When it was almost three o'clock in the day, Shang Cheng and Bao Kan returned to their temporary residence outside the east gate, a post house specially set up for officers in the Yiwei Military Mansion. From the day he reported to Weifu, Shang Chengcheng had been living in a separate small courtyard at the back of the post house. It is clean here, and there are three rooms, just for him and Bao Kan Zhao Shishi to live.

Bao Kan led the horse to the stable, and he went back to his residence alone, scooped up the water in the water tank and wiped the soil on his face, then took off his official uniform and changed into comfortable civilian clothes, and then lay on the bed and read the book "The Legend of Hu Wen".

This is a collection of Tang Dynasty legendary novels that he bought in a bookstore in the city only yesterday, and he has never heard of any of the thirty or forty bizarre stories in it, and he has read it with relish at this time. It's a pity that there is not a single punctuation mark in the whole story of these articles, and he has to frown and guess the sentence from beginning to end, so there is a lot less fun to read.

There were also several books piled up at his bedside, including the Analects, the Spring and Autumn Period, and Poems, as well as two reference books designated by the imperial imperial examination, the Poetry Examination and the University Collection Annotations. He spent almost half a month's salary on these books, and originally wanted to use them to pass the time, but after turning a few pages, he realized that he couldn't read them at all, and he was reluctant to throw them away, so he threw them here first.

The only book he pondered repeatedly was "Yan Lugong Carved Paste". The book contains more than 10 pairs of tablet stickers of Yan Zhenqing, a calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty, and there are regular script lines, although the "Manuscript of the Sacrifice of Nephews", "Yan Qinli Tablet" and "Ode to the Xing of the Tang Dynasty" are widely circulated works, he has long seen and studied and copied, and remembers that the melon is ripe, but now things are easy to move in time, and he has grown a lot of experience in more than a year.

Sometimes, when he was in the mood, he would write something on paper, or record a poem, and occasionally write a word that he was very satisfied with, and he would proudly put the word on the round table in the main room and enjoy it for a long time. But for some reason that even he couldn't tell, he never kept them, and he would carefully tear up the paper on which he had written, and then throw them away separately when he went out for a walk. Of course, he does not deliberately hide his ability to write, and he does not deliberately avoid stones and bags when reading and writing. One day at noon, he drank two more glasses of bitterness, and he didn't know what was going on, and suddenly he had a whim on the wine, and copied half of Li Bai's "Shu Dao Difficult" on a roll of white paper in cursive writing. Since then, he has not let anyone else see his "work".

In addition to reading books and practicing calligraphy, he will also walk around Yanzhou City in the market town, Yanzhou City is the largest city he has visited since he came to this world, although the overall layout of the city is similar to that of Yixian Duanzhou, but it is much larger than these two places, even Quzhou City, can not be compared with Yanzhou. He roughly estimated that there were at least 30,000 people living in the city, and that if you added the traders who came in early and left late every day, the number might double. Later, he even went out of his way to ask someone. According to Si Cao, the head of the Weifu Examination Division, in October of the 16th year of the Eastern Common Era, there were 8,366 households in Yanzhou City, totaling 46,879 people, and there were at least 90,000 people in the surrounding market towns and villages. This is still an incomplete number, and in order to avoid the Dingkou tax, many families hide the population.

The post house is located in the largest market town outside Yanzhou, with almost 3,000 households. When he first heard about it, he was still smacking his tongue, and he really couldn't figure out how there could be so many people in a market town, and the three thousand households were already more than the people in the whole county of Yi County. Later, I pondered carefully, and then I understood the truth: Yanzhou City is an important border town, except for the three days before and after the Lantern Festival in a year, the rest of the time has to be curfew every day, and people who have been busy all day always have to find a place for entertainment and pastime, so the nearest seat card set from the city has become an entertainment center. This is also the reason why there are so many inns and inns of all sizes in the market town that they are almost one by one, and they do not worry about running out of business.

There are not only many hotels on the seat card set, but also many restaurants, several street markets in the south of the town are lined up with restaurants, restaurants, tea and rice villages, every night, there are brilliant lights everywhere, and the light songs and dances are staggered to be lively all the way to the dawn of time. At first, he thought that this was a place for the rich and noble, but after going to Shibaokan twice, he realized that this place was completely different from what he imagined, and it didn't cost much to play in these places one by one. Two cents into the seat, ten cents for a cup of tea for a seat, three hundred dollars can be in front of the stage to wrap a table, if you stand outside the tent and crowd people, listen to singing, watch lantern plays, watch juggling, and even don't need money. The women who performed on the stage were not like the street performers, who came off the stage with a dustpan after singing and dancing; They don't seem to care about their wages, whether they are rewarded or not depends on the audience's own wishes, the reward is more of a "thanks" word, the reward is also a "thanks" word, and the reward is still a "thanks" word. According to Bao Kan, these women are all kabuki bought from restaurants and restaurants, and they usually ask for guidance from clever teachers, and the proprietors are usually willing to let them redeem the deed of sale a few years in advance for the sake of their own reputation and fame......

Bao Kan said it lightly, as if it was a matter of course for the landlord Caidong to treat his "property" so well, but he was stammering and speaking for a long time. Later, he found Bao Kan and asked, Bao Kan still felt that he was making a fuss, and said: "The palace maid of the emperor's family has only been a maid for ten years, and if she is not released after the end of the year, she will not be married, and the imperial history will not agree; Why do these owners let others sell their lives for them? These girls are also raised by their parents, and the family can't survive three disasters and five difficulties before they take this road, or they don't give people a hope for a living person, and they will go to hell when they die! Even the family members of criminals who act as officials in the workshop rarely have been working for fifteen years......"

Every time he thought of these things, he couldn't help but feel a little touched and sighed, he never thought that this Zhao Dynasty, which had never been recorded in history, a feudal country that was supposed to be ruthless, would be full of so much warmth.

Of course, warmth can't hide all the ugliness and sin, but it is warmth after all......

He suddenly thought of the bookstore he had been to.

Yesterday afternoon, he was really bored in the post house, so he went into the city alone, looked east and west, and walked to the state school examination room in Kejia Lane. He didn't wear an official uniform, nor did he bring a jade pendant, of course the janitor wouldn't let him in, he could only stand on tiptoe at the door to look at the situation in the examination room, and he was greatly disappointed, except for the stone tablet engraved with the quotations of the sages of the past dynasties, and the locked door of the scholar's official hall, he saw nothing. Then he turned his attention to the few green buildings and red shops on the opposite side of the examination room. Just as he was pondering why the government would allow brothels to be opened across from the state school, he saw the small door between the two red buildings. Usually one main two sides of the three doors, the door is cleaned, and there is a plaque hanging on the lintel to "nourish the fast" one by one. Looking at these three words, he finally realized the meaning of this plaque after a long time:

Cultivate the mind one by one.

He walked in and realized it was a bookstore. The two guys in the store didn't turn him away because of his dress and appearance, and they certainly didn't look up to him because of his height and appearance, so he slowly looked for him one by one next to the bookshelf. He wanted to find a few history books to read. No matter what era it is, as long as it is a history book, it would be better if it was with the Tang Dynasty and what happened after the Tang Dynasty What happened to the Zhao Dynasty, how did she rise, and why was she after the Tang Dynasty? These questions lingered in his mind, and as time went on, his curiosity grew......

Speaking of which, there are still a lot of books in the store, one inside and one outside, and there are at least three or four hundred kinds of books, but most of them are books that he can't read. The most of the books on the shelves are poetry collections and prose collections of literati and rioters. He flipped through it casually, all of them are very ordinary pastoral landscape poems, what "I am often melancholy since I climbed the east window, and life has always been vicissitudes", what "flowers fly and flowers fall and flowers are broken, and I hurt myself by myself", it is either a sour shadow and self-pity, or an inexplicable sentimentality. In addition to a set of "Former Tang Poems", he has never heard of any of the authors of other poetry books. But "Former Tang Poems" has a total of eleven volumes, and he negotiated with the bookstore owner for half a sky-high price, and people let him pay three times, and finally bit fifteen times and never let go, and said that he would not only sell, but if he wanted to buy it, he would not set it, or he would not buy it. Fifteen runs is really ridiculously expensive, and he can't take out so much money now, of course, he can also borrow from Baokan and stones, but when he thinks of borrowing money from stones, he thinks of the money he owes to Shanwazi, and he thinks of Shanwazi...... Then he was no longer interested in shelling out fifteen dollars to buy a few broken books.

Then he saw a book next to the collection of "Former Tang Poems", one by one, "Qingshan Manuscript".

The name of the book made him a little strange. He knew that except for the important Confucian classics such as the Four Books and the Five Classics, which were widely marketed, booksellers at this time generally did not take the initiative to open and print books, so most of the books that could be seen on the market were printed at the author's own expense. Those who are willing to pay for their own printing of books are nothing more than names; Since it is the title of the picture, it must be to show the words that he is most proud of to others, why is the author of this book so unique that he will take out the manuscript and print it? Puzzled, he picked up the book and flipped through it.

There are only five articles in the book: "Persuading Agriculture", "Persuading Learning", "Persuading Labor", "Persuading Business", and "Zhao Feng......

He stood by the shelf, frowning, and slowly turned the book page by page, reading it from beginning to end, and then reading it again from beginning to end......