As soon as Jim Thorne finished speaking, everyone fell silent. No one made a sound, mainly because they didn’t know what to say. The looks they gave Jim Thorne, however, grew increasingly sympathetic. To be so young and already not quite right in the head—what a tragedy.

Even someone as dense as Jim Thorne could feel the strange looks from the people around him, including from his own sister. They were looking at him like he was an idiot. Furious with humiliation, he retorted, "That’s what Grandma said! She said she’s got no butt and no brawn. She can’t carry manure, she can’t chop firewood, she plants rice seedlings slower than an eighty-year-old woman, she cries more than she pees, and even a dog would turn its nose up at her."

Another gust of mountain wind blew past, and the air grew even quieter. Everyone lowered their heads and pretended to work. There was just no good way to respond to that.

Aside from calling her ugly, Jim Thorne wasn’t actually wrong about the other things. A woman like Rosalind Green was completely unsuited for rural life. She was a natural-born canary, meant to be kept in a gilded cage where she could spend her days cooing affectionately, putting on makeup, playing mahjong, and going shopping...

Her biggest worries were probably a new fine line by the corner of her eye, or that her outfit for the day wasn’t as fashionable or beautiful as another lady’s. At most, her concerns might escalate to how she could please her husband and become an even better canary.

For Rosalind Green, the fact that she had managed to survive so many years in the countryside without completely breaking down was, in her own eyes, a miracle. She would even move herself to tears thinking about it.

But now, Jim Thorne’s words had snapped Rosalind Green out of her self-pity. She felt a little hurt and wronged. ’I’ve done so well,’ she thought. ’Why does everyone have to criticize me?’

She cooked three meals a day, did the laundry, grew vegetables, cleaned the house, and went to work in the fields. She never had enough to eat or nice clothes to wear, and she had to endure the harassment from the village ruffians. She had persevered through such a difficult life—so how could it be that ’even a dog would turn its nose up at her’?

Overwhelmed with grievance, Rosalind Green’s eyes immediately reddened. She fought back her tears, but her on-the-verge-of-crying expression made her look all the more pitiful and heart-wrenching. In Jim Thorne’s eyes, however, the damn woman just looked even uglier.

"See? This is what’s so annoying. Say a few words and she starts crying. All she knows how to do is cry, cry, cry! She can’t do a single thing right, but when she gets to crying, she’s in a league of her own. It’s so infuriating!" Jim Thorne said with a look of impatience, yelling at Adrian Hawthorne, who was walking over. "Is your dad blind or something? How’d he marry a mom like this for you? She isn’t even worth my mom’s little finger!"

Adrian Hawthorne had heard the commotion and came over to see what was happening. Before he could even figure out the situation, Jim Thorne hit him with that completely random and baffling insult. He was instantly furious.

Although he had plenty of his own complaints about Rosalind Green, a son doesn’t resent his mother’s flaws. No matter how bad Rosalind Green was, she was still his biological mother. He had promised his father he would protect her, and he wouldn’t let anyone else bully her.

"What did you say?" 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Adrian Hawthorne’s face darkened instantly. Tang Xiaonan inwardly cursed. ’My third brother has hit a raw nerve again.’ No matter how flawed Aunt Green was, it wasn’t her brother’s place to criticize her. To say such nasty things about someone’s mother right in front of her son—no wonder Adrian Hawthorne was angry.

"Third Brother, Aunt Green is a good person. You can’t talk like that."

Tang Xiaonan put on a stern expression and looked severely at Jim Thorne. ’I have to correct my third brother’s terrible habit of speaking without a filter. He makes enemies too easily.’

Jim Thorne got angry too. "I’m not wrong! What’s so good about her? When outsiders bully my first and second brothers, or me, or you, Xiaonan, Mom is fiercer than a mother tiger. She beats those people half to death! But her? When I used to beat up her son, all she did was cry and cry. She didn’t even know how to break up a fight! What’s the use of a mom like that? Even a mother hen knows how to protect her chicks!"