Chapter 31: The simplicity of the extraordinary

Xiao Lingling took away the food box that Yun Ye had brought and took away Yun Ye’s apology for yesterday’s rudeness.

Lingdang was very impressed with Yun Ye, thinking that this scholarly young man was very nice. Not only did he let her eat without telling anyone, he also took the blame for it. The fish fillet was really delicious today!

As he watched the little maid leave, Yun Ye smiled very cheaply, even with a hint of insidiousness. Conquering a person from her stomach is a good way to start, and this applies not only to men, but also to women. The culinary experience of the five thousand years of China is always so powerful. Yun Ye firmly believes that the home-cooked dishes he makes will surely conquer Li Anlan’s stomach.

Li Chengqian looked along with Yun Ye’s gaze, and saw only a few old, vigorous pines. He didn’t understand why he was having a fit. He scratched his head and ignored him, sitting down in his seat and starting to eat. He always felt that today’s meal was much less, and he was hungry. Everyone in the royal family had a fixed amount of food, not the legendary waste of big fish and meat at every meal. The maids in the palace might have stolen food, but they would never dare to steal the food of my princely son, which would be fatal.

Yun Ye’s plate was piled high, more than twice his portion. Needless to say, it was this guy who put my food in his own plate. Some sad and angry, and some helpless, a country lord stealing the imperial heir’s food and letting it get out would make the common people laugh to death and be recorded in history for a thousand years. Li Chengqian could only swallow his teeth and decided that after the meal, if Yun Ye did not fill his stomach, he would tell An Lan that Yun Ye was actually a villain.

Before he could finish eating, an eunuch rushed in to say that the empress had summoned the prince and the marquis to the Hall of Sweet Dew to meet the emperor.

I don’t know why, but the Ganlu Hall is the emperor’s study. Wouldn’t it be facing the two most terrifying couples in history? Could it be related to the sixth-rank official Dou Zhong I saw this morning? I’m not a minister in charge of your court. I’m just a small person who earns a salary. If you have something to do, you should find Fang Xuanling and Du Ruxi. You’re not looking for the famous Fang Mouduan, so what’s the point of taking me?

Yun Ye thought to himself, and he didn’t dare to slow down. Li Chengqian smiled insidiously and opened the way in front of him. He liked to see Yun Ye’s helplessness in front of his parents.

There was also a large bed in the Ganlu Hall. The bamboo mat was covered with a thick blanket, and then two more layers of fluffy blankets. Li Er had a square table in front of him, about one meter square, with five or six dishes on it. Yun Ye looked familiar. There was braised pork, bamboo shoots and black fungus with shredded pork, a bowl of braised pork with reddish meat skin on top of the plate, and stewed pig’s trotters with soybeans. But where was the chicken? Oh no, this is five of the six dishes that I made last night. Didn’t I send them to Li Anlan with the bell? How did they end up on Li Er’s table?

“Does it look familiar?” Li Er scooped up a spoonful of the soybeans in the pig’s trotters soup and put it in his mouth. He seemed to be a connoisseur, and the soybeans in the pig’s trotters soup had the most mellow flavor. The essence of the pig’s trotters was all in it. He took a bite of the soft and fragrant meat, and he immediately found the right way to attack.

“Yesterday, I was rude to the princess unintentionally. I returned home and felt extremely remorseful. I didn’t know how to apologize. My home was empty, but I had a good hand at cooking, so I made a few dishes and sent them to Princess Anlan, hoping to calm her anger and also alleviate my guilt.”

“Not bad, the lie is well told, worthy of being a disciple of a master, you are acquitted of the crime of sending food to the palace for no reason, how do you explain this?” Li Er grabbed a silver cake from the bed and threw it over, five taels, with the inscription of the secret recipe of the Yun family clearly visible.

Empress Consort Changsun sat next to him and served him food, completely ignoring Yun Ye. She picked up a chopstick of bamboo shoots, wood ear and shredded pork and put it in Li Er’s rice bowl and said, “Try this dish. It’s very chewy. It’s a pity that he could find fresh bamboo shoots in the middle of winter.”

Robbers! I gave your daughter a dish, and the eunuch pitifully rewarded a few silver coins, but you and your wife plundered it. There is no justice. I sent food to the palace, and it was still good food. How did I break the law? Is there any place to reason? In a flash, this is not the future. It seems that what His Majesty Li Er said is the law. There really is no place to reason now. Bribing the eunuch to inquire about Li Anlan also had to be explained.

“Your servant got up before dawn this morning, for fear that the princess would blame me. When I met the eunuch who was leading the way, I asked him about Princess Anlan’s preferences, in order to prepare to please her. I didn’t think that Your Majesty could see so far, and that Your Majesty could see through my petty thoughts. Please forgive me.”

“Father, Lord Lantian unintentionally offended Sister Anlan yesterday and is very remorseful. Yesterday, in my palace, he said he wanted to apologize and ask the eunuch about my sister’s preferences. Please forgive him for his sincerity.” Li Chengqian is a good brother after all. Although he is a bit shameless during the day, he is still a reliable brother in a critical moment.

The two biggest landlords in the Tang Dynasty didn’t even look at the two brothers standing on the ground. They ate very happily, one bite at a time, while commenting on Yun Ye’s cooking. Li Er seemed to like pork very much, and kept nodding as he chewed on a large piece of pork. Seeing that the atmosphere had eased up a bit, Yun Ye boldly introduced the characteristics of each dish one by one. Empress Consort Changsun listened very carefully and occasionally asked a few questions. Yun Ye and Li Chengqian smiled at each other, and it seemed that they could get away with it today.

“You and your master are like father and son. Why did you turn his bones to ashes and scatter them into the river, leaving no room for future generations to worship?” Li Er was full and satisfied, rinsed his mouth, took a sip of tea and asked Yun Ye.

“Dust returns to dust, and where it came from, it goes back to. Master often said that since we came naked, we must go naked. I have grown up, and my master’s last concern in the world is gone. I followed his will and let him return to the heavens and earth, and his image remains in my heart.” I had already prepared the answer, knowing that he would ask.

“This is indeed a noble act, a clean and thorough way to go, leaving no aftereffects. Today, you must tell me honestly what kind of existence White Jade Capital is, and whether it will pose a threat to the Great Tang. Now that you are also a member of the Great Tang, you will share in both its glory and its loss. You must answer carefully.” Li Er stood in front of Yun Ye for the first time and spoke from the standpoint of an accomplice.

“Your Majesty can consider the White Jade Palace to be the same as the Dragon Palace in the East Sea and the Hall of Heavenly Purity in the Nine Heavens. My humble opinion is that the White Jade Palace is a spiritual realm, not a real place. Someone once flew to the ninth heaven, but did not find any immortals running around among the white clouds. The Heavenly Pool of the Queen Mother of the West is on Mount Kunlun, and it takes a few years to get there. It’s just a big lake with ice and snow, so cold that you can’t breathe. I don’t believe anything can survive in that environment year-round. There are no flowers that bloom all year round, and there aren’t even a few weeds. When I think of it, I regret going there to play.

Yun Ye smiled to himself. I’ve been to three Tianchi lakes: the volcanic lake in the northeast, the Tianchi lake in Tianshan, and the Tianchi lake in Tibet. To be honest, if you take away all the tourist facilities, it’s just a wild place. You won’t even feel your feet when you climb the mountain, and you’ll regret it if you go up to see the blue lake. After going down the mountain, he still insisted on talking big, bragging about the beautiful scenery he imagined to others, and he didn’t want others to be better off than him when he had suffered a loss. A buddy of mine was tricked by me and came back almost strangling me. When others asked about the harvest of this trip, he described it with a face full of intoxication, making me hate myself for my lack of language.

Li Er’s family of three now looks just like me when I can’t answer a question in class, blankly staring with a pair of ignorant eyes.

“Can people fly in the sky? Have you been to the Heavenly Pool of the Queen Mother of the West?”

Very good, Yun Ye found that he was a master at changing the subject, and suddenly he moved from the topic of the master to the simple scientific question of whether people could fly. He coughed twice and assumed the posture of a museum guide, which made the Li family three members respect him.

“Have you ever seen a Kongming lantern, Your Majesty?”

“That’s for praying for blessings. Of course I’ve seen it. Don’t talk nonsense about people flying in the sky.” Li Er’s face twitched a little.

“Your Majesty, that person flew up to the sky sitting on a Kongming lantern.”

“Nonsense! Who’s Kongming lantern can fly with people?” Li Er jumped off the bed with a bang, his fierce eyes staring at Yun Ye. If he couldn’t give a reasonable explanation, Yun Ye would die more hideously than a pig today.

“Your Majesty, don’t be angry. Please listen to what I have to say. You see, a two-foot square Kongming lantern can carry a candle or cotton wool to the sky, right?

“That’s right. I let a three-foot-square Kongming lantern go last year, and it even took the oil lamp with it. The oil lamp weighed three taels.” Li Chengqian chimed in.

“Thank you, Your Highness. You are right. If a three-foot-square lantern can carry a three-tael weight, then a lantern ten times larger than that can carry ten times the weight. If the firepower is increased, wouldn’t it be easy to lift a person weighing 100 catties with a 30-foot-square lantern? I have sat on one of these things. Below, a flame is blown out with a strong oil flame, and the hot air is blown into the large ball. The person sits in a large basket made of bamboo, and the wind drifts them through the sky. The clouds are all water vapor, and the person is soaked through when they pass through the clouds. It is so cold in the sky that you have to wear a fur coat in the middle of summer to survive. The people on the ground are all the size of ants, and the city is the size of a kang table. Your Majesty, if you like, I will make one when I find suitable cotton.

In the Tang Dynasty, there were no synthetic fibers, so it is not known whether there were materials that were both strong, airtight and fireproof.

His Majesty Li Er sat back on the kang with his legs crossed, and big waves were surging through his mind. Why? How come no one had ever tried something so simple? It had been almost 400 years since Zhuge Liang of the Three Kingdoms invented the Kongming lantern, and no one had ever thought of it? It was a feat of such magnitude that even if there were dangers, there would be no one willing to die for such a great reward. Is it really true, as Cheng Yaojin said of Yun Ye, that he was an extremely clever boy? I don’t think there are no such clever young people in our Tang Dynasty, and some of them are even better than Yun Ye. But why can his ingenious ideas be endless? A simple method of making salt, a simple way of frying steel, a simple way of saving lives by taking blood, and a simple iron stove have created an industry. Simple honeycomb coal, combined with loess, becomes firewood. Even pork, which is so simple that it has been forgotten by the upper class in the Tang Dynasty, can be so delicious. There are too few simple practices in our Tang Dynasty. If there were a hundred or so Yun Ye, what would the Tang Dynasty be like? It is easy to say that simple things can become complicated, but it is difficult to do so. What kind of heart and liver is needed? What kind of freak is this?

Li Er was greatly shocked. The arrogant character he had cultivated over the years was defeated in front of Yun Ye. He had no interest in pursuing Yun Ye’s bribery of the eunuch or his attempt to seduce her daughter. He just wanted to quietly organize his thoughts and re-establish his high and aloof mentality. Without this mentality, he could not be a good emperor. He waved Yun Ye and the crown prince away and lay on the bed without saying a word.

Empress Changsun saw the whole scene and tenderly massaged Li Er’s temples, waiting for her husband to clear his thoughts and become the almighty emperor again.

“Guanyin maid, what exactly is wrong with us? Are we too stupid or is this kid too smart?” Li Er asked the empress in puzzlement.

“Brother, you’re thinking about it wrong. That kid grew up in a group of weird people, or perhaps a group of tall people. He’s seen a lot and learned a lot. Plus, he was educated differently from Cheng Qian and Cheng Qian’s children. According to Cheng Yaojin, he studied not only mathematics, but also physics, which he called physics, geometry, and several other subjects that I don’t understand. Even nonsense is a subject, so it’s not surprising that he has an extraordinary mind. But I’m not worried at all that he’ll go too far.”

The queen’s words cheered Li Er up, and he said with clenched teeth, “Kid, if you want to marry my daughter, it’s not that simple.”