On the ninth day of the eleventh month, Lu Shi, Minister of the Five Armies and concurrently Chief Registrar of the Tuduan Bureau, received an urgent dispatch sent at four hundred li a day from his son Lu Shu, reporting that the Qiantang Chen Clan had violated prohibitions and broken the law. At the same time, the gentry clans of Kuaiji, led by the He Clan, accused Chen Caozhi of using Tuduan to harass the people. Tens of thousands of farming households across Kuaiji's counties had delayed sowing their winter wheat because of widespread anxiety, while Chen Caozhi had brutally suppressed those who petitioned and offered advice, arresting innocent administrative clerks and law-abiding villagers. His reputation was exceedingly poor.
Lu Shi had felt mounting pressure lately. Huan Wen had memorialized the court to have Sima Xuan, Prince of Pengcheng, handed over to the Minister of Justice, and the previously sluggish Tuduan in Yangzhou, the hardest region in which to implement it, had suddenly become a storm of activity. Many obstinate gentry clans had been forced to surrender more hidden households. Even the Wu Commandery Zhu Clan, allied with the Lu Clan, seemed unable to withstand the pressure, repeatedly sending messengers to ask Lu Shi whether they should surrender some more hidden households merely to discharge their obligation. Lu Shi secretly ordered the Zhu Clan and the thirty-six lesser gentry clans of Wu Commandery to resist firmly. There was still some time before the Tuduan reverification; they must not let the Huan Clan intimidate them.
The people of Kuaiji were fierce and unyielding. Since the Yongjia Southern Migration, Kuaiji's commandery and counties had offered the fiercest resistance during the three rounds of Tuduan overseen by Wang Dao, Yu Liang, and Geng Yi, and all three had achieved little. Lu Shi had