During the Tang Dynasty, Wang Yan, an official who served the crown prince, once remarked that the events of a person’s life seemed bound to an unseen order. Fortune and misfortune, he believed, arrived not by chance, but according to a pattern set long before.
To illustrate this view, he recounted a striking episode from the reign of Empress Wu Zetian.
When members of the imperial clan were condemned during her purges, one young kinsman was sent to the Court of Judicial Review and sentenced to death. Facing the inevitable, the man sighed and said: “Since I cannot escape death, why should I wait for the executioner’s blade?” That night, he tore his own collar into a rope and hanged himself with it.
By morning, however, he revived. He laughed, spoke freely, and ate and drank as if nothing had happened, appearing as calm and comfortable as if he were at home. Several days later, when the sentence was finally carried out, his expression did not change. He showed no visible fear.
After his failed suicide, the man explained what he believed he had witnessed. He said that upon dying, he was confronted by an official of the underworld, who rebuked him for arriving before his appointed time. Shown the Book of Life and Death, he was told that a killing committed in a previous existence now required repayment through this specific execution. He could not settle his “karmic debt” by his own hand; he had to face the blade as decreed.
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