Xiao Feng Meets Wanyan Aguda begins as a chance encounter in a snowbound forest and becomes a friendship across a wartime ethnic divide. Xiao Feng, lost while caring for the gravely wounded AhZi, joins a Jurchen hunter in bringing down two tigers; the hunter introduces himself as Wanyan Aguda, and Xiao Feng identifies himself as Khitan. Aguda then guides Xiao Feng to his tribe, where the celebrated feat earns him an honored welcome. The episode makes practical hospitality, physical courage, and cross-cultural recognition the grounds of an alliance that precedes the two men’s later bond.

The encounter in the snow

Xiao Feng has been lost in a forest covered by snow and is carrying AhZi, who is unconscious and near death. After three days without food, he finds shelter, makes a fire, and eats more than twenty fungi. A tiger’s roar offers the prospect of food; hearing a human voice amid the pursuit, Xiao Feng leaves AhZi beside the fire and follows the sound through the storm.

After traveling more than ten li, he finds two tigers being pursued by a large hunter in beast-hide, armed with an iron fork. The man uses his knowledge of animal behavior to drive the tigers back, but he is fighting them without martial arts. When one turns on him, Xiao Feng calls out that he will help and intercepts the animals. The hunter speaks in a language Xiao Feng does not understand, but Xiao Feng joins the fight without waiting to learn what he is saying.

Xiao Feng’s intervention displays a kind of strength the hunter has not seen. A palm strike knocks one tiger down, but it recovers and charges again. Xiao Feng strikes it a second time, catches its tail with both hands as it tries to flee, and uses the opposing forces to fling it into the air. He then strikes its belly with both palms, killing it. The hunter, meanwhile, kills the other tiger by driving his fork into its forehead and pinning it to the snow. Their different skills make the encounter a shared hunt rather than a contest: Xiao Feng supplies extraordinary martial power, while Aguda proves himself a capable hunter.

Names, identities, and welcome

After the hunt, the two men communicate through gestures and praise. The hunter points to himself and says, “WanYan AguDa!” Xiao Feng answers with his own name. When Aguda asks whether he is Khitan, Xiao Feng nods and asks in turn; Aguda identifies himself as Jurchen. Their first exchange therefore establishes not only their names but also the identities that might have made the meeting dangerous: the Jurchen and Khitan are at war.

They nevertheless respond to one another as companions. Xiao Feng knows that the Jurchen live east of the Liao Empire and north of Korea, and that they are renowned as brave fighters. He is pleased to meet someone in the vast snowy wilderness. Because Aguda knows the terrain, he can guide Xiao Feng through the blizzard, while Xiao Feng’s immediate concern remains reaching AhZi and finding the ginseng needed to treat her. He carries her and the dead tiger back to the fire; Aguda follows with his own kill.

Xiao Feng gives AhZi tiger’s blood to drink, then tears off tiger legs to roast. Aguda watches his unusual strength with astonishment. After they eat, Xiao Feng gestures that he became lost while searching for ginseng for AhZi. Aguda assures him that ginseng is readily available in his region and offers to take him to the tribe. The invitation answers Xiao Feng’s immediate need for help and begins the transition from an isolated encounter to a place among the Jurchen.

At the Jurchen encampment

Aguda leads Xiao Feng through the storm for two days. On the afternoon of the third day they find numerous footprints in the snow and reach a cluster of skin tents on a southeastern mountainside. At the encampment, fires burn outside the tents, where women mend animal hides and pickle meat. Aguda brings Xiao Feng into the largest tent, where more than ten people are gathered. He recounts Xiao Feng’s feat, and the Jurchen crowd around their guest, offering approving gestures and praise.

A Han salesman, Xu Zhuocheng, provides the language bridge. He speaks Jurchen and knows several other regional languages, and his interpreting allows Xiao Feng to learn that the gathering is in the tent of the Jurchen chief, Helibu. Aguda is Helibu’s second son; Helibu has eleven sons, all described as capable heroes. Although the Jurchen and Khitan are enemies, Aguda’s admiration for Xiao Feng leads his father and fellow tribespeople to set aside hostility toward their Khitan guest. Their welcome rests on a shared esteem for heroic ability, not on any resolution of the conflict between their peoples.

Aguda gives up his own tent for Xiao Feng and AhZi. Xiao Feng initially tries to refuse, but accepts when Aguda insists. The tribe holds a feast, serving meat from the two tigers. Xiao Feng has gone more than half a month without wine and drinks more than ten bags of the Jurchen liquor without any apparent change in his complexion. Because the Jurchen regard drinking capacity as a measure of a true hero, the feast extends the recognition first earned in the hunt: even those who did not witness Xiao Feng kill a tiger come to admire him.

Friendship and recovery

During the months at the encampment, Xiao Feng follows Aguda hunting by day and studies the Jurchen language with Xu Zhuocheng at night. After he has learned enough to communicate much of what he wants, he also begins learning Khitan, reflecting on the mismatch between his Khitan identity and his inability to speak that language. Jurchen and Khitan are sufficiently similar for him to make progress in both, and he eventually no longer needs an interpreter. The friendship that began through gestures thus acquires a practical means of communication.

Xiao Feng’s stay also gives him the conditions to care for AhZi. In spring, she eats ginseng each day, much of it gathered by Xiao Feng while hunting, and her condition improves significantly. He continues using his internal energy to regulate her breathing, but now needs to do so only once or twice rather than keeping his palm against her constantly. AhZi can sometimes manage a few words, though her limbs remain weak and she cannot move; Xiao Feng continues to attend to her daily needs. He undertakes this care in remembrance of AhZhu’s devotion and finds comfort in fulfilling her wish.

The encounter’s immediate consequence is therefore more than rescue from hunger and disorientation. Aguda’s guidance brings Xiao Feng to a community where he and AhZi can stay, while access to high-quality ginseng supports her recovery. In turn, the Jurchen receive Xiao Feng as a guest because Aguda’s regard for him outweighs their peoples’ enmity. The episode grounds their connection in specific acts—joining the hunt, sharing the meal, surrendering a tent, and learning one another’s language—rather than in an abstract reconciliation.

The wider political setting

The meeting’s cross-cultural welcome gains significance against the book’s account of Liao power and its contested succession. The account traces a conflict from the reign of YeLu LongXu: when the Holy Emperor chose his eldest son YeLu ZongZhen as successor, their mother favored the younger son, YeLu ZhongYuan. ZongZhen warned his brother of the scheme, and ZhongYuan supported him rather than taking the throne. ZongZhen later made ZhongYuan his designated successor, but after ZongZhen’s death the crown passed instead to his son YeLu HongJi.

YeLu HongJi compensated his uncle with the title of royal emperor uncle and command of the army, while ZhongYuan’s son YeLu NieLuGu became Prince of Chu and controlled the Southern Chancellery’s military affairs. This distribution of authority sets the conditions for the later rebellion: while HongJi is away hunting, NieLuGu proclaims his father emperor and circulates an edict portraying HongJi as a false ruler. The personal encounter between Xiao Feng and Aguda is not itself part of that succession struggle, but the two episodes place Xiao Feng among peoples and political powers whose inherited conflicts shape the choices ahead.

The account also places the Liao–Song rivalry within a territorial history. Liao acquired sixteen prefectures after Shi JingTang sought its support, and those lands gave Liao strategic advantages in campaigns against the Song. In Liao Nanjing, Xiao Feng and AhZi later find bustling streets where the language of the Central Plains makes the city feel familiar to them. These details sharpen the contrast at the heart of the meeting: Xiao Feng can be welcomed by Jurchen strangers in a snowy borderland, even as the surrounding world remains ordered by war, imperial succession, and competing claims of belonging.