The distance from Qiantang County to Wu Commandery was roughly six hundred li on foot by the shortest route, but ox carts had to follow the post roads, which meant making a detour through Huating and traveling over a hundred li farther. Chen Caozhi, Liu Shangzhi, and their party of seven covered seventy or eighty li a day, reaching Huating on the evening of the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month. Huating was only a hundred li from Wu Commandery, a journey of two days.
Chen Caozhi knew that the area around Huating would become Shanghai in later ages. Situated on the left bank of the Songjiang, Huating had originally been a post station during the Qin and Han dynasties. Even toward the end of the Eastern Han, the area had still been a desolate expanse of reeds. Only after refugees from the north began settling there had the two banks of the Songjiang gradually flourished.
There was a famous allusion associated with Huating, involving the Lu Clan, one of the four great clans of Wu Commandery. Lu Ji, grandson of the celebrated Three Kingdoms general Lu Xun, had displayed extraordinary talent from childhood, and his writing had been unrivaled in his age. Zhang Hua, the minister most trusted by Emperor Wu of Jin Sima Yan, had once said, "The campaign against Wu yielded us two outstanding men," regarding the brothers Lu Ji and Lu Yun as the greatest gains from the conquest of Eastern Wu. Lu Ji excelled in both poetry and calligraphy and was highly esteemed throughout the world. Yet during the War of the Eight Princes, the three brothers Lu Ji, Lu Yun, and Lu Dan had been killed one after another by Prince of Chengdu Sima Ying. Before his execution, Lu Ji had sighed, "The cries