# Chapter 410: The Reason for Falling into Demonic Possession
"Is it her?" Zhang Chenze asked quietly. "The 'Leader' that White Tiger mentioned... from many years ago?"
"Who can really know..." Yun Yao shook her head. "Although she's still alive, it's still a case of 'dead witnesses can't testify'..."
Lin Qin felt like she had found some clue, so she looked up at the shopkeeper and asked, "Excuse me, do you have any food here?"
"Food..." The female shopkeeper stared blankly for a long time after hearing this, then extended her dirty fingers, cupping one hand and using the other like chopsticks, miming the motion of putting food into her mouth. "You mean this kind of food?"
"Yes..." Lin Qin felt a sense of déjà vu.
When Qi Xia had once asked her if there were any "needle and thread" here, her first reaction had also been to mime the act of threading a needle.
It seemed she was using this method to preserve a shred of rationality.
"There's very little food in our store..." The female shopkeeper shook her head regretfully. "The food only comes in small amounts each time... Even I haven't eaten for a long time..."
Meanwhile, Tiantian and Li Xiangling were looking around the convenience store. They quickly spotted several cans on the shelves that looked quite new.
Tiantian spoke up. "There are several cans here. Why don't you eat them yourself?"
Hearing the word "cans," Lin Qin turned to look. She remembered that when she had come here last time, the shelves had clearly been empty.
Now, more than twenty days later, had supplies really been replenished?
"I can't eat them..." The shopkeeper waved her hand. "If we staff want to eat, we have to buy them... But I can't afford them..."
Lin Qin thought for a moment. She knew there were two important questions that needed answers.
"Since you never eat anything from the store... how long has it been since you last had a meal?" Lin Qin asked.
"How long... since..." The shopkeeper's dry, yellow eyes blinked several times before she finally remembered something. "The last time I ate... I made a soup from a pot of little piglets... It was very tasty..."
"At least twenty-four days," Lin Qin blurted out.
Would a normal person look like this after going without food for twenty-four days?
No... The more she thought about it, the more terrifying it became.
Could it be that this shopkeeper hadn't eaten anything even before those twenty-four days?
After a brief moment of thought, the answer came to her.
"I don't think White Tiger was lying..." Lin Qin whispered to the others. "This girl's body is definitely enhanced... She has an Earth-level physique... So she's been able to survive this long on her own internal energy..."
Yun Yao also took a closer look at the female shopkeeper. Her body was now no different from a skeleton, which meant that for a long time, her body had been consuming its own energy.
"If it's really as you've inferred..." Yun Yao's expression grew heavy. "That means she doesn't have much longer to live... It looks like her body's muscle and fat content is already extremely low. If we don't find a way to get her to take in nutrients, she'll likely soon become a corpse that can never stand again."
Lin Qin nodded after hearing this, then asked the shopkeeper again, "In that case, who exactly supplies you with these 'goods'?"
"'Goods'?"
Lin Qin pointed at the shelves not far away. "Where do your cans come from? Does someone really deliver supplies to this place?"
"Ah..." The shopkeeper raised her eyebrows. Since her skin was completely withered, the wrinkles on her forehead were especially prominent. "It's the 'Deliveryman'... He brings me some cans regularly... But I can't touch them... They're store merchandise... I can't afford them..."
"'Deliveryman'...?"
Yun Yao picked up a can and examined it. Soon, she noticed something.
She was all too familiar with these cans.
"This 'Deliveryman' you mentioned... What does he look like?"
"He..." The shopkeeper thought for a moment, then raised one hand to cover her eyes. "He wears a... a golden..."
"Glasses," Yun Yao prompted.
"That's right... Glasses. He wears a clean shirt... He smiles a lot, and his smile is very nice..." The shopkeeper unconsciously broke into a smile as she spoke. "His voice is gentle when he talks to people... And he smells nice..."
As she described him, a figure came clearly into everyone's mind.
"Chu Tianqiu." Yun Yao and Lin Qin said the name simultaneously.
Chu... Tianqiu?
When the female shopkeeper heard those three words, her expression slowly began to change, as if "Chu Tianqiu" left a deeper impression on her than "Qiao Yun."
"Chu Tianqiu is... Who?" Her cracked lips trembled continuously, as if waking some sleeping memories.
Yun Yao didn't answer the question. She simply frowned and looked at Lin Qin.
A strange thought began to swirl in her mind.
"Lin Qin... What does 'little piglets' mean?" Yun Yao asked.
Lin Qin briefly recounted what had happened the first time she had come here.
Back when everyone first met this woman, she had cooked her own child and tried to share it with everyone. She was completely insane.
Hearing this, Yun Yao silently lowered her head.
Soon, her eyes flickered back and forth, as if some clue had connected all the irrational things together.
"Wait..." Yun Yao murmured. "It wasn't because of Qi Xia..."
"What...?"
"I fell into a misconception..." Yun Yao said, somewhat dazed. "I originally thought that Chu Tianqiu had completely gone mad because he met Qi Xia twenty days ago..."
"Isn't that the case?" Lin Qin asked in return.
"What if there's another possibility..." Yun Yao turned around, her expression unusually terrified. "What if it was for this girl?"
"What...?"
"Or rather..." Yun Yao struggled to calm herself down. "Was it for that child?"
These few sentences made everyone frown.
"Yun Yao..." Lin Qin interrupted. "Isn't your assumption a bit too bold? Are you saying that child was Chu Tianqiu's...?"
"Yes..." Yun Yao nodded. "Just as this girl said, the person she's seen the most over a long period of time is Chu Tianqiu. For some unknown reason, Chu Tianqiu had relations with this woman. After he learned that his child had died miserably, he completely went mad...?"
Hearing this, Zhang Chenze couldn't help but interject. "This is too... too absurd... I've met this Chu Tianqiu too. Although I don't know him well, I basically understand his character. As crazy as he is, how could he have fathered a child here with this woman...? In my memory, he's not that kind of barbaric person..."