Chapter 262: Under the Evaluation of the Public
Across the lane, Grandpa and Grandma Sheng caught the shouting. Sensing that their granddaughter’s name was being hurled around, they hurried out of their courtyard, their steps hesitant but anxious.
Pan Yue, being young and sharp-eared, had heard the commotion even more clearly. Recognizing that someone was aggressively confronting her sister-in-law, she sprinted out of the gate to see what was happening.
“Sheng Wanyan! I am never letting this go!” Liang Qian shrieked, completely blind to her surroundings. “Just you wait! I’ll have my dad crush you!”
She hurled vicious curses one after another. The moment Sheng Wanyan noticed the growing crowd of neighbors stepping onto the snow-dusted path, her lips trembled, and her eyes instantly brimmed with tears.
“Wanyan! What happened?” Pan Yue arrived at the scene first, her face flushing with anger the moment she heard Liang Qian’s unhinged threats. It was bad enough that this woman had constantly created friction back when they were both in the military art troupe, but now she had the audacity to target her sister-in-law?
“Yan’er!” Grandpa and Grandma Sheng cried out in unison, their hearts in their throats. They rushed to her side, frantically grabbing her hands and looking her over to ensure she wasn’t harmed.
“Grandma, I’m alright,” Sheng Wanyan whispered, her voice wavering.
“Sheng Wanyan, you miserable bitch!” Liang Qian hissed, entirely unbothered by the presence of the elders.
Hearing their granddaughter insulted so vilely to her face, Grandpa and Grandma Sheng’s expressions instantly turned dark.
The gathering crowd began to whisper fiercely among themselves.
“What on earth is going on? Why is she screaming like a lunatic?”
“Do you even need to ask? Everyone knows Liang Qian has been obsessed with Captain Gu for a long time.”
“Look at how terrified and tearful Captain Gu’s wife is. It’s obvious Liang Qian came over just to stir up trouble.”
Sheng Wanyan held her grandparents back gently, refusing to let the elderly couple engage in a vulgar shouting match on her behalf. More importantly, she had no intention of letting Liang Qian control the narrative of this confrontation.
The person who dictated the flow of this scene had to be her.
“Grandma…” Sheng Wanyan murmured, a tear escaping her eye as she looked at Auntie Xie. “I only walked over to drop off some homemade wine for Auntie Xie. The moment Comrade Liang Qian stepped out, she began screaming and cursing at me for no reason at all. She accused me of stealing Tingxiao from her… but everyone in the compound knows that Tingxiao and I married out of mutual love. When he spoke at the military auditorium last time, the entire regiment witnessed him reject her family’s blind date request.”
She sniffled, resting a delicate hand on her bump. “I don’t know what I did to offend her, but Comrade Liang Qian kept shouting that I took what belonged to her. She… she even said…”
Sheng Wanyan bit her lower lip sharply, appearing far too terrified to utter the remaining words.
Her fragile, aggrieved display instantly rallied the crowd to her defense.
“What is wrong with Liang Qian?”
“Exactly! Captain Gu made the situation crystal clear in public. He rejected the matchmaking attempt before he even met his wife!”
“Liang Qian is a married woman now. How can she still be openly pining after another officer?”
“Good heavens, Battalion Commander Du basically married a woman whose heart belongs to someone else!”
The neighbors’ sharp remarks hit Liang Qian like physical blows, roasting her pride over an open fire.
“She… she claimed I trapped Tingxiao,” Sheng Wanyan sobbed softly, continuing her account. “And then she called the baby in my belly a bastard. She also said… she also said…”
Sheng Wanyan trailed off entirely. Seeing her thoroughly bullied, defenseless state, the crowd easily filled in the blanks, assuming the rest of Liang Qian’s tirade had been too vulgar for a respectable young woman to repeat.
“Don’t be afraid, Yan’er,” Grandma Sheng said firmly, her grip tightening to offer her granddaughter strength. “Tell everyone exactly what she said! If you’ve been wronged, we will march straight to the military leadership and demand justice!”
“She said… she would have Chief of Staff Liang use his power to kill me,” Sheng Wanyan whispered, her voice trembling with engineered terror. “And then she lunged forward to push me. If Maodou hadn’t jumped in to protect me, I don’t know what would have happened to my baby.”
Gasps!
A collective breath was drawn across the lane. Threatening a pregnant woman by abusing military authority?
“Grandma… is it acceptable for people to use their family’s high rank to oppress ordinary citizens now?” Sheng Wanyan asked, her voice carrying beautifully to the edges of the crowd. “If officials can just threaten our lives whenever they please, how are ordinary families like us supposed to survive?”
Her final question struck a deep chord with the surrounding dependents, instantly ignited a firestorm of collective indignation.
“She’s absolutely right! This is a blatant abuse of power to bully a pregnant dependent! What rights do ordinary people have if this is allowed?”
“My husband is out there risking his life on the front lines to earn merits for this country, yet his family is being terrorized at home by a corrupt official’s daughter!”
“How can any of us feel safe living here?!”
Hearing the crowd turn entirely against her, Liang Qian panicked, her face twisting as she shrieked, “Sheng Wanyan, stop spouting your filthy lies! Shut your mouth!”
“You shut up!” Pan Yue snarled, stepping squarely between them. As a member of the Sheng family, she knew exactly how hard Gu Tingxiao had pursued her sister-in-law, deploying every trick in the book just to win her hand. She was practically a firsthand witness to their romance.
“Liang Qian, you shameless creature!” Pan Yue barked, her hands resting firmly on her hips. “You’re a married woman, yet you have the audacity to publicly harass another man’s wife over a delusion! You stand here abusing your father’s rank to terrorize my sister-in-law, while her brother and her husband are out executing a highly dangerous mission for this nation! Are you even worthy of the uniform you wear? Are you worthy of the soldiers bleeding for this country?”
Pan Yue tilted her chin up, her gaze fierce. “Let me tell you something: if Chief of Staff Liang truly intends to abuse his authority to crush our family, I’ll have my own father take this matter straight to the highest authorities in the Central Military Commission!”
A prominent family background wasn’t an exclusive luxury. If the Liang family ever discovered exactly whose granddaughter-in-law Sheng Wanyan actually was, they would be shaking in their boots.
“Pan Yue! Don’t you dare slander my family!” Liang Qian screamed.
“Do you have the nerve to deny a single word my sister-in-law just said?” Pan Yue countered, her posture unwavering as she stared her down.
“I… I…” Liang Qian stammered, her tongue suddenly tying into knots.
Seeing her hesitate and stumble over her words, the crowd needed no further confirmation. Every syllable Sheng Wanyan had uttered was the absolute truth.
The neighbors looked at Liang Qian with profound disgust. No one could believe that a girl with such a pretty face could harbor such a toxic, malicious mind. Pining after a married officer, attempting to assault a pregnant translator recognized by the state, utilizing her father’s position to threaten a citizen, and demoralizing the troops—any single one of those offenses was severe enough to ruin a family.
The uproar grew so loud that Political Commissar Xie and a group of senior officers hurried down the lane to investigate. The moment they arrived, they were met with the sight of Sheng Wanyan’s tear-stained face, Pan Yue fiercely guarding her sister-in-law, and Liang Qian looking as though she wanted to commit murder.
“What is the meaning of this commotion!” Political Commissar Xie boomed.
The moment the leadership appeared, the surrounding wives immediately swarmed them, demanding answers. They asked how the military could allow an official’s daughter to use her family’s power to threaten dependents while their own husbands were away risking their lives on missions.
Political Commissar Xie and the officers frowned deeply. Auntie Xie quickly stepped forward, whispering a concise, accurate account of the entire incident into her husband’s ear. As the details unfolded, the faces of the officers turned incredibly dark.
Chief of Staff Liang, who was standing right behind the political commissar, looked so thoroughly humiliated and enraged that his face resembled a thundercloud.
“Insolence!”
Political Commissar Xie’s roar echoed down the lane. “Chief of Staff Liang! Look at what Comrade Liang Qian has done!”
Chief of Staff Liang stumbled forward, his hands shaking, while Liang Qian flinched violently, completely terrified by the commissar’s fury. Captain Du arrived a moment later, breathless and sweating; having heard that his new wife had caused a massive scene, he had sprinted back from his unit to assess the damage.
“I had no idea Chief of Staff Liang wielded such supreme authority within this regiment,” Political Commissar Xie remarked, his eyes narrowing to cold slits as he stared at the officer. “To think you can simply decree the death of a national talent whenever it suits your whims? I’ve truly opened my eyes today. It turns out taking a life in this compound is a remarkably simple affair!”
Chief of Staff Liang instantly broke into a cold sweat. He snapped into a stiff salute, his voice tight with panic. “Political Commissar, I assure you, there is absolutely no truth to those claims! It’s just my foolish daughter spouting nonsense in a fit of temper!”
“Nonsense? Then your daughter’s ‘nonsensical’ thoughts are dangerous indeed!”
Political Commissar Xie stepped closer, his voice cutting through the winter air like a blade. “Sabotaging military morale! Interfering with a military marriage! Abusing official rank to terrorize citizens! Endangering the physical safety of a state-protected intellectual! Chief of Staff Liang, as a senior officer, tell me exactly how these crimes should be sentenced under martial law?”
Chief of Staff Liang and Liang Qian paled in absolute horror. Every single charge the commissar listed carried a severe prison sentence. Her daughter had shattered four major military regulations back-to-back in a single morning.
“Political Commissar! This isn’t entirely my fault!” Liang Qian shrieked, desperately pointing at her face in a bid to deflect blame. “Sheng Wanyan struck me first! Look at my cheek—she slapped me! And then she set her massive dog on me!”
