Chen Ping'an led Ning Yao before a five-colored Clay Idol, roughly a head taller than a robust adult man. It had originally possessed three pairs of arms, but now only the uppermost fist-clenched arm remained, raised high in the air, along with the lowest "hand-clasping" arm. Though it had only one arm, its hands could still clasp because its ten fingers were interlocked. Thus, even though the other arm had been severed at the shoulder, the palm and wrist had remained.
The five-colored clay idol was an armored divine person with a great beard, clanking armor, and overlapping scales. Two strings of beads adorned the edges of its armor plates, each linked bead full and round. Compared to the unspeakable ugliness of Liu Xianyang's ancestral Wart Armor, its appearance was the difference between Zhi Gui and Granny Ma.
The idol stood upon a square black stone pedestal. Compared with the headless idol beneath whose roof they had sheltered the previous night, this painted idol had lost many arms and its colors were mottled and peeling, yet it still exuded a soaring, spirited vitality. Most importantly, at the clay divine person's waist and abdomen, its hands were entwined in an exceedingly strange posture.
Ning Yao saw the clue at a glance and understood why Chen Ping'an had hurriedly brought her here. She nodded. "It does resemble that standing Fist Stance from the Mountain Shaking Manual, though it differs somewhat from the sword furnace in the manual."
After considering it for a moment, Ning Yao asked, "Can you find the other severed arms nearby?"
Chen Ping'an squatted on the ground and shook his head regretfully. "I looked, but found nothing. They were probably crushed long ago by children who came here to play hide-and-seek. Over all these years, these earthen gods and