Clayton Xavier smiled gently. Jacqueline Spann had just told him what had happened over the past few days: Phoenix Golding had been bullied by the Thorne family, Old Master Tate was refusing to teach her English, and Phoenix was no longer paying for her schooling. She had poured out all her grievances, and everything she said, both directly and indirectly, pointed to how domineering and brutish the Thorne family was—and that naturally included Nora Thorne.

"Armstrong, Nora."

Clayton Xavier smiled as he greeted them, but the look he gave Nora Thorne was complicated. ’He just couldn’t see how this cute, innocent little girl could be the unreasonable tyrant Jacqueline Spann had described.’ Still, the Thorne family bullying a defenseless woman like Phoenix Golding in front of the whole village really was going too far.

After all, Phoenix Golding was a teacher, and it was perfectly normal for a teacher to discipline a student. Of course, Phoenix had also been impulsive that day, nearly breaking Nora Thorne’s hand. Both sides were at fault, but the Thorne family was more in the wrong.

Clayton Xavier had been raised by his grandmother. The first books she had used to teach him were the Three Character Classic and the Thousand Character Classic. She had also taught him to deeply respect his teachers, telling him that a master’s standing was even more important than a parent’s. He had taken all these lessons to heart.

Teachers nowadays weren’t called ’masters’ anymore, and their social standing wasn’t what it once was. Of course, their scholarship had declined as well. Clayton Xavier had spent five years at Xavier Village’s elementary school. While the teachers there were certainly more knowledgeable than Phoenix Golding, they still failed to impress him. He felt their learning couldn’t even compare to his grandmother’s, let alone his own father, Storm Xavier.

Although Storm Xavier was an absolute scoundrel, his scholarship was genuine. When he was young, the Xavier family had been incredibly wealthy, the richest in the area. His mother had doted on her only son, hiring private tutors to teach him one-on-one at home in the hopes that he would test into a university in the provincial capital.

Unfortunately, Storm Xavier’s mind was never on his studies. He spent his time flirting with the maids and idling with pet birds and dogs. By fourteen or fifteen, he was already frequenting brothels and gambling dens with his disreputable friends. Eventually, he even took up opium. Drinking, whoring, gambling, drugs—he indulged in them all, a prodigal son in every sense of the word. Yet even with his half-hearted approach to learning, he had still managed to retain some real knowledge, far more than some of the local elementary school teachers.

Moreover, Storm Xavier had excellent calligraphy. Though he rarely participated in the communal farm labor, he could leverage his fine handwriting to earn a few meals, much like Shane Thorne. For village events like weddings and funerals, people would hire Storm Xavier to keep the accounts. Not only did this earn him a wage, but it also meant he could enjoy a few meals with meat.

But Storm Xavier was truly a hopeless case. He refused to study properly in his youth, spending his days messing around instead. His mother became so enraged that she personally broke his leg and locked him in the house for nearly a year. That was the only way she managed to break his opium addiction.

As for his gambling and whoring, there was no need for his mother to intervene. Not two years later, the Land Reform began. The Xavier family’s empire collapsed overnight. Their fields and shops were confiscated and became public property. Even a matriarch as strong as his mother, who had survived the turmoil of war, was caught completely off guard. She had no time to prepare and could only watch helplessly as the family home was stripped bare. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The hired hands and servants returned to their own homes, with some helping themselves to valuables on their way out. She and her son, Storm Xavier, were kicked out of their grand estate. Fortunately, the people of Xavier Village were decent enough to let the mother and son keep their current house, sparing them from having to live in a cowshed.

Afterward, the Xavier family was designated as ’landlords’ and had to earn work points every day. The amount the mother and son could earn in a day was barely enough to survive on. After several years of hardship, the old matriarch gritted her teeth and persevered, only to face a new problem. Storm Xavier was now in his late twenties and strikingly handsome, yet he couldn’t find a wife. No one was willing to marry the son of a landlord.