Alloy Master: Shen Le, Want Me to Introduce You to Lady Shiji?

Tears blurred Shen Le's eyes as he followed the young man and pressed his palms together before the Thousand-Hand Guanyin statue. Compared with the nearly hundred-foot-tall Buddha statue in the temple, this statue in the prince's residence had less divinity and more humanity.

The Buddha statue in the temple had a full face and a prosperous figure. It was magnificent, suffused with an unmistakable air of divinity;

It portrayed the nation's mother after she had become a deity and a Buddha, looking down on the mortal world with gentle compassion as the people worshipped her.

The statue in the residence's prayer hall, by contrast, had delicate features, a slender waist, and a vivid, natural expression and posture. She looked more like a loving mother gazing at her child.

Shen Le had no heart to study the statue closely or commit every smile and detail to memory.

He simply lowered his head, clasped his hands before his chest, and silently remembered:

Grandpa... Are you doing all right up in heaven?... Bodhisattva, if you can see me, if you can hear me, please watch over him... Watch over him...

Light and shadow flickered before his eyes. The young prince commanded troops, built cities, ventured beyond the frontier, settled soldiers to farm and herd, swept the grasslands, and defended the border. He grew from a man in his twenties into a sturdy man nearing forty.

Yet every time he returned to the residence, he went to the prayer hall to offer incense and bow before the Guanyin Statue.

After kneeling on the cushion awhile, letting the scent of sandalwood incense soak into him and looking up at his mother's kind face, his heart would gradually grow calm:

As though he were still that cherished, cared-for child at his mother's knee...

Incense burned in