At last, after listening to the stone man—whom Tibbers had beaten within an inch of his life—slowly tell his story, the bored Annie learned what had happened.
It turned out that the stone man before them, or rather, this "great stone spirit," had originally been the local earth god of Yellow Wind Ridge.
As for how he had ended up like this, that went back a very, very long time...
Who knew how many years ago, Yellow Wind Ridge had been nothing like it was now.
Back then, a few boulders on the mountain had absorbed enough of the world's spiritual energy and the essence of the sun and moon to become sentient. They soon cultivated into the first stone spirits, and two of them, being more advanced in their cultivation, were appointed mountain gods by the Heavenly Court.
One day, for reasons unknown, several fleshy Buddha heads appeared on the ridge. They had eyes, ears, mouths, and noses, with flesh and sinew complete, and grew out of the ground. They were incredibly strange.
More importantly, whenever the fleshy Buddha heads spotted a living creature, they would let out a loud howl. If anyone—or any other creature—heard the sound and approached out of curiosity, one would suddenly spring up and swallow them whole. It was vicious beyond belief.
As their fearsome reputation spread, some wild stone spirits, disturbed by the strange fleshy Buddha heads, set out to destroy them and protect the mountain's inhabitants.
Before long, one stone spirit found a fleshy Buddha head and charged straight into it, easily crushing it into a pulp.
But...
Strangely, though the pulp was dead, it stuck to the stone spirit's body. Before long, it had used the stone body to grow a new Buddha head made of stone.
From then on, the