ENG
The mystic's art breathes life into stone,
A servant bestowed, but caution be shown.
A nature fierce, beware its provocation,
For crossing its path brings fatal devastation.
Once upon a time, there lived a pretentious scholar who took great pride in a paperweight he collected. Whenever his guests commented that it was merely an ordinary stone with no notable features, the scholar would respond by sharing a peculiar tale.
During his adventurous youth, the scholar embarked on a treacherous journey. Exhausted and seeking respite, he leaned against a massive stone for a snooze. Suddenly, he felt the stone come alive. Skeletons emerged from its crevices, and the stone sprouted limbs, resembling a grotesque creature. Terrified, the scholar ran for his life until he stumbled upon a desolate valley, where he noticed a gaunt monk meditating atop a boulder. Struck by the peculiar sight, he contemplated fleeing once more. Yet, to his astonishment, he sensed the relentless pursuit of the stone creature from behind. Just as he stood on the verge of being crushed, the very boulder beneath the monk unexpectedly rose, revealing two mighty arms that pummelled and shattered the pursuing creature. Amidst this terrifying clash, the scholar barely managed to escape. And the paperweight, as he claimed, was a remnant of that cataclysmic fight.
The guests erupted into laughter upon hearing the tale, mocking the scholar for spicing up his wild dream to impress them. The scorned scholar, though indignant, began to doubt the truth of his tale himself and lost interest in the paperweight. Eventually, he banished it to a forgotten corner, never to be shown again.
The opening lines warn that some magic can make stone come to life. Those animate stones can serve people, but they have a dangerous, violent nature; if you provoke or cross them, they can kill you.
The main human character is a proud, showy scholar who owns a paperweight he treats as special. When his guests say it looks like an ordinary rock, he tells them a dramatic story to prove it matters and to impress them.
In the scholar’s tale from his youth, he was traveling and stopped to nap while leaning against a huge stone. The stone suddenly animated: skeletons came out of its cracks and the rock grew limbs, forming a grotesque, walking creature. The scholar was terrified and ran away.
He fled into a barren valley and saw a thin monk sitting on a boulder, meditating. The scholar thought about running past the monk, but he realized the stone monster was chasing him. Just as the monster was about to crush him, the boulder under the monk rose and opened to reveal two strong arms that smashed and destroyed the pursuing stone creature. The scholar barely escaped, and he later said the paperweight was a fragment left over from that battle.
When he finished the story the guests laughed and mocked him, calling it a fanciful dream. Their disbelief made the scholar doubt his own tale. He lost interest in the paperweight, stopped showing it, and eventually put it away in a forgotten corner. The overall implication is that animated stone can be both useful and deadly, and that pride and public ridicule can lead someone to abandon a real, dangerous object rather than confront or preserve it.