Ni Kuang
In "The Deer and the Cauldron", Cha departed from his usual writing style, creating in its main protagonist Wei Xiaobao an antihero who is greedy, lazy, and utterly disdainful of traditional rules of propriety. Cha intentionally created an anticlimax and an "antihero" possessing none of the desirable traditional values and no knowledge of any form of martial arts, and dependent upon a protective vest made of alloy to absorb full-frontal attack when in trouble and a dagger that can cut through anything. Wei is a street urchin and womanising weasel, with no admirable qualities whatsoever. The fiction writer Ni Kuang wrote a connected critique of all of Cha's works and concluded that Cha concluded his work with "The Deer and the Cauldron" as a satire to his earlier work and to restore a balanced perspective in readers.