As soon as he walked into the courtyard, Ji Mingxia saw a dark shadow drift past him.

He took a closer look and saw the shadow form a figure and stand at the door of the house, waving at him slowly.

The mountains in the distance were dark, the rice fields outside the village were dark, and it was dark inside Grandma Ji’s home.

For Ji Mingxia, the only source of light at this moment was the street lamp on the roadside of Banana Leaf Village.

But the street light could only reach the courtyard of the Ji family at most, and could not shine into the house. 

The humanoid shadow stood at the intersection of the courtyard and the house. It stood there silently, waiting for Ji Mingxia to throw himself into its net.

Ji Mingxia gripped the phone in his hand, and left his finger over the button for the flashlight. By relying on his memory, he walked step by step towards the house.

By the time Ji Mingxia reached the door to the house, the black shadow had already disappeared.

The inside of the house was pitch black, but strangely, Ji Mingxia felt as if the house was very “lively”.

The whole Banana Leaf Village was quiet, as if there wasn’t a single living person. It was so silent that he could often hear his own breathing.

But at that moment, knocking and stomping sounds came from the Ji family house, as well as other intermittent sounds.

Sometimes it was the sound of people walking around, at other times were the sounds of crying and laughing overlapping each other.

There were the cries of babies, sighs of men and women, and coughs of the elderly.

These sounds came from far and near, sometimes behind him, and sometimes in his ears, making Ji Mingxia feel as if there were countless “people” standing all around him.

Ji Mingxia listened carefully for a while, and when he heard an old woman’s coughing, he couldn’t help but whisper, “Grandma?”

The surrounding area suddenly became silent.

As if everyone was startled by his voice, they all stopped talking and turned their heads to stare at him in silence.

Ji Mingxia got goosebumps all of a sudden.

He instinctively wanted to back up and leave this place that looked very dangerous.

But he could not go.

If he was threatened to come in by Zhou Tao’s words, he became even more determined when he heard Grandma Ji’s house.

Ji Mingxia stood at the entrance of the living room, his brain spinning up rapidly.

The layout of the first floor of Grandma Ji’s house was very simple. After entering the front door, there was a small shoe changing area, followed by the corridor. The kitchen was on the left, the guest bedroom and the staircase to the second floor were on the right.

Grandma Ji's voice seemed to come from inside the living room.

The living room had a sofa, a coffee table and a TV cabinet.

And next to the sofa was a sideboard that was used to keep Grandma Ji’s Buddhist beads.

When Grandma Ji was idle, she would sit by the sideboard and dish out Buddhist beads. So could it be that Grandma Ji was sitting by the sideboard in the living room?

Thinking of this, Ji Mingxia couldn’t help but walk in the direction of the sofa.

Compared to the “lively atmosphere” earlier, the living room was dead silent at the moment, making Ji Mingxia’s footsteps sound extra loud.

The further in he went, the lower the temperature. It even felt like the oxygen had thinned out.

Grandma Ji’s house had always been open and bright, whether it was the floor space or the height of the floor, everything was built according to the specifications of big family homes in ancient times.

But at this moment, Ji Mingxia had a feeling that they he was not walking in a home but a narrow and dark tunnel deep in the mountains.

A gust of cold air came from the inside, causing Ji Mingxia’s body temperature to decrease wildly.

They were still in the summer and he had just rushed back to the house. He was full of sweat earlier but the sudden chill felt as if he had been plunged into an ice cellar.

He was wearing short sleeves and had no protection against the cold. His limbs were a little stiff from the cold and he clenched the phone tightly. He overcome the fear of the unknown in the darkness and finally walked to the sofa by instinct. 

“Grandma?” Ji Mingxia called out in a low whisper.

There was a “creak” on the couch, as if the person sitting on it had gently moved their body in response to Ji Mingxia’s call.

Ji Mingxia mustered up the courage to reach out towards that position.

He touched a cold body.

Rough skin wrapped around stiff limbs. The touch was cold and hard like a frozen corpse.

A strange laughter rang out next to Ji Mingxia’s ears.

Ji Mingxia was startled and he immediately let go. He took a step back and his face turned pale.

The thing he touched fell from the sofa to the ground and a pale green light was emitted from its body, showing the thing in its entirety.

Ji Mingxia took a closer look and instead of his grandmother, there was the Guan Yu idol that Zhou Tao had enshrined at the mini supermarket.

The idol had landed face up, it’s face was slightly skewed but its eyes were staring right at Ji Mingxia.

The eyes flickered with resentment and the skin on the face was pale white. The faint green light made it look even more terrifying than a corpse.

Ji Mingxia was horrified and took several steps back. Without hesitation, he turned around and ran in the direction of the door.

Probably because of his haste, Ji Mingxia kept tripping over several things!

With the sound of several things falling down, Ji Mingxia, along with the household items on the coffee table, fell to the ground.

The coffee table had most of Grandma Ji’s daily necessities for example, fruit plates, tissue boxes, coin boxes, etc. The large pile of things fell to the ground amd scattered around Ji Mingxia.

Ji Mingxia shivered and looked at the idol in horror. He stretched out his hand, grabbed the things around him and threw them at the idol.

After that, Ji Mingxia picked up another coin box, quickly stood up and rushed to the door.

The tissue boxes smashed into the idol’s body with muffled thuds.

Ji Mingxia held the coin box and managed to run to the door, but he found that the door had actually been closed without his knowledge.

He was startled for a moment, then he turned around and rushed to the location of the kitchen door. There was a small balcony next to the kitchen with a security gate that led straight to the backyard.

However, Ji Mingxia had just walked into the kitchen when he bumped into something head-on.

It felt the same as a frozen corpse. The idol that was on the sofa just now had actually ran into the kitchen and blocked his way!

Ji Mingxia took several steps back and again knocked over something on the kitchen counter.

This time, what fell to the ground were various porcelain and glassware.

The chaotic breaking sounds echoed in the house, and the splattered glass fragments hit Ji Mingxia’s feet. Ji Mingxia stood at the dining table, his face was white, and his body was trembling uncontrollably, as if he was about to faint at any moment.

The whole house had become a confined space that he was trapped in it, with the dead end in front of him and the Guan Yu idol behind him.

There was no place to escape.

Ji Mingxia leaned against the dining table and slowly slid to the ground as if he had lost all his strength. He buried his head in his kneees and although his expression could not be seen, his body was constantly trembling. It was clear that he was broken, like a frightened ostrich waiting to die.

At this time, Zhou Tao, who had not made a sound for a long time, suddenly spoke out from one side: “Mingxia, Grandma Ji is still waiting for you.”

Ji Mingxia cowered and turned a deaf ear.

Zhou Tao’s voice rang out again: “If you don’t come, she’ll die.”

At these words, Ji Mingxia finally reacted. His voice had a trembled and it was muffled as it came from under his arms: “Zhou Tao …… we have no enmity with you…… why do this …… didn’t we grow up together as good friends ……”

“Yes, we are good friends.” Zhou Tao sighed at Ji Mingxia’s questioning. “Mingxia, you don't know how shocked I was when I saw you. You will never be able to understand what I felt in that moment. We were obviously good friends but why were our fates completely different?”

Ji Mingxia said, “You, you had cancer, but you recovered ……what difference is there between us?”

“You don’t understand, you don’t understand anything.” Zhou Tao sneered, “This is why I came to you.  Why is your life is so good yet mine is so bitter? Fate is too unfair, but to give balance, you were destined to return to Banana Leaf Village at this time, destined to run into me ……”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” Ji Mingxia trembled.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand, you just have to make a deal with me.” Zhou Tao said. His distant voice gradually drifted to Ji Mingxia’s side. He saw Ji Mingxia’s fragile appearance and couldn’t wait to get closer to Ji Mingxia, saying in a compelling voice, “As long as you agree, I will immediately release your grandmother, how about that?”

“What do you want me to do?” Ji Mingxia heard Zhou Tao’s voice close at hand and couldn’t help but raise his head, his eyes were listless as he asked.

Zhou Tao was satisfied when he saw Ji Mingxia’s head full of sweat and his pale face.

He calmed down and said to Ji Mingxia, “I want you to volunteer to be my human soup.”

“Human soup?” Ji Mingxia was stunned, seemingly not understanding what that meant.

“It’s a soup made from human longevity for my nourishment. My mother and I have cancer, and if we were ordinary people, we would have died long ago, but we have a secret formula that allows us to absorb other people’s longevity and survive.” Zhou Tao patiently explained to Ji Mingxia. “We have relied on the help of the villagers to survive but with time, the effect of ordinary people’s longevity becomes worse, only those with special physiques can satisfy us… “

Zhou Tao was breathing heavily as he spoke, like a hungry ghost who couldn’t wait to eat: “We noticed you as soon as you came back. You are different from everyone else. Mingxia, the two of us are obviously similar in age, and we grew up together as playmates, but why is God so unfair to me, making me become such a human being now, while you ……”

He spoke with yearning: “You are young, energetic, and full of the power we crave. You alone can fill me and my mother …… You do not know, I couldn’t wait to meet you from the moment I saw you. I wanted to eat you, I wanted to be like you so badly ……”

He said, and couldn’t help but reach out his hand to caress Ji Mingxia’s face.

Ji Mingxia felt a cold hand touch his cheek and although he tried to restrain his emotions, he instinctively backed up to avoid Zhao Tao’s cold corpse like hands.

Ji Mingxia’s face was pale and his eyes were staring at the dark void as he said to Zhou Tao, “Where is my grandmother? Is she still alive?”

Zhao Tao was caught off guard and  his hand remained in mid-air. He felt Ji Mingxia’s resistance and disgust, but not only did not get angry, his face even showed a strange smile: “Don’t be afraid, I won’t kill you. Look at the whole Banana Leaf Village, no one has died except for the initial accidents. I just want to get your power, I will be very gentle ……”

Ji Mingxia felt him coming closer and gritted his teeth, “Your target is me, I want to see my grandmother and make sure she is safe before I can consider your deal.”

“No problem.” Zhou Tao looked at Ji Mingxia’s pitiful and helpless appearance and very generously agreed to his request.

“Your grandmother is at the stairs, you can see her when you go over there.” Zhou Tao said.

Ji Mingxia slowly stood up from the ground and swayed a bit because of his weak legs.  Because of his trembling, he couldn’t rush over to where Grandma Ji was and it was after standing there for a few minutes and regaining some strength that he took a step forward.

Zhou Tao carefully watched Ji Mingxia. Only after making sure that his arms and legs were really weak and that he had little strength to walk did he move out of the way and let Grandma Ji out.

Grandma Ji was sitting at a corner in the middle of the stairs. Because the room was dark, Zhou Tao considerately shone the green light of the idol on Grandma Ji’s body.

Under the faint green light was Grandma Ji sitting on the stairs with her eyes open, looking at Ji Mingxia who was walking towards her step by step.

At first, Ji Mingxia was worried that this Grandma Ji was a fake. It was only when he got closer and saw the look on her face that he confirmed she was real.

Grandma Ji had been awake from the beginning and when she saw Ji Mingxia walking over, her face, which had always been stereotypically serious, now showed anger and sadness.

Ji Mingxia instantly understood what Grandma Ji expressions.

She was angry that Ji Mingxia knew there was danger and still ran back, and sad that Ji Mingxia was tortured by Zhou Tao until he finally agreed to Zhou Tao’s request.

Ji Mingxia carefully looked at his grandmother. Although she looked a little haggard, she was still alive and had not become older, which reassured him.

He pulled the corner of his mouth and tried to give Grandma Ji a reassuring smile: “It’s okay.”