Xiao Feng—Wanyan Aguda

Xiao Feng and Wanyan Aguda’s relationship is a friendship built through deeds rather than shared language: Aguda welcomes a stranded Khitan into his Jurchen community, while Xiao Feng later risks himself to protect Aguda and the tribesmen from a Khitan attack. Their alliance rests on hospitality, admiration, and reciprocal aid, and it tests whether ethnic enmity must govern the treatment of an individual.

First Meeting and Recognition

When Xiao Feng encounters Aguda in a snowstorm, both men are far from home and initially unable to speak to one another. Aguda identifies himself by pointing to his nose and giving his name; Xiao Feng answers in the same way. Once they establish that Xiao Feng is Khitan and Aguda Jurchen, the meeting becomes a source of relief rather than suspicion. Xiao Feng knows that the Jurchen live east of the Liao Empire and are renowned as capable fighters, but the immediate basis of their connection is the recognition of a fellow traveler in the snow.

Their first exchange also makes respect physical and legible. After the men share a tiger they have killed, Aguda watches Xiao Feng tear meat from the animal with his bare hands and examines his arm in open admiration. Their words are few, but gestures convey what speech cannot: Xiao Feng’s strength earns Aguda’s regard, and Aguda’s welcome gives Xiao Feng a companion when he has been lost in the wilderness.

Hospitality in the Jurchen Camp

Xiao Feng explains by gesture that he is lost and seeking ginseng to treat the gravely ill A'Zi. Aguda responds with practical assistance, indicating that ginseng is plentiful if Xiao Feng will follow him. He knows the terrain well enough to guide Xiao Feng through the blizzard, and after two days of travel they reach the Jurchen camp. Aguda leads him to the chief’s tent and tells the assembled tribesmen how Xiao Feng killed a tiger without weapons; the crowd greets him with praise rather than hostility.

The welcome matters because the Jurchen and Khitan are at war. The chief, Helibu, is Aguda’s father, and Aguda is his second son. A Han merchant, Xu Zhuocheng, interprets for Xiao Feng and explains that Aguda’s standing and praise for his guest help the tribesmen accept the Khitan as an honored guest despite the conflict between their peoples. Aguda gives up his own tent for Xiao Feng and A'Zi. Xiao Feng initially tries to refuse, but accepts when Aguda persists, and the tribe holds a feast in their honor. Hospitality here is not an abstract declaration: it supplies shelter, food, and a community in which Xiao Feng can care for A'Zi.

The relationship continues through ordinary companionship. Xiao Feng joins Aguda on daytime hunts and learns the Jurchen language in the evenings with Xu Zhuocheng’s help. As his command improves, he also studies Khitan, whose language resembles Jurchen. He eventually becomes able to communicate without an interpreter. The gradual removal of the language barrier follows the trust already established through action, extending their friendship from a moment of mutual recognition into life shared within Aguda’s community.

Mutual Aid and A'Zi’s Recovery

Xiao Feng’s stay among the Jurchen is shaped by his responsibility to A'Zi, still incapacitated after her injuries. He hunts and gathers ginseng for her, and continues to use his internal energy to regulate her breathing. By spring, daily ginseng and his care have helped her improve: he needs to assist her less frequently, and she can sometimes manage a few words, though her limbs remain weak and he still attends to her daily needs.

Xiao Feng understands this care as a way of honoring A'Zhu’s devotion and fulfilling her wish. That motive gives Aguda’s hospitality a particular consequence: it creates the safe conditions in which Xiao Feng can persist in caring for A'Zi. When Aguda invites him on a bear hunt in early summer, Xiao Feng accepts because A'Zi is doing better and he can leave her without the same anxiety. Their friendship thus works through shared practical responsibilities, not only the public admiration prompted by Xiao Feng’s strength.

Friendship Tested by War

The alliance faces its sharpest test when a hunting party is attacked by Khitans. Xiao Feng sees that only Aguda and five young tribesmen have survived from the original party, while the other Jurchen have been killed. With the group exposed on open ground, he judges that continued fighting could cost Aguda his life. Yet simply attacking the Khitan forces risks killing many people of Xiao Feng’s own ethnic group. He therefore tries to stop the violence by calling on them to withdraw and deciding to capture their red-robed leader, rather than answer the attack with indiscriminate killing.

This choice makes the personal obligations formed through Aguda’s hospitality collide with Xiao Feng’s Khitan identity. He cannot stand aside while the Jurchen who treated him as an honored guest are in danger, but he also seeks a way to protect them without turning the encounter into a larger slaughter of Khitans. His intervention is therefore both an act of loyalty to Aguda and an attempt to contain the consequences of ethnic warfare.

From Personal Loyalty to Political Power

Later, when rebellion breaks out in the Liao capital, Xiao Feng’s place in Aguda’s circle belongs to a wider political upheaval. Liao’s succession history helps explain the stakes: YeLu ZongZhen had once been designated heir, while the powerful Empress Dowager favored his brother YeLu ZhongYuan; after ZongZhen became emperor, he gave ZhongYuan a position next in line to the throne. The succession eventually passed instead to ZongZhen’s son YeLu HongJi, who later elevated ZhongYuan and entrusted him with command of the army, while ZhongYuan’s son became Prince of Chu and held military authority in the Southern Chancellery. These inherited rivalries set the background for the rebellion Xiao Feng later confronts.

After the fighting, Xiao Feng brings ZhongYuan to YeLu HongJi. HongJi, overcome with relief, takes Xiao Feng’s hands and offers to share his country with him. Xiao Feng advises him to pardon his uncle to stabilize the troops, and HongJi then appoints Xiao Feng Prince of Chu and Lord of the Southern Chancellery. Xiao Feng had killed the former Prince of Chu and captured ZhongYuan in order to save his sworn brother; he says he did not seek office and asks HongJi to withdraw the appointment. The episode marks a striking change in Xiao Feng’s circumstances, from a guest dependent on Aguda’s guidance to a man entrusted with high military and political authority in Liao.

The appointment does not erase the obligations that made Xiao Feng’s friendship with Aguda meaningful. HongJi expects him to be based in Nanjing and prepare for a possible campaign against the Great Song, but Xiao Feng questions whether the army is ready and whether the time is right. The contrast is central to the relationship’s significance: Aguda’s friendship first offers Xiao Feng help across an ethnic divide, while later political authority places him within the machinery of that divide. The bond with Aguda is grounded in hospitality and mutual protection, not in a claim that the two peoples’ conflicts have disappeared.