Zhiguang’s revelation at Zhiguan Temple gives Xiao Feng the first direct account of his father’s identity and last words, transforming a search for the past into a test of what identity and vengeance mean. The monk returns to him a cloth rubbing of Xiao Yuanshan’s inscription at Yanmen Pass, explains why Xiao Feng was raised under Qiao Sanhuai’s surname, and sets the family story against a Buddhist teaching of detachment. He dies after writing that teaching in dust, before answering Xiao Feng’s question about the leading big brother.

Arrival and Recognition

Xiao Feng and A'Zhu reach Zhiguan Temple without incident. Though the temple is small and its exterior worn, its standing in the martial world is far greater than its appearance suggests. Monk Pozhe announces their arrival, and Zhiguang comes to welcome them. Xiao Feng, who had feared the monk might be killed before they could speak, is relieved to find him alive. He and A'Zhu remove their disguises and meet Zhiguang openly.

The revelation begins with a name. Zhiguang tells Xiao Feng that his original surname is Xiao. Xiao Feng already knows he is Khitan, but has not known his father’s surname; hearing it makes his origin feel newly, unmistakably real. He bows to Zhiguang and asks for guidance. The monk explains that Xiao Yuanshan named his infant son Feng’er in the inscription at Yanmen Pass, but the child was entrusted to Qiao Sanhuai and accordingly took his foster father’s surname. Xiao Feng weeps at learning his father’s name and lineage, and thanks Zhiguang for making them known.

Zhiguang also places the surname in its political context. The Xiao clan, from which Liao empresses traditionally came, held considerable influence in the Liao Empire; when a ruler was young, an empress dowager could govern, further strengthening the clan. Xiao Feng’s discovery therefore joins intimate family history to the power and standing of a major Khitan house. He tells A'Zhu that from then on he is Xiao Feng, not Qiao Feng, and she accepts his new name.

The Rubbing and Xiao Yuanshan’s Account

Xiao Feng has not seen the inscription itself: when he reached the site outside Yanmen Pass, someone had already scraped the writing away. Zhiguang has preserved its text in a rubbing made from many pieces of cloth stitched together. He presents it to Xiao Feng as a record of his father’s final words. The characters are Khitan, unfamiliar to Xiao Feng, but their powerful strokes deepen the force of the document as an artifact of a father’s hand and a lost language.

Zhiguang recounts how the words were interpreted. People inside Yanmen Pass who knew Khitan independently gave the same explanation, which the monk considered likely to be accurate. The inscription says that Feng’er was exactly one year old when Xiao Yuanshan and his wife were travelling to her parents’ home for a banquet. They were attacked by warriors from the Southern Dynasty. Xiao Yuanshan’s wife was killed, and he lost the desire to continue living.

The account also exposes the conflict between Xiao Yuanshan’s martial inheritance and his actions. His martial arts master was Han, and Xiao Yuanshan had vowed before him never to kill Han people. Yet in the attack he killed more than ten. His inscription records both shame and sorrow, and his belief that after death he would have no face to meet his master. The family revelation is thus not a clean account of innocence or vengeance: the father’s grief follows a violent act that violated his own vow. Xiao Feng receives the rubbing from Zhiguang, who gives it to him as his predecessor’s final words.

The Unanswered Question

After thanking Zhiguang for explaining the incident’s cause and aftermath, Xiao Feng says the knowledge has made him a new man. But one question remains: who was the leading big brother behind the expedition? Zhiguang acknowledges that Xiao Feng has come seeking an answer and refers to deaths and reprisals associated with the investigation. Xiao Feng tries to correct the monk’s account of whom he killed, but Zhiguang has already gone to fetch an object, and the conversation moves into the meditation room.

There, seated on a bulrush mat, Zhiguang writes on the dusty floor: “All things are the same; all creatures are equal. Sages and animals are treated evenly. Han or Khitan is reality and also fantasy. Kindness, enmity, honor and disgrace are all mere dust.” Xiao Feng understands the Buddhist proposition: distinctions of rank and kind, and even the opposition between people and animals or between rulers and ordinary people, do not possess ultimate weight. Applied to his own life, it suggests that being Han or Khitan need not define him, and that the accumulated claims of kindness, hatred, honor, and disgrace can be relinquished.

But Xiao Feng cannot simply adopt that detachment. He is not a Buddhist, and the teaching does not tell him who led the expedition. He asks Zhiguang repeatedly to name the man, while the monk only smiles. The contrast leaves the scene suspended between an ethical answer and a factual one: Zhiguang offers a way to regard the feud, but withholds the information Xiao Feng came to obtain.

Death and Aftermath

When Xiao Feng looks closely, Zhiguang’s smiling face is still, and the monk does not respond when called. Xiao Feng checks for his breathing and finds that he has died. He is overcome with grief, kneels, and bows several times before leaving quietly with A'Zhu. Zhiguang’s death closes the meeting without resolving the identity of the leading big brother.

More than ten li from the temple, Xiao Feng tells A'Zhu that he never meant to harm Zhiguang and wonders why the monk brought his life to this end. A'Zhu believes Zhiguang had understood the world deeply and was enlightened enough to regard life and death as alike. They then consider why the monk knew they were coming. Xiao Feng suspects that the prime villain had warned Zhiguang they would seek revenge, leading the monk to expect that he would not escape Xiao Feng’s violence and to take poison after their conversation. This is Xiao Feng and A'Zhu’s interpretation of the death, rather than an explanation confirmed by Zhiguang.

A'Zhu takes the words in the dust as more than a final lesson: she argues that Xiao Feng may be tired of living amid the Central Plains martial world’s cycles of gratitude, vengeance, and reputation, and suggests that he go beyond Yanmen Pass to hunt and herd cattle and sheep instead. The scene thus ties Zhiguang’s brief written teaching to the pastoral future Xiao Feng and A'Zhu have imagined. Yet the monk’s death and the unanswered question leave that proposed escape shadowed by the unresolved history that brought them to the temple.