Xiao Feng and the Beggar Clan

Xiao Feng and the Beggar Clan are bound by a painful reversal: once their leader and a man who counted their members as friends, he is rejected after his Khitan identity is revealed, yet refuses to turn that rejection into vengeance. As he becomes a senior official of the Liao Empire, the Clan’s loss of him clarifies the divide between political belonging and personal attachment—and exposes how little rank can replace the fellowship he has lost.

Former Leader and Rejection

Xiao Feng’s connection to the Beggar Clan is not merely a former office. Its members were his subordinates and friends, and his recollection of their shared past persists after the Clan refuses to let him remain its leader. The rejection follows the disclosure that he is Khitan, a change in how others identify him that does not erase the ties formed before his ancestry became decisive.

That break has a public and political context. Liao and Great Song have fought for generations, and the borderlands are caught in a retaliatory cycle: Liao soldiers raid civilians for provisions, while Song forces retaliate with raids of their own. Xiao Feng has seen members of both peoples suffer from these practices. His former community’s hostility toward him belongs to the same larger world in which ethnic identity can outweigh personal history, even though he sees the Clan’s members as people he once served and befriended.

The Question of Vengeance

While riding with AhZi among the Liao troops, Xiao Feng hears her argue that the Beggar Clan deserves to be destroyed for expelling and mistreating him. She contrasts the Clan, which she calls a small faction, with the thousands of soldiers he now commands. Her proposal turns his new power into a test: whether rejection will become permission to retaliate.

Xiao Feng answers that the Clan was right not to keep him as its leader once it knew he was Khitan. That judgment does not mean that the rejection causes him no pain; it means he does not regard past service and friendship as debts to be collected by force. The people AhZi urges him to punish are, in his understanding, still his former companions. He cannot make himself treat them as enemies merely because they no longer accept him.

When AhZi presses him on whether he would accept the leadership again if the Clan regretted its decision, Xiao Feng does not answer with a simple claim that reconciliation is possible. Instead, he observes that the heroes of Great Song regard Khitans as cruel villains, and that a higher Liao office will only deepen their hatred of him. The question exposes the trap in his position: he remains emotionally attached to the Clan, but cannot expect that attachment to restore his former place among its members.

Belonging Across the Border

Xiao Feng’s response to AhZi is shaped by the conflict between his descent and his upbringing. Although he is Khitan, he grew up in Central Plains and feels more love for Great Song than for the Liao Empire. Looking south toward the distant mountains, he thinks of crossing them to return to Central Plains. If the Beggar Clan would admit him as an ordinary, duty-free disciple, he would feel more at ease there than as a powerful Liao official.

The wish is significant precisely because it does not erase the Clan’s rejection. Xiao Feng imagines a humble place within it, not a restored command or a means to exercise power over its members. Yet this imagined return remains at odds with the world around him: his Khitan ancestry defines him to others, and his appointment places him at the center of Liao authority. The Beggar Clan therefore stands for more than a lost position; it represents a community in which his past relationships once mattered more than the boundary now used to exclude him.

Rank and the Limits of Power

The irony sharpens when Xiao Feng becomes Lord of the Southern Chancellery. The title gives him command and political standing, and AhZi treats it as proof that he can answer the Clan’s rejection with overwhelming force. He refuses that logic. His authority over Liao soldiers does not give him a moral claim to punish former friends, and he recognizes that military power cannot repair the breach in belonging.

His reluctance to serve the Liao court further distinguishes office from allegiance. After the Liao emperor orders him toward a campaign against Song, Xiao Feng considers how to honor the emperor’s regard for their sworn brotherhood without carrying out a conquest he does not wish to undertake. He plans to go to Nanjing, wait about a year, and then seek resignation, intending to leave if it is refused. His difficulty resembles his attachment to the Beggar Clan: in both cases, personal bonds pull against political roles, but neither bond guarantees that he can return to the life he prefers.

Significance of the Relationship

The Beggar Clan relationship brings Xiao Feng’s divided identity into intimate focus. The border conflict can be described through armies, offices, and competing claims, but his exchange with AhZi makes its cost personal: he has lost a community whose members were once his friends, and he cannot undo that loss by becoming more powerful. At the same time, his refusal to destroy the Clan preserves a measure of continuity between the leader he was and the man he remains.

The relationship is thus neither a simple reconciliation nor an uncomplicated feud. Xiao Feng acknowledges why the Clan rejected him, feels the sting of its treatment, and still refuses to answer with collective punishment. His longing to return as an ordinary member, rather than a commander, reveals the distance between the status available to him and the belonging he actually wants.