"A few years had passed. He'd grown a little and looked more like an adult.
"When the two of us saw him, we didn't know what to say. His mother just cried. All I could do was sit beside her.
"He listened patiently as we told him everything—our complaints, our worries. He looked at our son, who was still asleep at the time.
"He made a phone call, and before dawn, a monk came to our door.
"That master chanted sutras over our son until daybreak.
"Ye Qing spent the whole night making phone calls.
"In the morning, he went out. When he came back, he gave us new ID cards and a household registration booklet. He'd also arranged a new place for us to live and new jobs.
"He told us we could start over and that everything would be all right. Our son would be all right, too.
"The two of us could only cry and thank him. We didn't know what else to say.
"He never mentioned his earlier talk about cultivating our son.
"My wife asked if something like that would happen again. He said it wouldn't.
"He stroked our son's head and said it wouldn't happen again. He wouldn't make our son grow up like he had, not when he was still just a child.
"I felt he'd changed a lot. His nature seemed gentler, more optimistic, and more confident. Before, he'd always thought about cultivating our son and exposing him to the things he'd been exposed to. Even the last time we saw him, when he said he'd given up, he'd still seemed hesitant as he left.
"This time, he truly didn't care about any of that anymore.
"We were so grateful to him. We even wanted to invite him to dinner again, but