Chapter 87: Cell Phone (2/2)

Bai Yan’s response was to nimbly plop the remaining sweet potato into his mouth and then touch the old lady’s hand in one fell swoop, doing this ever so naturally.

When the old woman wasn’t paying attention, Bai Yan exposed a provocative smile towards the boy, immediately causing him to become angrier.

Seeing how Bai Yan was quickly making him cry out of anger, Ye Shangyu secretly felt that this was no good, so she slyly kicked him.

Recalling what they were here for this time, Bai Yan exercised a bit of restraint, obediently shutting his mouth, finally refocusing that they were there to do their job.

Bai Yan had already made the boy too angry. Ye Shangyu felt that there was no hope for him, so she let Bai Yan chat with the old woman while she did her best to coax the young child.

Ye Shangyu waited until she had a better impression on the boy before sounding out, “You said earlier that Xu Lanfang also liked playing with her phone, what was she like before?”

“A few months ago, her grandma suddenly couldn’t work anymore, so she started to do it instead. She also used to love playing on her phone, and our grades were roughly the same…” The boy mumbled, “My grandma is still well, so I don’t need to learn from her!”

“What does she normally like playing on her phone?” Ye Shangyu said with patience, “Did she like looking at frightening things? For example, if there’s a story or movie that has a ghost.”

“She liked reading novels and watching videos… Oh right, she also liked scrolling through her feed, especially the short clips that give an insider look.” The young boy was reminded as he said, “Towards haunted things, she liked scrolling to find supernatural videos. Anyway, I don’t like watching these myself. I have zero interest in making people feel scared.”

Hearing Xu Lanfang had the habit of watching supernatural videos, Ye Shangyu’s eyes brightened, feeling that she made a discovery.

Finally, she posed another question at once, “Do you know which supernatural videos she usually watched? Which anchor did she like the most?”

“I don’t know…” The boy’s face was at a loss, “I don’t like watching them.”

“Then, do you know what her account name is? What username did she use when scrolling through these posts?”

“Um, her username is usually Guess Who I Am. I didn’t pay attention when she was scrolling, but it should still be this.”

Asking a few more questions and knowing that there couldn’t be any more questions that the boy could be asked of, Ye Shangyu finally let him off, absent-mindedly having idle chat with him.

On the other hand, Bai Yan’s talk with the old woman had stretched out for a long time, but there was still some gain in it.

Just like Jina and the others, the old lady also insisted that no one has gone missing.

But, from his experience with Dong Zi’s family, Bai Yan obtained a lot of insights, so he changed topics and stopped asking about the people who had disappeared, starting to ask who had recently left the village.

Sure enough, like Dong Zi’s family, ever since the last few months, a lot of villagers’ families moved away and left the village. Moreover, all their reasons were to live comfortably in the city.

Although Bai Yan had no idea what the circumstances of this world were, going to the city meant living comfortably, probably because the situation in the city was definitely better than in the village.

According to what Anchor Bai Cui said about this being a ‘left-behind children’ village, generally speaking, city rent was expensive and prices for commodities were high, so there were only adults that lived in the city to work. Workplaces provided full accommodation, so the children and the elderly were left in the village. Education in villages was cheaper, and the living costs here were inexpensive.

However, whole families moved to the city without any regard for their land and their old homes. This would happen only if the villagers all simultaneously won the lottery, but otherwise, being dragged down by having a family to feed, two parents couldn’t possibly afford the costs of moving the old and the young to the city.

Bai Yan carefully pondered on this and deduced that these people who had ‘moved to the city’ were the missing people mentioned in the post.

Talking to the two family members separately, Bai Yan and Ye Shangyu had their own gains.

While chatting, a boy covered in filth from head to toe walked over while carrying a ball.

Although granny was old, her eyesight was still quite good.

Seeing the boy from a distance, the old woman called out in a loud voice, “Tie Zhu, come over and eat some sweet potatoes!”

The ears of the boy carrying a ball were sharp, and once he heard that there was something to eat, he ran like the wind, not caring for the ball anymore.

Seeing that he was about to use his grimy little hands to grab a sweet potato, the old woman pulled out a handkerchief from her pants pocket, giving it to the boy to wipe his hands clean. After, she placed a sweet potato in his hands, “You need to clean your hands before you can eat, eating the mud all over your hands will make you sick.”

The boy carelessly nodded his head, grabbing a sweet potato and stuffing it in his mouth, not knowing if he remembered what she said or not.

After swallowing the sweet potato whole, the boy picked up the ball, patting it while also starting to sing the nursery rhyme he made up.

The old woman heard the boy utter ‘a curse of death’ to Dong Zi’s entire family and couldn’t help but wrinkle her brows.

She opened her mouth, intending to tell the boy to stop singing, but before she could utter a sound, the boy suddenly shut up out of the blue.

He looked at the old man walking over and giggled. He gazed at the old man, then looked back at the old lady and Gou Dan, with envy written in his eyes.

Soon, he abruptly hugged the ball and ran away in an instant. In a blink of an eye, he disappeared in the middle of the small trail.