Thousand-Gold Elder

An Elder of the Beggar Sect's old faction, "Thousand-Gold Elder" Young Master Li, had a son, Li Fugui.

He once held an official rank, but gave away his entire fortune to join the Beggar Sect for the sake of Jianghu righteousness. In truth, he had been caught embezzling and the Imperial Court sent men to seize his estate. Knowing he could not escape, he simply spent the whole night scattering his wealth, giving every coin to beggars to buy himself a good name and hide inside the Beggar Sect, crying thief while playing the thief-catcher and claiming the authorities had wronged him. The young Wang Erzhuang and Nangong Yuan were fooled by him and thought him a Good Person; Nangong Yuan even admired his generosity.

After joining the Beggar Sect, he used his favors to order the Beggar Sect's Disciples around and make dirty money for him. He gathered up the remnants of the defeated twenty years ago: the men were worthless, so he killed them; the women had their hands and feet hamstrung and were handed out to his underlings as playthings. Any children born were sold to the Jin Kingdom, or mutilated and passed off as born crippled, the better to win a passerby's sympathy and cheat them out of their money. Since the victims were all people of the Wulin and not Commoners, the Imperial Court did not care, and Thousand-Gold Elder exploited that loophole to rake in a fortune through wicked means.

In the end, Wang Erzhuang struck him dead with a single palm at a grand assembly of the Beggar Sect, and his orphaned son Li Fugui became Wang Erzhuang's adopted son.