The rain had become their world. It sheeted down, a cold, relentless curtain that turned the labyrinthine back-alleys of Port Klang Bay into a flowing river of grime and reflected neon. Their lungs burned, raw from gulping the wet, metallic air. Their legs, heavy with a fatigue that went deeper than muscle, threatened to buckle with every stumbling step.
Long Yizhe ran at the front, his mind a silent, screaming void. The only thing solid in the chaos was the press of the leather cylinder against his ribs, a cold, damp weight that felt less like an object and more like a brand.
Behind him, Hu Weilong's breaths came in ragged, furious growls. "Bastard! COWARD! Face me! Face me properly!" he roared into the rain-slashed darkness, not at anyone, at everything. His big hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists, the urge to turn back and fight a physical pain in his chest.
"Save your breath, you idiot!" Sha Jie hissed from behind, his voice a low, sharp blade in the downpour. He moved with a predator's instinct, his eyes constantly scanning the shadows between overflowing dumpsters and rusted fire escapes, expecting the graceful phantom from the warehouse to materialize at any second. His own knife was out, held low and tight against his thigh.
Ying Zhen brought up the rear, his head constantly on a swivel, his hearing straining over the drumming rain and their own pounding footfalls. "Left here! Now! Through the broken fence!" he barked, his voice unusually sharp, the "Eagle" in him seeing the escape route the others missed.
They scrambled through a gap in a chain-link fence, the torn metal snagging on their jackets. They didn't stop until they found a sliver of shelter deep in a dead-end alley, beneath a crumbling concrete staircase that led to nowhere. They collapsed against the wet brick, chests heaving, the four of them huddled in the damp, dark space.
The silence that descended was heavier than the rain. It was filled with the echoing *thud* of Master Chen's body hitting the floor, the silent, brutal efficiency of the massacre, and Shao's cold, bored smile.
Hu slammed his fist into the brick wall. The impact was a dull, wet crack. "ARGH! We left him! We left them all!" Spittle flew from his lips, mixing with the rain on his face. His broad shoulders shook not from cold, but from a helpless, consuming rage.
"What were we supposed to do, Weilong?" Sha's voice was flat, drained of all emotion, a defense mechanism against the horror. "Die with them? Become more stains on the floor for that... that thing to step over?" He wiped his blade clean on his wet pants with a slow, deliberate motion. "He wasn't human. The way he moved..."
"He was human," Long whispered, his voice hoarse. He finally spoke, his words pulling the others' gaze to him. He was staring at nothing, his face pale. "He was just... more. It was a style. A technique. I've never seen anything like it." His analytical mind, the part that made him "Dragon," was already trying to dissect the nightmare, to find logic in the illogical.
Ying, who had been silently monitoring the alley entrance, turned. His sharp eyes, usually so observant, were wide with a different kind of sight. "The Phantom Shadow Kick," he said, the name dropping into the space like a stone.
The others looked at him.
"My grandfather... he told stories," Ying continued, his voice low. "From the old country. Before the societies were just about territory and money. When they were about styles, about lineages. The Phantom Shadow Kick was a legend. A lost technique of the 'Shadow Moon' school. They said it was so fast, the kick was felt before it was seen. That it could bypass any defense. They said it was a killing art, banned for generations." He looked at each of them. "That's what killed Master Chen. A legend."
The revelation hung in the air, making their situation feel even more immense, more terrifying. They weren't just up against a rival gang. They were up against a piece of living history, and that history was murderous.
Hu shook his head, refusing to be drawn into the mysticism. "I don't care about legends! He's dead! The Green Dragon is finished! What do we do now? Go to Uncle Feng? To the other captains?"
"Are you insane?" Sha snapped, his composure breaking for a second. "We don't know who to trust. That hit was clean. Too clean. They knew where he would be, when he would be there. How? Someone on the inside gave him up." The word *traitor* went unspoken, but it echoed in the space between them.
The truth of it settled on them, a new layer of cold dread. Their own family was suspect.
It was then that Long remembered the weight in his jacket. With trembling, cold-numbed fingers, he unzipped his jacket and pulled out the leather cylinder. It was about the length of his forearm, darkened with age and now damp with rain and his own sweat. One end was slightly torn from his frantic grab.
"What is that?" Ying asked, his keen eyes locking onto it.
"I... I don't know. I found it when I fell. It was under a crate near... near where it happened." Long's voice was barely a whisper.
In the faint, erratic glow of a flickering streetlight at the alley's mouth, they huddled closer. Long carefully, reverently, unrolled the scroll. The material was not paper, but a strange, thick parchment that had somehow resisted the moisture. The script and diagrams that were revealed were breathtakingly old.
It was written in a classical, elegant hand, accompanied by intricate illustrations of human figures flowing through impossible stances, their bodies mapped with fine lines that denoted energy channels and focal points.
At the top of the exposed section were four powerful characters, brushed with a force that seemed to leap off the page even after centuries:
**九陽真經 - Jiǔ Yáng Zhēn Jīng - The True Scripture of Nine Suns**
Below it, the text began, speaking of cultivating a burning, unyielding Yang energy within the body, of forging the spirit in an internal furnace, of strikes that could shatter stone and unleash torrents of raw, explosive power.
They stared, their breath caught in their throats. The horror of the night was momentarily eclipsed by awe. This was no gangland ledger. This was a treasure. A sacred text.
"This is what he was protecting," Long breathed, the realization dawning on him with terrifying clarity. "This is why they came. Not just for him. For this."
Hu stared at the diagram of a man whose palm strike seemed to generate its own light. "This... this is the stuff of old movies. This can't be real."
As if in answer, a sharp voice cut through the rain from the mouth of the alley.
"Well, well. Look what the rats dragged in."
Four figures stepped into the dim light, blocking their only exit. They were big, dressed in the black tracksuits and red armbands of the Iron Tiger Syndicate. These weren't phantoms like Shao; these were street enforcers, blunt instruments. The one who spoke had a face like a hatchet and a chain wrapped around his knuckles.
"The boss said some little Dragons might have scurried away. Told us to sweep the alleys. Looks like we hit the jackpot." He grinned, a cruel, gap-toothed expression. "Shao will be real pleased we found you."
The four friends scrambled to their feet, their exhaustion replaced by a fresh surge of adrenaline-fueled fear. They were cornered, outnumbered. Hu stepped forward, putting himself between the enforcers and his friends, his body automatically falling into a clumsy fighting stance.
"Stay back," he growled, the threat sounding hollow even to his own ears.
The lead enforcer laughed. "Or what, kid? You gonna cry for your dead boss?"
He lunged, the chain whistling through the air aimed at Hu's head.
Time seemed to slow. Hu saw the blow coming, knew he couldn't get out of the way. He braced for the impact.
But Long, standing just behind him, was still holding the scroll. His eyes weren't on the enforcer; they were frantically scanning the ancient text. His mind, reeling from the diagrams, latched onto a single line, a principle of energy and alignment: *"The root is in the feet, issued from the legs, directed by the waist, and manifested in the fingers. The power is one thread, unbroken."*
It wasn't a technique. It was a concept. A feeling.
"Hu! Your stance! Widen your root! Power from the ground up!" Long yelled, the words coming out before he could even think about them.
It was a desperate, insane thing to say in the middle of a life-or-death fight.
But Hu, trained from childhood to trust Long's strategic mind even when he didn't understand it, instinctively obeyed. He shifted his back foot, digging his heel into the wet ground, settling his weight.
The change was subtle, but critical.
Instead of trying to awkwardly block the chain with his arms, he pivoted at his newly stabilized waist, letting the whistling metal whip past his face by a hair's breadth. The momentum of the enforcer's missed swing carried him forward, off-balance.
And Hu, now planted like a tree, drove his fist forward.
It wasn't a skilled punch. It was raw, untrained power. But it was *connected* power. It came from the earth, up through his legs, coiled in his core, and exploded from his shoulder.
It connected with the enforcer's jaw with a sound that was sickeningly solid. The man's head snapped back. His eyes rolled up into his head, and he dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, out cold before he hit the wet concrete.
Silence.
The other three Iron Tiger enforcers froze, their cruel confidence replaced by shock and confusion. They had just seen their leader, a seasoned fighter, taken down by a single punch from a scared kid.
Hu stared at his own fist, then at the man on the ground, his rage momentarily stunned into silence. He had never hit anyone that hard in his life.
Sha and Ying didn't hesitate. Seizing the moment of surprise, they moved. Sha became a blur of motion, his knife flashing. He didn't stab, he slashed, cutting straps and drawing lines of fire across arms, forcing the enforcers to drop their weapons. Ying targeted precise, vulnerable points—a kick to a knee, a sharp jab to a throat—his movements efficient and debilitating.
Within seconds, the remaining enforcers were on the ground, moaning in pain and confusion.
The four friends stood amidst their fallen opponents, breathing heavily. The rain washed the blood from the small cuts Sha's knife had made. They looked at each other, a new, terrifying understanding dawning in their eyes.
The scroll was real.
The knowledge in it was real.
And it had just saved their lives.
Long quickly rerolled the precious parchment, his hands now shaking for a completely different reason. He shoved it back inside his jacket.
"We can't go to anyone in the Green Dragon," he said, his voice firm now, the voice of their Dragon emerging from the shock. "Not until we know who we can trust."
"Then where do we go?" Ying asked, his voice tight.
Long looked down the alley, toward the deeper, darker parts of the city. "We disappear. We find a place they'd never think to look." His mind was already racing, plotting. "And we learn."
He looked at Hu, whose knuckles were already swelling and turning purple. He looked at Sha, who was calmly wiping his blade clean again. He looked at Ying, whose sharp eyes were already looking for their next path.
"We learn what this is," Long said, patting the scroll hidden in his jacket. "And we become what we need to become to survive."
The weight of the scroll was no longer just a physical burden. It was their map, their weapon, and their only hope. The legacy of the Storm Tiger had chosen them. And their first lesson had just begun in a rain-soaked alley, written in blood and ancient ink.