Nanjing is the Liao Empire’s southern capital, also called Yanjing and Youdou, and a strategic frontier city whose position and military role shape Xiao Feng’s life there. After he becomes Lord of the Southern Chancellery, its familiar Central Plains speech offers him a temporary sense of return, while the city also confronts him with the human cost of the Liao–Song conflict.

Names, Setting, and Strategic Position

The account identifies Nanjing with Yanjing, Youdou, and the capital of You Province; it notes that the city is known as Beijing in modern times. It describes a city 36 li across, with eight gates, including northern gates whose names express allegiance to the Liao emperor. Markets, restaurants, squares, shrines, temples, and government offices fill the city, which Xiao Feng and A'Zi cannot fully explore in half a day.

Nanjing’s importance is not only administrative. The narrative traces its strategic place in the Liao–Song balance to the Sixteen Prefectures, ceded to the Liao Empire by Shi Jingtang in return for Liao support. The territory includes You, Ji, Zhuo, Shun, Tan, Ying, Mo, Xin, Gui, Ru, Wu, Wei, Yun, Ying, and Houzhou. Its position gives Liao forces a route for deep incursions into the south, while the Song lacks comparable defensive strongpoints; the account links that advantage to the long-running war between the empires.

A Capital in a Succession Crisis

The city’s political significance is bound up with Liao succession. YeLu HongJi’s grandfather, YeLu LongXu, had designated his eldest son YeLu ZongZhen to inherit, although the empress favored the younger YeLu ZhongYuan. ZhongYuan ultimately supported his brother rather than seize the throne, and ZongZhen rewarded him with the status of royal emperor brother and a place next in the succession. Yet after ZongZhen’s death, the throne passed to his son HongJi, who later made ZhongYuan royal emperor uncle and supreme commander of the army, while granting ZhongYuan’s son YeLu NieLuGu control of the Southern Chancellery and the title Prince of Chu.

That arrangement leaves the capital and its government exposed when NieLuGu rebels. He declares his father emperor and brands HongJi a usurper, invoking the earlier succession dispute to challenge the reigning emperor’s legitimacy. HongJi worries that his uncle’s command of the army, his son’s control of the Southern Chancellery, and the edict’s claim could turn the Liao army and populace against him. Nanjing thus stands not merely as a seat of power but as part of the institutional machinery at the center of the rebellion.

Xiao Feng’s Residence and Divided Belonging

After the rebellion, Xiao Feng accepts an appointment as Lord of the Southern Chancellery, but he is troubled by the task of serving a state whose campaign against the Song conflicts with his upbringing in the south. He resolves to go to Nanjing with A'Zi, remain in office for a time out of regard for YeLu HongJi and their sworn brotherhood, and seek resignation later. His plan makes the city a provisional home rather than a settled allegiance.

When Xiao Feng and A'Zi arrive, the broad streets and busy markets are full of people from the south, and Central Plains speech surrounds them. Both welcome the familiarity. The next day they dress plainly and mingle with the crowds, exploring the streets and markets. The comfort is qualified: Xiao Feng is a Khitan by birth and an official of Liao, yet the language and customs of the southern population recall the life in which he was raised.

The City and the Captives

Nanjing also brings the frontier’s violence directly to Xiao Feng’s attention. A Liao troop returns with hundreds of Song captives, mostly young women, along with goods taken in a raid near Zhuozhou. Its captain offers captives and valuables to Xiao Feng as a customary tribute, expecting approval. Xiao Feng instead sees the raid through the memory of Song soldiers capturing Khitan civilians at Yanmen Gate and recognizes the reciprocal pattern of border violence.

The account explains that Liao troops are not supplied with rations or salaries and are expected to obtain their needs by raiding neighboring territories, a practice called Beating the Grass Valley. Song retaliation is called Beating the Standing Valley. For people living near the border, these expeditions make ordinary survival precarious; the captives are poor villagers who cannot buy their release. Xiao Feng has already regarded the system as cruel and immoral, but witnessing the captives and hearing that the former Prince of Chu had used Song people as live targets sharpens his recognition of what the policy permits.

Xiao Feng asks where the raid took place and speaks to the captives in Chinese. A young woman from Zhang Village pleads to return to her parents, while hundreds kneel and a teenage boy remains standing, claiming to have a secret. Before that secret redirects the scene, Xiao Feng considers the kinship of shared language and food across the divisions among Khitan, Song, and Jurchen peoples. He orders the captives released and advises them to move away from the border, warning that he may not be able to save them another time. Their release gives the city a moral significance beyond its gates and offices: in Nanjing, Xiao Feng uses the authority of his Liao position to interrupt, briefly, the cycle of raiding and reprisal.

A Recurring Setting

Nanjing reappears as the place to which You TanZhi returns after capturing the frost silkworm for A'Zi. He carries it back in a gourd and reports his success; A'Zi orders it kept in a clay urn. Though the scene belongs to another plot thread, it places the silkworm episode within the same Liao capital where Xiao Feng’s uneasy service and humanitarian choice have unfolded. The city accommodates both imperial administration and private schemes, linking the larger border conflict to the characters’ daily movements.