Nanjing

Nanjing is the Liao Empire’s southern capital, a major administrative and military center whose strategic importance is tied to the long contest with Great Song. Also known as Yanjing and Youdou, it becomes the setting for Xiao Feng’s reluctant exercise of state power: he arrives as Lord of the Southern Chancellery, encounters the human costs of frontier raiding, and releases Song captives. The city is at once a place that recalls the Central Plains to him and the seat of an empire whose policies he cannot wholeheartedly accept.

Names, Setting, and Strategic Position

The narrative identifies Nanjing with Yanjing, Youdou, and the capital of You Province. It also notes that the city was later known as Beijing. Nanjing is presented not as a peripheral outpost but as a substantial capital: its walls extend thirty-six li, and eight gates open toward different approaches. The northern gates, Connecting Heaven and Encircle Vibration, express allegiance to Liao and obedience to imperial command. The Lord of the Southern Chancellery’s residence lies in the southwest of the city.

The city’s importance rests partly on the larger territorial arrangement between Liao and Song. The account traces Liao’s control of the Sixteen Prefectures to Shi JingTang’s cession of the territories in return for Liao support. Their location gives Liao a strategic advantage in campaigns against the south, while Song has struggled for generations to recover them. Nanjing thus belongs to a fortified political geography shaped by earlier bargains: its gates announce loyalty to the Liao court, while its military value derives from the contested territory around it.

Xiao Feng’s Arrival and the City’s Appeal

After YeLu HongJi appoints him to office, Xiao Feng leads his subordinates and AhZi to Nanjing. He has no desire to bind himself permanently to the Liao government. He resolves to serve for a time out of regard for his sworn brother, then seek permission to resign; if permission is refused, he plans to leave. His arrival therefore carries an unresolved tension between personal loyalty and political duty.

The city initially offers him a striking sense of familiarity. Its broad streets are busy with markets and restaurants, and he and AhZi hear the language of the Central Plains among the passersby. The atmosphere recalls the south where Xiao Feng grew up, and both companions enjoy exploring the streets. They dress simply and move among the crowds, but Nanjing’s many squares, shrines, temples, and government offices make it impossible to see the whole city in a brief tour. The familiar speech does not erase the fact that this is the capital of the state whose campaigns threaten the land Xiao Feng still feels connected to.

His appointment makes a simple tent life impossible. The Sixteen Prefectures, along with DaTong in the west and DaDing in the central region, fall within his jurisdiction, and his office carries extensive authority. He finds the administrative work draining and delegates it to YeLu MoGe, his capable chancellor. The official residence also provides plentiful medicines and tonics for AhZi; as she recovers, she eventually becomes able to walk and explores the city and its outskirts with an attendant.

Court Politics and the Road to Office

Nanjing’s importance is bound to the structure of Liao government and succession. The account explains that the empire’s military affairs are divided between the Northern and Southern Chancelleries. When YeLu HongJi is away hunting, YeLu NieLuGu, Prince of Chu and Lord of the Southern Chancellery, remains responsible for the capital’s military affairs. His father, YeLu ZhongYuan, is the emperor’s uncle and the empire’s supreme commander. Their positions make the rebellion reported by an urgent chain of bugle calls a crisis of both military command and royal legitimacy.

That crisis has a longer history. YeLu LongXu had designated his eldest son, YeLu ZongZhen, as successor, although the empress favored his younger son YeLu ZhongYuan. ZhongYuan declined to use their mother’s scheme to take the throne and supported his brother. ZongZhen later designated ZhongYuan as the next heir, but after ZongZhen’s death the throne went instead to his son HongJi. Once emperor, HongJi sought to compensate ZhongYuan with exceptional rank, command, and privileges, while giving ZhongYuan’s son NieLuGu a title and control of the Southern Chancellery. Those concessions concentrated great authority in the very family whose ambitions now threaten HongJi.

When the rebellion breaks out, the rebels’ proclamation calls HongJi a false emperor and presents ZhongYuan as the rightful ruler. HongJi fears that the claim could divide the army and subjects, especially because his uncle commands forces far larger than those available to the emperor’s immediate party. The institutional history explains why this is more than a straightforward personal quarrel: past succession decisions, the empress dowager’s influence, and the allocation of military office have shaped the crisis that now unfolds around Nanjing.

The Frontier Economy and Captives

Nanjing is also connected to a frontier economy in which armies seize goods and people from neighboring populations. Xiao Feng encounters the consequences when a Liao troop returns with treasure and hundreds of captives taken from Great Song, mostly women and some young men. The soldiers present their raid as a customary turn of duty and expect their commander to choose among the captives and spoils. Xiao Feng instead sees people whose captivity repeats, in reverse, what he once witnessed when Song soldiers seized Khitan civilians at Yanmen Gate.

The narrative names the Liao practice of raiding neighboring lands for provisions “Beating the Grass Valley,” and the retaliatory Song raids “Beating the Standing Valley.” Since Liao does not provide its troops with rations or salaries, the soldiers are expected to obtain their needs by raiding Great Song, Western Xia, Jurchen territory, Korea, and other neighboring countries. The costs fall especially heavily on people living near the borders, who face repeated capture and the loss of their homes. Xiao Feng has long regarded this system as cruel and immoral, but while he is in office he has not attempted to reshape the state’s affairs; the captives make the consequences immediate and difficult to ignore.

When Xiao Feng asks where the troop raided, he learns that it was near ZhuoZhou, close to Great Song. A young captive from Zhang village pleads to return to her parents. The other captives also appeal to him, while one youth asks to speak privately about an important secret. The moment places Xiao Feng’s political authority beside the vulnerability of the people it could protect. His doubts about allegiance are no longer abstract: he recognizes a shared language and common humanity across the boundary that the raids repeatedly turn into an excuse for violence.

Release and Significance

Xiao Feng allows the captives to go free. At first they hesitate, uncertain whether the command is a trap; he tells them to flee and, after they trust him, advises them to move farther from the border, warning that he may not be able to protect them another time. Their gratitude reflects the danger of their circumstances: the poor captives have no wealth with which to buy release and believe that capture would otherwise mean disappearing into a system of exploitation.

The act gives Nanjing a significance beyond its walls, gates, and offices. Xiao Feng’s authority as a Liao official enables him to interrupt one raid, but it does not dissolve the recurring cycle in which Liao and Song soldiers retaliate against civilians across the frontier. His thoughts turn on how arbitrary the divisions seem when people speak and live in recognizable ways on either side, even as the names used for each other harden into insults. Nanjing becomes the point at which his official role and his moral refusal to treat civilians as spoils come into sharp conflict.

The city also frames the contrasting circumstances of AhZi and You TanZhi. AhZi receives the title of Beginning Fortune Princess and resides in the Beginning Fortune Palace, where medicines support her gradual recovery. Later, You TanZhi is brought back to her attention under the iron mask that has made him known as the Iron Clown. He has spent months among captives doing labor outside the southern walls, and AhZi summons him when she learns he is still alive. These episodes place private dependence and suffering alongside the city’s public hierarchy: Nanjing is both the seat of Xiao Feng’s power and the setting where that power, and the unequal lives surrounding it, become visible.