Elen pouted and once again turned to Elena with a pleading look on his face.
"Cute acting may work on your grandma, but that won't have any effect on me. Don't make me say this twice, go and get ready for school," Elena said sternly, without any option for negotiation.
Elen returned to the room upstairs, with a look that said he was being forced to do child labor.
Elena and Elen were still living at the rented house above the Memories Art Store. Although Gracy refused several times to accept any rent, Elena still paid the money regularly.
"Hey... Elena, Elly is only 6 years old right now, let him stay at home if he is not feeling well. Even if our Elly didn't go to school, he would still easily be at the top of the class," Gracy said to Elena in a low voice after Elen had gone upstairs.
Elena looked at Gracy helplessly, she know very well that this old lady was putting up an act to win her sympathy for Elen. "Seriously, do you both treat me as some random fool or what?"
She then turned to the stairs and said, "Stop peeping and get ready for school. Today, no matter who pleads for you, if my name is still Elena, you will go to school."
"Then, how about we change your name just for today, Mom?" Elen's voice came from upstairs.
"Hahahaha..." Gracy laughed heartily upon hearing Elen's innocent idea.
Elena also looked upstairs with a defeated sigh on her face. "You..." Before Elena could say more, Elen ran off to the bathroom to get ready for school.
Due to Elena's poor health and limited mobility, Elen started doing things himself at a young age, so Elena never had to worry over such matters.
Usually, Elena would stay inside the store down stairs since going up to the second floor was difficult for her. It was Gracy who would always carry Elena upstairs and downstairs using her wind magic.
After some time, Elen came down in his blue school uniform, with a cute panda bag on his back.
"Well... well... Mommy's princess Elly is looking pretty beautiful today," Elena teased him upon seeing her son's downcast face.
Elen looked at his mother with an angry face. "Mom, I am a boy, and my name is Elen, not Elly. That's a girl's name."
Elena pretended to sigh helplessly and said, "I was hoping for a beautiful baby girl when I was pregnant, but God gave me a beautiful baby boy instead, so Mom can't resist calling you princess."
"Whatever," Elen turned his head away with a huff upon being called beautiful by his mother, his ears turning red in embarrassment.
"Heheh..." Elena chuckled upon seeing Elen's cute expression.
"Horn... horn..." Just then, the honking sound of a bus was heard from outside the store.
"Your school bus is here, Elly," Gracy said while looking outside through the glass door of the shop.
Elen waved goodbye at Elena and ran outside.
Elena looked at the departing school bus with a sad smile on her face. "As he grows up, he is more and more looking like a mini version of him."
Gracy raised an eyebrow upon hearing this. "Raven?"
Elena nodded softly.
"You still remember that scumbag's face," Gracy said with an irritated look on her face.
Elena smiled. "I have a pretty good memory. After all, he is Elen's father and, in a sense, my savior, so I truly don't hate him. Think about it, although he abandoned me, I am just a slave whose life was entirely at the mercy of my master."
"Breaking my slave mark and letting me go was already a gratitude no slave could hope for."
Gracy picked up a book and said impatiently, "I am busy, now stop wasting my time talking about some spineless moron."
Gracy hated Raven because he had abandoned Elena and Elen. At first, the old lady thought of him as a moral-less person and disliked him, but it turned into deep enmity after an incident that happened to Elen.
When Elen was 5 years old, he was playing inside the shop and accidentally knocked over a painting and ruined it.
The little boy got scared and apologized to the man who came to buy that painting.
The man, who had a refined look, glared at Elen with an angry expression and demanded he call his father to pay compensation for the ruined painting.
Elen truly got scared by the man's angry expression and told him he didn't have a father and started sobbing.
At this time, Elena heard the commotion and rolled her wheelchair over to Elen, who hugged her in fear and started crying.
Upon seeing that Elena was just a helpless woman, the refined-looking man became smug and started scolding Elen while calling him a bastard and demanding a huge sum of money from Elena as compensation.
But at that moment, he didn't notice that an old lady had stood up from the counter with a dark look on her face.
Before Elena could even respond to the man, he was lifted from the ground by a powerful wind and thrown outside the shop.
Gracy walked to Elen and rubbed his head affectionately. "This shop belongs to your grandma, so do the paintings displayed here. Elly, you don't have to listen to what he said. Wait for me here, I will first go and teach that bully a lesson, then we'll go to Uncle John's shop for a treat, okay?"
Elen, still crying, looked at Gracy and nodded while snuggling into Elena's embrace.
"Grandma, it's Elly's fault after all, you don't have to..." Elena tried to persuade Gracy upon seeing the anger in her eyes.
But Gracy simply ignored her presence and walked outside, muttering, "If anyone thinks they can get away after bullying my child, that's like slapping this old lady's face."
The next thing the people in the area heard were the agonizing cries of a man, sounding more like a pig being slaughtered.
Gracy didn't even stop when the police came to check on the situation.
She used her wind magic to lift the man and trashed him flat on the ground again and again as though she was addicted to torturing people. Fortunately, that man was also a divine cultivator, so he didn't die from all that beating, but in the end, recognizing that he was human was nearly impossible.
Gracy looked at the police officers who were standing at the side with fearful looks on their faces and indifferently went back to the shop as though the one being violent and cruel just now was someone else.