Xiao Feng—Bai Shijing

Xiao Feng—Bai Shijing is a relationship of trusted service broken by coercion and concealed betrayal. Its decisive significance lies in Xiao Feng’s discovery that Bai, whom he regarded as an upright and loyal man, helped kill Ma Dayuan under Madam Ma’s pressure, while stopping short of every act she later attributed to him.

Trust and the Murder of Ma Dayuan

Bai Shijing had long appeared to Xiao Feng as a scrupulous, dependable ally. Madam Ma’s confession recasts that trust: after Bai visited her home on the Fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month, she pressured him to kill her husband, Ma Dayuan. She threatened to expose him by claiming that he had assaulted her, and promised to follow him if he complied. Bai, unwilling to kill her, nevertheless killed Ma Dayuan. The account presents his action as a grave betrayal produced by pressure, not as proof that his loyalty to Xiao Feng had vanished.

The Cover Story and Its Limits

The killing was disguised to implicate the Murong family. Madam Ma said that she gave Ma Dayuan Ten Fragrance Bewitching Powder and ordered Bai to break his throat so that the death would appear to have been carried out with the Throat-Lock Capturing Technique. Bai participated in the murder, but Madam Ma clarified that he did not devise every part of the later plot. When Xiao Feng asked who stole his fan, she said Bai had not done it: Quan Guanqing persuaded Elder Chen to enter Xiao Feng’s house after Xiao Feng had left and take it. This distinction helps Xiao Feng separate Bai’s actual crimes from the conspiracy’s other actions.

Betrayal in the Conspiracy Against Xiao Feng

Madam Ma also said that she had tried to force Bai to expose the secret of Xiao Feng’s birth. Bai remained loyal enough to resist and, under the pressure she described, considered taking his own life rather than carrying out her demand. She eventually let him go on that occasion and enlisted Quan Guanqing instead. Quan then joined the effort to bring Xiao Feng down, with Elder Xu drawn into the scheme as well. Xiao Feng’s questioning connects the attempted disclosure of his identity to the wider conspiracy that cost him his position and standing.

Recognition and Significance

When the confession finally untangles why Quan Guanqing had acted as the chief conspirator while Bai Shijing was the one captured as a traitor, Xiao Feng identifies the moral distinction between them. He calls Bai a good man ruined by Madam Ma, while still recognizing Bai’s responsibility for Ma Dayuan’s death. Their relationship therefore turns on divided evidence: Bai committed a betrayal that Xiao Feng cannot excuse, yet refused other demands that would have directly harmed him. The revelation replaces a simple picture of a loyal officer or a wholly faithless one with a more troubling account of loyalty compromised by fear and manipulation.