Dare to shirk responsibility? This adorable little one will tear down your military district!

The wind in the courtyard seemed to have stopped. Everyone craned their necks, staring at the tattered notebook in Meng Yaya's hand.

The notebook was covered in dark smudges, looking exactly like a child's random scribbles. But no one present dared to laugh.

The third great-grandfather's face twitched slightly as he forced himself to maintain his elder's composure: "Playing tricks with a tattered notebook! What do a few dark lines prove? Do they mean they've become spirits?"

"Sure." Meng Yaya flipped to the first page with her little hand, poking her finger at the largest blob of ink.

She raised her head, her delicate face expressionless, only possessing a chilling calm: "This lump is from the winter before last. My dad sent back a money order for thirty yuan. The letter said it was for buying cotton for Mom to make a quilt, because Mom was weak after giving birth to me."

Meng Yaya's clear voice reached everyone's ears: "Wang Guifen went to the post office to get the money and bought herself a gold ring when she came back. That night, Mom was covered with moldy straw and was shivering in the quilt from the cold. I was so hungry that I kept crying, and Grandma, you were in the next room gnawing on pig's trotters and even called me a debt collector, saying that I kept you from sleeping."

Wang Guifen lay on the ground, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, yelling at the top of her lungs, "You're talking nonsense! That's my money! I saved it myself!"

"You saved this up?" Meng Yaya sneered and turned another page.

This page shows a crooked, long strip that looks like a stick.

"This was last year's Dragon Boat Festival. The village was distributing meat, and the eldest son's family got one and a half jin (750 grams). You said your second uncle needed to work, so you took it all. Mom wanted a sip of soup, but you hit her on the back with a fire poker until she bled. This poker is that one."

Meng Yaya held up the notebook, showing it to the surrounding villagers: "I was only two years old then, and I remember it clearly. The blood dripped down my mother's clothes, staining the ground red. Aunt Liu, you were passing by borrowing salt then, you saw it, right?"

In the crowd, a plump woman's expression changed. Under everyone's gaze, she hesitated for a moment, then nodded: "Yes...that's right. Wanrou's face was deathly pale; I thought she was sick, but it turns out she was beaten..."

The crowd immediately erupted in uproar.

The third grandfather tightened his grip on his cane, his face growing increasingly grim.

Meng Yaya didn't give him a chance to speak, and her little hands turned the pages of the book faster and faster.

"This page has a drawing of eggs. There are 136 in total. These are the eggs laid by the chickens in our family over the past three years. My mother and I never even tasted an eggshell. They all went into the stomachs of my second uncle and youngest uncle."

"This page contains cloth ration coupons. Dad sent them back to make clothes. As a result, Second Aunt wore a new jacket, while Mom was still wearing a tattered coat with the cotton wadding showing."

"This page..."

With each page Meng Yaya turned, she read out a messy account. Each entry was accompanied by specific dates and details. She even mimicked the profanities Wang Guifen swore at the time and the sarcastic remarks her second uncle made.

Those innocent childish voices were like sharp knives, tearing the fig leaf covering the Meng family to shreds.

Wang Guifen's face changed from deathly pale to a deep liver color.

She tried to get up and grab the notebook, but her knees were too weak to support her weight. All she could do was wail, "What a terrible thing! This little beast is a monster! What three-year-old can remember so much! She's possessed, sir! Burn her! Burn her now!"

"Am I a monster?" Meng Yaya snapped her notebook shut.

She took a step forward, her clear black and white eyes fixed on Wang Guifen: "I am Meng Changhe's daughter! I am Meng Yaya, who watched my mother suffer and survived by profiting from human blood! If remembering clearly makes you a monster, then aren't the despicable things you've done enough to send you to the eighteenth level of hell?"

"Good!" Sun Shouzheng shouted from the side, slamming his fire poker on the ground. "Well said! This girl is clever; it's only because Heaven has eyes that it couldn't bear to see this widow and her child killed!"

The way the surrounding villagers looked at Wang Guifen completely changed. What began as onlookers' curiosity turned into naked contempt and anger.

These days everyone is struggling, but people still value conscience above all else. To squander a martyr's pension and mistreat the martyr's wife and children is simply inhuman.

"That Wang Guifen is such a scoundrel. She always looks so respectable."

"That's right, I was wondering why Lin Wanrou was so thin. It turns out she's been scrimping and saving to feed her two good-for-nothing sons."

"Tsk tsk, were you even going to resort to family discipline? I think we should call the police! Let the officers settle this!"

Upon hearing the words "call the police," the third great-grandfather finally couldn't sit still any longer.

If this matter really escalates to the police station and it's discovered that the Meng family embezzled the martyrs' compensation funds, that would be a serious crime. The entire Meng family could be implicated, and their chances of being recognized as an advanced collective this year would definitely be dashed.

"Alright!" The third grandfather suddenly stood up, his cane slamming loudly on the ground. "We're all family, there's no need for grudges to last overnight! It's good that the children have good memories, but don't take it too seriously."

The old man wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and forced a smile, trying to smooth things over: "Wanrou, look at the mess this has made. Guifen may have been wrong, but she is, after all, an elder. She has certainly worked hard over the years, even if she hasn't made any great contributions..."

"Hard work?"

Lin Wanrou, who had been silent all along, suddenly raised her head.

She loosened the hem of her dress that she had been clutching tightly and took a step forward. Her usually docile face now held a resolute chill.

Lin Wanrou walked to Meng Yaya's side and took the scrap paper notebook from her daughter's hand. Her hand trembled slightly, not from fear, but from hatred.

"Third Grandfather, you've worked so hard." Lin Wanrou pressed the notebook tightly to her heart, her voice hoarse. "What's written here is just the tip of the iceberg. There's much more that Ya Ya hasn't written down."

She took a deep breath, as if to exhale all the pent-up frustration of the past few years: "The year Changhe left, we had no food at home. Wang Guifen told me to go to the back mountain to peel tree bark and grind it into powder for everyone to eat. And what happened? She gave the bark powder to me and Yaya, while she, along with Jingui and Jianjun, hid in the house eating plain steamed buns!"

"That winter, Ya Ya had a high fever of 40 degrees Celsius. I knelt on the ground and begged her for two cents to get medicine from the clinic. She said that even if the little girl died, it would save food! In the end, I had to sell my blood to get two fever-reducing pills!"

Tears streamed down Lin Wanrou's face, but she didn't wipe them away. She stared intently at the high-ranking elder: "Is this what you call hard work? Is this the Meng family's discipline? If this is what you call kindness, then I, Lin Wanrou, will give you my life today, just please stop harming my child!"

The entire room fell silent.

Even Meng Jingui, who had been pretending to be dead, was now shrinking back, not daring to utter a single word.

The third great-grandfather opened his mouth, but found himself unable to utter a single word. Before this mother who had suffered so much, any clan rules or the authority of elders seemed so pale and powerless, even nauseating.

Meng Yaya stretched out her little hand and gently grasped her mother's cold fingers.

She could feel that her mother's palms were sweaty and trembling slightly. But this time, her mother did not back down or bow her head. The frail Lin Wanrou finally grew fangs to protect her child.

"Mom," Meng Yaya looked up, her voice soft and gentle, yet carrying a reassuring power, "The accounts have been settled. We don't owe them anything. They're the ones who owe us."

She turned around, her small frame blocking Lin Wanrou's way. Her gaze swept over Wang Guifen, then over the Third Grandfather, and finally stopped on the smashed threshold.

Now that the score is settled, it's time to figure out how to proceed from here.

Meng Yaya bent down and picked up a broken piece of bluestone from the ground. It was a fragment of the threshold she had smashed to establish her authority, its edges as sharp as knives.

She tossed the stone in her hand, a naive yet almost cruel smile on her face.

"Grandpa, what did you just say about how to deal with unfilial descendants according to the clan rules?"

The third grandfather's eyelids twitched, and he instinctively took a step back.

Meng Yaya slammed the stone hard onto the ground.

"Crack!" The stone shattered into powder.

"My mother and I are no longer members of the Meng family."