Liu Bei did not want Liu Li to marry Lan Qing, and Lan Tian did not want his daughter to become a political bargaining chip either. Yet after returning home, he still circled around the matter and asked his daughter how she felt.
Lan Qing had been close to Lan Tian since childhood. Influenced by progressive ideas, she did not like life within the palace and still longed for the freedom of Guangzhou. Lan Tian thus began making plans.
During the New Year celebrations, Liu Bei remembered Shamoke's achievements in pacifying Rinan and subduing the Southern Barbarians, and summoned him and Lu Tie to the palace for an audience.
Shamoke was now past sixty, his temples and beard mottled with gray. In appreciation of his outstanding service, Liu Bei wished to keep Shamoke in the capital to enjoy his old age in peace. But Shamoke could not put his tribespeople out of his mind, nor was he accustomed to the northern cold. He asked Liu Bei to let him return to his homeland, and was thus further enfeoffed as Marquis of Chenyang.
Seeing Shamoke speak with such conviction, Liu Bei felt that sending him back to the barbarian tribes seemed somewhat unfair to him on the court's part. He therefore had Lan Tian try to persuade him again.
Several days later, Lan Tian entered the palace to report back to Liu Bei. He stated that Shamoke truly wished to return home for his retirement, then deliberately or otherwise steered the conversation toward Lan Qing.
"You want to send Qing'er back to Guangzhou to study medicine? Ziyu truly does things in ways no one expects. But you and your wife are both in the capital now, and she has not even come of age. Who will look after her in Guangzhou?