Madam Ma

Madam Ma is Ma Dayuan’s widow and a central architect of the Beggar Society conspiracy against Xiao Feng. Her initial appearance as a bereaved woman conceals a chain of calculated betrayals: she manipulates Bai Shijing and Quan Guanqing, exploits the letter left by Wang Jiantong, and turns her resentment of Xiao Feng into a campaign to destroy his standing. Her final disclosures unravel the conspiracy, while the mirror held before her at the end confronts her self-image with the consequences of her own malice.

Identity and Introduction

Madam Ma lives at the Ma family home outside Xinyang, a modest cluster of three tiled houses beside a brooklet. The four practice pits in the yard recall Ma Dayuan’s martial training, now interrupted by his death. When Xiao Feng and A'Zhu arrive at dusk, she comes to the door dressed in white mourning clothes. She greets A'Zhu as Elder Bai, unaware that the visitor is in disguise, and invites her in for tea. Xiao Feng’s presence is concealed behind a name A'Zhu invents.

Her outward presentation is composed but not uncomplicated. A'Zhu sees a trace of bitterness in her expression, while Xiao Feng notices that, despite her age and lack of makeup, she retains a delicate appearance. His earlier attraction to her has lost its power over him. The contrast between her mourning attire and the secrets she guards establishes the double role she will play: grieving widow in public, calculating participant in the Society’s internal struggle.

The Hidden Name and the Society’s Secret

A'Zhu approaches Madam Ma under the guise of warning her that Xiao Feng may be coming for her. She recounts the deaths of Elder Xu, Grandpa Tan, Granny Tan, Zhao Qiansun, Shan Zheng, and Zhiguang, presenting them as part of a trail of violence attributed to Xiao Feng. Madam Ma reacts with alarm, then insists that she has nothing left to live for since Ma Dayuan’s murder. A'Zhu uses the pretense of offering her an Elder’s position in the Beggar Society to encourage trust and draw her into conversation.

Xiao Feng leaves the room at A'Zhu’s request, understanding that the gesture is designed to make Madam Ma feel that the matter is confidential. He listens from outside. After a pause, Madam Ma asks why Elder Bai has come again, a question that surprises him. A'Zhu continues to build confidence by speaking as though she is an ally and by offering the prospect of revenge against the person responsible for Ma Dayuan’s death.

When Madam Ma finally approaches the hidden “Leading Big Brother,” she first avoids naming him. Her oblique talk of a bright, round moon leads A'Zhu to answer with a reference to the fifteenth day and mooncakes. Madam Ma then hints at the Duan family’s Purely Yang Finger. Pressed through this indirect exchange, she identifies the man as Duan Zhengchun, younger full brother of the emperor of Dali and the South-Stabilizing Prince. She says his earlier role in the attack at Yanmen Pass was presented as a defense of the Great Song, but was also meant to protect Dali from the Liao Empire. In her account, the Society had reason to protect him because Dali and the Great Song were strategically interdependent, and his powerful position made open disclosure dangerous.

Madam Ma demands that A'Zhu swear not to reveal the secret. A'Zhu’s oath is artfully framed as a promise on behalf of Bai Shijing, preserving her own freedom to act. The exchange shows how secrecy and carefully managed appearances govern the conspiracy: Madam Ma believes the name is safe, while her visitor has obtained the fact she came to uncover.

Resentment and the Conspiracy Against Xiao Feng

Later, when Xiao Feng confronts her, Madam Ma admits that her hostility began because he had never looked at her. She says she urged Ma Dayuan to expose Xiao Feng’s Khitan birth, but Ma Dayuan refused. She then turned to Bai Shijing, who also resisted at first. Madam Ma says she used their relationship and the threat of accusing him of assaulting her to compel him to kill Ma Dayuan. She identifies the fourteenth day of the eighth month, when Bai Shijing came to the house for the Mid-Autumn Festival, as the occasion on which she set this pressure in motion.

The confession makes Ma Dayuan’s murder part of a larger effort to punish Xiao Feng for an imagined personal slight. When Ma Dayuan refused to help expose Xiao Feng, Madam Ma says, he threatened to confine her and silence her. She presents his defiance as an offense against her, then describes how she prevailed on Bai Shijing to commit the murder. The killing thus served both to remove Ma Dayuan as an obstacle and to advance her plan against Xiao Feng.

Madam Ma also explains how the plot widened. She ordered Bai Shijing to expose Xiao Feng’s origins; when Bai Shijing faltered and nearly took his own life rather than betray Xiao Feng, she turned to Quan Guanqing. After drawing Quan Guanqing into cooperation, she sought Elder Xu’s involvement, judging that Quan Guanqing alone could not bring Xiao Feng down. She clarifies that Bai Shijing did not steal Xiao Feng’s fan: Quan Guanqing persuaded Elder Chen to take it after Xiao Feng had left home. These distinctions resolve why Quan Guanqing led the public conspiracy while Bai Shijing was the traitor actually captured.

Madam Ma claims that her object was to make Xiao Feng fall from his honored position, lose his place in the Beggar Society, and become an outcast in the Central Plains. She had read Wang Jiantong’s letter in Ma Dayuan’s safe, opening and resealing it without disturbing the wax. The letter gave her the information she needed to turn Xiao Feng’s concealed Khitan identity into a weapon. Her account reveals the conspiracy not as a single accusation but as a coordinated sequence of manipulation, murder, and public exposure.

Final Revelations and Death

Xiao Feng asks who wrote the letter to Wang Jiantong and supplied the identity of the “Leading Big Brother.” Madam Ma says that, after the deaths of the other people who knew the secret, only she and the unnamed man remain. The evidence here does not disclose the name through her answer. Her insistence on the secret’s importance, alongside her earlier disclosure of Duan Zhengchun’s identity to A'Zhu, leaves a sharp contrast between the information she shared under false confidence and the name she continues to withhold from Xiao Feng.

As her strength fails, A'Zi presents Madam Ma with a mirror. She sees a face marked by dust and blood and, in the narration, by the fear, hatred, anger, and other emotions accumulated over her life. Madam Ma had been proud of her beauty; the mirror gives her a final sight that contradicts that self-conception. Xiao Feng tells A'Zi to take the mirror away, but A'Zi wants Madam Ma to see what she has become. Madam Ma dies without closing her eyes.

Character and Narrative Significance

Madam Ma’s importance lies in the way private resentment becomes public upheaval. A grievance rooted in Xiao Feng’s indifference drives her to exploit the Beggar Society’s trust, weaponize Wang Jiantong’s letter, and turn several members against their former leader. Her manipulation of Bai Shijing and Quan Guanqing does not erase their responsibility, but her confession reveals how their different roles were arranged and why the apparent evidence against Xiao Feng took the shape it did.

Her scenes also connect the Society’s internal crisis to a wider political history. The name she reveals to A'Zhu belongs to a prince whose actions at Yanmen Pass were linked, in Madam Ma’s account, to the security of Dali as well as the Great Song. Yet she treats this political secret as leverage within a personal and institutional struggle. At the end, the unresolved identity of the letter’s author preserves a further mystery, while the mirror closes her own story on the divide between the beauty she prized and the destructive conduct she has confessed.