Three Kingdoms

  Chapter 227 Library

The library building in Cai Yong’s mansion is a separate two-story building with brick and wood structure. Strictly speaking, it should be two and a half floors. In order to prevent the books from being too close to the ground, which would cause damp and mildew, it was specially raised by about one meter. The appearance, and then sprinkled lime under the floor to prevent insects and ants, which shows the degree of love for books.

In front of the library building is a short gallery, and there is a small pavilion on one side of the gallery. Cai Yan is holding a scroll of books and reading in the pavilion at the moment. Get up and give a slight salute.

Cai Yong stopped in his tracks and said to Fei Qian, "My legs and feet are inconvenient to go up the stairs, so I will let Senior Sister Ru replace me..." Then he told Cai Yan to take Fei Qian up to the library to have a look, and he walked up to the library. Sat down in the small pavilion.

Cai Yan's eyes turned around, a little smile appeared on the corner of his mouth, and he said, "Junior Brother, is this the first time I have visited my library?" Cai Yan's tone of words was very casual, and there was no feeling of strict restraint at all. It's more like the relaxed atmosphere among friends.

   "Yes," Fei Qian looked up at the tall library, feeling admiration spontaneously in his heart, "Such a big library is really the dream of all scholars in the world..."

Cai Yan was holding the slips of paper, leading the way in front, and slowly said: "Before, they were stored in the room, but then there were more and more books of all kinds, and in the end they couldn't put them down, and because the ventilation is inconvenient, it is easy to attract insects and ants. It was really impossible to take care of it, so I simply built this building."

  Cai Yan gently pushed open the half-hidden door, like opening a scroll of letters, and then stood by the door, making a gesture of please...

   "Senior sister please first!"

  Cai Yan pursed her lips into a smile, and was no longer polite, and walked into the library openly.

  Fei Qian followed behind Cai Yan and also entered the library building. When he looked up, he couldn't help but gasped...

  This scale is amazing!

  It is important to know that this is the Han Dynasty, and all the slips are made one by one, one stroke at a time, which is completely different from the situation in later generations when the printing machine was started and thousands of books were printed out.

  The value of a book in the Han Dynasty can never be exaggerated, but Cai Yong’s library has so many slips and books, if calculated according to the market price, this is simply a peerless rich man...

  However, Fei Qian only dared to think about it in his head. If he dared to speak out, let alone the letter that Cai Yan held in his arms would bloom on his head, maybe Cai Yong would just push him out of the door...

  In the Han Dynasty, knowledge was extremely respected.

Cai Yan was very familiar with the bookshelves in the library building, and while strolling forward, he introduced: "This floor is mostly composed of mathematics, poetry and fu, while the six arts and philosophers are placed upstairs. what..."

As Cai Yan spoke, he turned lightly among the bookshelves, walked to a bookshelf, put the slips in his arms on the bookshelf, and continued: "...Fang Ji and military books basically belong to the collections of various families, and it is difficult to collect them. Therefore..."

Fei Qian made a rough count. In this floor, there are about fifty or sixty bookshelves for storing books. Each bookshelf has four floors, and each floor is more or less filled with various books. Weft knitting of various colors and lengths are dotted on the mostly blue and black letters, like a beautiful and beautiful abstract oil painting...

  Cai's method of classifying books is carried out in accordance with the official classification method. Because from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States period, until the Qin Dynasty, there were constant wars, and there was no condition for large-scale sorting and classification of books. Until the Han Dynasty, after the whole society gradually stabilized, Liu Xiang and Liu Xin, father and son, successively presided over the book. The books sorted out at that time were divided into six categories: Six Arts, Philosophers, Art of War, Mathematics, Fang Ji, and Poetry and Fu, together with a summary of an introductory nature, the general title was "Seven Strategies", which was also the earliest book classification method.

The books of military strategists have always been the secret biography of each family, and they are never easily revealed to others, while the method of medicine is the foundation of doctors, and it is not easy to spread it to the outside world. Besides, Cai Yong's own research focuses on classics and history, so he did not collect them. It is also reasonable to know Fang Ji and art of war...

   But even so, such a huge number of books is quite astonishing. Fei Qian made a rough estimate. There are more than 5,000 books on this floor alone, so the two floors have tens of thousands of books...

  Some small-scale libraries in later generations are no more than this.

Fei Qian was amazed, and took a volume of slips from the bookshelf beside him, opened it, and saw that it read "...the Western Capital of Han Dynasty was in Yongzhou, and it was called Chang'an. According to Hangu and Erwei The resistance represents the Taihua, the mountain of Zhongnan..."

   This is such a coincidence, now that the capital is going to be moved to Chang’an, I picked up a volume, which turned out to be Ban Gu’s Fu on Two Capitals, so Fei Qian really didn’t know whether to cry or laugh...

   Seeing Fei Qian close the slip of paper and put it back on the bookshelf, Cai Yan smiled and turned to lead the way.

   After turning to a bookshelf, Cai Yan stopped, and Wen Yan reminded: "The stairs are steep, junior brother, be careful."

It turns out that in order to free up more space for bookshelves, the stairs built in the library building are not as exquisitely carved as ordinary stairs. It is a simple wooden ladder that goes straight up and down. For someone like Cai Yong who is older and has bad legs, it is not easy to get up and down.

  Dai Fei sneaked up to the second floor, but saw that the bookshelves were not filled with bookshelves like the first floor, some bookshelves and even the whole shelf were empty. I didn’t expect Cai Yong to send out so many books...

  Cai Yan walked to an empty bookshelf, stroked it lightly with his hands, with a somewhat lonely expression on his face, and said slowly: "...these bookshelves were full...now...they're left outside..."

  Sunshine came in through the window lintel on the second floor, passed through several empty bookshelves, and fell mottled on Cai Yan, as if to appease Cai Yan's sadness...

  Time seemed to be frozen at this moment, and Fei Qian suddenly felt a little dazed, as if he had returned to the library when he was in college in later generations, and the situation at that time was really similar...

Cai Yan raised his hand and pulled the hanging strand of blue hair back behind his ear, smiled lightly, and said, "After reading it for so long, have you decided what books you want to borrow? You can borrow up to three books at a time, and you must read books." Greedy..."

   "Borrowing books..." Fei Qian couldn't help but smiled wryly, and said, "Senior sister, this time... I don't want to borrow books, but... I want to move books... and I want to move them all..."

   "Ah?!" Cai Yan's eyes suddenly widened, and a ridiculous thought suddenly appeared in his heart, this junior brother is not a bandit pretending to be...

   The author thinks that there shouldn’t be any jokes in this chapter... Work harder these days, and try to come up with more codes...

  (end of this chapter)