Xiao Feng's Departure for Yanmen Pass is the turning point at which Xiao Feng gives up trying to live in the Central Plains and travels north, carrying an unresolved desire for revenge into the frontier world. The departure begins in grief and disillusionment, but its significance deepens as later encounters force him to confront what it means to belong to peoples locked in cycles of war and reprisal.

Causes and Decision to Leave

At the Ma residence, with flames consuming the rooms, Xiao Feng explains that he had intended to seek revenge but no longer knows who his enemy is. The person who might have identified that enemy, Madam Ma, has died, and the information he needs is lost. His revenge therefore becomes an unanswerable quest rather than a course of action he can pursue.

A'Zi treats this loss lightly, taking pleasure in the fact that Xiao Feng cannot discover whom to blame. Her delight provokes his anger, but he remembers A'Zhu's dying request that he care for her younger sister. He restrains himself and resolves to try to guide A'Zi instead of abandoning her to the influence of her martial master, Ding Chunqiu. His decision to leave thus begins amid competing obligations: he has lost A'Zhu and the prospect of revenge, yet remains bound by a promise to her.

Xiao Feng states that he can no longer reside in the Central Plains and cannot avenge his parents' deaths. He intends to go north of the pass and not return, first making for Yanmen Pass. When A'Zi says she is bound for Jinyang and wants to travel alongside him, he refuses to take her. She follows with her qinggong nonetheless. As snow begins to fall again, he strides into it, mourning the injustice and the revenge he can never obtain; at the same time, letting go of the burden brings him a measure of relief.

From Departure to Northern Encounters

The journey north does not remove Xiao Feng from the conflicts surrounding his identity. Among the Jurchen, he is welcomed as a Khitan guest. A Han-speaking salesman, Xu Zhuocheng, interprets for him, and the Jurchen chief Helibu's son, Wanyan Aguda, gives up his tent for Xiao Feng and A'Zi. The tribe's warm reception makes fellowship possible across a political divide: the Jurchen and Khitans are at war, yet the Jurchen admire heroes and respond to Aguda's praise of Xiao Feng.

That welcome is tested when a Khitan force attacks a Jurchen hunting party. The Khitans shoot without first clarifying the situation, and an old Jurchen hunter is killed. Xiao Feng cannot bring himself to harm his own people, but neither can he ignore the danger to Aguda's party. He disarms two Khitan riders without killing them, then uses a bow to wound four more in the shoulder or foot, bringing them down alive. The scene gives concrete form to the conflict his departure has opened: his Khitan descent pulls one way, while his obligations to the people beside him pull another.

Political History Behind the Conflict

Later events illuminate the inherited political pressures surrounding Xiao Feng's northern passage. The Liao succession history reaches back to YeLu LongXu, remembered as the Holy Emperor. His eldest son, YeLu ZongZhen, was designated heir, while the second son, YeLu ZhongYuan, was favored by their mother. ZhongYuan ultimately supported his brother rather than taking the throne, and ZongZhen made him the royal emperor brother and next in line. Yet after ZongZhen's death, the throne passed to his son, YeLu HongJi, not ZhongYuan.

HongJi tried to secure his uncle's loyalty by elevating him to royal emperor uncle, granting him precedence in succession and command of the army, and giving him exceptional court privileges. He also entrusted the Southern Chancellery to ZhongYuan's son, YeLu NieLuGu, Prince of Chu. These arrangements, rooted in earlier succession decisions and the power of the empress dowager, left the ruling order vulnerable to a rebellion by the very family entrusted with its military authority. When the Southern Chancellery's forces proclaimed ZhongYuan emperor and declared HongJi illegitimate, the old succession dispute became an immediate crisis.

The Frontier's Human Cost

The northern setting also exposes how imperial warfare is sustained and who bears its cost. Liao soldiers bring hundreds of captives from a raid near the Great Song border, along with goods taken from the region. Xiao Feng recognizes a recurring pattern: Liao troops raid Song civilians for provisions, while Song troops retaliate by raiding Liao settlements. The two sides give these practices different names, but to the people seized they mean the same danger and loss.

When a captive youth approaches with a supposed secret, Xiao Feng learns that the previous Prince of Chu had used Song captives as targets. The revelation sharpens his response to the captives before him. He reflects that, had his parentage not been disclosed, he would still have thought of himself as a citizen of Great Song; he and the captives share language and food, and he questions the divisions that turn one population into enemies for another. Once the raiding soldiers have departed, he releases the captives and urges them to move away from the frontier, warning that he may not be able to protect them another time. Their release turns his unease about retaliation into a concrete act of protection.

Significance

The departure is more than a change of destination. Xiao Feng leaves the Central Plains after losing both the possibility of revenge and the life he had imagined there; the northern journey places him among people whose political identities conflict with his own. His choices in the Jurchen-Khitan clash and his release of Song captives show that descent does not dictate whom he will protect. By setting personal grief against the repeated capture and reprisal of frontier civilians, the episode makes his northward movement the beginning of a wider reckoning with belonging, loyalty, and the cost of war.