Feng Ruzhi’s short character biography in Where Winds Meet mentions a “caring older brother” who once stood by her, then disappeared from her life. The game never spells out his name in that snippet, which is why players keep asking who he is.
The brother in question is Zheng E.
How Zheng E connects to Feng Ruzhi
Zheng E is one of the major antagonists tied to the Kaifeng region. His story is scattered across several quests, including Granary of Plenty at the Ever-Normal Granary and the Twelve Year Grudge side quest that plays out through time‑shifted memories in Sorrowfield Village and the ruins near Gracetown.
Those quests show Zheng E as a once‑altruistic heir of a wealthy grain clan who tried to feed starving people during the collapse of Later Han. His kindness drew bandits to his home, Gracetown, leading to a raid that killed many villagers, including his younger sister. The surviving Zheng family fled to Sorrowfield Village, an infertile and impoverished area, where years of hardship and exposure to the Dawn‑to‑Dusk fungus drove Zheng E toward obsession and revenge.
In his journal entry, one of Zheng E’s biographies is titled “The Sacrificed Young Boy”. That text explicitly mentions Feng Ruzhi by name and frames her in relation to him, casting him as the older protective figure whose choices and sacrifices helped shape who she becomes. That is the “caring older brother” alluded to in her snippet.
Why the relationship is easy to miss
Where Winds Meet uses a fragmented storytelling style. Zheng E appears first as the mastermind behind the contaminated Ever‑Normal Granary, where he weaponizes the Dawn‑to‑Dusk fungus and preserves his sister’s body inside the granary as part of his revenge plan against Kaifeng. Feng Ruzhi, by contrast, arrives later as the Bloodscale Hall leader tied to the Heavenfall campaign and then as the Verdant Hill Village world boss.
The emotional and historical link between them is not delivered in a single cutscene. Instead, it surfaces when you read character journals and assemble context from spread‑out side quests. Feng Ruzhi’s biography mentions losing her family in the Yellow River floods and stepping up to lead the Dragon Hall. Zheng E’s biography quietly folds her into his own tragedy, labelling him as the “sacrificed” elder figure in her past.
The result is that many players reach Feng Ruzhi’s fight and read her flavor text without having fully internalised Zheng E’s journal entries or the Twelve Year Grudge flashbacks, so the “caring older brother” line feels detached from any named person.
What this adds to Feng Ruzhi’s story
Knowing that Zheng E is the caring older brother reframes both characters:
- For Zheng E, his descent from idealistic grain master to fungal terrorist is no longer only about his own clan and sister. It becomes part of a broader pattern of older figures sacrificing themselves or their morals for those they care about, including Feng Ruzhi.
- For Feng Ruzhi, the “Marriage Competition” boss fight and her role as Bloodscale Hall Master sit on top of a history of loss guided by an elder who tried, and ultimately failed, to protect and reshape the world through grain and poison. Her declaration at the Yellow River, taking leadership after disaster, echoes the way Zheng E tried to shoulder responsibility for starving people and then for revenge.
The game leaves room for future expansions on their shared past, but the identity of the brother referenced in her biography is clear: it is Zheng E, the sacrificed young boy who grew into Kaifeng’s most tragic grain‑master villain.
