On Mon, 5 May 1997, Gary Kleppe wrote:

The lesson of today is inanimate objects (such as statues) cannot be used to make cursed springs. They can't curse the spring because they can't drown.

Yeah. But the story of how the Ashura-niquan was created seemed to
suggest that they could. That's why I'd suspect that story to be a case
of fractured history.

Simple solution: the statue has a spirit in it, so it counted.