Once, when Fan Ning, Fan Wuzi, had spoken with Chen Caozhi about the prevailing spirit in Jiangzuo, he had said, "Wang Bi, He Yan, and their kind scorned the canonical writings, buried benevolence and righteousness in darkness, and unsettled younger generations with wandering words and frivolous doctrines. They made the gentlemen of rank abruptly change course, until ritual decayed, music collapsed, and the Central Plains fell. Their lingering influence and customs remain a scourge to this day. Jie and Zhou indulged their brutality for a time, but that merely sufficed to destroy themselves and overthrow their states, leaving a warning to later ages. How could they have turned the eyes and ears of the common people astray? Thus I believe that a calamity lasting one generation is less grave than a scourge afflicting successive ages; the evil of destroying oneself is small beside the crime of misleading the multitude!"
Although Chen Caozhi did not consider the harmful legacy of Mystical Learning since the Wei-Jin period as serious as Fan Ning described, he too felt that the idleness of high officials, their consumption of mineral powders, and their abstract discourse had to be corrected. Because Fan Ning detested Zhengshi Xuanfeng, he had devoted tremendous effort to studying Laozi and Zhuangzi. To refute Lao-Zhuang Xuanxue, one first had to understand it thoroughly: this was called attacking a man's shield with his own spear. Yet Fan Ning's position and reputation were not enough to correct the customs of the age. Chen Caozhi, however, now possessed an illustrious reputation and an exalted position, and was famed for Mysterious Debate. He now wished to set right Jiangdong's illusory, inflated scholarly fashions. Subduing Wang Chen and Wang Gong through Mysterious Debate today would be the first step-
Although Wang Chen and Wang Gong were only sixteen,