Chapter 254: Liang Qian Moves to the Courtyard
“Yan’er, why did Captain Du and his family have to move here of all places?” Auntie Xie asked, looking down the lane. “With them around, I bet we won’t have a single day of peace from now on.”
There was no need for Auntie Xie to elaborate; both of them knew exactly what the underlying issue was. Not long ago, the rumor that Liang Qian was desperately infatuated with Gu Tingxiao had caused a massive stir throughout the entire military base. Everyone knew the history.
Still, Liang Qian was the chief of staff’s daughter. While people had their private suspicions about her sudden marriage and relocation, no one dared to say too much out loud.
“Auntie, that’s their family’s business,” Sheng Wanyan replied mildly. “I wouldn’t know.”
“That’s true,” Auntie Xie conceded. There was no predicting who would end up living in the compound or who your neighbors would turn out to be. Even if they didn’t like it, they couldn’t exactly bar Captain Du and his family from moving in. The housing belonged to the military, not to any individual.
“Look over there—that must be Captain Du’s mother.” Auntie Xie pointed toward an old lady standing squarely at the entrance of the Du family’s courtyard, loudly barking orders at the soldiers helping them move.
The elderly Mrs. Du was incredibly gaunt, with sharp, sunken cheekbones that gave her a naturally harsh, mean-spirited look. She walked with a stiff, unnatural gait, revealing herself to be an old lady with bound feet. Rumor had it that in her youth, she had been a personal maid to a young lady from a wealthy estate.
“And that little one is Captain Du’s daughter from his first marriage,” Auntie Xie added, her tone shifting to one of pity.
The five-year-old girl was currently being driven like a pack mule by her grandmother, dragging heavy stools across the frozen ground. In the dead of winter, the child was wearing a tattered, threadbare cotton jacket. The fabric was torn open in several places, and the cotton batting inside had completely fallen out, leaving it no thicker than a light spring coat. In the freezing climate of Bing City, it was a miracle the little girl hadn’t frozen solid.
“Hurry up! Stop trying to slacking off!” Mrs. Du screeched at her granddaughter.
The little girl flinched violently in terror, gritting her teeth against the biting wind as she forced her small body to move faster.
“Useless little money-loser, exactly like your mother,” Mrs. Du spat, rolling her eyes. “It’s a good thing my son divorced that burdensome woman.”
Hearing her mother mentioned, the little girl’s eyes instantly welled with tears.
Inside the house, Liang Qian heard her mother-in-law’s shrill shouting and stepped out onto the porch. The sheer chaos and noise of the move were already grating on her nerves. Couldn’t they accomplish anything quietly?
The moment Mrs. Du spotted her new daughter-in-law, the harsh scowl vanished from her face, replaced by a fawning, sycophantic smile. She hurried over to soothe her. “Xiao Qian, moving is always a messy, chaotic business. Stay inside so you don’t accidentally get bumped. Did this useless girl disturb you? Don’t worry, I’ll discipline her right now.”
Liang Qian watched the old woman approach, her eyes dropping to the rough, dirt-caked hands that were reaching out to grasp her brand-new coat. A look of profound distaste flashed across her face, and she sharply pulled her hem out of the old woman’s reach.
Mrs. Du’s hands froze mid-air. Her smile stiffened for a fraction of a second, but she quickly recovered, determined to keep pleasing her high-status daughter-in-law. “I’ll teach this brat a proper lesson for you this instant!”
Without waiting for a response, the old lady turned and delivered two harsh slaps across her granddaughter’s face. The blows were so forceful that the little girl stumbled backward, sobbing miserably as she curled into a corner of the yard.
“Wah… ugh…”
With such a dramatic spectacle unfolding in the lane, neighbors from the surrounding courtyards naturally began poking their heads out to watch. Finding herself the center of attention—stared at like a monkey in a zoo—Liang Qian’s face turned incredibly dark.
Then, her gaze shifted, and she caught sight of Sheng Wanyan standing on her own porch across the lane. A wave of intense humiliation washed over her.
Taking a deep, stabilizing breath, she forced a tight smile and said to Mrs. Du, “Mom, we’ve only just arrived. Let’s not make ourselves a laughingstock for the neighbors.”
Leaving it at that, Liang Qian turned on her heel and retreated back into the house. Why should Sheng Wanyan get to stand there and mock her?! If it weren’t for Sheng Wanyan, she would never have been forced to lower her standards and marry a divorced man with baggage! She was determined to make Sheng Wanyan open her eyes and witness exactly who would come out on top.
Across the lane, Sheng Wanyan watched the door slam shut. Meeting Liang Qian’s venomous glare with a casual shrug, she turned back inside to continue her rest. Some people willingly threw themselves into a fire pit out of pure spite; it wouldn’t take any effort on her part for Liang Qian’s life to unravel.
One wrong turn at the crossroads, and every subsequent step was bound to be a disaster. Liang Qian was gambling the remainder of her life just to win a petty grudge.
The racket outside persisted for hours. The elderly Mrs. Du possessed an astonishingly loud voice, her shrieks carrying clearly even over a distance of a hundred meters.
Trapped in a state of fitful, half-woken sleep, Sheng Wanyan found herself constantly jolted awake whenever the volume spiked. With a tired sigh, she finally decided to lock her front door and retreat entirely into the absolute quiet of her spatial domain to get some proper rest.
Across the lane, little Huzi was also startled awake by the shouting, bursting into a frantic fit of crying. Pan Yue was so thoroughly enraged by the constant disturbance that she was ready to march across the lane and start a screaming match.
So what if she’s the chief of staff’s daughter? I’m the division commander’s daughter! Who’s supposed to be afraid of whom?
“Let it go, Xiaoyue,” Grandma Sheng urged, gently catching her arm. “They’ve just arrived, so a bit of noise while moving is unavoidable. If you march over there to pick a fight on their very first day, the gossips will turn it around and make it look like we are the ones being unreasonable.”
Grandma Sheng’s calm words immediately took the wind out of Pan Yue’s sails. She knew the old woman was right. The Du family was technically within their rights to move their belongings, and if she initiated a massive argument now, malicious actors might use the incident to accuse Sheng Wanze of disrupting military unity and fellowship.
But if they couldn’t stop them, were they just supposed to endure this constant shrieking?
Grandma Sheng patted her back soothingly. “If they keep up this level of noise, we won’t even need to lift a finger. The other families in the lane won’t tolerate it for long.”
Pan Yue understood the logic, but it still infuriated her that little Huzi’s sleep was being ruined. “Who lives directly adjacent to the Du family’s courtyard?”
“Political Commissar Xie,” Grandma Sheng replied with a knowing smile.
Pan Yue’s eyes lit up as realization dawned on her. If the elderly Mrs. Du’s shouting ended up disrupting Political Commissar Xie’s rest, Captain Du would be facing serious professional consequences.
“Grandma, you really think through everything,” Pan Yue said, giving the old woman a respectful thumbs-up. Political Commissar Xie was notoriously the most rigid and difficult man to deal with in the entire division; even her own father treaded carefully around him. If you displeased him, he wouldn’t hesitate to issue a formal reprimand. One simply did not cross the political commissar, because no one could outmaneuver him in strategy or debate.
“Just wait and see,” Grandma Sheng noted placidly. “The Du family won’t be able to carry on like this for many days. Go on and tend to Huzi first.”
Pan Yue nodded, lifting her fussy son into her arms to feed him. The baby was genuinely hungry, and he quickly calmed down as he drank his milk in big, greedy gulps.
During dinner that evening, Pan Yue recounted the afternoon’s events to Sheng Wanze. His temper immediately flared upon hearing it. He could overlook a reasonable amount of noise during a move, but letting an old woman shriek at the top of her lungs all day long was entirely unacceptable. Even while preparing dinner, Mrs. Du had been shouting across the yard, showing zero consideration for the peace of the neighborhood.
“Grandma was right,” Sheng Wanze said, exhaling slowly to master his irritation. “It’s a good thing you didn’t act on impulse today. We don’t know anything about this Mrs. Du yet—there’s no telling if she’s reasonable or completely unhinged. If she had escalated it into a physical altercation with you, you could have been hurt.”
Pan Yue felt a lingering chill of fear at his words. With an elderly couple and a newborn infant in the house, a volatile neighbor was a genuine hazard.
Seeing the worry in her eyes, Sheng Wanze rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll find an opportunity to have a quiet word with Captain Du tomorrow.”
Pan Yue nodded, content to leave the matter to the men. She trusted her husband to handle the situation professionally.
When Gu Tingxiao returned home from the regiment later that evening, he was surprised by how uncharacteristically clingy his wife was the moment he walked through the door.
“Why do you look so pale?” he asked, instantly noting that the healthy, rosy color had drained from her cheeks. “Is the baby giving you trouble?”
Sheng Wanyan shook her head against his shoulder. “No.”
Unconvinced by her listless, exhausted demeanor, Gu Tingxiao pulled her firmly into his arms and sat down on the chair, settling her comfortably onto his lap. “Tell me what’s wrong.” He gently brushed the stray hairs away from her forehead, his voice incredibly tender.
Sheng Wanyan buried her face deep into his chest, her voice laced with a deep sense of grievance. “The Du family was moving in this afternoon. That old Mrs. Du has an incredibly loud voice, and she kept screaming. I couldn’t get a single bit of sleep.”
