Chen Xian has been sitting on a rock all day long. At the foot of the hill where he sat, there passed the fifth funeral cortege. For the last three days and three nights, the rain had pelted down uninterruptedly, and finally, the typhoon had gone earlier this morning. Though it just cleared up several hours ago, the entire area had already been heated up like a hotpot on a stove fire. A great banyan tree stood still behind Chen Xian, stretching its roots into the rock crevices. It did not fell in the typhoon. Although the storm had torn down many of its leaves, there remained more on its branches.
People clustered around a soaked coffin, wearing mourning clothes made of the coarsest flax. Some were raising funeral banners and some were beating gongs and drums, but all of them were just walking, without words or tears, nor bright faces, as if the death of a person was not a big deal. The leading one was blowing a suona, a horn that accompanies all the rhythms of life - birth, marriage, and death. Perhaps it was too exhausting to repeat the same performance five times in a roll, or maybe he was just tired of wading, the tunes of the suona were faint, without any vitality.
As the cortege was about to leave the village, a woman suddenly tumbled down the hillside woods with hair dishevelled. Mud covered her body, and fallen leaves adhered to it. She tied some rag fragments over the chest so that she was not nude, but it was just to no avail as her lactating breasts were hanging openly yet helplessly in the air. In her left armpit, one saw a dark swollen pustule. An ashen-faced baby rested still in her firm arms.
The suona stopped. People in the cortege came up and surrounded this woman, followed by more villagers carrying hoes and picks. The poor woman struggled to her knees in the muddy flood, mumbling, begging. But it seemed that people could barely hear her, or maybe they were just not willing to listen to her, no one responded to her begs. Gradually, the people around the woman were getting more and more, and finally formed a rampart of men and women until Xian lost his sight.
At first, people were just watching this unexpected guest. A few moments later, they started discussions in low voices. But all of a sudden, villagers raised high their hoes and picks one after another, and battered with brute forces - bang, bang, bang! In the several moments that followed, water and mud were splashing all over. No swears, no chaos, people were just battering to a uniform pace until Xian saw a stream of scarlet in the totality of muddy yellow. People gradually stopped beating, opening up a breach in the direction of the flood flow. The vigourless baby was still in its swaddled clothing, floating away with joss paper, dead branches and fallen leaves. Its mother followed slowly behind it, with her face deeply buried in the floodwater, and a ribbon of blood exuded from the top of her head.
The suona continued, and the crowd dispersed. The cortege resumed going upstream to the cemetery at a more solemn pace. Xian did not do anything but just put on a poker face. Leaves of the banyan tree behind him had cast sheets of shadows, swaying with the wind that occasionally passed by. But the shadows were so heavy that they could not be blown or washed away.
Xian lowered his head and stroked in his hand the precious sword - "Blackwaves". The sword appeared gleaming reflected the sparkling waves of the floods and the whirling bright spots under the banyan tree. The sword blade is about three chis and two cuns (â76 cm) long. The hilt was first wrapped with iron sheets. On one side of the hilt, a lion-play-bead figure was struck on the iron sheet in a concave pattern, then cut down a soft silver plate into that figure, hammer it into the pits on the hilt, and pummel it carefully so that the uneven veins become the muscles and the face of the fierce lion, as well as the unquenchable flame of the bead. On the other side, the smith had used the same technique to hammer out the word "Sword of Blackwaves". The sheath was also carved with a pattern of hexagonal tortoiseshell, and in each hexagon was carved a penta-petal plum blossom, hammered out by silver wires and plates similarly as before. This technique was called "Jian-yin", literally "hammer the silver", and was popular among generals and adventurers like Xian at that time. The ductility of soft and delicate silver collides with the tough and rough texture of steel on this single sword, making whether the design, the patterns, or the touch, the grip, the sharpness, all excellent.
The conceit of Xian used to be cast in the "Blackwaves" sword as well. It was a glorious legend of his family. In the October of the fifteenth year of the reign of Zhengtong Emperor, Xian's great uncle, following his fellow countrymen, took refuge under the banner of Dong Xing, the Left Deputy Chief Commander from the Great Ming Imperial Court. At White Goose Lake outside of Canton city, the Ming army and these countrymen led by Dong Xing engaged in a fierce battle against the rebels commanded by Huang Xiaoyang, a mere escaped criminal. In a chaotic skirmish, Xian's great uncle drew a bow and shot dead Huang Xiaoyang, who claimed himself to be "the King that follows the will of his people". Since then, the rebels have been devastated, cracked down by the corps of Dong Xing. Later, the Imperial Court rewarded for meritorious deeds, and Dong Xing was promoted and conferred Right Dudu, the viceroy of Canton province. Because of this, Dong Xing bestowed this precious sword to Xian's great uncle to express his appreciation and gratitude. He also wanted to promote Xian's great uncle to a Zhaoxin Captain, or "Captain who manifests confidence". But Dong Xing was not good at administration, which led to his poor dominance over his soldiers during peacetime. As a result, his men looted the near villages and sacked the rich households, massacring thousands of peasants and capitulated rebels. Xian's great uncle was so disappointed, so he refused the promotion and went back to his home village with the "Blackwaves", not involving any again in the politics. Only when pirates wreaked havoc could one see his sword out of the sheath.
The elderly in the village remembered that, when Xian's great uncle left the village, his chest was full of confidence and ambition, always mentioning the words like "do the justice". But when he returned, his entire character has changed, like he was no longer the same man as he departed. After the war, he never mentioned what he has done during that period, and just ridiculed himself as someone asked about what happened. He responded: "I just took the salaries and did the jobs, nothing else. " Xian did not believe that these words were truly from the bottom of his mind, he believed that the hope of "doing the justice" was still sparkling in the heart of that old man, even though he did not mention it anymore: Xian could feel it as the "Blackwaves" passed to his hand. He swore to himself, that he would use this sword to chope down the corrupts on above and kill off the pirates below.
Now he just watched the flood taking away many lives, and more lives afterwards, but he could barely do anything. He just sang quietly stroking the "Blackwaves":
"For ten years I defend against injustice with my sword,
Crossing the dark oceans as well as the bright fords.
But how can I imagine that people's buying the swords
Was never for the peace and the justice to be restored?"