On the fourteenth day of the fifth month in the first year of Taihe, Empress Xiao of the Yu clan was buried in Jingping Mausoleum, bringing Empress Yu's hundred days of mourning to an end. By then, rumors that Lu Na's daughter Lu Weiwei would enter the palace as empress had already raised a tremendous clamor. Had it been any other young lady of the southern gentry clans, the news would never have caused such a sensation. There was no other reason: for three years, everyone had known of Lu Weiwei and Chen Caozhi's troubled love, and now the most talked-about romance in Jiangzuo was approaching its end-
The common people in the streets watched it all as a spectacle. These were matters between the imperial clan and the Great Clans, nothing to do with them. Although they felt rather more sympathy for Chen Caozhi, that was all. Chen Caozhi had even willingly risked his life on a mission to the Di Hu State, whose people ate raw flesh and drank blood. It really was not worth laying down his life for the emperor like that;
The gentry clans of the Southern Crossing, led by the Langya Wang Clan and the Taiyuan Wang Clan, expressed opposition. Since Emperor Wu of Jin's time, no empress's family had come from the south. Although the court now held only its corner of Jiangzuo, allowing the Wu Commandery Lu Clan to become imperial relatives would shake these northern émigré clans' dominance at the center of power. But their leaders, including Wang Shu and Wang Biaozhi, believed Huan Wen would be even less willing to see the emperor marry into the Lu Clan of the Three Wu. They might as well leave Huan Wen to handle this and stay out of it themselves. Letting the