In the ninth month, 805, Liu Tsung-yüan was banished from the capital and made prefect of Shao-chou (in present central Hunan). While he was on his way to Shao-chou, the court increased the severity of its punishment of the Wang clique members, reassigning Liu farther south, to Yung-chou (in southern Hunan), and demoting him to marshal (ssuma). He stayed in Yung-chou for ten years. In early 815, after being back in Ch'ang-an, through the court's recall, for less than two months, he received yet another punitive appointment. This time he went farther down to the utmost southwest, to Liu-chou (in present Kwangsi), as prefect, and died there five years afterward. In the eyes of Liu and of contemporary intellectuals on the whole, both Yung-chou and Liu-chou belonged to the “barbarous areas.”.

Accompanied by his mother and her nephew Lu Tsun, Liu Tsung-yüan arrived in Yung-chou at the end of 805. Life in Yung-chou for Liu was in general lonely, painful, and boring. His elderly mother died in the fifth month of 806; he felt deeply guilty about the suffering his political fall brought on her. Having long been widowed, Liu was unable to find an appropriate marriage partner because Yung-chou's literati class was small and the available families did not want to marry their daughters to, as Liu himself put it, “a convict.” More important, Liu had no sons.