By mid-July, early autumn had begun to bring clear skies and crisp air. In this troubled season, more than fifty celebrated scholars of Kuaiji, led by Xie An, suddenly launched a great northern expedition from Kuaiji, passing through Wuxing to take Jiankang by surprise and startling court and country alike.
The Kuaiji scholars were variously gifted with literary grace, vigorous eloquence, and untrammeled insight. Yet celebrated men long resident in Jiankang, such as Liu Tan, Wang Meng, Yin Hao, and Xie Shang, had either died young and become a handful of yellow earth or gone north to campaign in the Central Plains and toil among the furrows. The disparity between the two sides had been enormous from the outset.
Worse still, men such as Xie Wan and Yu Yun defected outright, styling themselves heirs to the elegance of the Orchid Pavilion. All day long, they accompanied the Kuaiji scholars in groups, pointing out strengths and weaknesses, until Jiankang's scholarly circles dissolved into a rout and all but fell on the spot.
It was understandable, really. Liu Yulong, who had displayed something of the diplomatic prowess of the Spring and Autumn era in the Prince of Kuaiji Sima Yu's hall several months earlier, had ranked last among the sixty-three worthies at the Orchid Pavilion's Shangsi Festival gathering that year. Jiankang's fall to this surprise attack could hardly be blamed on its conduct of battle.
But that was not the end. At this point, the Kuaiji scholars played their trump card: the eminent and virtuous monk Zhi Daolin.
While the Kuaiji scholars were turning Jiankang upside down, he had already gathered Jingkou's assorted idle monks at the residence of his friend from the Shangsi Festival gathering, Liu Cheng-the former Way of the Celestial Masters Manor in Jiangcheng, Jingkou-and expounded his doctrine of