Considering that the return journey would let him enjoy the Yangtze River version of "going downstream," and that Huan Xin would certainly need to pack and such, Liu Cheng, now a "Bearer of the Staff" for the Huan Clan, did not leave immediately. Instead, he decided to stay a few more days.
His main task over those days was naturally to resolve Huan Xin's worries about what he would leave behind.
However, after a brief conversation, this third son of the Huan Clan, upon learning that he merely had to move to Shouchun and live there normally, proved unexpectedly unresistant... for one thing, he knew his father had already given his word, leaving him no room to resist; for another, in a development both unexpected and reasonable, his newlywed wife, Sima Yu's third daughter Sima Daofu, whose age was mismatched with his because of their political marriage, very much wanted to live closer to Jiankang. Once they went to Shouchun, her journey home would shrink from sixty days to a little over ten, and she could even stay in Jiankang for long stretches.
For the young commandery princess, only sixteen this year, this was undoubtedly an enormous temptation.
Of course, the central reason still lay with Huan Xin himself.
Previously, Huan the Third had harbored some ambitions. After all, his eldest and second brothers were far too useless. Yet as he grew older, he gradually realized that while he was indeed somewhat better than his two elder brothers, he was only somewhat better. That slight difference was not enough to carry him across the divide between legitimate and concubine-born sons. At the very least, he could not cross the great mountain that was his father's principal wife and win his father's recognition.
Even Huan Wen had to yield to his