"Master, please save us—they're going to seize us and take us before the magistrate!"
The leading woman's cry of "Master" utterly ripped away the false monk's fig leaf of shame.
"Don't listen to her nonsense! I don't know them! I have no idea what tricks these imperial people have up their sleeves, to find a group of women to frame and slander a poor monk! Amitabha, this is a sin, a great sin!"
"Father—"
Behind the group of women, a child's tender voice, tinged with tears, rang out.
There wasn't just one, a rough count revealed at least seven or eight.
If it could be said that these women might have been impersonators hired by Gu Changqing, these children, each bearing a resemblance to the "living Buddha," surely weren't just stand-ins.
There are many people in the world who look alike, but these few had a distinct borderland accent; with only so many children in the borderlands, seven or eight resembling the living Buddha—who would believe they weren't his own?