Little stone

**Little Stone** or **Pebble** was a jade (earth) spirit born in a place far away from Jingling mountain.

After his home got destroyed by humans, Little Stone decided to visit Jingling mountain, hoping to meet the Yangming Master. While wandering there, he was confronted by Yinzhe's subordinates and was saved by Yang Jinghua, who had mistaken him for a human girl. After Jinghua demonstrated his power and proved that he is indeed the shadow spirit, Little Stone was very impressed and begged Jinghua to let him meet the Yangming Master. Duanmu Xi, however, adamantly refused, since he was suspicious of the spirit's intentions. When Jinghua saw Little Stone's disappointment, he told him that he would meet him in two days, thinking that he could change Duanmu Xi's mind. During that time though, Little Stone was caught by Yinzhe, so Jinghua begged Xi to help him save him, since he couldn't defeat Yinzhe on his own. After Xi refused again, Jinghua went on his own but his efforts were in vain. Yinzhe threw Little Stone off a cliff, leading Jinghua to attack him in his anger and get severely injured during the fight. Duanmu Xi then showed up and fought Yinzhe, who ended up losing the battle. Jinghua's injuries were so severe that his soul nearly dissipated and Duanmu Luoyue almost came out of his seal. After Duanmu Xi passed some spiritual energy into him, Jinghua regained his consciousness and went to look for Little Stone bellow the cliff, ignoring the exhausted Duanmu Xi. There, Little Stone revealed that he was dying anyway due to being away from his home for a long time and that he only wanted to thank the Yangming Master for blessing and purifying them during the sacrifices. After that, his body disintegrated, leaving only the jade amulet that contained his spirit behind. Jinghua then left, angry at Duanmu Xi for not coming there in time and not fulfilling his last wish. Duanmu Xi took the jade amulet and when he found Jinghua back home, he wore it around his neck, telling him that if he took care of it maybe Little Stone would regain his physical form. Jinghua then revealed that he only took a liking to Little Stone because he reminded him of a playmate he had as a kid, whom he wanted to protect but was unable to. Hearing that, Duanmu Xi got emotional and thanked him, without revealing that the playmate he was talking about was actually him.

A few days later, while Duanmu Xi and Yang Jinghua had taken Qin Shiyao to the mall for her birthday, Shenlong Xiren bumped into Jinghua, making the amulet fall from his neck. While Xiren was giving it back he placed a spell in it and used his hypnosis power on Jinghua, which made him forget that incident and hallucinate about Little Stone. When Jinghua expressed his delight about Little Stone’s return, Duanmu Xi got suspicious about it, thinking it was probably his imagination and not the real Little Stone. This was confirmed later by Yin Huayu, who told him that spirits would need at least a few decades of recovery before regaining their physical form. The next day, the hallucination convinced Yang Jinnghua to share his power with it in order to help him fulfill his deepest desire of finding the little playmate he had promised to protect when he was young. As Duanmu Xi was affected by this as well, he immediately went to Jinghua and destroyed the jade amulet in order to dispel the gu. Since the jade was Little Stone’s original body, Yang Jinghua got extremely angry and punched Duanmu Xi, thus fulfilling Xiren’s purpose of separating them for a while.

After that, Duanmu Xi and later Yang Jinghua placed their half-pieces of the amulet inside a special box. When Shenlong Zhangxuan came back to the Duanmu household, Duanmu Xi hid a letter for him inside the box, in which he was asking him to fix the jade amulet using the Shenlong family's techniques, as he believed it meant a lot to Yang Jinghua and restoring it would make him a bit happier when he was gone. However, after Zhangxuan left again, he burnt the letter.

Later, Duanmu Xi was taken hostage by Dr. Sen, who wanted to subject him to his unethical experiments and conduct his dream research on him. In exchange Dr. Sen would try to extend his life, but since that wasn’t possible in the end, Duanmu Xi asked him to fix the jade amulet instead, saying that it was very precious to Yang Jinghua. The repaired jade was brought to Jinghua by Jue, but it just pushed Jinghua further into turning into a demon, after thinking that Jue had killed Duanmu Xi.