Letter of the Leader

The letters attributed to the “leading big brother” are a material trace of the hidden identity at the center of the Yanmen Pass investigation, but their evidentiary value is repeatedly obstructed by concealment and destruction. Shan Zheng had said that he possessed several such letters and had compared one with a separate letter addressed to Chief Wang; after his manor was burned, the surviving handwriting of that other letter became a clue that could exclude an attribution, but not establish who wrote it.

The Letters as Evidence

At the Apricot Forest gathering, Shan Zheng stated that several letters by the “leading big brother” were kept in his house and that he had compared one with the letter before him, concluding that it was genuine. His claim made the manor more than a residence: it held documents that might identify the person whose name was being concealed and help explain the attack at Yanmen Pass.

The comparison was specifically between the letters Shan Zheng kept and the letter addressed to Chief Wang. The evidence does not preserve the contents of the stored letters or identify their writer. What it does establish is that Shan Zheng believed the comparison confirmed the authenticity of the letter he had examined.

Destruction and Concealment

After Shan Zheng and his sons were killed, the Shan family manor was burned. A’Zhu questioned why the whole family and even the house had to be destroyed; Qiao Feng reasoned that the purpose was to eliminate the letters along with the family, leaving no written evidence that could reveal the concealed name. The destruction thus erased a potential source of confirmation, turning the missing documents into part of the mystery.

A separate recollection of the letter addressed to Chief Wang supplies a further complication. Venerable Zhiguang had torn off its signature and swallowed it, deliberately preventing Qiao Feng from learning the writer’s name. Although the signature was lost, Qiao Feng remembered the handwriting clearly. The letter therefore survived as a recognizable piece of evidence while its most direct identifying mark had been removed.

Handwriting as a Clue

Later, Qiao Feng compared that remembered handwriting with the writing on Duan Zhengchun’s scroll. The scroll’s rounded, flowing, elegant hand did not match the letter’s script; Qiao Feng concluded that the two texts were written by different people. This comparison ruled out one proposed identification, but it did not reveal the letter’s author.

The letters’ role is therefore defined by an imbalance: their existence is reported, their contents remain unavailable, and the surviving letter has lost its signature. Handwriting can test an attribution, while the burned archive and removed signature prevent a conclusive answer. As physical evidence, the letters propel the investigation precisely because they promise certainty that the surviving clues cannot deliver.