Great Tang Idyll Volume 02 Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Baguenaudier After the Rubik's Cube

"Xiao’man, do you think this is correct? Oh, it isn't? Then I'll try something else... this is also wrong."

In one of the large gardens at the back of the Between The Water and Clouds Restaurant that were reserved for lodging guests, the little girl that was arranged to stay here by Li Xun was playing with her younger brother. The little baby had just drunk milk for the first time today and was laughing foolishly. It was unclear what his sister had said to him. Every time his sister smiled at him, he would smile too and drool. 

After being served food and pork knuckle soup, the mother was able to lactate on the second night. She hugged the child in her arms and she happily fed the child. 

Now that she was in charge of dish cleaning, she always made sure that every dish she washed was nice and clean. She never needed to be urged by others to do more work. After washing the dishes, she would rush to do other work as soon as saw it. She was extremely grateful that the young childe Li Wang’xun found her a job. His status was probably too high to hire a person like her to work for him. 

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Thus, she can only do as much as she can for the restaurant. She knows about the price of the pork knuckle. She ate a whole knuckle every two days and this was an expense that even ordinary people can't afford, let alone a poor family like hers. The young childe didn’t send anyone over again these two days to ask about her family, so if the restaurant wanted to mistreat their family, no one would know.

It could be said that the young childe had explicitly told the restaurant to care for her so it made sense that the restaurant wouldn't disobey his orders, but her child, Liu’er was also taken care of too. For the past few days, her children were fed with high quality food. She knew that the food was the rich people’s leftovers, and some of the dishes weren’t even touched. 

How come they didn’t resell it to others? How come the waiters didn’t eat the food themselves? A full plate full of hand-ripped lamb meat was brought over before. If this was nothing, then what about the tailor-made clothes? It was said that everyone in the restaurant must wear the same clothes, so it made sense that herself and her husband had to wear it.

However, clothing was also made for Liu'er and Xiao’man. In particular, Xiao'man was given an outfit made entirely of silk. When he wore the silk outfit, Xiao’man felt so comfortable that he couldn’t stop smiling. A lot of diapers were also prepared for him. When the diapers were brought over, to their surprise, the diapers were floral scented, which was done by smoking the fabric with fragrance1.

They treated her family so well that if she didn’t do work to make up for it, she would feel extremely guilty. They also gave Xiao’man a lot of toys, and among the toys was a baby walker. A thin hoop was made using wood, and it was connected to three small wheels by three wooden dowels. The hoop also had a suspended fabric seat. 

The seat was perfect for Xiao’man to sit in. He either sat in the seat without moving around, or walked around when he felt like moving. There was no worry that he would fall over. This item was too rare, so they have never seen it before. 

"Mrs. Fang2, help bring twenty plates over here." Just as she was thinking about things, a waiter in front of her shouted out to her.

"Yeah~! I’m coming." After hearing that someone called for her, she went to get twenty plates. She inspected each plate one by one to see if there were any chips on them. If there were chips, the restaurants absolutely did not use them. Other smaller stalls would continue to use the dishes even if they were chipped. 

When she came over with the plates, he took the plates from her hands and plated the food. The waiter sighed while looking at her leaving figure.

"Ga’zi, hurry up, what are you doing? Could it be that you have set your eyes on her?” The chef was waiting to serve the food onto the plates. Seeing that he was spacing out, the chef spoke up. 

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"What do you mean? I'm only fifteen years old today. I’ll get a wife when I have more money saved up. I was thinking about how pitiful her family was. Good thing they encountered us though. Otherwise, I have no idea how they would turn out. Xiao’man only started growing some flesh on his bones these past two days. Before this, he was so skinny, he was curled up into a ball.”

The waiter passed the plate to the chef and spoke emotionally.

The chef put the food on the plate and gave it to another waiter who was responsible for serving food to guests. He looked back, "There are so many people in this world who are suffering, can you care for all of them? The master family are the nice ones. That person surnamed Li threw them here and didn’t care about them anymore. When the master family heard about this, they even made clothing for their family.

Today they sent over the fattest pork knuckle. I’ll prep it later and stew it until it’s mushy, then she can chug it down while holding her breath. When you have time, go check on those two kids. Make sure they don’t hurt themselves. Didn’t the master family bring some sort of drawings over? Liu’er looked it at and she said something about one hundred and sixty-five.

We should treat their family well. The master family has requested that we give them good food, and that we give Liu’er a midnight snack. I heard that the master family wants to hire a doctor for the restaurant. If someone becomes ill after eating, then they can go see the doctor, and the doctor can look after Liu’er too. If she falls ill, she can be treated immediately. "

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"Oh, right. I heard about that. Chef Ni, please continue working, I almost forgot something really important. The master has instructed that we must give Liu’er and them fruits. I’ll go get some for them right now. I don’t understand that drawing either. I stared at it for a while and I still couldn’t make anything out of it."

The waiter waited for the chef to finish talking. He didn’t dare to make further delays so he briefly said a few words, and then grabbed some fruits. He swiftly cut it up to make a plate of fruits and carried it to the small yard. 

When he came to the small yard, he happened to see Liu’er make the last two moves in solving the Rubik's Cube. All six sides were solved. He was stunned. He was nearly ten years older than Liuer. After playing around with the Rubik’s for a long time, he could only solve one face at most. He didn't expect that a child of this age could solve all six faces.

"Xiao'man, I finally know how to solve it. It's actually not too difficult. After I win, I will buy you good things."

Liu'er’s voice snapped the waiter out of his daze, and he quickly approached them with the fruit plate. He said to them "Younger sister Liu’er, you are so amazing. I can’t believe that you solved this Rubik's cube in just one day. Is it okay if you show me how you did it?"

"Thank you, Brother Ga’zi. Here, scramble it up and I’ll show you how to solve it. It's actually very easy. I came up with a solution to tackle this puzzle.  I'll tell you about it later. Come on, Xiao'man, after drinking this juice, you will grow up to be strong and powerful, and then you can do more work and show filial piety to our parents."

Liu'er saw that there was fruit juice among the fruits that Brother Ga'zi had brought to them. She smiled sweetly as she placed the Rubik's Cube in Brother Ga'zi's  hand, and then she gave the juice to her brother to let him drink first.

After recovering from the shock, he thought about how Liu'er could have just shifted the unscrambled Rubik’s Cube twice and reversed the moves. Seeing that Liu'er was busy feeding her brother, he turned his back towards them after he took the Rubik’s Cube. By the time Xiao'man finished drinking the juice, he had already scrambled up the Rubik's Cube.

He stretched out his hand and handed the Rubik's Cube to Liu'er. With suspicious eyes, he watched Liu'er fiddle with the cube. He had his eyes wide open so that he could watch her clearly. If Liu'er could really solve it, he wanted to learn from her.

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Liu'er took the Rubik's cube and inspected each side. She moved both hands quickly and in less than a quarter of an hour, she had solved all six sides of the Rubik's cube right in front of him. She handed it over again and said, "Brother Ga'zi, I only figured out the strategy recently so I'm still a bit slow. I'll be better when I practice more. Once I win the prize, I'm not going to play with this anymore; it's not fun."

Still feeling dumbfounded, Ga'zi took the Rubik's Cube and looked at it carefully. There was nothing special about this particular Rubik's Cube so he finally believed that she was able to solve it. At that moment, he saw Liu’er in a new light. No wonder his Master treated Liu’er's family so differently. He heard that if a person doesn’t understand a particular rule behind the Rubik's Cube, it would be extremely difficult to solve. 

Liu’er never learned this rule before. She only received the Rubik’s Cube this morning, and it was still bright out. She actually solved it in less than a day. What did the person who delivered the Rubik’s Cubes say? ‘A person who doesn’t have a good brain shouldn’t even bother playing this, unless the person knows about the rule.’ 

"Ga’zi, what are you doing? Taking Liu'er's toy?" Just when the waiter was in a daze, the voice of Housekeeper Zhang was heard coming from the gate of the yard. Ga’zi was so frightened that he immediately stuffed the Rubik's Cube back into Liu'er's hand.

"Housekeeper Zhang, why are you here? I didn't snatch Liu’er's toy. I came to give them fruit. Liu’er just solved this Rubik's Cube, so I wanted to have a look at it. She’s really amazing."

The waiter turned around and explained to Housekeeper Zhang.

"I see." Housekeeper Zhang replied, and then he turned to look at Liu'er and said, "Miss Liu'er, do you not have toys to play with anymore? The Master thought of this ahead of time and has ordered me to give you this toy that is made just for you. This is called Baguenaudier; everyone else plays this. Also, there’s this. No other place has it. It’s called Hua’rong Path3.

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Cao Cao is trapped here and you need to help him escape using the least number of moves. The Master said that within two days, you will be given a new toy. At night, a teacher will come teach you historical facts. There are still five days left until the competition.

The master said that the history trivia, Rubik’s Cube, and brain teaser competition are designed for you, so you will at least win two competitions. Liu’er, my master has said that regardless of what you want, the master family will try their best to give it to you. Tell me, what do you want? "

As soon as the housekeeper’s finished speaking, Liu'er and the waiter showed different expressions. Liu'er couldn’t understand why the master of the Zhang family would treat her so well. She looked at the two new toys in front of her. For the Baguenaudier, it seems like if there were an odd number of rings taken off the handle, or an even number of rings on the handle, the handle can be removed. The puzzle could be assembled by doing the opposite.

The waiter was no longer surprised by Liu’er. He suddenly thought about regardless of how amazing Liu’er was, she was incomparable to his Young Master and Young Miss. The housekeeper's words were quite self-explanatory. The ‘master’ he was referring to was actually the two little masters. The housekeeper was sent here the moment when Liu’er was able to solve the Rubik's Cube.

He thought about what Liu’er said just now. She said that after she wins the prize, she wouldn’t continue playing this since it was too easy. The Young Master and Young Miss was actually able to predict this? Furthermore, they sent a new toy. After making the comparison, the waiter concluded that Liu’er was really nothing compared to those two.

How amazing. Good thing he was a loyal person. He did not waver when Li Cheng presented all of those benefits to him. If he did, then the Young Master will definitely know. The Administrate Office will not care much if a master beats their servant to death since his family have signed life-long contracts. Even if they didn’t sign life-long contracts, the result will be the same since the Administrative Office belonged to the master family.

"Liu’er, are you done thinking yet? This is the first time the master treated others like this." Housekeeper Zhang asked Liu’er again.

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Translator’s Notes

1. Smoking fabrics with fragrance 

This was done by exposing the fabric to the fragrant smoke that is released when burning aromatic materials. 

2. Mrs. Fang 方嫂嫂

Fang is just her surname and does not refer to teeth “fangs”. Also, the waiter actually refers to her as “sister-in-law“ as it is common to refer to a friend’s or co-worker’s wife as “sister-in-law”. Since this is not common in Western countries, I changed the translation to “Mrs”. 

3. Hua’rong Path 华容道

This is a Klotski puzzle that is based on a fictitious novel called Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The goal of the game is to slide the blocks so that the largest block, which is suppose to be Cao Cao (曹操), can escape. 

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