It was also after the Qiqiao Festival on the seventh day of the seventh month that the astonishing news spread through Jiankang: Zhu Yingtai, Military Adviser of the Western Headquarters, was actually Xie Daoyun of the Catkins Verse. The sensation surpassed even that caused by the news that Lu Weiwei would enter the palace. Chen Caozhi's older cousin Chen Shang had already been battered dizzy by one fierce rumor after another. He did not know what Zhu Yingtai becoming Xie Daoyun meant for his sixteenth brother. The two most outstanding young ladies of the northern and southern gentry clans were both entangled with his sixteenth brother by a thousand threads of feeling. Behind this lay the reputations and interests of the two great Lu and Xie clans. For the humble Qiantang Chen Clan, was this a blessing or a calamity?
Chen Shang had visited Xi Chao, Attendant Gentleman of the Central Secretariat, over his sixteenth brother's abduction by the Xianbei. Xi Chao reassured him that Grand Marshal Huan had already sent Yuan Hong to Ye City to negotiate and would insist on recovering Chen Caozhi. Only then did Chen Shang feel somewhat relieved. He hurriedly wrote another letter home and sent a Chen Clan private soldier galloping back to Qiantang with the news, lest his elderly father Chen Xian and his sister-in-law Ding worry themselves sick, for his previous letter had revealed far too much anxiety-
On the twenty-first day of the seventh month, when that travel-worn Chen Clan private soldier returned to Chen Family Cove, Xie Daoyun was drinking tea and conversing at length with Ding Youwei. Run'er first encountered the soldier from Jiankang in the front hall and hurriedly asked what had happened. The soldier gave a brief account and presented the letter. Taking it, Run'er led him