Wand SMoke:
The Seven Scholars

The Cultivation of Character

by MarQuese Liddle

One summer’s eve, during a drop-off for the auction on Hashima island, pirates Sìhng Lùhng and Jūn-Făn were playing with their respective nephews on the beach. Not long after the fun had begun did a fight break out between the two brawlers. Each man judged the other’s kin as being shamefully steeped in weakness.

Sloshing his gourd toward Jūn-Făn’s sister’s babe, Sìhng Lùhng claimed the boy was craven because he was too afraid to play in the waves. “She must forbid him from exploring anywhere outside the house,” he said, “that he lacks even this much bravery. When I was his age, I wasn’t afraid of anything!”

Jūn-Făn countered in much the same way. He thrust a finger inches from Sìhng Lùhng’s face, saying, “Anything but work or a hard-won fight! And by the looks of things, your lazy nephew has taken after you. His mother must bribe him with sweetmeats and cakes to keep him from exercise or play.”

The two went back and forth like this until the sun was ready to set. Just before it did, Scholar Kŏng arrived on a skiff filled with Neverlander slaves trained and ready for the auction. Though they were about to be sold, the dozen disciplined chattel paddled to shore, moored to a nearby tree, then followed their taskmaster along the beach, not even one balking.

Kŏng stopped short of the two pirates and their nephews, looked the four of them over, then condemned them all as spoiled-rotten fools. “As if you two feckless brutes weren’t abettors to your own mothers’ indulgences. If the captain didn’t have Ryōshin to regularly beat those bad habits out of you, you’d be utterly useless. Like right now! What are you doing goofing around? You’re meant to be leading these slaves to the auction!”