Shan Zheng

Shan Zheng, known as the Impartial Judge, was a prominent martial artist in Tai’an and a long-standing benefactor of the region’s poor. His murder and the destruction of his household turn the mystery surrounding the “Leading Big Brother” into a matter of both personal grief and deliberate evidence suppression: the fire kills Shan Zheng’s family and appears to erase letters that might have identified the man behind a series of killings.

Identity and standing

Shan Zheng lived outside Tai’an’s eastern gate in Shandong, where he was widely known. Villagers described him as someone who had helped the poor and people struck by disaster for decades. His reputation rested not only on martial skill but also on sustained local generosity, which makes the destruction of his household a communal loss as well as a calamity for Qiao Feng’s investigation.

The Shan family was known for its martial ability: according to one villager, even its five-year-old children knew martial arts. That detail sharpens the mystery surrounding the family’s fate. The villagers suspected that the attackers had blocked the doors after setting the fire, preventing people inside from escaping despite their ability to defend themselves.

The fire at the Tai’an manor

Qiao Feng and A'Zhu reached Tai’an at twilight while traveling toward the Shan family’s home. About a li beyond the eastern gate, they saw smoke rising and heard gongs and cries for help. The fire was already intense by the time they arrived; nearby villagers were carrying water and scattering sand, while trenches around the manor and the absence of neighboring houses helped keep the blaze from spreading.

The people gathered there said that no one among the Shan family’s more than thirty members had escaped, regardless of age or sex. Qiao Feng recognized that the reports were true from the smell of burned bodies carried out of the fire. The crowd mourned the family and blamed Qiao Feng, repeating the accusation that he had killed Shan Zheng’s sons in Henan and might now have attacked the manor. A'Zhu, angered by the accusations, startled her horse into kicking one of the men who voiced them; the incident showed how completely the public account had made Qiao Feng the presumed culprit.

Qiao Feng had expected that visiting Shan Zheng might lead to a major fight. After Qiao Feng had killed the Shan family’s two “Tigers,” the household had reason to hate him, and he believed Shan Zheng and his descendants would not forgive him. He had not intended to kill anyone on this journey, but he anticipated resistance. Finding the manor already destroyed instead left him feeling sorrow and sympathy for the family he had once expected to face as opponents.

The missing letters and the hidden enemy

The fire’s significance extends beyond the deaths. Shan Zheng had previously said that he kept several letters from the man called the “Leading Big Brother” in his house, and that he had compared their handwriting with another letter and judged it genuine. Qiao Feng and A'Zhu therefore understood the burning as potentially purposeful: if the killer feared that Qiao Feng would search the manor and discover the letters, destroying the house would remove that path to the enemy’s identity.

This suspicion joins Shan Zheng’s death to a broader pattern. Qiao Feng observes that Shan Zheng had been friendly with Zhao Qiansun, who would surrender his reputation rather than reveal the hidden man’s identity, yet the mysterious enemy had killed both men. A'Zhu also connects the burning to the killings of Qiao Feng’s adoptive parents and Venerable Xuan Ku, and to the deaths of Granny Tan and the Shan household. Their conversation does not establish who the killer is, but it frames the repeated violence as an effort to prevent Qiao Feng from learning the truth.

The scene also reveals the limits of reputation as evidence. To the villagers, Qiao Feng’s established public image as a villain explains both the earlier killings and the fire. For Qiao Feng and A'Zhu, the pattern points instead toward an unknown enemy who anticipates their movements and may be destroying witnesses or records. Shan Zheng’s absence thus deepens the mystery: his death removes a potential source of testimony, while the burned letters may have carried the clearest clue to the “Leading Big Brother.”

Narrative role and aftermath

Shan Zheng’s role in the story is concentrated in the consequences of his death. He is introduced through the respect he earned in Tai’an, then becomes the center of a scene in which public mourning, false accusation, and investigative suspicion overlap. His household’s destruction gives physical form to the danger surrounding the hidden identity: evidence that might have survived in the manor is lost with the home.

For Qiao Feng, the fire is a reversal of the confrontation he had prepared for. He arrives expecting to meet a hostile family and instead finds a community grieving people who had been killed before he reached them. The contrast strengthens his sense that the unknown adversary is acting ahead of him, while the villagers’ accusations show how his own reputation can conceal the actual perpetrator. Shan Zheng’s legacy as a local benefactor therefore stands against the destruction attributed to the supposed villain—and against the ease with which suspicion settles on Qiao Feng.