Chapter 112

Ning Zhe walked out of the bedroom door, casually picked up a sour date from the bamboo basket on the windowsill, peeled it, and tossed it into his mouth. It was the familiar taste, so sour that even his own mother wouldn't recognize him.

"I didn't expect there to be Qinzhou wild fruit here."

After gnawing off the thin layer of flesh, Ning Zhe spat the oval pit into his palm. Five circular, concave patterns were evenly arranged in a circle on the pit, like a pentagram. That is why sour date pits are called "Five-Eye Six-Path Bodhi Seeds" after being made into bracelets.

... The idiots who play with antiques call everything a Bodhi. Picking up a brick on the side of the road is called a Stone Bodhi; stealing a piece of rebar from a construction site is called an Iron Bodhi. Stepped on a beer bottle at a scrap yard? You've hit the jackpot; that's called an Emerald Bodhi.

Ning Zhe casually put the leftover date pit into his pocket and walked out of the front door of Ji Taimei's grandmother's house. He still hadn't been able to find Ji Taimei.

Last night, Feng Yushu, who was following behind Ji Taimei, saw with her own eyes that he ran into the village along the small path, but after she arrived at Ji Taimei's mother's maiden home, she couldn't see him. Instead, the grandfather, who had been notified by his daughter in advance that his grandson was coming to stay for a few days, mistook Ning Zhe, who was knocking on the door, for Ji Taimei.

Along with the identity of "the Ji Taimei that Grandpa knows," only some fragmented childhood memories flooded into Ning Zhe's mind, with not much useful information.

Sheep Prison Village was only this big, much smaller than Gubei Town. If he hadn't returned home, where could Ji Taimei be hiding?

... He couldn't have been killed, could he?

"Hiss... hoo." Ning Zhe adjusted his breathing and stepped out to leave.

But suddenly, a crisp "clatter" came from behind. Ning Zhe subconsciously turned his head and saw that in the living room behind him, the cupboard against the wall had been opened at some point, and two blue-and-white porcelain bowls had fallen to the ground and shattered into pieces.

There was no one else in the living room. His grandfather was in the bedroom, and his grandmother had taken his sister out to worship the Earth God. In the empty living room, there was only the opened cupboard and the shards of porcelain on the floor.

"What fell?" His grandfather heard the sound and walked out of the bedroom. Seeing the broken porcelain on the floor, he frowned and scolded Ning Zhe a couple of times, then turned to the corner to get a dustpan and broom, muttering: "Why were you in such a rush to get a bowl, you clumsy thing. The bowl isn't worth much, but be careful not to cut your hand."

"There are still two crescent cakes in the stove, take them to eat first. I'm going to the fields to get some vegetables, and we'll cook together when your grandmother gets back."

"Got it." Ning Zhe took a deep look at the opened cupboard and turned to go to the stove to get the cakes.

If someone else had seen that scene, they might have thought the wood and hinges of the cupboard were old, or that it had simply been blown open by the wind, or that the bowls in the cupboard hadn't been placed properly and fell with a slight bump... but Ning Zhe was a careful person, and he remembered very clearly—the double doors of that cupboard were locked with a small copper padlock. Although it wasn't locked tight with a key, it definitely couldn't have been opened by a simple collision.

Only a nimble human hand could have quickly removed the small padlock hanging on the cupboard door, which meant there was someone in the living room just now.

An invisible person.

"Was it Ji Taimei? Or the Earth God? Or something else?" Ning Zhe went to the stove, grabbed half a crescent cake, and walked toward the door while gnawing on it.

There was no doubt that there were ghosts in this village, but the rules of that ghost seemed elusive, with no clues available to investigate.

Ning Zhe left his grandmother's house and walked toward the village's Earth Temple.

Driven by a sense of crisis, Ning Zhe did not see a staggering figure with tattered clothes quietly following him. Every step the scarred legs took left a bloody footprint on the road.

But those footprints were as if invisible—they could not be seen, touched, smelled, or tasted.

Following Ji Taimei's childhood memories, Ning Zhe passed through the old street overgrown with grass. Sheep Prison Village was not large, and many of the already sparse houses were empty; these were the homesteads left behind after the villagers moved their entire families to Yun City. There weren't many people left in the village; out of 10 households, he didn't know if even 3 were occupied. Even if they were, most were decrepit old people like Ji Taimei's grandparents, and young people were almost nowhere to be seen. It was worth noting that there were coffins everywhere in Sheep Prison Village.

Ning Zhe walked along the road, and every few steps, he could see a coffin placed on the side of the road, either covered with a tarp, placed under a shed, or parked in a small house built of cement bricks... Every house in Sheep Prison Village had at least one coffin placed in the open nearby, making the already sparsely populated village appear even more desolate and cold.

"Could these coffins be related to the ghosts in the village?" Ning Zhe couldn't help but think.

Looking at the coffins visible everywhere on both sides of the road, Ning Zhe pondered for a moment and extracted an interesting clue from Ji Taimei's memories.

—Sheep Prison Village had been a famous "Longevity Village" far and wide since Ji Taimei was a child. The elderly in the village lived exceptionally long lives; eighty-year-old men were everywhere, centenarians were not rare, and there were at least two "true" long-lived elders who had lived past 120. The few who died "early" in their sixties or seventies did so due to accidental deaths, such as tripping while walking and hitting their heads on the corner of stairs, or being hit by a car in a traffic accident...

Other than that, it was rare to hear of anyone in Sheep Prison Village dying from the torment of illness or passing away peacefully in their sleep of old age.

In short, this was a very interesting place.

Ning Zhe silently raised his vigilance, took his phone out of his pocket, and glanced at the message Feng Yushu had sent him earlier:

【I just met two strange people on the side of the road, a man with a crew cut and his old mother】

【That old woman... is very old, very, very old. Her skin is stuck to her bones like paper, there isn't much flesh to be seen on her, her eyes are blind, and she might be deaf too. She's just like the skeletons in the horror movies that A-Zhi usually watches】

【When I asked her son for directions, she hid behind the door and secretly watched me】

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【There is a coffin covered with a bag under the eaves outside the door】

【Where are you?... I want to find you】

Ning Zhe held his phone, looked up, and glanced ahead. He saw an old person wearing a red vest squatting by the railing on the second-floor balcony of a nearby residential house, fumbling with thin, withered hands at something drying on the windowsill, which looked like pickled vegetables like dried radish.

Click—Ning Zhe took a photo of the old person and sent it to Feng Yushu:

【Is this the kind of old person you were talking about?】

Feng Yushu replied instantly:

【Yes! I just saw two similar people. They are both so old they don't look like people anymore, but they are still alive and can still move】

Ning Zhe shifted his gaze from the second floor and replied with a message:

【Come find me at the Earth Temple on the north side of the village. There is a giant ginkgo tree there that needs more than ten people to wrap their arms around; it's easy to find】

Feng Yushu:

【Okay!】

After sending the message, Ning Zhe stuffed his phone back into his pocket and continued walking forward. Sheep Prison Village was not large, and from far away, he could already see the towering canopy of the giant tree on the north side of the village from the street.

And a wisp of smoke drifting straight up into the sky.

(End of Chapter)