In early March of the fourth year of Shengping, the Twelve Counties of Wu Commandery began their routine land registration review. These reviews took place once every two years. The Household Registration Inspection two years earlier had kept Lai Fu's family trembling with fear for months. Because the Qiantang Chen Clan was not a gentry clan and had no ranked official currently in office, it had no right to maintain protected households. Lai Fu's family was to be sent to Qiao Province for resettlement, while Ran Sheng and Jing Nu would be seized, assigned to military households, and put to hard labor. The Qiantang Chen Clan's lands would also have been stripped away. Only with Ge Hong's help had the Qiantang Chen Clan weathered that crisis-
Two years later, the Wu Commandery land registration review had begun again. Naturally, Chenglang Chu, Chu Jian, who was exercising the governor's authority, presided over this Grand Household Registration Inspection of the Twelve Counties. Qiantang County bore the brunt: it would be the first to undergo a strict Household Registration Inspection. This was the first time Chu Jian's nephew, Chu Wenqian, had exercised his authority throughout the county since becoming its magistrate. He would probably use it to establish his might, and gentry and commoners alike in Qiantang could not help feeling uneasy-
For the cold-gate commoner clans, a Household Registration Inspection was an ordeal of extortion by officials and local magnates. For the gentry clans, it also involved balancing and consolidating interests. If a particular gentry clan was on bad terms with the official overseeing the land registration review, its illegally held protected households and hidden households might be exposed, inflicting heavy losses on the clan's interests. Of course, it was very common for powerful gentry families to hold protected households beyond the