Shan Family Manor

Shan Family Manor was Shan Zheng’s residence outside the eastern gate of Tai’an, and its destruction turns a place associated with local generosity and martial strength into the scene of a family-wide death and the apparent erasure of evidence. When Xiao Feng and A'Zhu reach it, the fire has already taken the household; their discovery deepens the mystery surrounding the “prime villain” they have been pursuing.

Setting and Reputation

Shan Zheng lived about one li beyond Tai’an’s eastern gate. The family was prominent in the region, and villagers remembered Shan Zheng as a benefactor who had helped the poor and those struck by hardship for decades. The household was also known for its martial ability: according to one villager, even the family’s five-year-old children knew martial arts.

The manor’s surroundings helped contain the fire. Deep trenches encircled the property, and no one lived nearby, so the flames did not spread to neighboring homes. Villagers nevertheless gathered to fight the blaze, carrying water and scattering sand as they tried to bring it under control.

The Fire and Its Victims

Xiao Feng and A'Zhu arrive at twilight after riding east toward the manor. From a distance they see smoke and hear gongs and calls for help; nearer the site, the heat and flames confirm that the fire is immense. They learn from the villagers that none of Shan Zheng’s family—more than thirty people, men and women, young and old—escaped.

The villagers suspect deliberate arson: they reason that someone must have blocked the doors, since a household so practiced in martial arts should otherwise have been able to get out. They also connect the disaster to the earlier deaths of Shan Zheng’s sons, killed in Henan, and blame Xiao Feng. The accusation is wrong, but its public force is immediate: the crowd repeats it while the family’s manor burns.

Xiao Feng and A'Zhu at the Ruins

The fire is not the outcome Xiao Feng expected. After killing two of the Shan family’s sons, he knew that Shan Zheng’s descendants might seek revenge, and he had prepared himself for a confrontation in Tai’an. Instead, he and A'Zhu reach the manor after the family has suffered a catastrophe. Xiao Feng responds with sadness and sympathy, even though he had anticipated hostility from the household.

When a villager curses Xiao Feng and imagines that he led followers in the slaughter, A'Zhu reacts angrily and startles her horse into kicking the speaker. Xiao Feng smiles, though his expression remains sorrowful. As the villagers continue to accuse him, he recognizes from the reports and the burned remains that the entire family has perished.

Evidence and Narrative Significance

A'Zhu condemns the supposed killer for destroying not only Shan Zheng and his sons but also the rest of the family and their home. Xiao Feng replies that such destruction would make sense if the killer wished to cut off every trace. He recalls that Shan Zheng had spoken in the Apricot Forest of letters hidden in his house, letters whose handwriting he had compared with that of the “Leading Big Brother.” Shan Zheng had regarded one as genuine.

A'Zhu draws the implication: if the manor and its papers are burned, Xiao Feng cannot find the letters and learn the hidden figure’s name. The explanation remains their inference rather than a witnessed account of who set the fire, but it gives the destruction a possible purpose beyond killing. The manor’s fall thus marks a double loss: more than thirty lives, and a promising route toward identifying the person behind the concealed letters. The villagers’ blame of Xiao Feng, meanwhile, shows how his already notorious reputation obscures the difference between what he has done and what others attribute to him.