Chapter 113 Immortality

Chapter 113 Immortality

Chapter 113 Immortality
Ning Zhe walked out of the bedroom door, picked up a sour date from the bamboo strainer on the windowsill, peeled it and put it into his mouth. It still had the familiar taste, so sour that even his own mother wouldn't recognize it.

"I didn't expect there would be wild fruits from Qinzhou here."

After biting off the thin layer of flesh, Ning Zhe spit out an oval pit into the palm of his hand. Five circular concave lines evenly surround the pit, like a five-pointed star. Therefore, the sour jujube pit is also called "five-eye six-channel bodhi seed" after being made into a bracelet.

...Those who are into collecting cultural relics call everything Bodhi. A brick picked up from the roadside is called a stone Bodhi. A rebar stolen from a construction site is called an iron Bodhi. Stepping on a beer bottle at a scrap yard? That's a stroke of luck, it's called an emerald Bodhi.

Ning Zhe put the leftover date pits into his pocket and walked out of the front door of Ji Taiyu's grandmother's house. He still couldn't find Ji Taiyu.

Last night, Feng Yusu, who was following Ji Taiyu, saw him running into the village along the path, but when he rushed to Ji Taiyu's mother's home, he did not see him. Instead, the grandfather, who was informed in advance by his daughter that his grandson would come to stay at home for a few days, mistook Ning Zhe who was knocking on the door for Ji Taiyu.

Along with the identity of 'Ji Taiyu that my grandfather knew', what flooded into Ning Zhe's mind were only some fragmented childhood memories, and not much useful information.

Yanglao Village is only the size of a palm, much smaller than Gubei Town. If Ji Taiyu didn't go home, where could he hide?
...It couldn't be that he was killed.

"Hiss...Huh." Ning Zhe adjusted his breathing and took a step to leave.

But suddenly, there was a crisp sound from behind him. Ning Zhe turned around subconsciously and saw that the cupboard on the wall in the living room behind him was opened at some point, and two blue and white porcelain bowls fell to the ground and shattered.

There was no one else in the living room. Grandpa was in the bedroom, and grandma took my sister out to worship the land god. The empty living room only had an open cupboard and broken porcelain slag on the floor.

"What fell?" Grandpa came out of the bedroom after hearing the sound. When he saw the broken porcelain pieces on the floor, he frowned and scolded Ning Zhe. He turned to the corner to get a dustpan and a broom, and said, "Why are you so anxious to get a bowl? You are so clumsy. The bowl is not worth much. Be careful not to break your hand."

"There are two crescent-shaped cakes in the stove. You can eat them first. I'll go to the field to prepare some vegetables. We'll cook together when your grandma comes back."

"Got it." Ning Zhe took a deep look at the open cupboard, then turned around and went to get a cake from the stove.

If someone else saw what happened just now, they might think that the wood and hinges of the cupboard were old, or it was simply blown open by the wind, or the bowls in the cupboard were not arranged properly and fell down with a slight bump... But Ning Zhe was a careful person, he remembered it very clearly - the double doors of the cupboard were locked with a small copper lock. Although it was not locked with a key, it could not be opened by a simple collision.

Only nimble hands could quickly remove the small padlock hanging on the cabinet door, which meant that there was someone in the living room just now.

An invisible person.

"Is it Ji Taiyu? Or the land god? Or something else?" Ning Zhe walked into the stove, picked up half a crescent cake, and walked out the door while eating it.

There is no doubt that there is a ghost in this village, but the ghost's behavior is confusing and there are no clues to explore.

Ning Zhe left his grandmother's house and walked towards the village land temple.

Ning Zhe, who was driven away by a sense of crisis, did not notice that a half-naked staggering figure quietly followed him. Every step the scarred legs took left a bloody footprint on the road.

But the footprints seemed invisible, invisible, intangible, smellless and tasteless.

Following Ji Taiyu's childhood memories, Ning Zhe walked through the old streets covered with green grass. Yanglao Village is not large, and many of the few houses are empty. They are the homesteads left by the villagers after they moved to Yundu City. There are not many people left in the village. I wonder if there are 10 households with people in 3. Even if there are, most of them are old and decrepit like Ji Taiyu's grandparents. There are almost no young people. It is worth noting that there are coffins everywhere in Yanglao Village.

Ning Zhe walked on the road. Every few steps he would see a coffin placed on the roadside, some covered with waterproof cloth, some placed under a shed, or parked in a small house made of cement bricks... There was at least one coffin placed in the open air near every house in Yanglao Village, making the already sparsely populated village look even more desolate and deserted.

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

Looking at the coffins everywhere on both sides of the road, Ning Zhe thought for a moment and extracted an interesting clue from Ji Taiyu's memory.

——Yanglao Village has been a well-known longevity village since Ji Taiyu was a child. The life expectancy of the elderly in the village is exceptionally long. Eighty-year-old men can be seen everywhere, and centenarians are not uncommon. There are at least two truly long-lived people who have lived to be over 120 years old. The few elderly people who died "early" in their sixties and seventies also died accidentally because they accidentally fell while walking and hit their heads on the corner of the stairs, or were hit by a car in a car accident... and so on.

Apart from this, it is rare to hear of anyone in Yanglao Village dying from illness or passing away peacefully in their sleep.

All in all, this is an interesting place.

Ning Zhe silently raised his vigilance, took out his cell phone from his pocket, and glanced at the message Feng Yusu had sent him before:

[I just met two strange people on the roadside, a man with a crew cut and his old mother]

[That old woman... is very old, very old. Her skin is as tight as paper to her bones, and there is not much flesh on her body. She is blind and probably deaf. She looks like the skeletons in the horror movies that Ah Zhi usually watches.]

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

[There is a coffin covered with a bag under the eaves outside the door]

[Where are you? ...I want to find you]

Ning Zhe looked up with his cell phone in hand, and saw an old man in a red vest squatting by the railing on the balcony of a residential building not far away. He was groping with his skinny hands for something drying on the windowsill. It looked like pickled radish or something like that.

Click—Ning Zhe took a photo of the old man and sent it to Feng Yusu:
[Are you talking about an old man like this? ]

Feng Yushu replied immediately:
[Yes! I just saw two more similar people. They were both extremely old, but they were still alive and could move.]

Ning Zhe turned his eyes away from the second floor and replied a message:
[Come to the land temple in the north of the village to find me. There is a huge ginkgo tree there that requires more than a dozen people to hug. It is easy to find.]

Feng Yushu:
【it is good! 】

After sending the message, Ning Zhe put the phone back into his pocket and continued walking forward. Yanglao Village is not large, and from a distance, the towering crown of the giant tree to the north of the village can be seen from the street.

And a wisp of smoke that went straight up into the sky.

(End of this chapter)