Jian Lake was also known as Mirror Lake. Legend had it that the Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan had once cast a mirror here. Long and narrow, it stretched over a hundred li from Haokou in Shangyu in the east to Doumen in Shanyin in the west, gathering the waters of Kuaiji's thirty-six sources and irrigating ten thousand qing of farmland, to the people's benefit. Over the past twenty years, Kuaiji had enjoyed favorable winds and timely rains, with no major droughts or floods. Jian Lake's usefulness had consequently been overlooked, and the practice of building embankments along its shores to reclaim farmland had grown ever more rampant.
While awaiting the Chancellery of the Book of Documents' edict from the beginning of the twelfth month, Chen Caozhi and Xie Daoyun traveled over three hundred li in seven days, making a circuit of Jian Lake with chief clerks, merit officers, and other commandery and county officials, along with the heads or stewards of great clans such as the Wei Clan, Xie Clan, and Kong Clan, to examine the waterways and terrain. Some fields and gardens occupying former lake channels had to be returned to the lake, while in other places, such as the area around Mount Lanzhu, changes in the land and water meant that converting lake back into farmland was no longer necessary.
Chen Caozhi had come to Kuaiji to conduct a reverification of the tuduan, and had no authority to order Kuaiji's gentry and commoners to return their fields to the lake. The provincial decree merely prohibited any further reclamation of lake waters for farmland. He could not take too forceful a stance on restoring fields to the lake. His harsh measures against the He Clan had left Kuaiji's gentry clans feeling much like foxes mourning a rabbit's death. The Wei