On the twenty-fifth day of the seventh month, Chen Caozhi arrived in the capital, Jiankang, with Huan Shixiu, Tian Luo, Cai Guang, and a party of more than two hundred. After the Way of the Celestial Masters fanatic Lu Song had breached Guangmo Gate the previous year, the Jin sovereign and his ministers had reflected painfully on their ordeal, raised fifty million in coin, and begun building walls at the Six Gates of the Capital. The days of fences and earthen walls were gone for good. The walls around Guangmo Gate had been completed first; lofty, imposing, and heavily guarded, they at last gave the city the bearing of an imperial capital.
The early autumn sunlight slanted down beneath a blue sky washed clean, and the great city stood firm. Mounted on his horse, Chen Caozhi gazed at Guangmo Gate's tower, filled with a thousand reflections. Since leaving the capital on the twelfth day of the second month, he had gone first to Gushu, then to Jingkou, before crossing the river northward to persuade the fortified settlements of the Two Huai Regions. At Liu Family Fort in Xiaxiang County, he had learned that Yu Xi's rebels had taken Jingkou and immediately hurried back through the starry night. He had devised a plan to break the rebels' morale, captured their leaders, and sent them under guard to the capital, then returned to the Huai River region to visit the settlements' militia leaders. From the second month to the seventh, he had scarcely stopped riding, covering nearly ten thousand li. His hardships went without saying, but fortunately, things had gone fairly smoothly, and the North Mansion Army had taken organizational shape. Now he could finally breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the sweetness of life. Welcoming his brides, Double Marriage, the