Sanzo's Journey - Part 5 - Two Men at a River

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A few weeks before Ivory Invasion

“Hrmm… we shall see if you are ready,” Xing Guo muses, half to himself, half to his nephew. “Show me that blade of yours.”

“Ah, sure.” Sanzo replies, as he retrieves his sword from its spot on the nearby weapon rack. “Here it is.”

Xing Guo draws the blade from the saya, and looks it over. “You've taken good care of it, but the blade has gotten quite a bit darker since you finished it all those years ago.” He sheathes the blade and returns it. “Tell me, how many lives have you cut short with this blade.”

“Hm? Oh, I don’t really keep track of that anymore,” Sanzo answers casually.

A sudden rage flashes through Xing Guo's eyes. “Do the lives of others really mean so little to you that you can’t even be bothered to remember the ones you've slain?”

“I… It’s not that,” Sanzo stammers, shaken by his teacher’s sudden fury. “I was keeping track… but after the Battle of Golden Bridge… I killed so many people that day… after that, there didn't seem to be much point in trying to remember them all.”

Xing Guo stared at his nephew for quite some time before finally deciding what to do with him.

“Come. And bring your blade with you. I’m going show you something.” Xing Guo stands and heads for the door, pausing momentarily to retrieve another sword from the rack.

“Another demonstration of how much further I have to go before my technique is perfected?” Sanzo asked as he stood up to follow.

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“You shall see. I can only hope that you shall understand.”

The two of them walk silently, each carrying a sword, down to a small, sandy river in the nearby woods. Xing Guo draws his blade before presenting it to his nephew for examination. Sanzo briefly looks over the blade before nodding, acknowledging the quality of its craftsmanship, before returning it. Xing Guo then takes both of the swords and walks into the river until the water is about two feet deep before planting both of the blades into the sand a few feet apart, with the cutting edge facing the oncoming river. Walking back to shore, he can’t help but notice the confused expression upon his student’s face. “Just watch,” he answers before the question is even asked.

Both men sit at the shore and watch both the river and the blades. Aside from these two men, this little patch of nature is completely undisturbed. Birds chirp and sing from nearby trees, bugs buzz about the river, a few leaves float downstream, and fish can be seen darting both up and down the river.

Several more minutes pass before Sanzo starts to speak up, “I’m not sure what I’m suppose to…,” before his teacher cuts him off with a gesture.

Sanzo turned his attention back to the blades in the river just in time to see a leaf float up to the edge of his blade and be sliced cleanly in two. A couple of minutes later a dragonfly buzzed past and lost a pair of its wings to the same blade as it was diving down to the water to get a drink. Another minute passed before a leaf floated up the Xing Guo's blade, but unlike before, this leaf merely folded in half along the blade, before sliding off to one side a few seconds later, as if the sword had no edge at all. Another dragonfly even landed on Xing Guo's blade and took a drink from the river before resuming his wandering flight over the river.

“Hrmp, looks like mine’s the sharper blade. Its cutting everything that comes against it,” Sanzo states matter-of-factly.

“Did you want it to cut those things?” Xing Guo asked.

Sanzo stopped and thought for a moment before responding, “Not really, they were just random things on a river. I mean, I guess it shows off how sharp the blade is, but that could have been done any number of ways and…” Sanzo's voice trails off as he looks back to the swords as a fish is cut in half by his blade, sending streamers of red down the river. “Huh. Wasn't expecting that.”

“Sharp indeed, but a samurai’s blade needs to be more than sharp.” Xing Guo states. “A samurai’s blade must cut that which its master wishes, and only what he wishes. Had I wanted it to, my blade could have cut any of the things that floated past it, including this very river itself. Yours, on the other hand, cut everything it could, regardless your feelings on the matter. Regardless of your intentions when you made it, it has tasted so much of blood and war that it knows nothing else. Now, go pull those swords out of the river before yours turns another fish into sashimi.”

“Do I have… never mind, I’ll go get them,” Sanzo says as rises and starts into the river. “What do you want me to do with mine then? Keep using it, melt it down, or just sentence it to the special dust gathering spot on the sword rack?”

“That’s up to you. It’s possibly a useful tool, perhaps, but you need to be careful if you’re going to keep swinging that thing around, or it may turn on you to feed it’s lust for violence,” Xing Guo answers, as both men turn back towards town.