After Emperor Wen of Wei, Cao Pi, ascended the throne, he grew increasingly suspicious of his exceptionally talented younger brother, Cao Zhi, constantly seeking opportunities to restrict and plot against him.
First, an imperial envoy falsely accused him of drunkenness and disrespect toward the emperor's messenger, attempting to fabricate charges of defiling the court's dignity. Fortunately, the Empress Dowager intervened on his behalf, and the case was settled with merely a demotion to the Marquis of Anxiang.
Then they kept shifting his fiefdom, never letting him settle. In the year he was made Marquis of Anxiang, they changed it to Marquis of Yicheng; the next year, in name only, they made him Prince of Yicheng. In the first year of the Taihe era, he was moved to Junyi, then back to Yongqiu, and later to Dong'e.
Furthermore, his movements were restricted, and even his mother could not easily see him.
Cao Zhi was deeply frustrated, often lamenting that his vast knowledge had no place to be used. He repeatedly submitted memorials to Emperor Wen of Wei, passionately expressing his views, but they were consistently ignored.
In one of his memorials, he wrote: "In the past, Yi Yin served as a lowly marriage attendant, the utmost in humility; Lü Shang, when he was a butcher and fisherman, was equally obscure. Yet when they were elevated to serve Tang of Shang and King Wen of Zhou, it was truly because their paths and ambitions aligned—not because of recommendations from courtiers."
The idiom "Dao He Zhi Tong" refers to having the same aspirations and ideals, often used to describe two people whose interests and visions are perfectly aligned.
Source: *Records of the Three Kingdoms*, "Biography of Chen Si Wang Zhi"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "道合志同" came to describe having the same aspirations and ideals, often two people whose interests and visions are perfectly aligned.