In their daily life, apart from intimate moments, Jiang Xu usually maintained a serious demeanor. His sudden playful behavior explained why Mingtan felt embarrassed and walked ahead, quickly covering half the street’s length.
Jiang Xu glanced at the sugar figurine in his hand and followed her at a leisurely pace.
As dusk fell, Mingtan reached the end of the street and suddenly remembered their original purpose. Looking around, she realized she had walked in the wrong direction. She stopped, intending to turn back, but found herself drawn to a commotion nearby.
At the intersection of two streets, a crowd had gathered, three layers deep, whispering among themselves.
Jiang Xu caught up, his sugar figurine now gone—whether eaten or discarded, Mingtan hadn’t noticed. She craned her neck towards the crowd, murmuring curiously, “Is it a street performance?”
“This is too difficult!”
“I bet that little bird can’t be taken out at all. It’s just a scam.”
“Right, if the head can come out but not the wings, or the wings but not the body, how is that possible?”
The couple moved closer as the onlookers debated heatedly.
Noticing some women in the crowd, Mingtan inquired, “Miss, may I ask what’s happening here?”
“Someone’s set up a puzzle stall,” the young woman explained eagerly, her eyes fixed on the scene. “He claims a master craftsman of mechanisms stayed at his home for a night and gifted him this contraption as thanks. Look, that’s the thing.”
Mingtan followed her gaze to a small wooden cage on the stall. Inside was a wooden bird, with a crooked sign reading “50 wen per attempt, half an incense stick’s time.”
“I must say, it’s quite intricate,” the woman continued. “He’s offering it as a prize to anyone who can remove the bird without damaging the cage. It costs 50 wens per try, with only half an incense stick’s time allowed. You must also put down 5 taels of silver in advance. If you break it, you lose the deposit!”
The bowl held about a few hundred wen, indicating several had already tried and failed.
“Why is everyone just watching instead of trying?” Mingtan couldn’t help but ask.
The young woman turned to her, assuming she hadn’t heard before. She held up five fingers for emphasis. “You need to put down 5 taels of silver. Not everyone can afford to try. Even if you have the silver, who knows if you might accidentally break the wooden contraption? No one wants to lose 5 taels for nothing!”
Five taels is a lot? Mingtan hesitated for a moment, then glanced at Jiang Xu.
Jiang Xu lowered his head and asked her, “Do you like it?”
“…It looks very intricate. Not something easily made,” she replied.
Jiang Xu nodded and stepped forward, directly placing down a silver ingot.
Seeing he had put down a 10-tael ingot, the stall owner didn’t even bother collecting the 50 wen fee. He quickly put on a friendly face and offered the wooden bird-in-cage mechanism with both hands. “Please, Young Master, go ahead.”
Jiang Xu took the contraption, his gaze focusing intently for a moment. Mingtan, standing nearby, couldn’t help but feel surprised.
Noticing her reaction, Jiang Xu asked, “You recognize it?”
Mingtan nodded, hesitantly saying in a low voice, “This seems to be a mechanism made by Master Yun Yan. I’ve read Master Yun Yan’s ‘Treatise on Mechanisms’ in my maiden chambers. Though I’ve never seen the actual object, I’ve heard all his mechanisms are engraved with cloud patterns.”
The base of this bird-in-cage mechanism indeed bore an exquisite cloud pattern, identical to the one printed in the ‘Treatise on Mechanisms’.
The stall owner, likely unaware of Yun Yan’s significance, was only asking for a 5-tael deposit. In his eyes, the mechanism was worth merely 5 taels. If sold in the capital to a connoisseur, it could easily fetch 500 taels or more.
Yun Yan was a master craftsman of mechanisms during Emperor Gaozong’s reign. It was said that while the Emperor was alive, Yun Yan designed mechanisms for his mausoleum to protect his eternal peace from future disturbances. After Gaozong’s passing, Yun Yan withdrew from society and vanished, leaving very few of his mechanical works in existence.
Jiang Xu examined it for a while before starting to solve it.
The wooden cage had only two small circular holes at the top and bottom, neither of which could be opened. Five wooden bars surrounded it, and only the bird’s wings could move up and down; all other parts were immobile.
It was evident that the little bird could only be taken out through the gaps between the wooden bars. However, the bird’s round head fit perfectly in the gap. If turned another way, the feet could come out first, but the wings would get stuck. If the wings were moved to come out sideways, the body would get stuck…
In short, no matter how it was maneuvered when one part came out, another would always be caught by the wooden bars.
Jiang Xu had initially thought it would be simple, but after fiddling with it for quite some time, he still couldn’t solve it. His expression was focused as he carefully controlled his strength to avoid accidentally damaging the mechanism.
As half an incense stick’s time was nearly up, Mingtan glanced at her husband, whose demeanor had noticeably cooled, and felt a twinge of embarrassment.
Earlier, the young women in the crowd had whispered that this handsome and distinguished-looking young master seemed confident and would surely solve the puzzle. She had thought the same, eagerly anticipating her husband’s display of skill and winning Master Yun Yan’s mechanism as a gift for her.
“Young Master, half an incense stick’s time is up,” the stall owner reminded cautiously.
Without looking up, Jiang Xu said, “Buy another half incense stick’s time.”
“C-certainly, of course.”
As another half-incense stick was about to burn out, the crowd began to murmur that this thing was just a scam and impossible to solve.
Mingtan, having watched Jiang Xu attempt the puzzle for so long, thought she had spotted something. She tugged at his sleeve and whispered, “Husband, may I try?”
Jiang Xu paused briefly before handing her the mechanism. “It’s quite difficult.”
She didn’t rush to manipulate it, instead observing it. After confirming her thoughts, she tried holding the cage from a different angle, quickly moving it left and right, and finally pushing the head from the inside—
It came out.
So quickly? Did it come out?
Mingtan herself was stunned for a moment.
The onlookers, needless to say, fell silent for an instant. Several people had failed to solve it earlier, yet she had managed to remove the little bird from the cage in just a few breaths after starting. It was truly incredible.
“Miss, have you played with this mechanism before?”
“Yes, how did you do it so quickly!”
“So it can be solved. How did she do it? Did anyone see clearly? It was too fast for me to follow.”
Others might not have seen clearly, but Jiang Xu, standing beside her, had.
In fact, from the moment she changed the way she held the wooden cage, he had noticed the details he had overlooked before and understood the solution to the mechanism.
The five wooden bars of the cage appeared evenly spaced at first glance, but there were subtle differences in the gaps. The space where the wooden bird could be removed was slightly wider than the others. Of course, the order and angle of moving the bird’s parts were also crucial; one wrong move would make it impossible to remove smoothly.
As everyone discussed, even the stall owner was curious if she had played with this mechanism before. Mingtan said she hadn’t, but the crowd was skeptical.
However, Jiang Xu knew she couldn’t have played with it before. All of Master Yun Yan’s works were unique pieces, and this particular mechanism wasn’t recorded in the ‘Treatise on Mechanisms’. It must have been made after he withdrew from society, so she couldn’t possibly have known the solution beforehand.
Mingtan joyfully claimed her prize of the bird-in-cage mechanism from the stall owner. She didn’t ask for the 10 taels of silver back and even told the owner about the mechanism’s origin, offering to pay him more.
The owner, being honest, said he had set the rules from the start and already felt uneasy about keeping the 10 taels. He firmly refused Mingtan’s additional offer.
Mingtan thanked him and left, elated with her prize. After walking for a while, she suddenly slowed down, as if remembering something. She gently tugged at Jiang Xu’s robe and deliberately asked in a cautious tone, “Is my husband angry?”
Before her marriage, the palace instructors had taught her that a married woman should always prioritize her husband, especially in the royal family. She must never outshine her husband. She had taken those lessons seriously, but her husband had always indulged her. Since marrying into the Prince of Beining’s household, she had probably overstepped more than once or twice.
“What is there to be angry about? That the Princess Consort is smarter than this Prince?”
Mingtan explained nervously but sincerely, “I’m not smarter than you, husband. It’s just that I’ve loved solving Chinese ring puzzles, Kongming locks, and Lu Ban locks since I was little… I only wanted to try it after watching you fiddle with it for so long and observing the mechanism. I didn’t expect it to go so smoothly. If you had a bit more time, you would have solved it too.”
Jiang Xu was about to say something, to tell her there was no need to be so cautious, that he wasn’t that petty.
But then Mingtan waved the mechanism in front of him, blinking her eyes. “If you’re angry, would you like to have this? I promise to try harder to hide my intelligence in the future, so I won’t appear smarter than you.”
As she said “Try harder to hide my intelligence,” Mingtan finally couldn’t keep up the act. She burst into laughter, holding her prize and walking ahead with light steps, muttering, “How am I so clever,” “I’m truly a little genius,” “Wisdom is indeed something that can’t be hidden”…
Jiang Xu watched Mingtan’s retreating figure and paused. He must have lost his mind to believe that his Princess Consort would be so timid as to feel anxious about outshining him.
Night had fallen, and lanterns began to light up the street.
Jiang Xu caught up, ruffled the hair of his mischievous little Princess Consort, and then took her hand, guiding her away from an approaching carriage.