The wonderful sll of bread and cake which i i had been slling was not coming from inside the house, it was from outside.
When she went to take a look, she was surprised to see a full on baking session outside in the compound. Machines had been set up on tables, ovens were burning, relatives were sweating.
Madam Feng was in the center of the chaos, chef’s hat on her head, wrapped in a yellow flour dusted apron that was marked, "Baker of the gods." Her voice was loud and commanding with years of experience from handling unskilled employees to angry custors. It rang out like a war horn as she shouted instructions.
"Jun Yi! I said gently whisk, you are creating a delicacy, not giving a dog a bath. And soone get Big Yellow away from the cooling rack. If he eats one more cupcake, I will turn you all into dough."
Chi Mi Mi who had just co over from a failed audition was absentminded. She dropped a jar of marmalade on Mrs. Noodles. The cat hissed and leapt onto Jun Jie’s back. He was startled and knocked over a tray of strawberry drizzle.
"From the beginning Jun Jie. Not a mont to waste." Madam Feng roared. "Noodles, get your butt on the terrace, now."
i i did not expect the command to work. She was pleasantly surprised to see the cat climbing up a pillar and moving to the terrace on the second floor.
i i could not rember the last ti she had seen many of her relatives in a kitchen, attempting to cook. It seed like madam Feng had wrangled as many of them as she could.
Su Manchu was elbow-deep in batter. Her great grandparents were making sugar figurines. Her grandparents were asuring spices.
Her father was arguing with Jingzhe about the asurents, insisting that the cinnamon was a quarter pinch off the recomnded amount.
Her mother was recording it all, laughing at them.
Mingzhe was also there, working with her uncle Chi Wei to catch the sponge cakes which were being belched out of a brick oven which had robot arms and a razor sharp teeth.
"Don’t you all have work to do?" i i asked them.
"Its a Sunday." Soone answered.
She slapped her forward and nodded. "Right. What is with all the baking?"
"Kang Zhenzhen is having an afternoon tea party." Her mother popped up behind her, answering the question while biting into a rose shaped cupcake. "She made a last minute request and the Kang’s offered your mother-in-law a lot of money so she took on the job. I guess she didn’t want to let down the next Empress."
i i slurped her coffee. "I slled chocolate when I woke up. Now I sll strawberries and lemons. Where are the chocolate cakes..."
"It was chocolate chip buns." Chi Lian showed i i pictures she had taken. "It was not this light bread, it was thick and dark and when you pinch the bun, there is lted chocolate inside. The lted stuff inside tasted like chocolate with raspberries and a little lemon."
i i licked her lips, she wanted to taste that bread.
"Between her bread and cakes, I cannot decide what she does best."
On the sides, away from where the baking was going on, General Big Yellow ran with a cup cake in his mouth and a chef hat on his head. He was being chased by a wolf cub.
The tiger cub was on the second floor terrace, pretending that it was sleeping and not the least bit interested in what was going on.
Go Go Squid, the tortoise was sunbathing in a pond of shallow water. He was actually not interested in the baking.
"I guess I should be off then." i i told her mother.
"Rember to train." Chi Lian told her.
She waved goodbye and left alone. Mingzhu was piping cream on so cupcakes with her cousins. They had all been learning from Jingzhe and Madam Feng during the holiday so they were very professional about it. Chef hats, nets covering their hair, aprons and gloves on. They were working slowly, frowning as they took their ti.
Around ten minutes after i i left, Chi Zimo showed up and pulled Chi Lian aside. They went to the house next door, moving to ow ow’s nesting room where they could speak privately while checking on the bat and her babies.
ow ow squeaked at them loudly before they even looked at the babies. One of her wings pointed at the socks on the ground.
"I am not picking up anymore socks." She seed to say.
Then she hung upside down, closed her eyes and went to sleep.
Chi Lian picked up the socks and threw them in the hamper which held all the little clothes and toys for the baby bats. "What have you found out?" she asked Zimo.
"That we have to pay the arsonist." Zimo answered.
They backed out of the room in order not to disturb the baby bats that were sleeping. Their conversation was taken to the kitchen because Zimo wanted to drink so water.
Chi Lian leaned against a counter and Zimo poured himself water into a glass while expanding on what he had started earlier. "The warden has fulfilled the rest of his requests. The money and the new cell are the only things remaining. That creep turned in four phones, one for each fulfilled request."
He placed the glass down and brought put just one phone. It was an old model phone, one that used buttons. Phones like that were now found in museums or at the bottom of old boxes that people had long forgotten.
"He did not want to be hacked so he moved the video to his computer and then broke it down, saving little parts on different old phones. Then, he switched them off and left them with soone he trusted."
Chi Lian snorted. "He has brains for sure. He ca up with a plan and waited patiently for so many years to execute it. Did you find out why he chose now to share what he new?"
Zimo nodded. "He made an enemy of Wei Xiao who has ties to the triad apparently. Soone attempted to poison his food twice. He beca paranoid and decided that he needed to move to another section of the prison.
He also revealed that he still has more videos on other things that would make the warden a rich man. So, he is now a high value prisoner that is protected all hours of the day.
Should we buy the rest of his information along with Mo Liang’s arson evidence?"
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