In the din of a war between dynasties, a flower opens in mid-air and catches a falling sword. The witness comes from Myths & Legends of China (a compilation of Chinese myth, published 1922), in the tale of a great siege drawn from the Fêng shên yen i. Chun T'i, "a Taoist of the Western" Paradise, is set to storm the Chüeh-hsien Mên, a gate where every attacker before him has been cut down the instant he crossed the threshold, a mysterious sword descending "like a thunderbolt" upon each head. Chun T'i does not parry it with iron. He lifts his Seven-precious Branch, "whereupon there emerged from it thousands of lotus-flowers", which "formed an impenetrable covering and stopped the sword in its fall".

The blossom is the tale's recurring miracle, and it belongs not to Chun T'i alone. When the defender T'ung-t'ien Chiao-chu thrusts at an ally armed only with a fly-whisk, "there emerged from this a five-coloured lotus-flower, which stopped the sword-thrust". Later, hunted by the sword-wielding Immortal Wu Yün, Chun T'i simply "opened his mouth and a blue lotus-flower came out" to blunt the blows; when the strokes keep falling, "again the stroke was averted by a timely" lotus-flower. Again and again the killing edge meets not a shield but a bloom, and the bloom wins.

Thompson files this under magic gardens and plants, and the flower here is exactly that — a garden weaponized, softness set against steel and proving the harder of the two. The lotus, elsewhere the very emblem of serenity, becomes in this Chinese witness an active guardian: it rises on command from a branch, a whisk, a mouth, and each time it turns aside the sword meant to be unstoppable. The scholar-god who wields it is finally a saviour, offering even his enemies passage to the Western Paradise rather than death. What is it about the flower, of all things, that a tradition should choose it to stand between a warrior and the blade?