Apricot Forest is a gathering place of the Beggar Society whose importance extends beyond the assembly held there: Shan Zheng’s reference to letters hidden at his home makes the forest a key point in the chain of suspicion surrounding the “leading big brother” and the “prime villain.” Later, Xiao Feng and A'Zhu revisit what was said there and connect it to the destruction of the Shan family manor.

A clue spoken at the gathering

At the gathering in Apricot Forest, Shan Zheng said that letters written by the “leading big brother” were hidden in his home and that he had compared one letter with their handwriting, judging it genuine. The remark gave the hidden documents significance as possible evidence in the unresolved case. It also made Shan Zheng’s home a place where someone seeking to suppress the truth might fear discovery.

The Shan family manor and its aftermath

After Shan Zheng and his sons were killed, the rest of the family and the manor were also destroyed. Discussing the event, A'Zhu asks why the perpetrator would go so far as to eliminate the household and burn the house. Xiao Feng reasons that the aim was to cut off the evidence at its root: if the letters remained, he might enter the manor and find them. The fate of the Shan household thus gives the words spoken in Apricot Forest a later, ominous consequence.

Recalled in the investigation

While travelling with Xiao Feng, A'Zhu recalls Shan Zheng’s statement and fears that the prime villain may have been present in Apricot Forest. The memory is not merely a detail of the gathering; it shapes her understanding of the danger surrounding their inquiry. She leans toward Xiao Feng as she voices her fear, linking the earlier public disclosure to the threat they believe may still be active.

At Jinshan Temple, after arriving in Zhenjiang, Xiao Feng proposes that the “leading big brother” and the “prime villain” could be the same person, while allowing that they might be separate people with a close connection. He points to the lengths taken to conceal the first figure’s identity and observes that even Chief Wang had been willing to follow him. The clue from Apricot Forest therefore feeds into a broader attempt to understand both the hidden identity and the destruction of the evidence.

Significance

Apricot Forest functions as the point where a spoken claim about hidden letters becomes consequential evidence in later reasoning. The gathering’s words survive even after the manor and its documents are feared lost: Xiao Feng and A'Zhu use the remembered statement to connect the Shan family’s destruction with the effort to conceal the “leading big brother.” The location’s narrative importance lies in this contrast between a public disclosure and the subsequent attempt to erase what it might reveal.