Edition note: An independent English rewriting of the Chinese argument, shaped for English-language readers.
Whenever Hu Fei closes in on Feng Tiannan, Yuan Ziyi intervenes. After three rescues she reveals why: Feng is her father. Her mother, Yingu, was a fisherman's daughter whom Feng raped. When Yingu's father sought justice, he was beaten and humiliated, then died of illness. The person who came to demand an account became the crime's second destroyed life.
Yuan Ziyi is born into the disgrace imposed on her mother. Later she becomes a nun named Yuanxing and trains to avenge the wrong. Her teacher adds a condition: because Feng gave her life, she must save him three times before she may kill him. The two governing tasks of her adulthood—to rescue this man and to destroy him—are both written by others.
When she asks Hu to stop, she says Feng has no personal feud with him. He is involving himself in someone else's grievance. The argument is striking because the speaker is herself bound by the opposite rule: this man has a blood relation to you, therefore you owe him rescue. She asks Hu to calculate responsibility by proximity because proximity has been made the law of her own life.
After the third rescue, she steps aside. Feng dies, but Yuan Ziyi does not marry Hu. Her vows and religious name make the romance impossible, and she leaves despite loving him. In a novel filled with women fixed by men's words, this departure matters. Nan Lan escapes a suffocating marriage only to enter a harsher dependence on Tian Guinong. Ma Chunhua waits for a nobleman to acknowledge the children he wants but not the woman who bore them.
Yuan Ziyi cannot undo the violence that preceded her birth or the promise that organizes her revenge. She does not receive a life free of imposed meanings. Her narrow freedom appears at the end: she neither remains as the daughter who must keep paying a father's debt nor asks the man she loves to suspend his life around hers.
She walks away without turning back. It is the one major action in her story that no parent, teacher, enemy, or lover has prescribed.
Based on the Sanlian Bookstore edition of Jin Yong's The Young Flying Fox; later revisions differ in some details.
版本说明：中文原作；简体与繁体同页切换。
袁紫衣第一次拦住胡斐的时候，胡斐正要杀凤天南。
此后每一次胡斐追上凤天南，她都在。她出手，她拦，她把人放走。胡斐想不明白：这个姑娘跟他一路同行，彼此有情，可是一到这件事上就站到对面去。
三次之后她说了实话。
她是凤天南的女儿。
她母亲叫银姑，是佛山打鱼人家的女儿，皮肤黑，长得好看，人叫她黑牡丹。那年她十八九岁，挑了一担鱼送到凤府去。凤天南看上了她，妻妾满堂，还是强占了她。
她逃回家，怀了孕。
她父亲赶到凤府去理论。没有理论出什么来，反被羞辱打骂，几个月之后气病死了。
去讨公道的人，成了这件事里第二个被毁掉的。
银姑的肚子大了起来。叔伯们说是她害死了父亲，不许她戴孝，不许她向棺材磕头。
袁紫衣就是在这样的情形下生下来的。
她后来被一位师父带走，出了家，法号圆性。她学了一身武功，为的是回来报母亲的仇。
她答应过师父一件事：动手之前，先救凤天南三次。
理由是生身之恩。这个人是她父亲，给了她这条命；这条债要先还，还完了才谈得上别的。
她这一生要做的两件事，一件是杀这个人，一件是救这个人，而这两件事都不是她自己想出来的。
书里没有让她抱怨过这个安排。她照着做了：三次拦住胡斐，三次把凤天南放走。第三次之后她把话说清楚，从此不再拦。
她拦胡斐的时候，说过那两句话。第一句是我这辈子从没这样求过人。第二句是这个人跟你没有深仇大恨，你不过是为了别人的事。
说这句话的人，自己正被"这个人跟你有血缘"这一条捆着。她要求胡斐照着"有没有关系"来行事，因为她自己就是这么被要求的。
三次还完之后，凤天南还是死了。
她也没有嫁给胡斐。她是出家人，法号在身上，这件事从头到尾不可能。两个人一路同行了很久，最后她走了。
胡斐手上留着她给的一枚玉凤。
书里还有两个女人，处境是同一个形状。
一个是南兰。她是苗人凤的妻子。苗人凤是打遍天下无敌手的大侠，人极正直，也极不会说话；南兰跟他过日子，日子过得闷。田归农来了，说的是好听的话，她跟他走了，丢下丈夫和刚出生的女儿。
后来田归农得到了他想要的东西，也就不需要她了。
她走出一个不由自己的位置，走进了另一个更不由自己的位置。书里没有让谁替她说一句话，也没有让谁骂她。
另一个是马春花。她是商家堡的女儿，会武功，性子直。她遇上了福康安——那时她不知道那个人是谁，只知道那是个好看的、有本事的、待她好的公子。
她生了一对双胞胎。
后来那个人来了。他要的是那两个孩子，不是她。她死的时候还在等着他说一句认下来的话。
这本书里的女人，几乎每一个都被一个男人的一句话定住了：一句求恳，一句承诺，一句始终没有说出口的话。
袁紫衣是其中唯一一个自己走开的。
她走的那一天，胡斐追出去过。她没有回头。
她这一生里自己做主的事情只有这一件：她没有嫁给她喜欢的那个人，也没有留下来让他为难。
注：本文所据为金庸《飞狐外传》三联书店版。人物、情节与引述均出自该版本；新修版在若干处另有改动，与本文所论不涉之处不另作说明。