The silence in the park was no longer a silence of tension. It was the silence of a tomb.
The last, wet, tearing sounds from the tiger's pounce on Captain Liu had faded. All that remained was the low, desperate moaning of "Rhino," the one-armed Level 2 Adept, who was bleeding out on the grass.
Then, a new sound.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK...
It was a rhythmic, mechanical beating, growing from a distant hum to a deafening roar in seconds. The air pressure changed. A hurricane of downdraft blasted the park, scattering leaves, trash, and the fine, red mist that had been Diaz.
A single, blinding-white searchlight cut through the darkness, illuminating the scene of the mauling.
A matte-black military helicopter, emblazoned with the silver BSA dragon-and-sword, hovered twenty feet above the ground.
The side door slid open.
But a rope-ladder didn't drop. A figure simply... leapt.
He dropped twenty feet and landed on the grass with the impossible, weightless silence of a falling leaf. Not a speck of dust, not a drop of blood, stained him.
He was a young man, perhaps twenty-two. He was not wearing a uniform. He was clad in expensive, deep-blue, embroidered silk robes, the kind of clothing that belonged in an ancient, royal court. His hair was tied back in a perfect, severe topknot, held in place by a single, jade-green pin. This was Li Wei, the "Shining Serpent" of the local, City U Guardian Family.
He stood for a moment, his handsome, aristocratic face a mask of bored, cold annoyance. He surveyed the carnage: the unrecognizable remains of Captain Liu, the screaming, one-armed Rhino, the vaporized stain that was Diaz.
He didn't wince. He didn't show pity.
He scoffed.
It was a small, sharp, "tsk" of pure, unadulterated disdain.
"Pathetic brutes," he said, his voice as smooth and cold as his jade pin. "Your 'Awakening' is nothing before true heritage. You're just animals, given a slightly sharper set of claws."
Rhino, his vision blurring from blood loss, looked up at the god-like figure. "Sir..." he groaned. "It's... it's a Level 5... internal Qi... you... you have to run..."
Li Wei's gaze flickered to him, and it was so cold, Rhino's words died in his throat.
"You have no idea what true power is," Li Wei said.
He slowly, deliberately, cracked his knuckles.
The sound was not the normal, human pop of joints. It was a series of sharp, percussive cracks, like small caliber gunfire. A visible, shimmering, silver-white aura, the internal, forged power of a Level 4: Grandmaster, briefly enveloped his hands.
"You were hammers, trying to fight a furnace. I am a master smith."
He sniffed the air, his expression one of disgust, as if the smell of blood and suburbia was offensive to him. "It's heading deeper into this... filth. Disgusting."
He turned his back on the dying BSA team.
"I will subdue this beast," he announced to the night air, "and show you the power of a real Gongfa."
He didn't run. He didn't sneak.
He confidently strode, his silk robes not even whispering, into the dark, tree-lined suburban street, following the sound of the now-distant, rampaging tiger. The helicopter's spotlight followed him, a divine, holy beam, painting him as the savior, and the world had been waiting for.