Qin Hongmian

Qin Hongmian is a former lover of Duan Zhengchun and the mother of Mu Wanqing. At Little Mirror Lake, she comes seeking revenge against Ruan Xingzhu, another of his partners, but recognition and conversation complicate the rivalry: the women’s shared history with Duan gives way, briefly, to sympathy and mutual recrimination. Her story also holds together two different kinds of loyalty—the claims of romantic attachment and the responsibilities of motherhood.

Identity and Background

Qin Hongmian is known as Sura Saber Qin, a name associated with her use of two sabers. She is Duan Zhengchun’s former lover and Mu Wanqing’s mother. The account places her among several women with whom Duan had relationships while travelling in the Central Plains, including Qin, Ruan Xingzhu, and Qin’s younger fellow disciple Gan Baobao. His princely standing and multiple relationships form the background to the women’s intersecting grievances.

Qin’s anger is directed less at Duan for his infidelity than at the women she regards as rivals. She resents women whom she considers seductive and blames them for taking Duan away from her. That distinction shapes her actions: rather than treating the past as a settled separation, she pursues other women connected to him, and she brings Mu Wanqing into that pursuit.

At Little Mirror Lake

After receiving a message from Gan Baobao, Qin travels with Mu Wanqing to seek out Dao Baifeng, Duan’s wife, and another of his former lovers. They fail to kill either woman. When Qin then learns that Ruan Xingzhu is living in seclusion beside Little Mirror Lake, she takes Mu Wanqing there intending to kill her as well.

The encounter does not proceed as Qin expects. Ruan recognizes her through the two-saber style and identifies her as Sura Saber Qin. When Ruan addresses her as an elder sister, Qin rejects the conciliatory form of address and calls her a harlot. Ruan responds by praising Qin’s beauty and saying that Duan misses her. The flattery eases some of Qin’s anger, though it does not erase the hostility that brought her to the lake.

Mu Wanqing is present not simply as a companion but as Qin’s daughter, with her own stake in Duan’s divided family. During the confrontation, A'Zi reaches toward the immobilized young woman, and Ruan intervenes to stop her. Ruan then recognizes Qin and Mu Wanqing, making the family and romantic entanglements at the lake impossible to separate from the immediate dispute.

Rivalry, Reconciliation, and Longing

After the women part, Qin and Mu Wanqing secretly return. Qin has noticed a pair of men’s shoes beneath the couch in Ruan’s bedroom, embroidered with the words Mountain and River; their freshness and the damp mud on their soles suggest that Duan is nearby. Her deduction brings the emotional contradiction of the scene into focus: she wants to find him, yet does not want to face him.

Qin tells Mu Wanqing that they can keep watch until her father arrives. She admits that they have been separated for many days and that both she and Duan have grown old. Her words convey an attachment that has survived the grievance, even as she remains unwilling to meet him openly. Mu Wanqing agrees, sharing the sorrow of the moment without disclosing her own growing feelings for Duan Yu, who is absent from this scene.

The earlier hostility toward Ruan also shifts into an uneasy solidarity. At the lake, Qin says that the old ill will between them has lifted and that a hatred she had carried has been removed. She now wants to find Kang Min, whom she blames for disrupting her happiness with Duan. Ruan says she does not know where Kang is, but asks Qin to stab her on Ruan’s behalf if she finds her. Their alliance is not a simple reconciliation: each woman still speaks from her own injury, and both direct their anger toward Kang Min.

Their parting exchanges expose the cost of Duan’s absence from his daughters’ lives. Qin asks Ruan to slap him twice on her behalf, one slap for herself and one for Mu Wanqing. Ruan counters with requests for two slaps and two kicks, for herself and A'Zi, because Duan fathered the girls without caring for them. Ruan then weeps, and Qin consoles her by promising that after they have killed Kang Min they will return to keep her company. The scene turns rivalry into a temporary bond founded on shared abandonment, without resolving their grievances against Duan.

Conflict and Narrative Role

Qin’s actions make her one strand in a larger web of relationships organized around Duan Zhengchun. She and Ruan Xingzhu move from threatened rivals to momentary allies; Mu Wanqing’s presence makes their conflict a question of inheritance and care as well as romance. Their daughters’ different relationships to the same family history sharpen the contrast between biological connection and the responsibilities that follow from it.

That pattern resonates beyond the Little Mirror Lake episode. A'Zhu later explains that she and A'Zi were given to other households as infants and marked with the character Duan so that their mother might recognize them. She describes the separation between their parents and says the sisters were sent away because their mother could not take them home. This account concerns A'Zhu and A'Zi’s parentage, not Qin’s; set beside Qin and Mu Wanqing’s story, however, it underscores how Duan’s relationships leave daughters scattered across households, with recognition and parental care repeatedly arriving late or remaining incomplete.

Qin’s brief appearance is therefore shaped by a double movement: an old love persists, but it does not repair the harm caused by Duan’s divided affections or absence from his children. Her search for him, her refusal to meet him, her anger at Kang Min, and her final promise to accompany Ruan all arise from relationships that have not cleanly ended. The scene gives her both force and vulnerability without supplying a final resolution to her pursuit or her bond with Duan.