Unintended Wrongs and Harm in Vengeance

Unintended Wrongs and Harm in Vengeance is the moral idea that gives A'Zhu’s death its meaning: a person may cause grave harm without intending it, and vengeance can punish the wrong person when it treats every injury as deliberate. After A'Zhu disguises herself as Duan Zhengchun to meet Xiao Feng in her father’s place, Xiao Feng strikes her without recognizing her. Her sacrifice makes the danger of revenge personal, but it cannot undo the consequences of his blow.

The revenge that sets the trap

Xiao Feng approaches the meeting seeking revenge for the deaths of his five relatives, while A'Zhu knows that Duan Zhengchun is her father. She has overheard her parents speaking of the daughters they abandoned and her father’s wish to find them. Realizing the conflict between Xiao Feng’s pursuit and her father’s life, she considers what she can do without asking Xiao Feng to abandon his vengeance outright.

A'Zhu first pretends to be ill, then disguises herself as Xiao Feng and tells Duan Zhengchun that the appointment at the bluestone bridge has been canceled. She next assumes her father’s appearance and goes to meet Xiao Feng herself. The plan places her between the avenger and his intended target: Xiao Feng believes he is confronting Duan Zhengchun, while A'Zhu accepts the danger of standing in her father’s place.

The mistaken blow and recognition

The disguise holds until Xiao Feng notices that the person he has lifted feels far lighter than Duan Zhengchun. A flash of lightning reveals A'Zhu beneath the false face. The recognition comes only after Xiao Feng has struck with full force; he understands at once that the person he meant to attack is the woman he loves, and that she is fatally injured.

A'Zhu asks whether he is angry with her. Xiao Feng answers that he is angry with himself, then raises a hand against his own head before she asks him to promise never to harm himself. His response shifts the scene from the pursuit of an enemy to the anguish of a man who has become the source of the harm he most regrets. He cannot explain what he would have done had he known Duan Zhengchun was A'Zhu’s father, and that uncertainty makes the mistake no less consequential.

A'Zhu’s explanation

A'Zhu says she had wanted to spend her life with Xiao Feng, but believed that asking him to give up revenge for his five relatives would not resolve the conflict. Instead, she offers a different understanding of responsibility: she reminds him that he did not intend to harm her, just as Duan Zhengchun, she argues, may have caused her parents’ deaths through an unintended mistake. Her point does not deny the harm; it challenges the assumption that every terrible outcome proves deliberate malice.

Xiao Feng initially tries to imagine alternatives: A'Zhu could have warned her father to leave, or arranged for the meeting to occur elsewhere and later. But he realizes that these possibilities do not explain why she chose to take the risk herself. He understands that her sacrifice is for his sake—not simply to save her father or to argue that an unintentional wrong can be forgiven. She fears that killing Duan Zhengchun would draw the Dali Duan family, with its Six Meridians Divine Sword, into an enduring conflict with Xiao Feng. Her choice is an attempt to spare him the further consequences of revenge.

Death, guilt, and the cost of vengeance

A'Zhu dies in Xiao Feng’s arms. He tries to revive her by transferring his internal energy, but she does not respond. A'Zi blames him for her elder sister’s death; Xiao Feng accepts responsibility and tells A'Zi to kill him. He even exposes his chest and urges her to use her poisoned weapons, but A'Zi flees after seeing the wolf-head tattoo there. His self-condemnation is not an abstract regret: he seeks punishment and cannot imagine continuing his life without A'Zhu.

He carries her body through the rain and remains with it from morning until sundown. Remembering that A'Zhu had survived an earlier injury because Xiao Ci’s Great Diamond Palm struck the copper mirror in Xiao Feng’s hand, he keeps trying to save her through his internal energy. This time, however, his palm had struck her directly, and she remains motionless. The contrast makes the error irreversible: the earlier injury left room for hope; this blow does not.

With A'Zhu dead, Xiao Feng concludes that he can no longer seek revenge on Duan Zhengchun, who has already lost his daughter in his place. He also loses interest in the Beggar Society’s great undertaking and his former ambitions, questioning what purpose they can have when he is a Khitan. In the bamboo grove, he digs two adjoining graves and prepares a marker identifying himself as the rash Khitan Xiao Feng. The unintended wrong has thus overturned the logic of vengeance: it does not restore the dead or settle the past, but leaves the avenger grieving, morally wounded, and unsure where he belongs.