A Tang emperor sent an agent in disguise to take Wang Xizhi's Orchid Pavilion Preface from an old monk, and took it into his tomb

In 353 Wang Xizhi wrote the preface to a poetry gathering at the Orchid Pavilion near modern Shaoxing. He Yanzhi's account, written under the Tang, says the scroll passed to the monk Zhiyong, who left his writings to his disciple Biancai. Biancai cut a hidden compartment into the beam above his bed and kept the scroll there. Emperor Taizong summoned him three times. Each time Biancai would not produce it. The emperor sent the censor Xiao Yi, who changed into plain clothes, won the monk's trust and carried the scroll away. Xiao Yi was promoted. Biancai, then over 80, could eat only gruel afterwards and died about a year later. He Yanzhi says that when Taizong was dying he asked to take the Lanting with him, and it went into his tomb. The New History of the Five Dynasties records that the general Wen Tao dug up the Tang imperial tombs in his territory. In Zhaoling he found iron boxes holding books and the "brushwork of Zhong and Wang, paper and ink as new", and took them all. The original has never been identified since. The copy closest to it, attributed to Feng Chengsu, is in the Palace Museum in Beijing.