"This friend of mine was a stone. Later, through a chance encounter, it gained awareness. Later still, someone thought it looked like a bodhisattva and called it the Stone Bodhisattva-the Stone Bodhisattva that granted every prayer!"
Inside the Mahavira Hall, the Stone Bodhisattva's golden body trembled.
The listeners below recoiled in shock, like a drop of water splashing into boiling oil.
"What? That Stone Bodhisattva is a living stone spirit?"
"Stop talking nonsense! That's clearly a true bodhisattva manifesting its power!"
The elderly monk-official Yongde, standing beside the steps, was even more alarmed. His face turned deathly pale, and cold sweat streamed down his forehead.
Sha Wujing ignored the commotion below and simply continued:
"This friend of mine said that since people knelt down and begged it, it ought to help make their wishes come true."
"Even if the people praying to it smashed it with hammers and pried at it with chisels to take pieces of its stone skin home, trying to break its whole body apart!"
"Even if every wish it granted meant peeling a piece of flesh from its own body and damaging its very essence!"
"Even if those whose wishes it granted still weren't satisfied and only wanted more!"
"But it still felt that this was what it ought to do. If people asked for more, that meant it hadn't done enough. It hoped to fulfill the wishes of everyone who pleaded with it, everyone who prayed to it. It felt that was only right."
"But now, all of a sudden, it can't do that anymore. It begged me to find a way to help it break free of its restraints, so it could keep giving those people its flesh and granting their wishes."
Not a sound came from the audience.
Sha Wujing turned his head