The Yu clan of Yuyao had begun its rise in the late Eastern Han and remained flourishing for centuries. Every generation had produced men who served among the Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers, and the clan had also attained outstanding achievements in classical scholarship, calendrical calculation, and other fields. Yu Fan, an important minister under Sun Quan of Eastern Wu, had been a great scholar of Yijing studies. His nine-volume Commentary on the Changes brought together the finest achievements of earlier scholarship on the subject, while his other works on the Dao De Jing, the Analects, and the Discourses of the States were all highly esteemed by his contemporaries. Yu Fan was also thoroughly versed in military writings, accomplished in both civil and martial affairs-
Another important scholarly figure from the Yu clan of Yuyao was Yu Xi, who had brought down Shan Xia. Widely learned and fond of antiquity, Yu Xi had declined the court's repeated summons to office. Apart from pursuing scholarship, his sole delight was taking in hidden households and amassing family wealth, and Shan Xia had once ordered his arrest. Besides his classical works, Explanations of Mao Poetry and Commentary on the Classic of Filial Piety, and his famous astronomical treatise, Discourse on the Stable Heavens, Yu Xi had distinguished the celestial cycle from the annual cycle, naming the difference "precession"-
Yu Xiaofu came from a family with a deep scholarly tradition. Exceptionally perceptive from childhood, he had studied the Confucian classics intensively while also reading widely in Xuanxue. Barely twenty, he had already gained considerable renown, and he and Kong Wang were known as the two outstanding young men of Kuaiji. The previous year, the Prince of the Eastern Sea had invited him to serve as Friend of the Prince, but he had declined. Proud