Xi Zirui looks up at the enormous shelves in the cavernous library with sinking feeling. It's not only the dizzying height of the shelves but also the multiple rows of them giving him vertigo.
How is he supposed to find Han Yu's book in the middle of all this? He could search for an eternity and not even come close.
When he came here in the past he just grabbed a book from the lower shelves at random and read it on the floor, Su Xueyi lying on his stomach next to him, peering over his shoulder at the yellowed pages or narrow bamboo strips, depending on whether the book was bound or a bamboo scroll.
Xi Zirui remembers he had fun mocking the petty human concerns of the people he read about. Everything about them seemed so small to him, so beneath him.
He remembers reading about a man whose biggest ambition in life was learning how to read and write.
