "Three generations of my house have eaten the state's bounty; today I repay it with death. The city cannot hold. When I die, bury me with this sword in the dry well, and let it not fall into the enemy's hands. The Pei line rests in you, not in the sword." Tong the Seventh threw himself down weeping, unable to speak.

At dawn the enemy swarmed up like ants. Pei, in his heavy mail, stood on the rampart and swung the sword: with one stroke he cleft two men, with another three; the blade lost three inches of its tip and still he did not stop. Arrows came like locusts and took him in shoulder, belly, and thigh, yet Pei leaned against the wall and stood, his eyes unclosed, his hand on the hilt, never relaxing till death. When the city fell, Tong the Seventh bore away the body and secretly buried the sword in the dry well beside the grave, sealed the earth, and went. That night a great storm arose, and from the well came a faint dragon's murmur, reaching several li. The villagers said it was the unquiet spirit of General Pei.

From Pei's death, the Autumn Water drank the general's blood, and the spirit's seed was first conceived. Yet a spirit is long in the making, and one blood will not complete it; it must wait for later men of sincerity to follow.

III. Lu Qingya - The Spirit Made Manifest

The Tang fell; the Five Dynasties raged; and when the Song rose, the plow of a farmer leveled the ground above the well, and the sword sank into the earth, its years beyond counting.

In the Shaoxing years of the Song, there was a scholar of Zhe named Lu Qingya. His father had been a county clerk, honest and unbending, who crossed the private interests of the prefect and was falsely charged with taking bribes, imprisoned, and died of the prison's hardships. Qingya, then seventeen, changed his name and wandered the four quarters, resolved to avenge his father. Hearing that in the well of Returning Cloud temple there was an old treasured sword, and that the village elders told how it could tell the crooked from the upright and glowed at night to warn against injustice, he wrapped up provisions and carried a spade to dig it out. He dug more than a zhang and found the sword; drawn from the water it was still blue, and warm in the hand, as if with breath remaining. Qingya stroked the sword and wept: "Father, your wrong lies sunk in the spring - of what use is my life? Sword, if you have knowing, help me." That night the sword rang, clear and far as a chime-stone, as if answering him.

Qingya carried the sword to Lin'an and lost himself among the common folk for three years - drawing water for a tavern, foddering a great man's horses - and from the stable he knew his enemy's hoof-iron: for the enemy, retired and living by the lake, went out always on a black stallion whose shoes bore a strange mark. Day by day Qingya watched his comings and goings, and marked the road of his drunken homecoming; beneath the bridge he lay in wait some forty nights.

In the autumn of the third year, the enemy, feasting, came home indeed deep in drink, borne in a shoulder-litter past the Broken Bridge. Qingya sprang from beneath the bridge and drove the sword through his chest; the enemy fell from the litter and died. The onlookers cried out; Qingya did not flee, but flung the sword to the ground and offered his bound hands: "It is I who killed my father's murderer; I submit to the law." The magistrate pitied his filiality, yet the case was made and he was sentenced to death. On the day of execution Qingya asked to hold the sword, and the clerk, moved, granted it. The blade laid to his neck, Qingya gripped the sword and smiled; his blood spattered the Autumn Water, and its light dimmed a moment, then brightened again, as if waking after drinking dew. Several thousand onlookers all stood in awe and wonder.

From Qingya's death the sword's spirit shone clear. For Qingya's sincerity was enough to move stubborn iron; and the sword's spirit, by then, could tell the crooked from the upright in men's hearts - before the harsh it turned cold, before the wronged it grew warm.

IV. Liu Wuyan - The Spirit Perfected

After Qingya died, the sword went into the official treasury. A hundred years it passed through many hands: one master was a general who used it to slaughter a city, and the sword was dull and colorless; another was a robber who used it to plunder the alone, and the sword trembled in his grip, as if unwilling. None of these masters came to a good end. For a spirit's attaching does not hinge on the blade's sharpness or dullness, but on the sincerity or falseness in a man's heart. Where the heart is true the sword is warm; where false, cold - and in that warmth or cold the spirit chooses for itself.

In the Zhizheng years of the Yuan, weapons filled the land, and the right bank of the Huai suffered worst. There was a woman swordsman, Liu Wuyan, orphaned young, who served a blind wanderer as master and studied the sword ten years. The blind man's name none knew; blind of both eyes, his swordsmanship was divine. He had said to Wuyan: "The sword is the shadow of the heart. Heart clear, sword clear; heart dark, sword blind. When later you meet the Autumn Water, it chooses not by noble or base but by the heart's affair. If the heart's affair is clear, it follows you; if dark, it chills your hand so you cannot raise it." Wuyan kept this well.

When the blind man died he left her the sword - and it was indeed the Autumn Water. Wuyan wore it at her side and went among the rivers of Jiang and Huai, stilling quarrels and undoing feuds. At that time the Wang and Li clans, dwelling on the two banks of the Wo River, had warred through three generations; their dead filled the ditches, their hatred piled like a mountain. They intermarried not, and dog and cock gave no news across; every child going out carried a blade. The prefect and the magistrate could not forbid it. Wuyan, obeying her master's last charge, went to undo it.

She came to the place as the two clans were mustering for battle by the riverbank, old and young, women and children, all with cudgels, their cries shaking the ground. A Wang elder rolled up his sleeve and cursed: "Three generations of my clan's blood - shall a yellow-mouthed girl decide it?" Wuyan answered nothing. She leapt to stand on the high mound, raised the sword to heaven, and said in a clear voice: "Whoever raises a cudgel in wantonness today, I shall strike him down for Heaven, kinsman or stranger." The sword left its scabbard; a cold light three zhang long fell, and thin ice snapped shut upon the river's face; both banks fell silent.

Wuyan came down the mound and sat at the center, and thrice went among them to reason. First she asked the root of the quarrel - and it was a single field, contested three generations back, scarce ten mu of land, yet the grudge had reached a hundred lives. Second she laid bare the right and wrong: each side had its wounds, each its debts; neither was wholly in the wrong. Third she set the terms - blood-price paid, boundaries drawn, markets opened as before. The Liu sword lay at her side, its light warm as spring. There was a Li widow who had lost three sons to the strife; she laid her hand on the sword and wept: "I ask only that my grandchildren may till my field and die without hatred." Wuyan stroked her back, and with the sword cut a wooden tally, each clan holding half, swearing before the river-god. Within ten days the blood-feud was settled, and the children began at last to go between.

When it was done, Wuyan walked alone along the river's edge and gazed on the Autumn Water, sighing: "The sword has passed three dynasties; the men of three dynasties have died with it, and the sword alone remains. General Pei died keeping his post, Lu died for filiality - shall I too die with the sword, having stilled a feud? The sword does not age, but men rot quickly - why?" That night Wuyan returned to the ruined Returning Cloud temple, laid the sword back in its old niche, bowed twice, and went away, and none knew where she ended. The temple monk took it and hung it on the wall, to await a later man of sincerity - for more than a hundred years.

V. I Obtain the Sword - The Spirit Returns to Quiet

Now I have taken the Autumn Water from its niche and brought it home, hanging it beneath the south window of my study. On every wind-and-rain night it still rings faintly; the older it grows the fainter the sound, as if telling of old things yet asking no one to understand. When guests heard and came to see, I brought it out; its light was gentle and clear, not like a weapon of slaughter, and those who knew touched it and said: "This sword has drunk much blood, yet its light is not fierce - surely there is virtue within it."

There is a young man Zhou of the village, a merchant, bold and fond of marvels, who hearing I had an old sword came to look. He handled it long, and wishing to draw it out and show off, pulled again and again, but the blade would not leave the scabbard; Zhou strained till his face was red, and the sword never left its case. I smiled: "This sword chooses its master; force will not avail." I took it and drew - it came at my hand, and its blue light filled the seat. Zhou stood astonished, bowed twice, and withdrew; never after did he speak of the sword.

Someone asked me: "The sword having a spirit, what will it do?" I smiled: "A spirit is one who remembers the old. Three dynasties, three masters, each ended in faith and right; the sword followed them in life and death, and never for a day betrayed them. Now the three masters are all rot, and the sword alone remains - not that the sword clings to life, but that it clings to its masters' sincerity. The sword is old; it no longer seeks to kill or to win merit, but only a clean table, to listen to the rain and watch the hills, and keep company with us readers of books - that is enough."

Each night as I read, the sword's shadow lies across the window in the lamplight, its blue faintly there, like an old friend sitting silent. On wind-and-rain nights its ringing grows thinner, as if telling me the affairs of three dynasties: General Pei's rampart, Lu's bridge, the woman Liu's river. And so I have set it down on paper, that those who come after and see the Autumn Water may know it is no mere iron.

VI. The Comment of the Strange Chronicler

Says the Strange Chronicler: The world prizes a sword for its keenness, for its edge - that it may cut, may seize, may win wealth and rank. Yet the sword's spirit prizes not its keenness but its remembrance. General Pei died keeping his land; Lu died to make his filiality clear; the woman Liu with the sword stilled three generations of violence - these three, their hearts were bright as the Autumn Water, and the sword went with them in and out of life and death; though their bodies turned to earth, their souls still lean upon this three-foot iron. And so we know a thing's spirit is not the thing's own: where a man's sincerity is lodged, there it is quick; where his falseness stains, there it is dark. The men of this age give you their lungs and liver in handshake, and turn their weapons on you the next moment; today they swear life and death together, tomorrow they sell your head. Sword in hand, faith not in heart - before this Autumn Water that kept its truth through three dynasties, can they not blush? The sword at least is imperishable in sincerity, while men may hasten to rot through their falseness. Is it not a thing to sigh over?