Chapter 1387 — Elder Yu Goes Blind
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Yu Xiaoke gleefully stowed away the fine things Wei Zhao had given her, then followed happily at his heels out of the collection room, heading toward another one a short way ahead.
Old Hei opened the door, and Elder Yu pushed in ahead of him. This was a library: bookshelves stood on every side, crammed with volumes of every kind. Wei Zhao came in and swept a quick glance around. Besides works on medicine there were many on botany, plainly kept for the study of herbs.
Seeing that it was a library, excitement spread across Elder Yu's face. The medical practice notes he was after, he judged, must surely be here.
Old Hei had already gotten what he wanted; these collection rooms were merely a walk he was taking alongside the others. What he most wanted now was to know how they were ever to get out of this tomb. The way they had come was surely no good. To climb straight up out of that pit they had fallen through was simply not possible: the vertical distance might not be so very great, but the passage wound and doubled back on itself, and the stone walls were frighteningly smooth. Without proper tools there was no climbing out.
Their eyes could only turn now to the other exits - and how easy were other exits to find? For the moment they could pin their hopes on no one but Yu Xiaoke and Wei Zhao. Among them, those two alone were capable; add himself, who had picked up a thing or two over the years, and that was the sum of it. As for a specimen like Elder Yu - timid as a mouse and conceited to boot - he was not worth counting on at all.
The moment Elder Yu stepped inside, his eyes went racing around every shelf, but the books in the room were simply too many - startlingly many, thousands if not tens of thousands, packed densely along every shelf, until his eyes fairly swam.
Looking at volume after volume of medical writing, Elder Yu frowned. How long would it take to search through all this?
"You - come and search with me. Find it, and I'll let you copy a set!" Elder Yu thought a moment, then said to Wei Zhao. Two searching together beat one, and at a time like this he had to promise the fellow some advantage, or what incentive would he have? Only, Elder Yu could not quite work out what use Wei Zhao could possibly have for a set of medical practice notes.
He was nothing but a thief - what did he want with such a thing? There were all these medical books in the room and he wanted none of them; he had to have that one set of practice notes. Was the man not simply setting himself against him?
Wei Zhao did not hurry to search the shelves, for a thing like medical practice notes was not the same as these medical treatises. It belonged to the category of a diary: how many patients one had treated today, which patients one had treated tomorrow, and matters of that sort. It was a personal article, and had no business being kept in a library.
"It shouldn't be here. There's no need to search." Wei Zhao said mildly. "These are all medical treatises. Medical practice notes are a private belonging, meant to be carried on one's person; they should be kept together with Zhang Lifeng's other personal effects. If I'm not mistaken, they'll be in the last stone chamber."
"Oh? Then we'll go and look in the last stone chamber first!" Elder Yu hesitated, decided there was some sense in Wei Zhao's words, and nodded.
The others had no interest in these old books either. These great medical works, though precious - many of them no longer to be found anywhere in the world - Wei Zhao did not deign to look at. The library at home, old man Wei's, was bigger than this one and held more books; whatever was here, the old man had essentially all of it.