A'tang and his father arrive at the outskirts of the city of liangcheng, where they find that the local government is not doing anything about the murder of the family of a viceroy twelve years ago. The local government, the narrator tells us, is nothing more than a decoration. The narrator feels that a'cheng's air of nobility is not fit for a bandit. He wonders if it would be too cruel for the bandit to find out that his whole family has been murdered.