A clean official in a previous life, what did he do in this life?
This time, I'll share a true story about my father-in-law.
Hundreds of years ago, my father-in-law held a high position and was one of the emperor's most trusted ministers. He held a high position and an excellent reputation. He was an honest and upright official, deeply loved by the people, and everyone said he was an honest official.
Sometimes, people really do "carry their habits into reincarnation." Things we cherished in our past lives, such as integrity, honesty, and kindness, may still cling to us in this life. Unexpectedly, I became his son-in-law in this life, continuing our past relationship.
When my father-in-law was in his twenties, he had his fortune told. The fortuneteller told him to be especially careful in his thirties in this life, as he was at risk of imprisonment and might even end up in jail.
In the 1970s, my father-in-law retired from the army and returned to southern Jiangsu. He first worked at our local township grain station and later transferred to a brick and tile factory as the chief accountant. At the time, the county was holding a financial training class, and he asked a veteran accountant with whom he had a good relationship: "How should I keep my accounts to avoid any problems?" The old accountant told him: "Remember two key points. First, don't be greedy. Second, on the back of all entertainment invoices, clearly state who treated the guests, who dined, and whether any gifts were given. If you do these two things right, your accounts will be clean."
The brick and tile factory grew larger and larger, and business prospered. But within a few years, it somehow lost over 100,000 yuan—remember, at the time, monthly salaries were only 30 or 40 yuan, which would be equivalent to 100 to 20 million yuan today!
When the township leaders saw the discrepancies in the accounts, they immediately held a meeting and decided to audit them, even preparing to have my father-in-law detained.
Many of the people who audited the accounts were my father-in-law's friends in the township, but everyone was terrified during those days—the backs of the invoices clearly showed their names, dates, and amounts. Who dined and who gave gifts was crystal clear.
The county, still concerned, sent another investigation, but the result was the same: the accounts were clean. While the incident was over, my father-in-law's position was gone.
Some say that being an honest official is a way to accumulate merit. Perhaps it was this innocence that saved him from imprisonment at a crucial moment.
In the 1990s, when my wife was still in elementary school, my father-in-law had a dream one night. In it, he was a "lower-level" official, ordered to escort eleven men and women to a village at the north gate of our county town for reincarnation. That night, eleven children were born (one melon was left out).
The world beyond dreams is stricter than reality, because what's judged below is morality. It's not what you say on a written test or what you say, but a person's true character. "Loyalty, filial piety, propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame" are the criteria for judgment. Men should be loyal, filial, and kind, and women should be chaste and filial.
It was a moral exam; the average sophisticated egoist would surely fail.
After waking, my father-in-law recounted his dream to his family. He knew the village and had indeed discovered that the household had eleven extra Xs.
His most frequent phrase was, "Be kind and never do evil."
I used to read the story of Justice Bao, in which Bao continued to serve as a judge in the underworld after his death. But after hearing my father-in-law's experiences, I began to believe those stories were true.
And those eleven people escorted in the dream—where did you guess they were reincarnated?
