Once the notice went out, twenty or thirty women were the first to rush out, heedless of everything. They arrived crying and shouting without cease, then tried to flee home as swiftly as flight once they found their men.
They were stopped again and required to give their names. Only after "canceled" had been written beside the entries on the original register, and the couples' names and addresses added to a new one, were they released.
Seeing that the soldiers truly did not stop anyone from returning, and remembering their earlier good faith in battering at doors without entering, Changgan Lane immediately erupted. More and more people poured out, throwing the whole place into chaos... Liu Cheng had no choice but to have Xie Xuan and Zhang Zhong hold them back, letting only a dozen or so enter at a time.
That immediately brought the situation under control.
But watching the dense, dark mass of people crowded there, Zheng Shengzhi, Chief Clerk of the Commandant of Archers' Unit, grew uneasy as he held the original register and kept writing "canceled." During the next group's entrance, he came over and asked quietly, "Lord, we are the inner troops of the Imperial Guards, yet we have launched a major operation in Jiankang's outer city. This must be an order issued directly by the Department of State Affairs. But we rounded up over four hundred men, and I estimate we will release more than half. How will we explain that to the regents? Besides, some of these women don't look respectable to me. They look rather like... like prostitutes."
What was wrong with looking like prostitutes?
And whom did I have to answer to?!
Liu Cheng was utterly speechless. His real job was to go after the wealthy Native Clans of the Way