In Outlaws of the Marsh, Wu Song is one of a handful of characters who have something distinct in common: When they decide to unleash their wrath on a person or persons, they will not stop until everyone in their path is dead.
What separates Wu Song from the likes of, say, Lu ZhiShen (the former military official who has lived in, and been expelled from, a new monasteries by now), is that Wu Song's vengeance takes on a primal dimension, far more brutal and unforgiving than other capable characters. Lu ZhiShen's vengeance is almost comical -- he has a tendency to make wisecracks while pummeling an adversary, and his wrath is often an outgrowth of his simple, black-and-white personality: he pummels people for very personal reasons. Wu Song, by contrast, leaves no room for personality when taking vengeance. Indeed, when he's not in the throes of a murderous rage, Wu Song is a kind, even charming man. But those good qualities disappear when Wu Song is on the warpath; his violence and his tendency to get drunken in order to do something extreme suggest that things like vengeance are natural forces, carried out for reasons that reach beyond mere human interest. As a result, he cannot be resisted or bargained with. Unlike Lu ZhiShen, Wu Song can only do monstrous things by becoming a monster. But in his dealings with the woman held against her will by Wang the Monk, there is a suggestion that Wu Song's victims might not be only the people who fall beneath his blade. Perhaps his wrath has taken a toll on him, as well.
