The town was flourishing more and more by the day.

Aside from visiting the abandoned school daily to read, Cui Chan was still living in the Yuan Clan's ancestral residence. Every day, he would carry a chair to the edge of the residence's open-air area, and he would often stare into the distance in a daze for several hours at a time. Occasionally, he would pay a visit to the new school built by the Dragon Whisker Creek's Chen Clan, but those visits would always be very brief.

At this point, Wu Yuan had already been stripped of his role as kiln supervision official, and his successor was said to have been a young up-and-comer who was related to Pillar General Cao. In the Great Li Empire's imperial court, the Cao Clan and the Yuan Clan, the latter of which was the clan that Wu Yuan's father-in-law belonged to, were renowned enemies. 

“In fact, the relationship between the clan was so terrible that physical altercations could easily arise between members of the two clans in any setting, and it was a common sight to see the two pillar generals hurling abuse at one another in the imperial court. 

“The emperor was mostly quite tolerant of the two pillar generals, often playing the role of mediator, but at times, even he would run out of patience and tell the pillar generals to piss off back home to continue their argument there. For many generations, the two clans had been neighbors, and it was said that from a young age, the children of the two clans would learn...