Xinyang Village, in Henan, is the destination of Xiao Feng and A'Zhu’s long journey to the Ma family home, where their search for the identity of the Beggar Society’s “leading big brother” reaches its answer. It is a modest rural setting for a revelation with far-reaching political implications: Madam Ma identifies the hidden figure as Duan Zhengchun, a prince of Dali whose family’s interests are tied to the survival of Great Song.

Setting and Approach

The Ma family home lies in Xinyang Village, in Henan. Reaching it from Mount Tiantai in Jiangnan requires Xiao Feng and A'Zhu to travel thousands of li, a journey too long to complete in a day. Their northward ride unfolds at a slow pace; A'Zhu’s conversation and jokes ease Xiao Feng’s grief and indignation, and the journey comes to feel less like the succession of nightmares that had preceded it and more like a dream softened by her company.

When the pair reach Guangzhou, Xinyang is less than two days away. Xiao Feng hesitates over how to approach Madam Ma. She had shown hostility toward him in the Apricot Forest and at Juxian Manor, but he recognizes that she believes he killed her husband, Ma Dayuan. Threatening a widow who does not know martial arts would violate his sense of honor, so he agrees that A'Zhu should speak to her instead.

The Ma Family Home

Xiao Feng and A'Zhu disguise themselves at a small inn. A'Zhu makes Xiao Feng look like a five-bag Beggar Society disciple attached to Elder Bai, while she takes on Bai Shijing’s appearance and manner. Xiao Feng, who has known Bai Shijing for almost ten years, cannot detect a difference. To reinforce the deception, he speaks the Society’s argot to its members on the road and lets word spread that Elder Bai has arrived in Xinyang.

The house stands in the village’s western suburb, about thirty li from the city. After asking local Beggar Society disciples for directions, the pair deliberately travel slowly and arrive at dusk, when the dim light is less likely to expose their disguises. A brook curves around three small tiled houses; two weeping willows stand beside them, and the flat ground in front resembles a farmhouse drying yard. Four pits, one at each corner, recall Ma Dayuan’s martial practice. Seeing them makes Xiao Feng feel the force of Ma’s absence: the man whose home they have come to enter is separated from the living by death.

Madam Ma comes out in a white mourning dress. She looks at Xiao Feng, then bows to A'Zhu, whom she believes to be Elder Bai, and invites her in for tea. The rural house is thus both the setting of a carefully staged encounter and a place still marked by the death that brought the visitors there.

Revelation and Political Reach

At the house, Madam Ma challenges the disguised A'Zhu over whether she has recognized the Pure Yang Finger associated with the Duan family. A'Zhu answers that the ruling Duan clan of Dali has long had little contact with the Central Plains martial world, and suggests that any link between it and the “leading big brother” must be rumor. Madam Ma counters that members of the clan who are not the emperor have often visited the Central Plains.

She then names the hidden figure: Duan Zhengchun, the current emperor’s younger full brother, who holds the title Prince Who Pacifies the South. Hearing the name, Xiao Feng shakes; after months of travel and searching, he has finally learned whom he had been trying to identify. The revelation turns the visit to a widow’s house into a hinge between the Beggar Society’s internal history and the politics of Dali.

Madam Ma further explains the strategic reasoning behind Duan Zhengchun’s involvement. She says that Great Song serves as Dali’s northern barrier: if the Liao Empire destroys Great Song, Dali would be the next target. Great Song and Dali, in her account, depend on one another like lips and teeth, giving Duan Zhengchun a reason to care about affairs beyond ordinary martial-world disputes. Xinyang’s importance lies not in its size or power, but in the disclosure made there: an apparently private inquiry reveals a connection between personal identity, martial-world intrigue, and the calculations of states.