The paper umbrella floated in the air, following the Dragon Horn Girl as she circled the stone statue twice.
She stopped, pinched her smooth pointed chin, and pondered. When the world died in Ancient Times, all the Gods and Devils and demons capable of escaping must have left. Those remaining were either too badly wounded and weak, or the souls of Gods and Devils who had fallen during the war. The conflict had spread too far and wide, bloody and brutal beyond measure, leaving behind countless lingering obsessions that had devised strange ways to cling to life.
Like this one before her—abandoning its body and burrowing into stone. The body would rot away, but stone endured forever.
She poked it with her dragon spear.
"Come out and talk, or people will think this dragon has gone mad."
"Little Ancestor, take it easy..."
"What's there to fear? I just think this statue is too ugly and want to carve it into something prettier for you. If you still won't come out, I'll carve it into a three-inch stone nail. You can just come out and burrow back in afterward, can't you? Why make such a fuss?"
She poked it again, frightening the stone statue into howling like a ghost in pitiful misery.
"Princess, spare my life... It isn't that I can't come out. I need the assistance of a formation to leave. Princess, save me..."
"Where's the formation?"
She turned her head this way and that, her grape-like eyes blinking as she searched for a formation. Other than broken bricks, there was nothing.
"Without the formation's assistance, I still can't leave even if the stone statue shatters. Sigh, I have been imprisoned for tens of thousands of years, a life worse than death. Fortunately, Princess has come here today. I beg