Madam Ma—Quan Guanqing

Madam Ma—Quan Guanqing is a conspiratorial alliance forged through Madam Ma’s sexual leverage: she says she slept with Quan for three nights, after which he pledged to bring down Xiao Feng. Her confession reveals that Quan helped organize the attack on Xiao Feng and stole the fan used to expose his birth, clarifying the division of responsibility between the conspirators.

Recruitment and conspiracy

Madam Ma recounts that, after pressuring Bai Shijing, whom she calls the old pervert, she turned to Quan Guanqing. She says she slept with Quan for three nights and that he then obeyed her in everything, promising to take care of the plot and ensure its success. Her account presents intimacy not as a private affair but as leverage in a political scheme: Quan became an active conspirator after Madam Ma secured his cooperation.

She also explains that she judged Quan alone insufficient to topple Xiao Feng, so she sought Elder Xu’s involvement as well. The conspiracy thus widened beyond the pair, with Madam Ma arranging multiple participants rather than relying on Quan by himself. Her confession identifies her as the organizer who recruited and coordinated allies, while Quan undertook practical actions on the plot’s behalf.

The stolen fan and divided responsibility

Madam Ma’s explanation resolves Xiao Feng’s lingering question about why Quan had been identified as the chief conspirator while Bai Shijing was captured as a traitor. When Xiao Feng asks whether Bai stole his fan, she says that he did not. According to her, Bai had remained loyal to Xiao Feng and would not commit such a wrong against him.

Instead, Madam Ma attributes the theft to Quan. After Xiao Feng left his home, Quan persuaded Elder Chen to enter the house and steal the fan. The distinction matters: Quan helped expose Xiao Feng’s birth by obtaining the object, while Bai’s involvement in the wider affair did not include that theft. Madam Ma’s testimony therefore separates the conspirators’ actions and corrects Xiao Feng’s understanding of who carried out this particular part of the plot.

Confession and narrative significance

The revelation comes during Madam Ma’s account to Xiao Feng, when she describes her own recruitment of Quan and his promise to manage the conspiracy. Her words answer two connected questions: how Quan came to act against Xiao Feng, and why the stolen fan implicated someone other than Bai Shijing. The alliance is shown through its concrete methods—sexual persuasion, promises, and the enlistment of further accomplices—rather than through a general claim of shared purpose.

The relationship also exposes the limits of Xiao Feng’s earlier understanding of the conspiracy. Quan’s position as chief plotter and Bai’s capture as a traitor had seemed difficult to reconcile; Madam Ma’s account makes the distinction legible by assigning the fan theft to Quan and affirming Bai’s loyalty on that point. The relationship’s decisive significance lies in how it links private coercive leverage to the public campaign against Xiao Feng.