Xie Shan's head throbbed from the great crowd of villagers sitting on the ground, weeping and wailing. In his previous life, he had been an enlightened monk, but those memories were sealed. In this life, he was an independent cultivator withdrawn from worldly affairs, with a hermitage he had built at Tide-Sound Retreat on Thousand-Stone Sail, amid Mount Wuyi's sheer cliffs and perilous peaks. He had always cultivated there in seclusion, seldom venturing out or dealing with others.
Now, faced with such a situation, he did not know what to do.
As he saw it, those children had cultivated no blessings in their previous lives, and their allotted lifespans in this one had been short to begin with. They were destined to die young. Because his two daughters had become involved and sown karmic causes, they would have to seek out each child's Reincarnated Body in the future and deliver them to salvation. That was the only solution.
But these ignorant men and women of the countryside could not see past lives or future incarnations. They could see only this life before their eyes, and all they wanted was their children. He tried to reason with them. "Those sons and daughters of yours came to collect debts. Your bonds as parents and children were never deep to begin with. Now those bonds have run their course, and you must part..."
Hearing Lord King Xie say this, the villagers wept even harder and louder. "I don't care about bonds or whatever else! I just want my child! My son, my poor, ill-fated son!"
Xie Shan could not make them understand. Feeling there was no point in lingering, he simply rose into the air. Looking down from the clouds, he sighed. "Parting from those we love, meeting those we hate—the troubles and