Huang Wen found himself in a luxurious corridor that abruptly terminated in a single, unremarkable door. Beyond lay the heart of the third underground level, filled with the noises of the supplement trade.
"No more roads?" Huang Wen scanned the area. This had to be the final barrier.
Just as he was about to use the Tuxedo's scanner on the door, it hissed open, revealing a brightly lit interior. Two men in cheap suits hurried out, their expressions stressed. Huang Wen caught a glimpse of another, highly secured elevator bank inside before the door began to swing shut. Access was clearly restricted by card swipe.
Huang Wen used the seconds they gave him. He pressed against the wall. The Tuxedo's stealth was perfect—not just visual invisibility, but also thermal dampening. He was an undetectable, cool void.
The key vulnerability, he knew, was still his physical form. He was solid. He was not a ghost. But his control over his footfalls was absolute. A Wing Chun master at 34 Essence didn't "walk"; he glided, silently distributing his weight.
He glided to the secure door, extended the watch interface, and casually brushed it over the card reader.
BEEP! Access Granted.
The door slid open.
He stepped into a floor that felt completely out of place beneath a grubby karate dojo. This was a high-tech, corporate office space. Accountants, secretaries, and mid-level managers sat hunched over glowing monitors, surrounded by whiteboards tracking profits, territory boundaries, and personnel performance.
"Is this a gang or a highly leveraged startup?" Huang Wen wondered, amused by the sight of crime bosses worrying about deductions for late clock-ins and full-time vs. contractor status. The Goren Gang was less a band of thugs and more an aggressively managed criminal enterprise.
He moved silently through the cubicles. The workers were stressed but not important. They were merely calculating the profits from the blood and drugs above them.
But then, a faint, muffled sound reached him from a closed, reinforced door at the end of the hall—the sound of raised voices, arguing over logistics.
Huang Wen crept closer, activating his superhuman hearing. He could just make out snippets of the conversation: "...where did Benson disappear to?..." "...Sheriff Yves needs a final settlement..." "...whose people are going to handle the cleanup and the new scapegoat..."
"Sheriff Yves," Huang Wen confirmed, a chilling smile touching his lips. "The corrupt cop. So they're still worried about the murder weapon and the loose ends. And they mentioned me. Perfect."
He had stumbled into the Goren Gang's Board of Directors. They were organized, alert to Benson's disappearance, and actively planning their next move.
Now is the time. They are all in one room, and they are not expecting a direct, military assault.
He approached the door, deactivated the Tuxedo's invisibility, and with a slight twist of his wrist, turned the knob and pulled the heavy door open.
He stepped into a large, rectangular conference room. Around a massive mahogany table sat about a dozen men. They were the true leaders—the financiers, the strategists, the men who hired the killers and paid the cops. They had no idea their security system had just been laughed at.
Only one man, a stocky figure with a nervous, corporate look, was standing slightly behind the imposing figure at the head of the table—the bodyguard.
The man at the head of the table, Goren himself, looked up from the table full of scattered papers, his face twisting in annoyance.
"Who the hell are you? I didn't summon anyone!" Goren's voice was sharp. "Since when does the Goren Gang employ such unprofessional idiots? Get out!"
Huang Wen calmly walked past the table and locked the door from the inside with a quiet click. He surveyed the room, his eyes lingering on each face.
"Are all the architects of my father's murder here?" Huang Wen asked, his voice low and steady. "Tell me, before I decide who dies first."
Goren's surprise morphed into arrogant amusement. "Oh, you're not one of ours. Kid, you've got stones. You walk right into the lion's den. Yes, the core leadership is here. Now, who sent you? What's your target?"
"My target," Huang Wen replied, spreading his arms slightly, the tuxedo seeming to absorb the light, "is everyone in this room. Today, you've all reached the end of your very lucrative careers."
A dozen hands simultaneously went for concealed weapons. The meeting room instantly became a kill zone. Dark pistol muzzles emerged and pointed directly at Huang Wen's chest.
"You're a brave idiot, kid. We don't know who put you up to this, but since you're volunteering for an early grave, don't blame us," one of the members snarled, his finger tightening on the trigger.
"Wait a second..." another member, a man with a prominent scar slicing across his cheek, squinted at Huang Wen's face, his expression turning to shock. "He looks like the son of that Wing Chun guy, the one Benson couldn't handle! I didn't think the kid had the balls to leave Chinatown!"
Goren's smile turned predatory. "Well, well. It's the vengeful son! What an exquisite coincidence. We were literally discussing the most efficient way to kill you and make it look like a tragic police error. And you deliver yourself like a Chinese takeout order!"
The scarred man, clearly the most aggressive, shoved his chair back and stood up, raising his pistol, his eyes blazing with mocking cruelty.
"Vengeance, is it? You think some parlor tricks your monkey father taught you can stop a gun?" The Scarred Man strutted forward, the muzzle pointed at Huang Wen's heart. "I'll tell you something, boy. I was the one on the rooftop. I pulled the trigger. I shot your father, and that's why I got this seat! Your family's death was my promotion! Say thank you!"
"Thank you, indeed."
Before the Scarred Man could even cock his pistol, Huang Wen moved. It wasn't a blur, but a perfectly efficient, terrifyingly fast acceleration. Utilizing the Wing Chun chain punching principle, he closed the two-meter gap in an eye-blink, concentrating his 34 Essence power into a single, devastating Inch Punch variation.
CRACK!
The sound was not a gunshot, but the sickening thud of massive force meeting soft tissue and bone. The Scarred Man's pistol clattered to the floor, forgotten. His chest cavity instantly collapsed and deformed under the blow. Broken ribs became shrapnel, puncturing his lungs and heart. He was thrown backward, a spray of blood arcing over the mahogany table, before his crumpled, lifeless body slammed into the wall.
He was dead instantly.
"FIRE! FIRE, YOU IDIOTS!" Goren screamed, diving under the table to avoid the sudden, bloody mess.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Gunfire erupted in a chaotic, deafening volley. The room filled with the acrid smell of burning gunpowder and the rapid-fire thwack of slugs.
But Huang Wen did not retreat. He did not dodge.
As the first shot was fired, his right hand, guided by instinct and the Tuxedo's internal A.I., smoothly swept the coat's collar upward. The fabric, reinforced with futuristic polymers, instantly wrapped around his face and neck, protecting his head and torso.
Bullets pinged harmlessly off the material. They struck the collar, the chest, the sleeves—the Tuxedo was a lightweight shield, and Huang Wen was an armored demon.
Ignoring the noise, Huang Wen surged forward, a bulletproof missile of pure, focused hatred.
THWACK!
He delivered a bone-shattering Pak Sau (Slapping Hand) strike to the temple of the nearest gangster, who dropped like a stone, his skull fractured.
CRUNCH!
Another, trying to reload his small pistol, was met with a devastating Gum Sau (Pinning Hand) strike, crushing his windpipe.
The massacre was over in seconds. The gang members—thugs who relied on their weapons and numbers—were terrified, dropping their small-capacity pistols as they ran out of ammunition. They weren't soldiers; they were businessmen who hired soldiers.
They scrambled, trying to form a pathetic barrier around the ducking Goren.
"What... what kind of technology is that?" Goren screamed, looking up from beneath the table at the unscathed, perfectly tailored Chinese man. The Tuxedo's fabric was smooth and unblemished, having absorbed the barrage of bullets without a scratch.
Goren couldn't reconcile the image: a Chinese Wing Chun kid from Chinatown wearing what appeared to be some kind of high-society, high-tech, bulletproof armor suit.
"This doesn't make sense!" Goren frantically whispered to the bodyguard, clutching his collar. "That suit—it's worth a king's ransom! And I've never heard of this level of protection being available! Who gave it to him? Why would some martial arts fanatic get an Experimental Survival Tuxedo?"
He knew, instantly, that this was no local problem. His gang was facing something far more powerful, far more connected, than any of his contacts could handle.
Huang Wen simply smiled, his expression cold and unforgiving. He took a slow, deliberate step toward the huddle of remaining leaders. Vengeance was about to be served.