Fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month

The Fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month is the date of a private encounter that became crucial evidence in the investigation of Ma Dayuan’s murder: Bai Shijing visited Madam Ma’s home to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, and she later said that she had persuaded him to kill her husband. The same date also anchors the eventual exposure of A'Zhu’s disguise, when Madam Ma recognized that the girl questioning her did not fit the private references she and Bai Shijing had exchanged that night.

The Night of Ma Dayuan’s Murder

Madam Ma recounted that Ma Dayuan had refused her demands and threatened to confine her at home if she disclosed anything. More than a month later, on the Fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month, Bai Shijing came to her home for the Mid-Autumn Festival. She said she encouraged his attachment to her and demanded that he kill Ma Dayuan. When Bai Shijing hesitated, she threatened to accuse him of having assaulted her; unwilling to kill her, he eventually killed Ma Dayuan.

The date therefore marks more than the visit itself. In Madam Ma’s account, it fixes the occasion on which her leverage over Bai Shijing turned into murder. Her story links his otherwise respected public standing to a secret act carried out under emotional pressure and threat of exposure.

A Coded Clue Recognizes A'Zhu

On the following year’s Mid-Autumn night, A'Zhu approached Madam Ma while disguised as Duan Zhengchun’s daughter. Madam Ma referred to the moon’s roundness and whiteness and asked whether A'Zhu preferred sweet or salty mooncakes. Those subjects echoed remarks Bai Shijing had made to Madam Ma on the Fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month the previous year. A'Zhu’s responses did not match the private context behind the allusions, and Madam Ma realized that the visitor was not the person she pretended to be.

This recognition turned a remembered exchange into a trap. Madam Ma inferred from the failed disguise and the visitor’s manner that Xiao Feng was involved, and she saw an opportunity to use him in her plan against Duan Zhengchun. The apparently casual references to festival food and the moon thus carried information from one year to the next, connecting the murder’s concealed history to the later confrontation.

Revelation and Consequences

When Madam Ma later explained the exchange to Xiao Feng, he understood why she had made those remarks during the earlier encounter with A'Zhu. The recollection exposed the private intimacy through which Madam Ma had pressured Bai Shijing and clarified how she had recognized A'Zhu’s disguise. It also showed that Madam Ma had intended to exploit Xiao Feng’s involvement in order to kill Duan Zhengchun and turn the Beggar Society against the Duan family of Dali.

The date’s narrative importance lies in this delayed disclosure: a festival visit first associated with Ma Dayuan’s killing resurfaced as the key to deciphering Madam Ma’s coded conversation. Its consequences extend beyond the murder, revealing the calculated use of secrecy and misrecognition in the conflicts surrounding Xiao Feng, A'Zhu, Bai Shijing, and Duan Zhengchun.