"Then souls should maintain a roughly equivalent number," Malin said, puzzled by Colin's statement, "but from what I can tell from history books, in the past few centuries, the human population has been on the rise."
Colin chuckled and shook his head, "The river is the stream of souls; within it, new souls are always being nurtured, while the old ones that enter do not necessarily get reborn. However, no one has ever seen that river, and those who claim to have seen it are mostly just experiencing strange visions during near-death experiences, which cannot be taken seriously." Colin sighed, "And now, the powers of the gods are waning, and even though the God of Justice remains strong, within a century we may face great troubles... But explaining these matters to you now, you wouldn't understand, kids have it so easy."
He sighed again.
What he didn't know was that Malin was indeed a child, but also a person from another world who was even older than him.