Bai Shijing

Bai Shijing, the Beggar Clan’s Law Enforcement Elder, occupies a place of trust among its leaders and in Xiao Feng’s circle. That standing gives weight to his betrayal: Madam Ma exploits his attachment to her to make him kill Ma Dayuan and participate in the conspiracy against Xiao Feng, and he ultimately dies when a mysterious assailant draws out his confession.

Standing in the Beggar Clan

Ma Dayuan’s closest friends in the Beggar Clan included Chief Wang, Quan Guanqing, Elder Chen, and Bai Shijing, with Bai sharing a particularly deep friendship with him. Bai and Ma were alike in temperament and often studied martial arts together. Xiao Feng, by contrast, remembered himself as more given to drinking and rough companionship, while Ma was calm and prudent.

Bai’s office and reputation make him a convincing figure of authority. After the Chief has been expelled, Ma has died, Elder Xu has been murdered, and the Elder of Merit Propagation has been killed, Bai holds the most revered position in the clan. When A'Zhu disguises herself as him, Xiao Feng recognizes how completely she has reproduced not only Bai’s appearance but also his solemn manner, words, and commanding tone. Though Xiao Feng has known Bai for nearly ten years, he cannot distinguish the disguise from the man.

The Visit to Ma Dayuan’s House

A'Zhu chooses Bai’s appearance because she has spoken with him at Juxian Manor and can imitate him more readily than the other possible visitors. Xiao Feng objects that Bai had treated her well and had tried to secure Divine Doctor Xue’s help for her injury. A'Zhu answers that she intends to use the disguise to do good, not to harm Bai or his reputation.

At an inn, A'Zhu disguises Xiao Feng as a five-bag disciple who can pass as Bai’s attendant, and warns him to speak as little as possible. They travel to Xinyang, where Xiao Feng uses the Beggar Clan’s argot to ask about the leaders’ movements and makes Bai’s supposed arrival known in advance. They reach Ma Dayuan’s house at dusk, when the dim light will make close scrutiny of the disguise harder. The staged arrival allows A'Zhu, as Bai, to approach Madam Ma under the cover of an old friend of her husband.

In the mourning hall, the real Xiao Feng pays respect to Ma Dayuan’s memorial tablet. He notices that memorial couplets from Elder Xu and Bai are displayed, but his own is not. The mourning hall’s neglected white cloth and the widow’s solitary life deepen his concern for Madam Ma. A'Zhu speaks to her in Bai’s assumed authoritative voice, offering help and invoking Ma’s death as a loss shared by the clan. The performance is persuasive, but Madam Ma remains cold, and Xiao Feng worries that her grief might lead her to take her own life.

The disguise also lets A'Zhu draw out a dangerous secret. She assures Madam Ma that she will not disclose the identity of the hidden “leading big brother,” then swears an oath phrased to bind Bai Shijing rather than herself. Madam Ma reveals that the man is Duan Zhengchun, and warns that the secret could bring disaster if it reached Xiao Feng. A'Zhu’s false promise demonstrates how the authority attached to Bai’s name can be used to gain confidence—and how his reputation becomes an instrument in a deception he does not know about.

Exposure and Murder of Ma Dayuan

Much later, when the real Bai Shijing enters the room where Xiao Feng, Duan Zhengchun, and Madam Ma are gathered, the truth of the earlier deception becomes one of several mysteries Xiao Feng suddenly understands. Madam Ma’s folding fan, used as evidence against him in the Apricot Forest, must have come from someone close to him; he also wonders how she saw through A'Zhu’s otherwise flawless impersonation of Bai. The arrival of the actual elder resolves the immediate question of who had entered, even as the larger conspiracy comes into focus.

Bai immediately takes Duan Zhengchun by the hands and breaks both his wrists. Duan has little strength to resist: the assistance Xiao Feng had secretly given him lasts only briefly, and Xiao Feng has withdrawn his hand. Bai then goes to Madam Ma and tries to relieve the effects of the acupuncture-point pressure that has left her unable to move. Though he cannot undo it, his worried attention to her contrasts with the violence he has just inflicted on Duan.

A figure in the darkness turns the room into a test of Bai’s nerve. After a prolonged silence, Bai brings out a steel awl and attacks, but the unknown opponent evades him and catches him by the throat. The technique is the Throat-Lock Capturing Technique, the Ma family’s own martial art, which Bai knows well because he and Ma Dayuan had been close friends. The attacker’s tall silhouette resembles Ma’s, and the use of the family technique convinces Bai that he is facing Ma’s ghost. Xiao Feng, watching, understands instead that a martial-arts expert is using the appearance of a haunting to frighten the two conspirators into confessing.

Confession and Death

Under pressure, Bai first tries to shift responsibility onto Madam Ma, claiming that she forced him to act. When her contemptuous reply seems to loosen the assailant’s hold, he speaks more fully: Madam Ma had read Chief Wang’s will and repeatedly urged Ma Dayuan to reveal the secret of Xiao Feng’s birth, but Ma refused. Bai’s confession identifies Ma Dayuan’s murder as the work of the two conspirators, with Madam Ma as the instigator.

Madam Ma later confirms how she compelled Bai. On the Fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month, when he visited her house for the Mid-Autumn Festival, she used their affair to make him infatuated with her and demanded that he kill Ma Dayuan. When he refused, she threatened to expose him as the man who had raped her. Faced with that threat, Bai killed his friend rather than allow the accusation to become public. The account recasts his outward integrity as a reputation that Madam Ma could use against him: his fear of disgrace, not allegiance to her cause, gives her leverage.

Madam Ma and Xiao Feng also confirm the mechanics of the murder. Bai gave Ma Dayuan the Ten Fragrance Bewitching Powder and broke his throat, making the death appear to have been caused by the Throat-Lock Capturing Technique associated with Gusu Murong. Madam Ma says the idea of implicating Gusu Murong was Bai’s. She also clarifies that Bai did not steal Xiao Feng’s fan: Quan Guanqing persuaded Elder Chen to enter Xiao Feng’s house after he left and take it.

Bai’s confession does not save him. The assailant’s grip tightens; the injury to his throat becomes fatal, and he dies. The figure then disappears, while Xiao Feng follows its shadow into the snow, still seeking to learn who it was. Bai’s ending thus exposes the conspiracy but leaves the identity of the avenger unresolved in the moment.

Betrayal and Narrative Function

Bai’s importance rests on the collision between public trust and private compromise. He is Ma Dayuan’s friend, a senior figure in the Beggar Clan, and someone Xiao Feng remembers as an unswervingly good man. Yet Madam Ma’s threat turns intimacy and fear of disgrace into instruments of murder. His repeated attempts to blame her do not undo his choice or the harm to Ma Dayuan.

His role also connects two layers of the plot. First, A'Zhu’s disguise uses Bai’s authority to coax information from Madam Ma; later, the real Bai’s entrance punctures that impersonation and brings the conspiracy into the open. The fan, the false attribution to Gusu Murong, and the use of Ma’s own technique each redirect suspicion before the confession restores the causal chain. Bai’s death marks the cost of that deception while leaving Xiao Feng with the revelation of Ma Dayuan’s murder and the unresolved question of who intervened.