A small group of villagers gathers in front of the monolith, their breath visible in the crisp morning air. Three young men stand closest, squinting at the strange marking near the center of the stone. The rest of the onlookers murmur among themselves, unsure of what to make of the spectacle.
The first young man, tall and curious, leans forward, head cocked. "It looks like a worm? Maybe it's a sign from the earth," he suggests, voice uncertain.
The second man, wiry and skeptical, shakes his head. "No, you are crazy. It looks like a man with a whistle. See, that's the hat and that's the whistle in his hand!"
The third man, younger and impatient, scoffs. "You are both wrong. It's definitely just a smudge. Why do we keep arguing over this?"
The crowd erupts in a gentle wave of laughter, their voices echoing off the ancient stone.
the third man[/@ch_3] steps forward, determined to end the debate. He wipes the smudge with the sleeve of his jacket. As the residue fades, a faint inscription is revealed beneath the spot he rubbed.]
For a moment, silence falls, broken only by the soft breeze rustling through the trees. The villagers peer closer, trying to decipher the message. The inscription, etched in delicate Chinese characters, reads: "God is cometh." But to the crowd, the script is foreign—its meaning lost.
"What does it say?" one of them asks, but no one knows.
Years pass, and the monolith becomes a silent witness to the village’s growth. Children play near its base, never noticing the faint writing. Elders speak of the day the smudge was wiped away, but the meaning is lost to memory.
"Perhaps the stone will speak to us again someday," an old woman muses, her voice hopeful.
A group of young people gathers, debating its significance. A tech-savvy youth pulls out his phone, scanning the smudge, but nothing happens. "It's just a dirty spot. Why do we keep making a fuss?"
Another wipes the smudge away, erasing the digital era's attempt at communication. The cycle of speculation and dismissal repeats, undisturbed by time.
No one notices the new message, their eyes distracted by the buzz of modern life. The monolith waits—patient, eternal—for someone to finally listen. Its message remains: simple, yet profound, misunderstood by all but the most attentive.
In the end, the story of the smudge on the monolith is a story of interpretation—a reminder that meaning often slips by unnoticed, lost in translation, waiting to be found by those willing to look beyond the surface.
