Xiao Feng's grief and remorse over A'Zhu

Xiao Feng's grief and remorse over A'Zhu are not simply the sorrow of losing the woman he loves: they arise from discovering that his own attack, meant for Duan Zhengchun, has killed her. The recognition transforms his pursuit of vengeance into a personal moral catastrophe. He condemns himself, longs to die, and loses faith in the ambitions that had previously given his life direction; only the suspicion that a villain engineered the tragedy draws him toward another course.

The discovery and its cause

During the storm at the bluestone bridge, Xiao Feng notices that the man he has struck feels unexpectedly light. A flash of lightning lets him see that the face he has grabbed is a disguise, and he recognizes A'Zhu beneath it. She had learned that Duan Zhengchun was her father and knew that Xiao Feng intended to confront him over the deaths of his five relatives. Believing that Xiao Feng would not abandon his vengeance even if she pleaded with him, she used disguise to take Duan Zhengchun's place at their meeting. Her intervention puts her directly in the path of the force Xiao Feng had meant for her father.

The realization is immediate and physical: Xiao Feng feels unable to stand and kneels, holding A'Zhu as he understands how grievously his full-power palm strike has injured her. He tries to sustain her by transferring his internal energy, but cannot undo what has happened. When she asks whether he is angry with her, he answers that he is angry with himself. His remorse begins before her death; it is bound to the knowledge that she acted to prevent the conflict between her beloved and her father, while he delivered the blow she had hoped to avert.

A'Zhu's death and self-condemnation

A'Zhu asks Xiao Feng to promise that he will never harm himself, but she is too weak to stop him when he raises his hand against his own head. Soon afterward, she dies in his arms. Xiao Feng checks her pulse and breath, calls her name, and continues trying to revive her with his internal energy. The repeated attempts establish the limit against which his grief is measured: he can act with extraordinary force, but neither his strength nor his devotion can bring her back.

A'Zi accuses him of killing her elder sister. Xiao Feng accepts the accusation and invites A'Zi to take revenge, holding himself open to be killed rather than defending himself. His response is not a claim that the death was intended; it is a refusal to separate his culpability from its consequence. He carries A'Zhu away from the bridge, unable to weep even as he grieves, and strikes the stone railing until pieces break away and part of it falls into the river. The damaged railing gives his self-directed violence an outward trace, while the storm and his cries accompany a loss he cannot put into words.

Grief, isolation, and the grave

Through the night, Xiao Feng wanders with A'Zhu's body, running without knowing where he is going. At dawn, after four hours of frantic movement, he remains intent on punishing himself and says to himself that he wants to die and join her. He returns to the bluestone bridge, then goes to the Square Bamboo Forest, calling for Duan Zhengchun and asking him to kill him in revenge for his daughter's death. No one answers. At Little Mirror Lake, Xiao Feng keeps A'Zhu in his arms and repeatedly channels internal energy into her, recalling that she had survived a previous injury when Abbot Xuan Ci's palm force struck the copper mirror he held. This time, he knows, the blow landed directly, and she remains motionless.

He sits outside the house from morning through midday and into the evening. His comparison with the danger he faced at Juxian Manor makes the change in him stark: isolation among enemies had not shaken his resolve, but a mistake he believes irredeemable has left him feeling that he should not go on living. He also turns his guilt into a crisis of identity and purpose. A'Zhu has died in her father's place, so he believes he cannot seek revenge on Duan Zhengchun; the former great undertaking of the Beggar Society and his old ambitions seem empty, and he asks what a Khitan can aspire to. Grief thus reaches beyond the lost relationship, unsettling his place in the jianghu and his former sense of belonging.

Xiao Feng digs two graves side by side in the Square Bamboo Forest while continuing to hold A'Zhu, unwilling to set her down even briefly. Thinking that her parents may return and want to understand what happened, he prepares bamboo tablets and writes one for the grave identifying himself as a rash Khitan. The intended shared burial makes his wish to follow A'Zhu concrete: he is not merely mourning her but imagining death as the only end to his guilt and separation.

From self-punishment to investigation

The plan does not hold. When Xiao Feng learns that the scroll attributed to Duan Zhengchun was indeed written by him, while the letter to Chief Wang was not, he reassesses the chain of suspicion surrounding the earlier affair. He reasons that Madam Ma must have had important secrets in setting Duan Zhengchun up. That possibility interrupts his intention to die: he rises with A'Zhu's body and decides that he must investigate the villain responsible for the trap before following her.

The turn does not erase his remorse. Xiao Feng still describes himself as having fallen into a cruel scheme and having harmed A'Zhu to death; he has no clear identification of the villain when he sets out. But the movement from the two graves toward investigation gives his grief a provisional direction. He cannot undo the fatal act or recover the life he shared with A'Zhu. He can, however, refuse to treat the apparent circumstances as the whole truth and seek the person who helped bring them about.

Significance

The episode makes Xiao Feng's strength inseparable from its limits. The palm that could settle a martial contest becomes the instrument of an unintended death, and physical power proves useless against the consequences. His reaction also distinguishes remorse from simple bereavement: he remembers the choice A'Zhu made, recognizes his role in her death, turns punishment against himself, and briefly abandons both revenge and the ambitions associated with his former life.

The two adjacent graves and the broken bridge railing embody opposite impulses within that grief. The graves express a wish to remain with A'Zhu beyond death; the broken stone records the violence he directs at himself and the world when no repair is possible. His later decision to investigate does not resolve the loss, but it changes the immediate course of his despair: rather than die before learning the truth, he carries A'Zhu onward and seeks the scheme behind the meeting that killed her.