Great Tang Idyll

Book 2: Chapter 3

Thank you to Jesse for commissioning chapters 02, 03 and 04!

Volume 02 Chapter 03: Building A Swimming Pool And Discussing The Comers

"Jade that is not carved cannot become an ornament. People that do not study cannot understand righteousness. ... The three rules of interpersonal interactions: The ruler and the subordinates must be mutually just¹... "

A man and a woman continued to walk in the uncomfortably silent environment. They suddenly heard a voice coming from the front, and when they listened more closely, they heard a few children talking amongst themselves. When they walked forward to get closer, they could clearly hear what these little children were talking about.

The two stood there in place to listened to them, and there were shocked and surprised the more they heard. What was going on? They were reciting three words at a time. It sounded catchy and it seemed to be very meaningful. This must have been the school that the little kneeling child was talking about.

"Where did they find this teacher from? Why does the lesson material sound so unfamiliar?" The woman listened for a while. Although it seemed like she was muttering to herself, at the same time it also seemed like she was questioning the man beside her.

"I've never heard of it before too. This Manor is so different from other places. Everything here is so confusing. There should be people on the manor right now, but look, not even a dog can be spotted."

The man also didn't understand what he was facing. It seemed that this place was not a Manor, but a place that could devour people at any moment. It was mysterious, and even the children were different from other places.

Naturally, they didn't know that someone had already spread the news of their arrival, and everyone on the Manor was told to go home. If observed carefully, it can see be that there some of the larger tools that were not easy to carry were left in the field.

The text that those children recited was the Three Character Classic. Zhang Xiao'bao doesn't know this text, but Wang Juan remembers it clearly. Two days ago, she changed some of the text's contents and sent it to the school for the teachers to have a look. When the teachers saw it, they were mind-blown. Although the text was easy to memorize, it was very informative. Within the text, there was a lot of things for the children to learn. Even people with a Xiu'cai degree would have benefited a lot from reading this text.

The two teachers who failed the imperial examinations wanted to know who wrote this text, but no matter how they asked, the people who came to send the Three Character Classics said that they didn't know. This made them feel angry, but also admiration. The only thing they could do was to analyze the text and then teach it to the little children on the Manor.

*

In the courtyard of the Master Household, Zhang Xiao'bao and Wang Juan were instructing people to build a swimming pool for the two of them. It was five meters wide and ten meters long. First, they got people to dig out a pit that had to be shallow since their family objected to it being deep. However, it wasn't too shallow since it was about one meter deep. The bottom of the pit was covered with sand, and then filled with water such that the water level reached their necks.

"Xiao'bao, you have conned so many peoples before, have you never encountered a time when you had to make cement?" Wang Juan stood beside the construction site, watching the people digging and leveling the surrounding pool wall. She felt that it would be better to use cement so she asked Zhang Xiao'bao without even turning to look at him.

"I think you need to heat stones with some limestone or something. Then you continue to heat it until it becomes cement. Why do want to use cement? If you really want to have a better swimming pool, just use large pieces of bluestone. When we make more money, we will use marble."

Zhang Xiao'bao said a few things, but he still didn't say exactly how cement was made. He changed the direction of the conversation so that Wang Juan would think about using natural stone.

In response to this answer, Wang Juan laughed. "Just say you can't make it if you don't how. Why bother mentioning using bluestone or marble? It doesn't need to be so extravagant. Having a place like this better is than that small river. After we fill it with water, we can let the water heat up under the sun. This way, we don't have waste firewood.

"I don't know how because I didn't have a chance to learn. I'm not ashamed of that. They will probably be done digging the pit before noon, and the sand can probably be filled in the afternoon. This will be our place to exercise until the weather turns cold."

Zhang Xiao'bao didn't care whether or not he could make cement. Cement seemed to be made by heating a bunch of materials together. In the future when he had more excess money, he could just find someone to try heating random combinations of materials, and eventually, there will come a day when cement is made.

Like Zhang Xiao'bao, Wang Juan didn't care much about cement. She was satisfied if there was a pool where she could swim in. She watched those working people's sweat drip like falling rain and said, "There are still a lot of bones in our warehouse that have been frozen for three months. Give the workers some bones to nibble on during lunch; this would make them ecstatic. Have you thought about how to deal with the two people who came to the Manor?"

After Wang Juan finished talking about lunch, she talked about an important matter. Those two people were too stupid since they asked about things so blatantly. If they were spies, they might actually succeed because who would believe that a spy would be that stupid?

"Nope. They can collect as much information as they want. They must have been sent by the person surnamed Yao. They have been wandering around for nearly four hours. They were here early in the morning; I wonder if they're hungry?"

Zhang Xiao'bao analyzed what the person who came here two hours ago said, and felt that the man and the woman were sent from there. It was not like he was allowed to make the two people disappear off the face of earth, so he could only allow matters to follow its natural course. All that can be arranged were arranged already. Even a little child was that cautious already, let alone the adult residents.

"Since you are not worried, then let's just leave them alone. It doesn't seem like we can swim today. Maybe the water will be warm by tomorrow afternoon. The volume is too great; if we let people boil the water, then we need to boil at least one-third of the pool's volume. Calculate how much water would be needed."

Wang Juan felt a bit impatient waiting so she tried to kill time by chatting with Zhang Xiao'bao's and then she gave Zhang Xiao'bao an arithmetic problem.

"Are you that bored? Do I even need to calculate it? It's about 0.85 meters high, 10 meters long, and 5 meters wide. With water, it should be forty-two tons. If we take into the account the amount of water seeping through the gaps in the sand, then we need 45 to 48 tons. Do you think we're too tall?"

Zhang Xiao'bao was quite proficient at working with numbers. After all, he needed to be able to count money so he had to learn a few things about mathematics.

"We're not that tall. We're more than two years old already. Your parents and my parents are not short. Our grandparents aren't short too. We usually exercise our body and plan out our meals, so we're slightly stronger than normal children. That's normal."

Wang Juan compared themselves to other children and realized that she and Zhang Xiao'bao were a few centimeters taller and a little bit heavier. The difference was not that significant. After all, they didn't exercise to the point of harming their own body just for the sake of increasing their strength.

"Will you look like a bodybuilder in the future?" Zhang Xiao'bao asked jokingly.

"I'm not going to talk to you anymore. You're just pretending to be confused. Didn't you see what I looked like before? When I went to catch you that day, I was wearing a skirt. I wonder how many people felt sorry for me when the explosion happened." Wang Juan began to laugh as she talked.

"That's good then. You need to work hard to grow to look like that. Then, whenever I have free time, I'll bring you out to show off to people. I'll go beat up anyone that finds you pretty and want to take you for themselves. That's considered as legal self-defence, right?"

Of course Zhang Xiao'bao remembered what Wang Juan looked like at that time. To prevent people from finding out about her, she put on makeup and wore a miniskirt. It was a pity that he was about to die so he didn't think much. Now that he recalled, her physique was really good. Normal people cannot even fathom how much explosive power was contained in that body.

"What are you smiling about? You look like a creep right now. You're thinking about dirty things at such a young age. There is no such thing as a good man. Well, except for my relatives. I'm not going to sleep next to you tonight, you creep." Wang Juan was angered by Zhang Xiao'bao's expression.

"I'm a creep? Who threatened me back then? And how was I threatened? I don't know about other men, but the deputy chief at your office has two sugar babies. When three million dollars was sent, I knew who was going to capture me. Surprisingly, you're only worth three million. A female soldier who can stand up for the motherland and risk her life to perform missions has a price of three million."

"So, it was him. I knew that something was wrong with him. Don't talk to me like that. What three million? That's not true."

In this moment, Wang Juan finally knew who had betrayed her. She clenched her little fist and she really wished she could go back and immediately beat the man until he passes out.

"Not just three million. In my heart, real soldiers like you are priceless. I have never used money to gauge your worth. That three million was the value of your deputy chief's reputation and dignity. Don't worry, I died. People like this will eventually encounter karma. Your deputy chief will die of a cold or a minor illness."

Zhang Xiao'bao had never dared to disrespect someone like Wang Juan, and he regretted making this joke when he saw how Wang Juan reacted.

"Ahh. I have no idea if you abide to laws, but whatever you do can be explained with morals. Let's not talk about that anymore; it's history already. We can't swim in the afternoon, so where should we go play after dinner?"

Wang Juan calmed down after hearing Zhang Xiao'bao's words.

Zhang Xiao'bao didn't know where to go. They had entered a bottleneck period in terms of exercises. They could not continue to increase the amount of training they do, or else they might hurt their bodies.

Witnessing Zhang Xiao'bao's silence, Wang Juan suggested, "Let's go up the mountain. I have never been at the top of mountain ever since I got here."

"No. Let's go to the field and take a look at the toads. If the two of us want to go up the mountain, then a lot of people will come along. This will attract other people's attention² and waste manpower." Zhang Xiao'bao quickly rejected Wang Juan's proposal which involved bothering other servants in the courtyard.

Wang Juan thought about it for a while and sighed helplessly. One's status pre-determined a lot of things. She and Zhang Xiao'bao also had to take into considerations of others, otherwise they would have not built a swimming pool. Things like swimming in the small river should never be done in the future.

It was good to go look at the fields too. When Wang Juan thought of this, she pulled Zhang Xiao'bao to their room to go eat. The earlier they ate, the earlier they can depart. She said to Zhang Xiao'bao, "Those two people should be hungry too, right? Should we feed them? "

"Yes. Tell the restaurant right now that when they see a man and woman ordering food, recommend to them the most expensive dishes and tell them that the cheaper dishes are all sold out." Zhang Xiao'bao replied.

Translator's Notes

1. These are a few lines taken from a Chinese classic text called Three Character Classic . This was written in the Song Dynasty which is the dynasty that comes after the Tang Dynasty. This would explain why no one else has heard of the text before in the novel.

The original text was written in triplets of characters so that it was easy for children to memorize. However it would be impossible to have its translation be in triplets of words, so I provided a more lengthy explanation of the lines.

2. attract other people's attention

The literal meaning is "hit grass and startle the hidden snake". It means to act rashly and alert the enemies.