Lady Shiji, Do You Want to Grow on a Buddha Statue?

A stone that absorbed the essence of the sun and moon, gradually gaining sentience.

It was carved into a Buddha statue and worshipped with incense, its sentience steadily growing stronger. Then, during a war, it was blasted into two pieces by a shell, its sentience nearly annihilated.

Then, the upper half of the Buddha statue that had been blown away was carved into a gravestone and placed before a martyr's grave. For ten years, twenty years, several decades, it remained with the martyr, receiving the respect and remembrance of the world—

"I can sense the sentience inside the gravestone..."

Perhaps that sentience, so weak it was almost gone, had gradually gathered again under such respect and remembrance?

Though it might not be quite the same as the previous sentience—a new, ignorant life, perhaps. But no matter what, it was alive, wasn't it?

Shen Le circled the martyr's grave twice. He had not brought any incense or candles, so he pinched up some dirt as incense, bowed several times before the grave, then took an apple, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of mineral water from his bag and placed them in front of it.

"Though it's very weak, and though it's no longer quite the same as the lower half of the Buddha statue, it really does have—"

With a troubled expression, he lifted Lady Shiji in both hands and bowed twice more toward the gravestone.

"What do you think? Should we take it away? Moving a martyr's gravestone probably wouldn't be appropriate..."

The pebble-sized jade stone rolled twice in Shen Le's palm. Following its instructions, Shen Le placed it directly in front of the gravestone, pressed tightly against it.

The stone demon remained quietly silent for quite a while. Then it rolled back to Shen Le's feet, rubbed