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

Under the old locust tree at the entrance of the Meng family courtyard, a crowd of people with rice bowls in their hands had already gathered to watch the spectacle.

Liu Zhaodi stood in the very center, spitting as she spoke, her already sharp tongue moving rapidly.

"Oh, my fellow villagers! You have no idea what I heard in the next village! That first wife is truly shameless!"

Liu Zhaodi spat the sunflower seed shells onto the ground and then stomped on them hard.

"You mean my cousin's been in the army for years? Those photos are all yellowed with age! But last night, when I came back to get something, I heard noises coming from the east room! It was a man's voice! That spendthrift woman must have been unable to bear the loneliness and invited some random guy home in the dark!"

Wang Guifen, standing nearby, immediately chimed in, slapping her thigh and wailing, "What a misfortune for our family! If word gets out, the Meng family will be utterly disgraced! No wonder we've been losing money and food; it turns out it's all gone to support some scoundrel!"

Zhang Cuihua, clutching her wrist which had been swollen from being kicked yesterday, added fuel to the fire: "That's right! Otherwise, where would that three-year-old brat get his meat? Where would he get the strength to injure Second Uncle and Younger Uncle? He has someone backing him up!"

Three become tigers.

The villagers around looked at the tightly closed gate of the Meng family's house, and their expressions changed. These days, issues of conduct can be fatal.

"I never expected Lin Wanrou to be so flashy behind the scenes, despite her seemingly honest appearance?"

"I think so. There's always gossip around a widow's door."

Just as the discussion was getting louder, the two rickety wooden doors creaked open.

Lin Wanrou was pale and her body was still trembling, but she didn't stop walking. Clutching the hem of her clothes, she walked step by step to the front of the crowd.

"Sister-in-law, you can't make false accusations." Lin Wanrou's voice wasn't loud, but she enunciated each word clearly. "I, Lin Wanrou, have always been upright and honest, and have never done anything to wrong Jianguo!"

"Pah!" Liu Zhaodi spat a mouthful of phlegm at Lin Wanrou's feet. "You think you can just say there wasn't any? Then explain yourself! Where did the meat come from? Where did the flour come from? Did a strong wind blow it away?"

"That was given to me..." Lin Wanrou was about to say that it was given by a god, but then she felt that no one would believe her if she said that.

"Can't say it now, huh?" Liu Zhaodi said smugly, pointing at Lin Wanrou's nose. "She was cheated on! Folks, we can't keep this kind of slut in our village! She must be drowned in a pig cage! And that little bastard child should be thrown out too!"

"Throw it out! Throw it out!" Wang Guifen joined in the commotion.

Suddenly, a small hand reached out and grasped Liu Zhaodi's pointing finger.

Meng Yaya had somehow managed to sneak up to the front. She looked up at Liu Zhaodi with a blank expression, as if she were looking at a croaking toad.

"Auntie, don't you want your fingers anymore?"

Liu Zhaodi's heart skipped a beat. She had heard about the girl's strange deeds yesterday, and although she hadn't believed them at first, the sight of those dark, piercing eyes now sent a chill down her spine.

She abruptly pulled her hand back: "What are you doing? You want to hit an elder in front of so many people?"

"I won't hit them." Meng Yaya shook her head, playing with a piece of mud she had just pried off the wall. "I don't hit shameless people, I'm afraid of getting my hands dirty."

The entire audience erupted in uproar.

A three-year-old child called his aunt shameless?

"Who are you cursing!" Liu Zhaodi's face turned a deep purplish-red, and she raised her hand to slap him.

"Auntie, did you really go back to the village last night?" Meng Yaya didn't dodge, but instead took a step forward. Her voice was clear and even a little innocent. "But Er Gouzi's dad said that last night he heard mice squeaking in the brigade's feed warehouse at the east end of the village."

Liu Zhaodi's hand froze in mid-air, her face turning deathly pale, even paler than if she had applied powder.

"What did you say...what rat..." her voice was weak.

Meng Yaya tilted her head, feigning a troubled recollection: "That mouse was squealing terribly, yelling 'You rascal, be quiet!' Auntie, did you hear it?"

"boom!"

The crowd erupted in an uproar.

This is a lot of information!

The feed depot at the east end of the village is a well-known gathering place for wild mandarin ducks in the surrounding area.

Among those present was a man with a full beard, whose expression suddenly turned extremely ugly. That was Zhao Dachui, the village's bachelor.

Meng Yaya didn't give Liu Zhaodi a chance to react at all, pointing to a button on Liu Zhaodi's collar.

"Auntie, why did you button this wrong? This button with black thread, doesn't it look like it's from Uncle Zhao Dachui's clothes? I remember Uncle Zhao was resting under the tree yesterday, and this button was still there."

All eyes turned to Liu Zhaodi's neckline.

Sure enough, a large black men's button was sewn on the very top of the floral shirt in a very conspicuous way. The thread was still new, obviously it was sewn on in a hurry, or... the wrong clothes were worn?

Looking at Zhao Dachui in the crowd, he had already been crouching down, trying to slip away, but was grabbed by a few nosy aunties.

"Well, so it was you, you old slut, crying 'stop thief'!"

If you still haven't realized it by now, you're a fool.

Meng Jingui and Meng Jianjun, who had been standing by watching the spectacle, turned green with embarrassment. Their sister-in-law was having an affair? And with one of the village's bachelors no less? They might not have been cuckolded, but they were utterly humiliated!

"No! I didn't! That brat made it all up!" Liu Zhaodi panicked and frantically tried to cover her collar, but the more she panicked, the more confused she became, and she ended up tearing off the buttons.

"Whether it's made up or not, just go to the feed warehouse and see if there's any of Auntie's red ribbons under the haystacks," Meng Yaya added, delivering the final blow. "I remember Auntie loved those red ribbons the most."

This strike will seal his throat.

Liu Zhaodi's legs went weak, and she collapsed to the ground. It was all over!

"Kill this shameless bastard!"

Wang Guifen never expected that she would get herself into trouble, and that the trouble would even affect her eldest daughter-in-law. She wanted to scold Lin Wanrou, but now the whole village is laughing at the Meng family.

Meng Yaya couldn't be bothered to look at this mess. She took Lin Wanrou's cold hand and glanced around at the people pointing and whispering.

"My mom and I are not jinxes."

Although her voice was still young, it carried an undeniable firmness.

"We're not staying in this house anymore. We're not acknowledging these wicked relatives anymore. My father isn't dead; we're going to the Beiping Military Region to find him. Then, we'll let the commanders see who the thief is and who the slut is!"

After uttering these resounding words, Meng Yaya dragged Lin Wanrou back into the house and slammed the door shut in front of the entire village.

Chaos reigned outside the door. Liu Zhaodi's wailing, the villagers' laughter, and Wang Guifen's furious curses mingled together.

Inside the room, Lin Wanrou slid down to the floor 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.

"Let's go." Meng Yaya took out a handful of leftover rabbit jerky from her pocket and stuffed it into Lin Wanrou's mouth. "It stinks here, it smells like mud."

She didn't want to waste any more time in this lousy village with these rotten people.

However, the journey to Beiping was long and arduous, and walking alone was certainly not enough. A letter of introduction and money for a ticket were required.

Although the rabbit provided some nutrition, it wasn't enough to cover the travel expenses.

Meng Yaya stroked her chin and thought for a moment.

In the original owner's memory, the village's eccentric old madman once mentioned that deep in the Daqingshan Mountains, there was an old forest where "golden nuggets" that could sustain life grew.

That golden nugget is ginseng.

If you can dig up a wild ginseng that's been around for a long time, you'll have enough money for the trip to Beiping, and even enough to settle down in the future.

Meng Yaya avoided the crowd and, like a nimble kitten, disappeared into the dense bushes behind the mountain.

The deeper you go, the dimmer the light becomes. Ancient trees reach for the sky, and a thick layer of decaying leaves has accumulated, making it soft and spongy underfoot.

It was extremely quiet around us; even the birdsong was scarce.

What would be a scene from a horror movie for ordinary people was a long-lost comfort zone for Meng Yaya. For the past ten years since the apocalypse, she had spent most of her time hunting mutated beasts in this kind of environment.

She released a wisp of her supernatural power, sensing the aura of the surrounding plants.

"Over here."

Meng Yaya's eyes lit up, and she started climbing up the hillside to her left. There, she could feel a faint but pure fluctuation of spiritual energy.

She parted a patch of weeds that were half her height.

A plant with several red berries on its top grows quietly at the base of a dead old pine tree.

Five-grade leaf!

Although it's not some thousand-year-old ginseng, judging from the quality of its leaves, it's at least fifty or sixty years old. In this day and age, it would definitely fetch an astronomical price!

Meng Yaya was about to reach out and dig.

"hiss--"

An extremely faint sound, mixed with a fishy stench, emanated from the hollow of the withered tree.

Meng Yaya's hand hovered in mid-air, frozen in place for a moment.

A venomous snake, about the thickness of a thumb and covered in black and yellow stripes, with a triangular head, was poking its body out of the tree hole, staring intently at her hand.

That's a highly venomous five-step snake!

Just then, a series of hurried and heavy footsteps came from the bushes not far away, accompanied by suppressed coughs.

"Cough cough... This godforsaken place... Where are there any herbs...?"

An old man wearing a tattered Zhongshan suit, with gray and disheveled hair, stumbled over.

He clearly didn't see Meng Yaya, nor did he see the snake. He stepped on a dead branch, his body tilted, and he actually lunged straight towards the roots of the old pine tree!

"Don't move!" Meng Yaya whispered.