Beneath the old locust tree at the entrance of the Meng family’s courtyard, a crowd had already gathered, holding their rice bowls as they watched the commotion.
Liu Zhaodi stood right in the center, spittle flying as her already mean lips moved rapidly.
“Oh, my fellow villagers! You have no idea what I heard in the neighboring village! That eldest branch’s wife is truly shameless!”
Liu Zhaodi spat a melon seed shell onto the ground and stomped on it fiercely.
“How many years has my cousin been away as a soldier? Even his photo has yellowed! But last night, when I came back to fetch something, I actually heard noises from the east room! It was a man’s voice! That good-for-nothing woman must have grown restless and invited some strange man into the house under the cover of darkness!”
Wang Guifen immediately chimed in beside her, slapping her thigh and wailing, “Such misfortune for the family! If this gets out, our old Meng family’s reputation will be ruined! No wonder money and grain have been disappearing from the house—it must all be going to support that strange man!”
Zhang Cuihua, clutching her swollen wrist from being kicked the day before, also fanned the flames: “Exactly! Otherwise, how could that three-year-old brat have meat to eat? How could she have the strength to injure Second Uncle and Little Uncle? Someone must be backing her up!”
Three people spreading rumors make a tiger.
The surrounding villagers looked at the tightly shut gate of the Meng family, their expressions changing. In these times, matters of conduct could be deadly.
“Who would have thought Lin Wanrou, who seems so honest, could be so promiscuous behind closed doors?”
“I think it’s likely. There’s always trouble at a widow’s door.”
Just as the murmurs grew louder, the two rickety wooden doors creaked open.
Lin Wanrou’s face was pale, her body still trembling, but her steps did not falter. Clutching the hem of her clothes, she walked step by step to face the crowd.
“Sister-in-law, you cannot slander me like this,” Lin Wanrou said softly, but her words were firm. “I, Lin Wanrou, have always acted with integrity and have never done anything to betray Changhe!”
“Pah!” Liu Zhaodi spat a thick glob of phlegm at Lin Wanrou’s feet. “You say you haven’t, so you haven’t? Then explain where that meat came from! Where did the white flour come from? Did it fall from the sky?”
“That was…” Lin Wanrou was about to say it was given by a deity but felt that no one would believe such a claim.
“Can’t explain it, can you?” Liu Zhaodi said triumphantly, pointing at Lin Wanrou’s nose. “It was traded for by sleeping around! Fellow villagers, we cannot keep such a loose woman in our village! She must be thrown into the pig cage! And that little bastard should be thrown out too!”
“Throw her out! Throw her out!” Wang Guifen joined in the clamor.
A small hand suddenly reached out and grabbed Liu Zhaodi’s pointing finger.
Meng Yaya had somehow slipped to the front. She looked up at Liu Zhaodi, her face expressionless, as if she were looking at a croaking toad.
“Auntie, do you not want this finger anymore?”
Liu Zhaodi’s heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t believed the strange stories about this girl she’d heard yesterday, but now, under the gaze of those dark, deep eyes, she felt an inexplicable chill down her spine.
She yanked her hand back. “What are you doing? In front of so many people, are you trying to hit your elder?”
“I won’t hit you,” Meng Yaya shook her head, playing with a lump of mud she had just scraped from the base of the wall. “I won’t hit shameless people. I’m afraid of dirtying my hands.”
The entire crowd erupted in shock.
A three-year-old child calling her aunt shameless?
"Who are you calling names!" Liu Zhaodi's face flushed a purplish-red, her hand raised to strike.
"Auntie, did you really go back to the village last night?" Meng Yaya didn't dodge but instead took a step forward, her voice clear and even somewhat innocent. "But Er Gouzi's father said he heard rats squealing in the village east team's feed storage last night."
Liu Zhaodi's hand froze mid-air, her face instantly turning deathly pale, whiter than if it had been powdered.
"What… what rats are you talking about…" Her voice trembled.
Meng Yaya tilted her head, putting on an expression of struggling to recall. "Those rats squealed so pitifully, and while squealing, they kept crying, 'Ease up, you devil.' Auntie, did you hear them?"
"Boom!"
The crowd instantly erupted.
The implications were too much!
The village east feed storage was famously known as a rendezvous spot for illicit lovers in the surrounding villages.
Among the crowd, a burly man with a thick beard suddenly turned ashen. That was Zhao Dachui, the village bachelor.
Meng Yaya gave Liu Zhaodi no chance to react, pointing at a button on her collar.
"Auntie, why is this button sewn wrong? This black-threaded button looks like the one on Uncle Zhao Dachui's shirt, doesn't it? I remember seeing it on Uncle Zhao's shirt yesterday when he was resting under the tree."
All eyes instantly focused on Liu Zhaodi's collar.
Sure enough, at the top of her floral blouse, a large, masculine black button was clumsily sewn on, the thread still fresh—clearly done in haste, or perhaps… she had worn the wrong shirt?
Meanwhile, Zhao Dachui in the crowd had already hunched over, trying to slip away, but was grabbed by a few nosy aunties.
"Well, well! So it's you, you old hussy, crying thief while being the thief herself!"
Anyone who hadn't caught on by now would be a fool.
Meng Jingui and Meng Jianjun, who had been standing by watching the drama unfold, turned green with rage. Their sister-in-law having an affair? And with the village bachelor? Even though the cuckold's horns weren't on their heads, the shame was still unbearable!
"It's not true! I didn't! That little brat is making it up!" Liu Zhaodi panicked, frantically trying to cover her collar, only making things worse and tearing the button off in her haste.
"Whether it's made up or not, we can check the haystack in the feed storage to see if Auntie's red hair ribbon is underneath," Meng Yaya delivered the final blow. "I remember Auntie loved that red hair ribbon the most."
That blow was fatal.
Liu Zhaodi's legs gave way, and she collapsed to the ground. It was over!
"Beat this shameless woman to death!"
Wang Guifen hadn't expected the fire she started to burn her own family—specifically, her niece-in-law. She wanted to curse Lin Wanrou, but now the whole village was laughing at the Meng family's disgrace.
Meng Yaya couldn't be bothered with the chaos. She took Lin Wanrou's icy hand and scanned the pointing and whispering crowd around them.
"My mother and I are not some cursed jinxes."
Her voice, though youthful, carried an undeniable firmness.
"We won't stay in this house anymore. And we won't acknowledge these rotten relatives. My father isn't dead—we're going to the Beijing Military District to find him. When the time comes, we'll let the commander see for himself who the thief is and who the tramp is!"
With these resounding words, Meng Yaya dragged Lin Wanrou back into the house and, in front of the entire village, slammed the door shut with a loud "bang."
Outside, chaos erupted. Liu Zhaodi's wails, the villagers' jeers, and Wang Guifen's furious curses all mingled together.
Inside the house, Lin Wanrou slid down against the door, panting heavily as if she had just fought a tough battle.
"Ya Ya… are we really leaving?" Lin Wanrou looked at her daughter.
"Yes." Meng Yaya pulled a handful of leftover rabbit jerky from her pocket and stuffed it into Lin Wanrou's mouth. "This place stinks, all mud and rot."
She didn’t want to waste any more time in this broken village with these rotten people.
But getting to Beijing was a long journey, and relying on their own two feet was impossible. They’d need an introduction letter and money for tickets.
The rabbit had traded for some nutrition, but it was nowhere near enough for travel expenses.
Meng Yaya stroked her chin, thinking.
In the original host’s memories, the village’s eccentric old madman had once muttered that deep in the Great Green Mountains, there was an ancient forest where life-saving "golden lumps" grew.
Those golden lumps were ginseng.
If she could dig up a wild ginseng root of a decent age, they’d have enough for the trip to Beijing—maybe even enough to settle down afterward.
Meng Yaya avoided the crowd and slipped into the dense bushes of the back mountain like a nimble little cat.
The deeper she went, the darker it grew. Ancient trees towered overhead, and a thick layer of rotting leaves cushioned her steps, soft and spongy.
It was eerily quiet, with even the birdsong growing scarce.
To an ordinary person, this would be a horror scene, but for Meng Yaya, it was a long-lost comfort zone. In her ten years in the post-apocalyptic world, she had spent most of her time hunting mutated beasts in environments like this.
She released a trace of her esper ability, sensing the aura of the surrounding plants.
"This way."
Meng Yaya’s eyes lit up as she climbed toward the slope to her left. There was a faint but pure spiritual energy fluctuation there.
She pushed aside a patch of waist-high weeds.
A plant crowned with a few red berries grew quietly at the base of a dead old pine tree.
Five leaves!
It wasn’t some thousand-year-old ginseng, but judging by the color and condition of the leaves, it was at least fifty or sixty years old. In this era, it would fetch an astronomical price!
Meng Yaya was about to reach out and dig.
"Hiss—"
A faint sound, accompanied by a foul, fishy smell, came from the hollow of the dead tree.
Meng Yaya’s hand froze mid-air.
A venomous snake, as thick as a thumb, with black and yellow patterned scales and a triangular head, emerged from the tree hollow, staring fixedly at her hand.
It was a highly venomous pit viper!
Just then, hurried and heavy footsteps, along with muffled coughing, came from the grass nearby.
"Cough… this damned place… where are the herbs…"
An old man in tattered Zhongshan attire, with messy, graying hair, stumbled into view.
He clearly hadn’t seen Meng Yaya or the snake. Stepping on a dry branch, he lost his balance and lurched straight toward the old pine tree roots!
"Don’t move!" Meng Yaya hissed.