عائد شوانشياو

The Return of Xuanxiao

Original short story · AI-assisted writing and editorial revision · 18+

This is a work of fiction. Every character involved in a romantic relationship is a fictional adult over twenty-five, and none are related by blood.

Chapter One: Rust Water

Chu Shuheng laid Xuanxiao across the anvil at Tingwen Workshop. Midway along the spine a crack wept rust water, and the fissure dragged a thin shadow downward, nearly to the hilt. The mouth of the scabbard had been forced open. She had wound the wrapping cloth the wrong way on purpose, turning the wound toward her own ribs.

"In seven days, three volumes of the elm-pod case notes must reach Jisheng Hall outside the city," she said. "The sword broke at Maple Ferry. The caravan did not wait for me. This escort is all I have left. If I cannot settle how to repair it today, I cannot even keep the cords on the medicine chest safe on the road."

The chest was not on her. The clerk at Yihe Apothecary in the eastern city would only hand over the three volumes on the morning of departure, afraid she would fail them halfway as she had at Maple Ferry. All she carried was a road pass stamped in red, its date written through to the you hour of the seventh day.

Han Li set down the tongs. He was forty this year. Burn marks lay in layers across his apron, and years of sparks had seared a white brand into the tail of his left brow. When he took the sword he looked first at her cloth-bound right hand, then at the crack. He did not ask who had stood opposite her at Maple Ferry.

The small hammer tapped twice along the spine. The first blow landed solid. The second went hollow at the far end of the crack. He turned the sword over, set his ear to the steel, and struck again.

"The crack looks fine, but the metal under it is uneven," he said. "If you mean to be on the road within seven days, you choose today. Close it along the old pattern and keep the balance as far forward of the guard as I can, four inches, and your three Returning Wind forms can stay as they are. Or set a new line into the true crack. The sword will still serve, but the feel in the hand will change. Either way I will not forge it into some treasure that shears iron. When the work is done it will still be an ordinary sword."

Chu Shuheng was thirty-six. She had been on the road for eleven years. The old balance of Xuanxiao was the one Han Li had marked in ink, years ago, on the sword diagram cut into the pillar: four inches forward of the guard, the point a little lively, suited to the wide arcs she used to keep a person outside the reach of her arm. She had eaten many years of road-wages on that.

"Leave it at the forward four inches," she said.

"It may not stay there." Han Li flicked rust from the crack with a fingernail. "To close it dead I have to cut out the iron that has taken the hurt. What I put back will not be the same thickness as the old steel. If the crack runs deeper than what I heard, I stop. I can try, but it has to pass inspection first. I will not fake the old feel in the hand."

A coal cracked in the furnace. She looked at the split. Two words turned between her teeth, and neither of them fell.

"I cannot answer."

"No fire tonight." He pushed Xuanxiao back to the edge of her palm, the crack still upward. "There is a bed in the west room. If you still want the old feel tomorrow, I will close the first line to that feel. The coal money can wait. We settle it when the case notes are delivered."

Han Li wiped the water from the anvil with a cloth and slid a chipped teacup toward her. The tea was cold. Her right hand could not take it. She switched to the left. The rim met the cloth at the web of her thumb, and she winced, and made no sound.

Someone passing the workshop door saw her scabbard and asked whether Lady Chu's sword had broken. She drew the scabbard deeper into her cloak. Han Li pulled the door to. The hinge sounded once and cut off the words outside.

Rain tapped the tiles. She returned the sword to its sheath. The split spine caught once at the mouth. The wound still lay against her ribs.

Chapter Two: Old Ink

On the morning of the second day the rain had stopped. Chu Shuheng set the road pass under the teacup and stood before the pillar to measure. The ink line was still there, half buried under ten years of ash. Beside it the old outline of the sword was drawn, and the fulcrum was marked at four inches.

She held out her right hand for Han Li to see. The cloth came off. A crosswise split ran through the web of the thumb, the edges gone white, opened by the shock of an iron whip. Han Li touched salt water to it. Her knee bent. The brine ran into the ash at the anvil's edge and the ash clotted into grains. He wrapped her again, half a turn looser than the night before, leaving room to hold a sword.

Han Li carried Xuanxiao into the workroom. Chu Shuheng sat outside the door and listened to the hammer come and go. When he brought the sword out again the rust was gone from the spine. The crack showed a gray-white break, fine as a thread buried in old iron.

"Yesterday, when I listened to the hammer, the hollow sound traveled only along the spine," he said, pointing at the mend he had closed for the moment. "By that I judged it a skin crack. It has not entered the heart. After this repair the balance can still fall back to four inches forward of the guard. But the point has to be taken a little thinner."

Chu Shuheng stared at that thread of iron. "Scrape the point and the edge goes thin."

"A little thin, and it will still cut a branch and stop an ordinary blade. You do not want a divine weapon. I do not make them." He did not lift his head. "You did not change your word last night, so I am working as if you had not."

She had not changed it. The bed in the west room was hard. She had lain awake past midnight, shaping the third form of Returning Wind in her hands, and she kept feeling that if the point did not sit at those forward four inches, the recovery would drop. One drop, and a person would enter the empty ring she used to leave. At Maple Ferry she had paid for that. The gap had let the iron whip in, and it had struck the spine.

When the mend had cooled, Han Li wiped the ash from the sword, balanced it again in his palms, and set the guard to the starting mark on the pillar's diagram. The fulcrum missed the old ink by the width of a hair. He took the sword back to the workroom, and it was afternoon before he nodded.

"The hand is the old hand," he said. "Do not split anything hard today. Walk the third form once in the yard. Walk it empty. Do not put force into it."

Chu Shuheng took the sword. The guard ground at once into the cloth at her thumb. She still closed her right hand full around it. The point shivered into a familiar place, and the knot that had been tight in her shoulder let go by half an inch.

In the yard she walked the first form and the second, wind only, no cut at the post. At the opening of the third her foot went long by old habit, and her waist sank to carry the circle. From the corridor Han Li called, "Hold."

She held. The sword stopped in midair. A muscle jumped in her arm.

"When the feel is right, a person will not stay small," she said.

Han Li looked at the fine new line ground flat along the spine. Its color was darker than the steel around it, like a hair that would not lie down. He did not take the sword back for a second listening. Coal had been added twice already. The seventh day pressed between the two of them. He wiped his hands on his apron and said, "Tomorrow, empty again, until I recheck it. Then you may touch the post. That is enough for today."

Chu Shuheng set Xuanxiao on the rack, the wound toward the wall. She called this restoration.

Chapter Three: The Charcoal Ring

On the afternoon of the third day Chu Shuheng circled the old chop-marks on the post with a charcoal stick and told herself to cut only inside the ring, not out to the old reach of Returning Wind. In her hand Xuanxiao was still the weight of the forward four inches. Lift the point and it wanted to travel outward.

The first cut she checked. Chips flew no wider than a finger. The hurt in her thumb heated. She changed her breath and pressed the pain back into the cloth.

The second cut she checked as well. Han Li watched from beside a corridor pillar, a flake of wounded iron from yesterday pinched in his fingers.

The third cut was the old motion of the third form. Her step went long. Her waist sank. The sword traveled a circle. Halfway through, the weight of the point carried her wrist past the charcoal ring, and the edge ate a deeper ring of years in the post. She tried to draw the sword back on the recovery. A little blood seeped through the cloth at her thumb. Her right hand would not loosen. She could only wrench it home with the old strength.

The sound did not ring in her ear. It rang in her hand.

When Xuanxiao came out of the post, the fine line newly ground flat along the spine had opened. The crack no longer ran only along the spine. At the end of the inlaid thread it turned, slanted toward the edge, and forked. In the tip of the fork she could see the fine wire of the mend twisted apart, the broken end pricking through the skin of the steel.

Chu Shuheng's hand went numb for half a breath. She brought the sword level before her eyes. Her gaze fell first on the new fork.

Han Li came quickly. The motion with which he took the sword was not rough. He turned the face to the light and tapped with the hammer's poll from spine to edge, then from edge back to spine. The hollow sound had changed its road. It scattered at the fork's tip, like a knock on a bowl that had a seam.

On the second pass he set his ear very low. With a fine needle he lifted a little of the skin along the new fork. Under the point lay an old dark line, older than today's twist, its edges already taken by rust. That was what Maple Ferry had left. Yesterday he had heard it as a hollow along the spine.

"Yesterday I judged wrong," he said. "The hollow stopped on the spine then, and I took it for a skin crack. Under the skin it turned into the heart-iron and forked toward the edge. I listened to both faces and did not follow that shadow any farther. The inlaid thread only held down the half that could be seen. The moment you used the twist of a wide arc, the other half was wrenched open."

The charcoal ring was still in the yard. Her cut had fallen outside it.

"I was the one who insisted on the full set," Chu Shuheng said. "You told me to walk it empty. I cut."

"The two things stacked, and only then did the sword split again." Han Li wrapped the new fork in cloth so the broken wire would not cut her hand. "The forward four inches cannot be kept. Force it closed again on the old balance and the next opening will run to the edge. Once the edge is notched, I cannot give you a second sword inside seven days."

She looked at the old ink on the pillar. The ink had not moved. The sword no longer met it.

The road pass still lay under the teacup. Tea had bloomed a ring around the edge of the red seal. That morning the clerk at Yihe had sent someone to ask one thing: if the notes did not pass the door of Jisheng Hall by the you hour of the seventh day, the shop would find someone else. Someone else meant no coal money, and no this job, the only one she had been willing to take after her defeat.

Chu Shuheng unwound the blood-soaked cloth and bound it tight again. Before the bleeding stopped she did not take the sword back to keep cutting.

Chapter Four: Deep Line

On the fourth day Han Li no longer fired that palm's width of steel. He lifted out the whole of yesterday's inlaid thread. The broken half sprang to the ground and curled. With the new fork exposed, the crack's true path was clear: it had bored from the side of the spine into the heart-iron and run slantwise for the edge, as if something inside had given it a push.

"This time the hidden wounded iron has to come out with it," he said. "The repaired place will be a little thicker than the old sword. The weight will sit closer to the guard. The balance will retreat from four inches forward of the guard to two. Those two inches I cannot find again. If you still want the old sword now, I can only keep it and take it as scrap. I will not delay you going to explain yourself at the apothecary."

Chu Shuheng looked at the broken thread on the ground. It had been set to the old balance. It had been set, and it had split.

"Follow the crack," she said. "Do not line it up with that ink again."

Han Li glanced at her and blacked out the old ink on the pillar with charcoal. His hand was slow. When the ink line was gone, a stain darker than the wood around it remained.

For the next two days the furnace did not go out. Han Li drew each hidden hurt he found onto paper, and after he repaired one place he tested that place again. There was no shortcut on the paper. Coal money was entered beside it three times. He put the materials wasted on the first attempt on his own account and did not mention them to her. By day Chu Shuheng went to the apothecary and helped haul empty crates. The copper she earned she set at the corner of the anvil. It was enough to add coal once.

At dusk on the sixth day the last recheck finally passed. Lamplight lay on the sword. The new line remained in the steel, a deep line that could be seen, slanting from spine to edge, with a faint rise and fall along its border. He drew the pad of his thumb across it. It moved under the touch.

When the finished sword rested on his forefinger, the fulcrum fell two inches forward of the guard and the blade held steady. He shifted to two other fingers. At the old four inches the steel would not stay. The tail sank, struck the anvil's rim, and gave a dull sound.

"This is not a treasure pattern," he said. "Hanging a cord, shaving bamboo, stopping an ordinary blade: enough. Take a great circle like Returning Wind at something hard, and it will still try to settle the old account along this line. With the balance at two inches the point no longer drives itself forward. You have to bring the elbow in, shorten the step, and use the point, the press, the short cut."

That night they set a post up again in the yard. Chu Shuheng took the sword. Her first step still went long. The point did not whip out along the old road. It checked in midair instead, and the check emptied the hollow of her shoulder. She pitched half a step forward. The post went uncut. The sheath knocked over the rack of medicinal herbs beside it.

She swore, very short, and set the rack upright. On the second pass her elbow came in, but the step was still long. The short cut bit the edge of the post and numbed the web of her thumb. The crack did not open. On the third she brought her foot back, half a chi nearer. The point pressed inside the charcoal ring on the post, held, then sent another inch downward. The chips came small and fine.

Han Li stood to one side and counted the length of her steps. He no longer counted ink. By the eleventh pass her right hand had begun to shake, and under the cloth the wound seeped dark. She slid the sword back into the sheath and did not ask for a twelfth cut.

"The road is long tomorrow. The hand has to be kept." Han Li tossed a packet of wound medicine into her arms. "If Jisheng Hall wants to see the sword, you need not turn this line in against your ribs."

She did not take up the sentence. When the packet went into her bundle her fingers paused outside the scabbard, and still she left the wound facing inward.

Chapter Five: The Written Receipt

At the yin hour of the seventh day the clerk of Yihe Apothecary handed over the three volumes of case notes, wrapped in two layers of oiled cloth, the outer cord tied in a dead knot. The clerk glanced at the sword at her waist. The wound still faced inward.

"Lately there are people on the mountain road robbing porters," the clerk said. "The volumes must stay dry and complete, and be in Physician Wen's hands at Jisheng Hall before the you hour. He has to check them against the record of the last treatment. Tonight he and the village physicians will settle the prescription together. If the books are short, they can only wait again."

Chu Shuheng pressed her print onto the road pass. Her right hand had no strength for it. The print came out crooked.

Forty li beyond the city, the first half was stone slab and the second a slope softened by night rain. She carried the case notes against her front and wore the sword on her left, leaving the right hand only to grip. Midway up the slope a section had collapsed. A mule loaded with dregs of medicine went first. Its hoof slipped, the rope whipped up, and it struck her calf. She turned aside and left the sword in the sheath. The mule's owner was a porter sent from Jisheng Hall to meet her, shouting not to cut the animal.

The hands that actually reached were at the top of the slope. Two men in short jackets carried no blades. One seized the porter. One grabbed for the oiled cloth at her front. The cord bit into her collarbone. If she took the old road of Returning Wind, the point would sweep a great circle, and inside that circle were the porter, the mule, and the case notes.

She brought her elbow in. Her step advanced only half a chi. Xuanxiao left the sheath a short way. The point did not drive forward. She turned the blade sideways and pressed it flat across the wrist that was pulling the cord. The edge faced outward, a line still between it and the man's skin. His fingers opened. The oiled cloth fell back against her front. The other man, seeing neither blood nor a severed hand, cursed once, let the porter go, and retreated into the trees.

The porter wanted to chase. Chu Shuheng laid the sword across the middle of the road. The new line faced the daylight, a deep mark slanting from spine to edge. There was no blood on the edge.

"The books are still here. We go," she said. "Chase them and we miss the you hour."

Wind was strong below the slope. Her right hand shook too hard to hold the scabbard. She sheathed the sword first, set the case notes on the cloak the porter spread open, and asked him to hold the loosened cord-end while she wound two fresh turns with her left hand. When she finished, the cloth at her thumb was soaked through. She did not stop to change it.

The gate of Jisheng Hall stood open before sunset. Wen Yan was fifty-two, medicine stains under his nails. His hands were steady as he unwrapped the oiled cloth and turned the volumes one by one. No mud marked the page-feet. Midway through the middle volume he came to a leaf slipped between the pages, a dried elm leaf with the old measure of one drug written on it. He smoothed the leaf, set it in a medicine drawer, and beside it lay several case records waiting to be checked.

On paper he wrote "Three volumes complete, not wet," and gave her that receipt together with the road pass. Then he looked at the sword in her hand.

"This line on the spine was split, then mended," Wen Yan said.

Chu Shuheng answered once. She laid Xuanxiao flat on the step, the cracked face upward. The dark line was cool. Along the edge of the old split there was still a little rise and fall. The pad of a thumb drawn across it moved, the same as on the sixth day in the workshop.

She had not yet opened Han Li's wound medicine. Wen Yan had her sit and dressed the hurt on her hand again. With the thumb of her left hand she slowly followed the old mark on the spine and stopped a long way from the edge, then returned the sword to its sheath. This time she unwound the reversed wrapping and showed the mouth of the scabbard, forced open and mended since.

Below the steps the porter had already folded the empty oiled cloth. She took the receipt and asked him about an inn where she could pass the night. In the morning she would return to Luxi City, pay the coal money first, and show Han Li the receipt. Going down the steps, her thumb met the mended mouth of the scabbard, paused, and did not wind the cloth back.