CDJMM – Volume 3 – Chapter 2 Compassion of the Buddha (2)

For Le Jing, relying on these divine eyes, becoming a national preceptor would be as easy as lifting a finger.

But rice must be eaten one bite at a time—no one gets fat by stuffing themselves all at once.

His top priority right now was to earn money to fill his stomach and then save enough to cover daily expenses. Otherwise, he’d starve or freeze to death long before he ever became a national preceptor.

So, for the moment, he had no choice but to moonlight as a fortune-teller.

The street bustled with people. He had only squinted his eyes for a few minutes before he felt dizzy, his brain throbbing in bursts.

No wonder the original owner was considered foolish.

He rubbed his temples and gave the street a cursory glance. Too lazy to keep searching, he casually picked a passerby walking toward him and prepared to call out to him once he got closer.

He had even rehearsed the lines: “Young man, your forehead is darkened—misfortune looms. If you wish to turn calamity into blessing, heed my advice…”

But plans never keep up with changes.

Just as Le Jing was about to speak, the passerby suddenly changed direction and walked straight toward an elderly fortune-teller’s stall on the opposite side of the street.

The old man wore a dark grey Daoist robe, eyes closed, a white fortune banner fluttering in the wind beside him. On it were five bold, vigorous characters: “One Divination Dispels a Thousand Worries.”

Le Jing narrowed his eyes, then deeply furrowed his brows.

For some reason—he couldn’t see this old man’s karmic threads.

The passerby, anxious and angry, demanded: “You said last time that my wife’s baby was definitely a boy, but yesterday she gave birth to another girl! Were you lying to me?!”

The old man’s expression didn’t change. Calmly, he said, “I ask that young brother mind his words. I’ve worked in this profession for decades, my reputation well-known. I do not lie. What did I read for you last time?”

“You read my Eight Characters.”

“Recite them again. Let me calculate.”

The man repeated his birth chart.

The old Daoist pinched his fingers, chanted a formula, tossed copper coins, then muttered in confusion, “That shouldn’t be… No matter how I calculate it, you should be having a son this year… Wait—give me your wife’s Eight Characters as well.”

After hearing the wife’s birth chart, the old man once again performed a set of elaborate gestures—chanting, pinching fingers, and even picking up a tortoise shell to divine—putting on a thoroughly convincing act.

After the full performance, the old man let out an enlightened sigh, stroking his beard. “So that’s what it is. I was careless… unexpected, truly unexpected…”

The man hurriedly asked, “What is it, Master? Is my wife’s Eight Characters bad?”

The old man gave an almost imperceptible nod and launched into a long, obscure explanation full of mystical jargon before concluding in a profound tone: “Your birth chart belongs to water, and your wife’s belongs to fire. Water and fire cannot coexist—naturally, conceiving a son will be difficult.”

The man froze for a few seconds, then slapped his thigh hard. “That damned woman! No wonder I can’t get a son! What’s the use of my hard work if the land isn’t fertile?! Master, does this mean I must divorce her and remarry?”

Le Jing: “…”

Was he witnessing a bargain-bin con artist in action?

Even though he couldn’t see the fortune-teller’s karmic threads, he could tell the old man was nothing more than a street charlatan.

And he didn’t even need his divine sight to know the real reason the man couldn’t father a son: it had nothing to do with his wife. It was purely his own issue.

Biology already proved that the man determines the child’s sex. Women only have X chromosomes; men have both X and Y. Only when a Y meets an X does a boy result. So it had nothing to do with “fertile land.” It was the seed that was the problem.

Though the man was cruel and stupid, Le Jing had no interest in meddling. In fact, divorcing this man might even be a blessing for his wife.

Right now, earning meal money and escaping his current predicament mattered far more.

He turned his gaze back to the street, ready to pick a new target.

Four half-grown children came bouncing his way. As they passed him, they all stopped simultaneously.

“Eh? The idiot!”

“Wow, this idiot’s life is tough. It’s so cold and he still hasn’t frozen to death.”

“Zhang Ji, didn’t your dad say he already beat the idiot to death? How’s he still alive?”

“This idiot is that cursed? I heard your grandma got hit by a cart, your brother fell in the water, and your dad chopped off his finger while cutting meat—all because he cursed you?”

The one called Zhang Ji was a chubby kid with a fleshy face. As his friends fired questions at him, his expression grew darker and the look he gave Le Jing was full of naked malice.

Le Jing watched them from not far away as they openly pointed and gossiped about him—loudly, without even a trace of restraint.

Although the original owner was foolish and most memories were blurry, everything involving these four children was unusually clear. Probably because he had been beaten by them too many times—even a fool remembers pain.

These four were the main culprits who bullied the idiot. He was their punching bag and had taken quite a few beatings.

Zhang Ji grinned viciously. “Good thing he’s not dead. We can have some fun.”

The other three exchanged a look and stepped toward Le Jing with malicious grins.

Zhang Ji grabbed a stone, weighed it in his hand, and hurled it at Le Jing’s forehead.

But the expected scene of blood didn’t happen. To his shock, the idiot simply tilted his head and avoided the stone with ease.

In disbelief, he met the boy’s mismatched eyes—light-colored, cold and deep, filled with a calm intelligence that belonged to a normal person. He looked nothing like the foolish, deranged child from before.

Was this still the idiot?

Had his madness been cured?

“Zhang Ji, did you not eat enough? You can’t even hit him from that close—hahaha!”

Mocked by his companions, Zhang Ji flushed with anger. He stomped toward Le Jing and sneered venomously, “Well, well… a few days away and you’ve grown bold—dodging now, are you?”

He kicked at Le Jing.

But Le Jing had already stood and prepared himself. He shifted his body and dodged easily again.

Having his attacks avoided twice, Zhang Ji was livid. Eyes red, breathing hard, he growled, “You’re courting death.”

If this were before, the idiot would’ve curled up and trembled. But today—whatever “medicine” he had taken—he actually smiled. Calmly, he replied, “I don’t know when I’ll die, but I do know one of you is going to die very soon.”

Oh? A rare occurrence—the idiot was talking. But when they heard what he said, the four brats burst out laughing.

“Hahaha the lunatic is spouting nonsense again!”

“This is the first time I’ve heard the idiot speak so clearly. Did getting beaten cure his stutter?”

“Come on then—tell us—which one of us is going to die? Hahaha!”

Immediately, a skinny boy tugged the sleeve of the laughing kid beside him, face uneasy. “Don’t talk nonsense. This idiot is kind of creepy. Did you forget what happened to Zhang Ji’s family?”

The boy with a face full of pockmarks snorted dismissively, “Oh please, you think too highly of him. If he had real abilities, would he still be begging on the street?”

“You don’t believe me?” Le Jing crossed his arms, lazily leaning against the wall. He glanced at the group with a half-smile and said, “You—skinny one. You live on Qinghe Alley. You had nightmares every night as a child, so your family asked someone to read your fate. They told you to recognize the big pagoda tree at your gate as your adopted father so you could finally sleep peacefully.”

The skinny boy stared at him in shock. “What?? We never told anyone about that—how do you know?!”

“Yes… how do I know?” Le Jing smiled and continued, “The short, chubby one in the back—you sat on a fire basin when you were five, so your butt is still covered in scars. And when you were ten, you accidentally wandered into a spider nest in a mountain cave. They crawled all over you, and since then you’ve been terrified of spiders.”

“Who are you calling chubby?!” The round boy reacted a beat late, then exclaimed, “Holy crap—how do you know that? Even my parents don’t know I’m scared of spiders!”

Le Jing tilted his head, smiling. “Why don’t you guess?”

Chubby boy’s voice trembled. “C-could it be… you can really tell fortunes?”

The “idiot” blinked, clapped a few slow, leisurely claps, and grinned. “Congratulations. Correct answer.”

No one laughed at him now. Even the pockmarked boy swallowed nervously, staring at the silent, wall-leaning “idiot.”

His matted hair, soot-blackened face, and filthy clothes made him look like a piece of coal—but those glass-colored eyes shone brilliantly under the sunlight, gleaming with an eerie light.

The idiot was not the same idiot as before.

They all sensed it—vaguely but undeniably. The person looked the same, but the presence was different.

He was still thin, small, and filthy, yet somehow…

They suddenly felt too afraid to bully him.

Seeing that he’d successfully intimidated the brats, Le Jing finally let out a breath of relief. He was starving, injured, and the original “idiot’s” malnourished little body was no match for these four sturdy kids—he would have been offering himself up like a free meal. He had no power to fight back at all.

Besides… he didn’t need to lift a finger anyway.

Le Jing’s gaze swept over the clueless faces of the four children. The smile in his eyes deepened.

Fate had already written the price tags on everything.

The three kids were scared stiff, but Zhang Ji—the self-proclaimed leader—wasn’t so easily frightened. He shot the three cowards a disdainful look and sneered, “Are you stupid? He’s just pretending to act mysterious. Who knows where he heard those things? You idiots really think he’s some divine fortune-teller? This lunatic always mutters crazy nonsense. You’d be dumb for believing it… And besides, we’ve beaten him up so many times before—why didn’t he tell our fortunes then?”

The three hesitated. Zhang Ji immediately pressed forward, raising his chin arrogantly at Le Jing. “Didn’t you say you can tell fortunes? Then tell me my future.”

Le Jing glanced at the thickening aura of death on Zhang Ji’s face, then looked past him. The smile tugging at his lips grew. He shook his head. “I can’t see your future.”

Zhang Ji looked triumphant, as if he’d found proof. He planted his hands on his hips and said to his friends, “See? He can’t do it! He’s a fraud. Let’s stop wasting time—if we don’t teach him a lesson, he’ll think we’re scared of him!” His three followers started getting restless.

Le Jing’s expression didn’t change. He smiled pleasantly and said, “Sorry, you misunderstood. When I said I can’t see your future… it’s because you don’t have a future.”

He pointed behind Zhang Ji, still smiling. “Look—you’re about to die.”

A low growl came from behind him. Zhang Ji instinctively turned around. His expression froze.

A wolf-dog with blood-red eyes and dripping saliva was staring at him like prey.

Behind him, the “idiot” spoke softly, “That mad dog was your enemy in your past life. It reincarnated this life to take your life.”

As if in response, the dog bared its teeth and let out a furious roar, leaping straight at him.

Zhang Ji’s face turned ashen. A shrill, inhuman scream tore from his throat as he bolted. The dog gave chase relentlessly. As they ran past the fortune-telling stall, the dog turned sharply and toppled the stand. The startled fortune-teller fell on his backside, covered in dust, utterly disheveled. The fortune-telling master, however, managed to remain graceful and unscathed, his robes fluttering like an immortal sage.

Everywhere the boy and dog ran became chaos—people screamed and scattered.

“Help!!”

“Someone save me!!”

Zhang Ji’s voice was already hoarse, but no one dared fight a rabid dog.

Le Jing leisurely turned to the three stunned boys who had frozen in place. He asked coolly, “Aren’t you going to help?”

“Are you crazy?! That’s a rabid dog! If it bites you, you go mad and die!” the chubby one blurted out. Then he realized who he had responded to and looked at Le Jing like he was about to cry. Trembling, he stammered, “Y-You… can you really see the past and future?”

Pockmark-face already half-believed but couldn’t accept it. He muttered to himself like self-hypnosis, “No, impossible… He must’ve seen the dog first and made something up. How could anyone predict it that accurately… If he could, he’d be a real immortal…”

Le Half-Immortal Jing pointed at the distant Zhang Ji—still crying and running in circles with the dog. With complete calm, he said, “Relax. The dog won’t kill him.”

Even though pockmark-face claimed disbelief, the boy still visibly relaxed—only to freeze again at Le Jing’s next breathless comment:

“Because while running from the dog, he’ll startle his father’s horse and get his skull kicked in. So he’s going to be killed by the horse.”

The boy’s light-colored eyes shimmered like glass under the sunlight, calm and certain, as if narrating an event that had already happened.

And indeed—it was a future destined to unfold.

Almost the moment he finished speaking, Butcher Zhang rode into view from down the road.

Zhang Ji saw his father and lit up, scrambling toward him. “Dad! Save me!!”

Startled by his son suddenly lunging from the side, Butcher Zhang yanked the reins, trying to stop the horse—

But it was a second too late.

The startled horse reared high. Its hoofs crashed down on Zhang Ji’s forehead. His body flew backward, hit the ground with a sickening thud, blood pooling, white matter spilling out.

Butcher Zhang’s eyes bulged. “JIIIII!!”

The three boys stared blankly for several seconds before jolting as one to stare at Le Jing. Their eyes were wide to the point of popping out—horror and disbelief twisting their faces.

Le Jing sat casually, legs crossed, chin propped on one hand. His gentle smile made their hair stand on end. Unhurriedly, he continued:

“Next, the dog will bite Butcher Zhang on the shoulder. Though he’ll eventually kill the dog, he’ll go mad a week later and die. So technically, he will still be killed by the mad dog.”

The three boys stiffly turned back to look.

They saw Butcher Zhang tumble from his horse and lunge for his son’s corpse.

The red-eyed dog leaped onto his back, sinking yellow teeth deep into his shoulder. The man screamed, rolling and wrestling with the dog in a bloody frenzy.

Perhaps grief gave him strength—he strangled the dog to death in the end.

Then the injured man crawled to his son and let out an animalistic wail.

Not far away, the boy sat cross-legged, watching coldly. His lashes lowered. His voice held no sorrow or joy—like a Buddha on a lotus throne delivering absolute judgment:

“On the battlefield, Butcher Zhang pillaged, killed, and raped without restraint. Fifty-seven women and children violated, eighteen children murdered. This is retribution visiting his family—though they were hardly innocent either.”

The three boys held their breath, trembling—fear turning into awe.

At this point, they couldn’t tell whether the “idiot” had predicted the future… or whether he was simply speaking aloud a future destined to happen.

Thud.

Pockmark-face collapsed to his knees first, followed by the skinny boy and the fat boy, all kneeling before Le Jing.

“Don’t kill me! I won’t dare ever again!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’ll never bully you again! I’ll give you all my New Year’s money!”

“I don’t want to die! I was wrong! Please forgive me—I’ll kowtow if you want!”

Le Jing had already checked their karmic lines. None of them were great sinners—small-time troublemakers, maybe, but no blood on their hands. No fatal destiny awaited them; they would just be unlucky or poor in this life, nothing that would affect the next.

“…How much New Year’s money can you give?” Le Jing asked.

The skinny boy paused mid-kowtow, eyes watery as he stuttered, “O-One tael?”

Le Jing held out his hand. “Give it to me. I guarantee you won’t die anytime soon.”

“A-Anytime soon?”

“Oh, just forty to fifty years.”

Hearing he could live another forty to fifty years, the skinny boy burst into relieved joy. He scrambled to hand over a small silver piece as if afraid Le Jing would change his mind. “We agreed! Don’t go back on it!”

The other two finally woke up as well.

“I don’t have money on me! Wait here, I’ll go home and bring all my and my brother’s New Year’s money! You must wait!!”

“I’ll bring mine too! Just don’t curse me!”

Having successfully extorted three boys’ New Year money, Le Jing felt great. He didn’t know the exact buying power of silver here, but three taels should at least feed him. And if not… well, there was still the fat boy and his brother’s share.

Ignoring the mourning scene in the street, Le Jing closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

Even with his firm mind, after seeing the past and future karmic threads of only a handful of people, his head hurt.

The idiot’s eyes were truly terrifying.

From experience, Le Jing now believed these weren’t “future sight” eyes, but “karma eyes.”

Karma—the Buddhist concept. Every action has a cause and an effect; what you sow, you reap. Good deeds bring good outcomes, evil deeds bring suffering.

For example, some evildoers repent in old age, doing large acts of charity to offset their sins, hoping for a better rebirth in the next life.

According to Buddhist logic, if you suffer in this life, it’s because you created too many sins before—including in past lives.

Whenever Le Jing looked at a person for more than three seconds, he would automatically see fragments of their karmic causes and effects across lives.

Like the burly man who wanted a son—he would soon be weakened by the resentment of the baby girl he drowned, and eventually dragged into the water by the ghost infant.

Or the restaurant worker who brought him food—his family had accumulated good deeds; tomorrow, they would receive a windfall inheritance from a distant official relative.

Although the idiot’s eyes were supernatural, most of what they saw were small karmic threads. Massive karmic forces tied to national destiny were rare—he’d only seen one such event in the idiot’s life, and even then he saw only the result, not the cause.

He saw a hellish battlefield, but not the time of the war or why it would start.

Most importantly, the boy’s eyes couldn’t see his own karma at all.

So even with these mystical eyes, Le Jing couldn’t claim to be an omniscient immortal.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” a voice suddenly said nervously. “This old man only wanted to earn a humble living. I didn’t expect to encounter a senior here. If I disturbed you just now, please be merciful.”

Startled, Le Jing opened his eyes. Standing before him was the graceful fortune-telling charlatan from earlier, bowing obsequiously, plastering on a flattering smile.

In a cautious tone, he asked, “Senior’s divine abilities truly opened my eyes. May I ask which sect Senior hails from?”

Le Jing: “……????”