So far, I am afraid no one can answer the precise number. Regarding the number of Chinese characters, its development can be seen based on records in ancient calligraphy books and Ci books.
The three chapters of "Cangjie", "Boxue" and "Yanli" in the Qin Dynasty have 3,300 words each. The "Xunzhi Chapter" written by Yang Xiong in the Han Dynasty has 5,340 words. By the time Xu Shen wrote "Shuowen" "Jiezi" has 9353 characters. After the Jin and Song Dynasties, the number of characters became increasingly complex. According to the Tang Dynasty Feng Yan's "Wen Jian Ji·Zi Zi Pian", Jin Lu Chen wrote "Zi Lin" with 12,824 words, Yang Chengqing of the later Wei Dynasty wrote "Zi Tong" with 13,734 words, and Liang Guye Wang wrote "Yu Pian" There are 16917 words. "Yupian" written by Sun Qiangzeng of the Tang Dynasty has 22,561 words. By the Song Dynasty, Sima Guang's "Leipian" had 31,319 words, and by the Qing Dynasty, the "Kangxi Dictionary" had more than 47,000 words. The "Chinese Dictionary" written by Ouyang Bocun and others in 1915 has more than 48,000 words. In 1959, Japan's "Dahanwa Dictionary" by Morohashi Tetsuji contained 49,964 characters. The "Chinese Dictionary" edited by Zhang Qiyun in 1971 has 49,888 words.
With the passage of time, the number of words in dictionaries is increasing. The "Chinese Dictionary" edited by Xu Zhongshu in 1990 contained 54,678 words. In 1994, "Chinese Character Ocean" by Leng Yulong and others contained an astonishing number of words, as many as 85,000 words.
Some people have counted the Thirteen Classics (13 classics such as "Book of Changes", "Shang Shu", "Zuo Zhuan", "Gongyang Zhuan", "The Analects of Confucius", and "Mencius"), and the total number of words is There are 589283 words, of which the number of different single words is 6544. Therefore, in fact, there are only six to seven thousand Chinese characters used by people in daily life.