"Save me!"
"Give me water!"
"Who are you?"
"Please save me!"
"Get me out of here! I'll be your ox, your horse-anything!"
"If you dare leave me here, you'll be the first one I kill when I get out!"
Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha stood among the scattered rocks, looking down at them.
The mountain wind swept past, shaking the dead branches.
Only after a long while did he ask:
"You say you know you were wrong. What did you do wrong?"
The wailing abruptly faltered.
One villain panted as he said, "We offended the king."
Another immediately chimed in, "We let the soldiers catch us."
Someone else gritted his teeth. "We didn't kill them all that day, so someone reported us to the authorities!"
As soon as those words left his mouth, several others voiced their agreement.
"Exactly! If we'd fled sooner, how would we have ended up like this?"
"If those villagers hadn't reported us, how would our eyes have been gouged out?"
"If the King of the Yuezhi weren't so vicious, how would we have been thrown into the mountains?"
"In the end, it's all that thieving Heaven's fault for giving us such rotten luck!"
The more they spoke, the more agitated they grew, as though they had even forgotten their hunger.
Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha looked at them and asked again:
"Why isn't it because you yourselves did wrong?"
The mountain wind swept through the cracks between the rocks.
After a brief, deathly silence, someone burst into curses.
"Shut up!"
"They were weak, so they deserved to die!"
"We took their things because they couldn't protect them!"
"They cried because they were useless!"
"If I had another chance, I'd damn well kill them again!"
Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha asked no more questions.
Just then, the villain clutching his sleeve opened his mouth