15 The Art of Creation - Carving out a Life

There were four spears leaning on the mansion's wall, their presence differing from each other.

A slender white hand cast the shadow over the shaft of the first spear. It was the thickest spear of the four - Asura Ryuu's spear made of the unknown black wood. The spear shaft appeared in those slender hands, giving off a faint aura of power. The power came from within the spear shaft, not the spear tip.

Asura Tenka: "Such a mysterious material. I wonder what properties it has?"

Her small hand grabbed a gray knife with cracks on it and pressed something similar to a button on its body. In that instant, grayish Spirit Energy flowed through the channels within the knife and formed a liquid-like transparent energy coating the entire blade. The blade of a knife gave off somewhat depressing aura, but there's no need to question its power.

The girl placed the knife in her hand so it felt comfortable and began working on the spear shaft. Next to her were the spear tip and the safety ring that secured the connection of the two - she had disassembled the spear for easier handling. Her moves were at times resembling the flowing water as the knife's blade left an impression on the shaft and at times sharp, leaving behind sword-like lines. The other three were watching with great attention, especially Xun Meng.

Little girl's attention was absorbed in the beautiful moves of the knife led by Asura Tenka's hand. As the style of the knife changed from flowing to rapid short moves, Xun Meng's mouth unconsciously let out a gasp of amazement.

Xun Meng: "Little Sister has such talent. It's very beautiful!"

Xun Bao: "I thought only little brother Ryuu was a craftsman genius, but it turns out little sister is one too... I feel ashamed for some reason."

Xun Meng: "Then let's learn from them!"

Xun Bao's eyes lit up as he glanced at his sister, thinking: "She's right! It's not okay to let Little Brother and Sister do all the work - we must help as well!"

Xun Bao attentively scanned the mechanism that Asura Ryuu crafted and suddenly asked: "Little brother, can you explain to me how that works?" while pointing at the spear tip.

Asura Ryuu grinned and dragged Xun Bao away to the place where he had drawn the pattern in the ground earlier. It was a blueprint for that exact mechanism. He picked Xun Bao's spear along the way and sat on the ground with legs crossed. His hand patted the ground next to him as he said: "Come here, I'll explain it to you."

Xun Bao's eyes sparkled as he hurriedly sat down near his brother, his eyes glittering with hidden anticipation. Asura Ryuu naturally noticed that which caused the corners of his mouth to slightly rise, forming a shadow of a smile as he thought to himself: "This guy is usually lazy, but when he is interested in something he becomes very serious. We gotta make a good use of that, hehehe..."

Asura Ryuu: "It's important to understand how something works thoroughly if you want to analyze it."

Xun Bao looked at Asura Ryuu with a tinge of confusion in his eyes: "What does analyze mean?"

Asura Ryuu was caught off-guard and smiled bitterly to himself, thinking: "I forgot that they're kids..." as his head shook.

Asura Ryuu's hands flew left and right as he explained: "To analyze something means to observe the changes while trying out different things. For example, this spear. You want to understand how I made this mechanism, right?"

Xun Bao nodded immediately without a second thought. There was no need to think when his genius brother explains things - or at least that's what he thought.

"Notice the pattern here.". Asura Ryuu said, his finger pointing at the tip of the spear shaft where the spear tip goes.

"Those hook-like things serve to hold the spear in place. These here serve to prevent the spearhead from rotating in place because you don't want your spearhead to get stuck and pluck out when you tug the spear."

Xun Bao kept nodding and occasionally letting out an "Oh!" of understanding as he figured out the meaning behind Asura Ryuu's words. While they were getting busy with their own thing, the girls were happily chatting as Asura Tenka explained to Xun Meng what she was doing.

When she finished carving out the design on the shaft, Asura Tenka rose and stretched out as she scanned her work. Her face beamed in satisfaction and she picked up the knife and the shaft again and carved a left half of the heart on it, then she grabbed her spear and carved the right half of the heart on her own shaft and then placed both of them down near each other, as the two heart-shaped halves connected forming a whole.

Xun Meng naturally noticed that, but she didn't ask why. Although she held back on asking, it didn't mean she won't try it out in the future, as could be seen from her strange smile. While she was grinning and thinking about something, Asura Tenka stretched her hand for her black spear shaft which was the thinnest of all four and continued with handicraft.

Xun Meng attentively observed and remembered the moves and techniques. At times, she'd glance at Asura Ryuu's spear in amazement because of the patterns on it. There was a dragon's head near the tip where the spearhead goes with a pair of draconic wings stretching to the sides, slightly below it was the left half of the hear-shaped symbol and below that was a pattern of dragon scales, over which a body of a dragon coiled all the way from bottom to top.

At the bottom part of the spear shaft, its body narrowed inwards by a few millimeters and there was a strange pattern which was actually a specially carved-out handgrip. Xun Meng's eyes jumped between Asura Tenka's spear and the one on the ground, and her eyes glowed with amazement repeatedly. The two had the similar design, but the scales on Asura Tenka's spear that were still coming to life had a slightly different shape.

As time went on, it was already noon.

Xun Meng and Xun Bao finished 'learning' from Asura siblings and went to prepare the food.

When Asura Ryuu saw his spear shaft, the first thing he thought was "Holy shit! She has a talent for this." His surprise gradually turned to shock and then to disbelief. As his hand slid over the scaly pattern, his fingers vividly felt the texture. He couldn't believe what his eyes saw. What was even more shocking, Asura Tenka didn't even pause as she did all that as if it was a second nature of hers, yet all the spear shafts after her dazzling handwork seemed alive.

By the time the lunch was ready, the four spear shafts - two black, one white and one dark gray leaned on mansion's wall, giving off a very lifelike aura that could take away one's breath if carefully examined. Asura Ryuu's spear represented a dragon, Asura Tenka's similarly had scales, but it had a devil-like dragon head instead of a more 'normal' one with a pair of devil wings stretched.

Xun Meng's white spear shaft had flowers carved as a pattern and near the top was an angelic figure carved in with wings stretching to both sides. Dark gray spear shaft, belonging to Xun Bao, had a fire pattern along its body and a beast-shaped mark at the top with sword-like wings. The wings were similar in length to the ones on Xun Meng's spear, but the wings on her spear were made of feathers while the wings on his spear had a scale-like layer instead of feathers.

The similarity between all four spears were, without a doubt, a pair of wings and a pattern of some deity in front of them.