Chapter 155: Discussions of Military Wives
On their way up the mountain, they had to pass by the river. The military wives gathered there washing clothes spotted them immediately, and a flurry of whispers broke out.
“Look over there, isn’t that Captain Gu?”
“Is that his new bride walking behind him?”
At the sound of the woman’s voice, the rest of the wives instantly paused their scrubbing and looked over.
“It really is Captain Gu!”
“Goodness me! Captain Gu’s wife is breathtakingly beautiful, isn’t she?”
“No wonder he was in such a tearing hurry to head back home and get married. Who wouldn’t sprint back if they had a wife like that waiting for them?”
“Hmph, a total vixen,” a sour voice muttered. “Using a face like that to seduce men wherever she goes.”
“Please! If I were even half that pretty, I’d gladly be called a vixen!”
“You can say that again…”
The crowd was a mix of curiosity, envy, and pure jealousy. Captain Gu might be cold and unapproachable, but he held a high rank, drew an excellent salary, and came from a prominent family background. Which of them hadn’t secretly dreamed of marrying their own daughters or relatives to a man like that?
If they had managed to secure Captain Gu, their families would have reaped countless benefits. But now, he had been snatched up by this city girl. If they had known he was so easily won over, they would have forced their daughters to be more proactive. Who knows? Things might have turned out differently.
But it was far too late for regrets now. A military marriage was strictly protected by law, and interfering with it was a dangerous line no one dared cross.
“Captain Gu, is this your new bride?” one of the bolder wives called out.
Gu Tingxiao gave a firm nod, politely acknowledging the gossiping crowd.
“Oh, look at how lovely your wife is!”
“That’s right! Make sure to drop by and visit us often!”
“My family lives on the second floor of the tube building. Come on over whenever you have a free moment!”
Sheng Wanyan kept a polite smile on her face, nodding to greet them. She understood perfectly well that a large part of their enthusiasm stemmed entirely from Gu Tingxiao’s status. At just twenty-seven years old, the deputy regimental commander had a brilliant career ahead of him, and absolutely no one wanted to offend him.
“Thank you, sisters-in-law,” Wanyan replied smoothly. “Things are a bit chaotic since I just arrived yesterday, but I’ll make sure to bring over some wedding candy for everyone tomorrow.”
Since she was currently empty-handed, it was only right to offer sweets to the compound neighbors to share their wedding joy.
“We’ll be looking forward to it, then!”
“By the way, where is Captain Gu’s wife from?”
“I’m from Chengdu,” Wanyan answered.
“Oh, a city girl?”
Wanyan nodded. The moment the words left her mouth, the atmosphere shifted noticeably, and the warmth in several women’s eyes vanished.
There were already a few military wives from the city living in the compound, and they were notoriously arrogant. Those women constantly flaunted their city upbringing, openly looking down on the village-born wives and treating them as uncultured. Naturally, the rural wives harbored a deep-seated resentment toward city folks. Hearing that Sheng Wanyan was also a city dweller caused her popularity to plummet instantly.
“Ah… city people,” someone muttered dryly.
The wives exchanged loaded glances, their minds whirring with assumptions. Wanyan ignored the sudden chill, maintaining her gentle, serene smile.
“Are you two heading up the mountain?”
“Yes, we are.”
Seeing that Wanyan kept her answers polite but brief, the women felt awkward pressing further.
“Well, we should get back to our laundry.”
“Make sure you head back down early. The mountains get dangerous after dark.”
Wanyan smiled and thanked them for the advice. She hadn’t missed the sudden wall of exclusion that went up the moment her city background was revealed, but it didn’t bother her in the slightest. She wasn’t the type to desperately crave a large social circle anyway. She had moved out here to build a beautiful life with her husband, not to play politics with the local wives.
She would simply mind her own business. Even if they chose to dislike her based on a stereotype, she wasn’t going to compromise her dignity or bend over backward just to curry favor. Her priorities were clear: focus on her translation work, make a good income, and take care of her household. If anything, she preferred a quiet life where people left her alone.
As the couple walked away toward the foothills, the murmurs behind them started up again, sharper this time.
“Great, another city girl. Just what we need—one more snob to look down her nose at us.”
“Exactly. And did you see her shoes? What kind of style is that? They must have cost a fortune.”
The women stared after Wanyan’s retreating figure. They had never seen that type of footwear before, but it looked incredibly high-end.
“Those are sneakers,” one wife announced, lifting her chin proudly. “You can only get them at the Overseas Chinese Store in the Capital.”
“How on earth do you know that?”
The woman smirked. “My husband’s brother-in-law’s cousin owns a pair. My sister-in-law never shuts up about them.”
“Goodness! A Chinese store? How much do they even cost?”
“At least this much,” the know-it-all wife said, flashing two fingers.
The crowd gasped. “A pair of shoes for two yuan? No wonder. It really is infuriating to compare yourself to others.”
“Yeah, two yuan is enough to cover my grocery bill for a whole month.”
The woman who recognized the shoes rolled her eyes so hard she nearly strained them. Two yuan wouldn’t even buy the rubber soles of those shoes, let alone anything from an Overseas Chinese Store. They were living in a fantasy world.
“What do you mean, two yuan? It’s twenty yuan!”
Inhale!
A collective gasp echoed across the riverbank. Twenty yuan! That was enough to cover a standard family’s entire living expenses for two full months. Spending that much on a single pair of shoes was mind-boggling.
Captain Gu was doting on his wife to a ridiculous fault. Wouldn’t it have been a thousand times better to spend twenty yuan on food and grain? To throw that kind of money at a woman’s shoes was beyond comprehension.
If they had known Captain Gu’s personal finances were that substantial, they would have pushed their daughters onto him by any means necessary. They had the advantage of living right next to him, yet an outsider from hundreds of miles away had swooped in and snatched the prize.
The wives sighed inwardly, bitterly wondering why their fates as women were so vastly different.
“Well, they’re still newlyweds,” one bitter wife scoffed loudly. “Who knows if he’ll stay this generous down the road?”
The comment struck a chord, and several women nodded in agreement. When they had first married, their own husbands had treated them like royalty too. But as the years rolled on, spending even a single yuan on a new blouse would trigger a massive argument.
Who could say if Captain Gu wouldn’t change too? The honeymoon phase was always sweet, but time would eventually reveal whether a man was a saint or a beast.
Meanwhile, Sheng Wanyan followed Gu Tingxiao up the mountain path. When they passed the communal tool shed near the base of the foothills—a station maintained by the base for soldiers during wilderness training—Tingxiao stepped inside to borrow a heavy machete.
Finding a smooth, clean boulder for her, Gu Tingxiao gestured for her to sit. “Rest here, wife.”
With a powerful swing of his arms, he set to work, the machete slicing cleanly through the thick bamboo stalks. Their property required an immense amount of material, but Tingxiao’s physical strength was formidable. With just a few efficient strokes, a massive stalk would come crashing down.
By the time the morning drew to a close, he had cleanly harvested fifty stalks of bamboo. Enclosing the kitchen area alone would consume a vast portion of it, to say nothing of building the covered walkway and the bedroom storage racks.
While Wanyan sat politely on the boulder, her mind was focused on a completely different goal. She wanted to venture slightly further into the woods to secure some fresh wild game to bring back. The base supply and marketing cooperative was far too distant—a grueling two-hour trek on foot. Her custom bicycle hadn’t been delivered yet, and until it arrived to cut that travel time down to a manageable thirty minutes, foraging from the mountain was her best option.
