Dali matters in the narrative first as the place where Xiao Feng intends to return A'Zi to her parents, and then as a point of reference for the family connections that shape his duty to her. Its brief but consequential appearances set private care against the political and ethnic divisions encountered along the frontier.

A destination of care

After hearing A'Zi refer casually to her sister and brother-in-law while watching migrating geese, Xiao Feng takes the words as a sign that she regards him as close family. He resolves not to abandon her: when she has recovered, he will escort her to Dali and deliver her to her parents, fulfilling the responsibility entrusted to him. As she tires during their journey, he carries her from the horse and lets her rest in the carriage; later, when she longs to see the grassland’s vast interior, he turns west rather than opposing her wish. Dali is thus a destination within a continuing journey of protection, not the scene of an arrival described in this evidence.

Family ties across distance

The connection between Dali and A'Zi is expressed through her parents, to whom Xiao Feng means to return her, and through the sister and brother-in-law she invokes while looking at the geese. The passage does not identify the parents or describe what happens after the intended return. It does, however, make the proposed journey more than a change of place: Xiao Feng understands it as the completion of an entrusted family obligation.

A name amid frontier divisions

Elsewhere, Dali appears as the southern home toward which Xiao Feng plans to escort A'Zi, while his immediate surroundings are shaped by conflict between Khitan and Jurchen people. A Jurchen chief's son, AguDa, welcomes Xiao Feng despite his Khitan identity, and a Han-speaking salesman, Xu Zhuocheng, helps the visitors communicate. When Khitan troops attack the Jurchen party, Xiao Feng is caught between the people he calls his own and the people who have received him as a guest. He prevents deaths among the Khitan riders he shoots at, but the clash makes clear how quickly inherited affiliations can pull against personal loyalties.

The wider political and human landscape

Dali is not part of the military crisis unfolding in Liao, but the events around Xiao Feng's later official position give the southern destination a wider contrast. Liao's succession dispute grows from an earlier contest over the throne: ZhongYuan once declined the opportunity to succeed his father and supported his brother ZongZhen, while HongJi later inherited the throne instead of ZhongYuan. HongJi compensated his uncle with exceptional rank and authority, yet the Southern Chancellery's rebellion, led by ZhongYuan's son NieLuGu, exposes how unstable those arrangements remain. The narrative therefore places Xiao Feng's intention to return A'Zi to Dali within a world where dynastic and political claims repeatedly divide families and communities.

That same world is sustained by raiding across borders. Xiao Feng learns that Liao troops take provisions by raiding neighboring lands, a practice called Beating the Grass Valley, while Song forces retaliate with raids of their own. When he encounters Song captives, he remembers having seen Khitan civilians captured by Song soldiers at Yanmen Gate and questions the logic of treating whole peoples as enemies. He releases the captives and warns them to move away from the border. Against this cycle of displacement, Dali serves as the named home toward which A'Zi may be returned: a personal destination whose meaning is grounded in kinship, even though the evidence does not show her reaching it.