Lu Ting-Pin's Peach-Wood Sword

Lu Ting-Pin's Peach-Wood Sword is both a weapon altered as punishment and the means by which that punishment ends. Its unusual material gives it the power to kill demons, while its tally of required victories turns it into a measure of Lu Ting-Pin's long penance. At the decisive moment, Mulan wields it against the White Fox; the sword's success releases Lu Ting-Pin from his obligation even though he is not the one holding it.

Appearance and Transformations

When Lu Ting-Pin draws the sword, Mulan sees that it is carved from wood rather than forged from metal. A red sash swirls from its handle, and Lu regards the weapon solemnly. Its wooden appearance is not incidental: it is the result of a judgment imposed on him by his Immortal comrades. They took away his fly whisk, limiting his ability to fly great distances, and changed his two-edged sword into one made of peach wood.

The weapon has another form as well. Mulan observes that it can turn into a boat, an ability she mentions when Lu asks whether she has noticed anything unusual about it. The scene presents this transformation alongside its wooden construction, establishing that the sword serves more than one practical purpose during the journey. The supplied episodes do not describe the mechanics of its change into a boat, but they make clear that this is a known feature of Lu's weapon.

By the time Lu's penance is complete, the sword has changed back. After the White Fox's defeat, Lu cleans soot and grime from its blade while the Jade Rabbit recovers. It gleams as metal rather than wood. The return to metal marks a visible contrast with the weapon Mulan first sees: the transformed peach-wood blade has fulfilled its task, and Lu's punishment has ended.

Judgment and Penance

The peach-wood form is directly tied to Lu Ting-Pin's sentence. Lu explains that peach wood has the special quality of being able to kill noxious beasts and demons, and that killing demons is part of his punishment. The sword is therefore not simply an unusual substitute for his former weapon. Its material equips it for the specific labor required of him.

The terms of the penance set a total of ten thousand demons for the sword to destroy. Before the confrontation with the White Fox, Lu has already accounted for nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. The Jade Rabbit recognizes the significance of that nearly complete count, and Mulan learns that one demon remains. Lu's satisfaction at the prospect of the final task connects the sword's accumulated record to his anticipation of finishing the sentence.

The conditions focus on what the sword must accomplish, not on Lu personally making every strike. This distinction is not emphasized until after the final blow. When the Jade Rabbit asks whether the White Fox's defeat counts, Lu answers that the terms required the sword to kill ten thousand demons and did not specify that he had to wield it himself. That detail makes the sword's function larger than an extension of its owner's skill: its assigned task can be completed through another person's action.

The White Fox's Defeat

During the confrontation, Lu Ting-Pin is left vulnerable as the White Fox prepares to attack him. Mulan intervenes, takes the peach-wood sword from the ground, and raises it against her opponent. The choice brings together the weapon's two roles: it is the instrument of Lu's sentence, but it becomes Mulan's means of protecting him when he cannot act for himself.

Mulan drives the sword into the White Fox. Celestial blue flames flare from the weapon, and the blade cuts through its target with an ease the narration compares to slicing snow. The flames expand around the White Fox; an unearthly shriek follows, then fades. Mulan falls while still holding the hilt, and the flames go out. The sword's defeat of the White Fox supplies the final demon required by the penance.

The episode makes Mulan, rather than Lu, the wielder of the decisive blow. That reversal is essential to the outcome: the sword completes its count through her intervention, while her immediate purpose is to stop the White Fox from killing Lu. The weapon thus links his long, formally defined punishment to Mulan's present act of protection, without requiring the two aims to be identical.

Completion and Significance

After the White Fox's defeat, the change in the sword accompanies a change in Lu Ting-Pin. He appears more vivid, and the weapon he has cleaned is now metal. When the Jade Rabbit questions whether the event counted, Lu points to the wording of the punishment: the sword had to kill ten thousand demons, but the terms did not require him to wield it. The explanation confirms that Mulan's blow has fulfilled the condition and ended his penance.

The sword's sequence of forms gives the punishment a concrete shape. It begins as a visibly wooden weapon, carries a demon-killing capacity associated with peach wood, and returns to metal when its required work is done. Its boat transformation also places it among the practical tools of the journey, not solely within Lu's history of judgment. At the climax, however, its most consequential feature is the specific condition attached to it: the sword must defeat the final demon, whoever holds it. That condition makes the completion of Lu's sentence depend on Mulan's intervention, turning an imposed instrument of atonement into the means by which both the White Fox is overcome and Lu is released.