We agreed on the twelve zodiac animals, but you've transformed into the Monkey King?

In the very center of the first row, a young man in a white suit reclined on a grand chair. He had a scantily clad dancer in his arms, one hand kneading her wantonly, while the other pointed at Lu Lanchun on the stage, his face flushed and lewd.

"I thought she was some virtuous and chaste woman, but she's just a virgin pretending to be innocent with her legs crossed." The young man laughed wildly. "Hey! You whore on stage, take off that annoying costume and sing me 'Eighteen Touches'!"

The onlookers were all stunned by the sudden outburst of vulgar language.

The fat merchant shrank back: "Has this little bastard gone mad? Daring to provoke us..."

"Shut up! Don't look that way!" The old smoker's voice trembled. "That's Marshal Lu's only son, Lu Xiaojia! The guys standing behind him all have military Mauser pistols tucked into their belts!"

The moment the words "Young Master Lu" were uttered, terror instantly enveloped the entire stage.

Hearing the whispers around him, Lu Xiaojia's vanity was satisfied. He raised his head, looked defiantly at the private room on the second floor, and shouted at the top of his lungs:

"Boss Huang! Your old bones can't handle this tender meat. Don't just sit there doing nothing! Name your price, I'll buy this bitch tonight. I'll teach her a lesson and see if her moans are better than her singing!"

Silence fell; the entire room was speechless.

"Tap, tap."

The cloth shoes stomped on the wooden stairs, the muffled sound slowly spreading out.

Huang Jinrong walked downstairs. He didn't have a single bodyguard with him, and his hands were behind his back in his long robe.

As he moved, the hearts of the two thousand onlookers were all hanging in the balance.

Huang Jinrong walked up to Lu Xiaojia.

Lu Xiaojia still had his legs crossed. He looked at the fat old man with receding hairline, his eyes full of contempt. He was a warlord's son who held a gun, a local thug in the concession, no matter how powerful he was, he was just a dog kept by foreigners.

"What? Boss Huang has agreed to part with it?" Lu Xiaojia grinned and reached out to pat Huang Jinrong's face.

Huang Jinrong suddenly pulled his right hand out from behind his long gown and swung it in a graceful semi-circle.

"Smack!!!"

A crisp slap echoed through the theater!

Lu Xiaojia's exquisitely beautiful face instantly deformed. Before he could even scream, he and the heavy armchair flew out and crashed heavily onto the floor of the corridor.

"Young Master!" Several bodyguards of the warlord were shocked and reached for the Mauser pistols at their waists.

"Click-click-click—!"

Instantly, dozens of dark Thompson submachine guns and Browning rifles emerged from the railings on the second floor of the stage, locking onto the heads of the bodyguards.

The bodyguards stood frozen in place, their backs soaked with cold sweat.

Lu Xiaojia lay on the ground, his ears ringing. He opened his mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with two bloody molars. Half of his face swelled up, turning blue and purple.

Huang Jinrong walked up to Lu Xiaojia, who was lying there like a dead dog, and looked down at him condescendingly.

"The warlord's son, even when he gets to the French Concession, will be a little beast who wants to recognize a godfather."

Huang Jinrong turned his head and waved to the backstage area:

"Drag this pile of garbage out and throw it on the street. Wash the ground clean with alkali; the smell is too foul, don't let it upset Miss Lu's throat."

……

Twenty minutes later, at the Longhua Military Governor's Office.

The military doctor, carrying his medicine kit, hesitated as he tried to touch Lu Xiaojia's swollen face with an iodine swab.

"roll!"

Lu Xiaojia kicked the military doctor over, the medicine box crashed to the ground, and glass bottles shattered everywhere.

He covered his exposed cheek and spat out two mouthfuls of bloody saliva, which landed on the military boots of Protector He Fenglin.

"Young Master, Boss Huang has deep roots in the French Concession. Why don't we consult with the Commander-in-Chief first..." He Fenglin advised, forcing himself to speak.

"Screw asking for instructions! My blood is my command!" Lu Xiaojia's eyes were filled with hysterical madness and humiliation. "Go! Drag out the guard battalion! Set that Vickers armored vehicle on fire!"

He Fenglin swallowed hard: "Young Master, those are heavy weapons that were just decommissioned from the front lines..."

"I'm going to mow that theater down with a heavy machine gun today!" Lu Xiaojia roared, his teeth chattering. "Half an hour! If I don't see the truck start within half an hour, I'll kill you first!"

……

The stench of blood in the main hall of the public stage had been masked by the soda water and sawdust sprinkled by the waiters.

The broken tea table was replaced with a new one, and the onlookers took their seats again. Although the atmosphere was still a bit tense, seeing the steady old man in the private room on the second floor put everyone's minds at ease.

Huang Jinrong leaned back on the sofa, and the tea server had just brewed a fresh pot of pre-Qingming Longjing tea.

He squinted as he listened to Lu Lanchun sing the line, "Look at the king sleeping soundly in his tent, fully clothed."

That's "Farewell My Concubine".

"Boss, that little brat will probably go and call for reinforcements," the old butler whispered in his ear.

Huang Jinrong didn't even lift his eyelids, a smirk playing on his lips: "Lu Xiaojia is nothing but a spoiled brat who abuses his father's power. If he gets beaten, at most he'll go back and cry, waiting for the governor's mansion to come and negotiate. Isn't that how things are in the martial world? Go, give Miss Lu a good beating, add a 'Havoc in Heaven' episode. Today in Shanghai, I want to see if any monkey can outrun this old Buddha."

He picked up the white porcelain bowl and took a sip of the piping hot Longjing tea.

The taste of power is mellow and bitter, yet addictive.

……

At the same moment, four military trucks loaded with elite military police escorted a Vickers armored vehicle belching black smoke, and like a steel beast, they directly crushed the boundary line between the Chinese-controlled area and the French Concession.

The two French officers stationed at the checkpoint had just sounded their sirens and raised their batons to try and stop them.

The armored vehicle didn't even apply the brakes.

The heavy machine gun on top was immediately turned around, its dark barrel aimed directly at the guard post. The Indian men were stunned. Eight silver dollars a month, what kind of life-threatening scheme was this?

The armored vehicle's tracks crushed the wooden barricades in the concession, sending splinters flying. The two policemen, terrified, dropped their batons and scrambled away.

Lu Xiaojia sat in the passenger seat of the truck, the cold wind blowing against his swollen face, making him grimace in pain.

"Drive faster." He stared at the brightly lit neon sign of the stage at the end of his vision, gritted his teeth and ordered, "When we get there, sweep two bursts of bullets into the doorway. Dead or alive, it doesn't matter."

……

"I, Old Sun, will—disrupt—that—Lingxiao Palace—"

On the stage, Lu Lanchun was singing the most brilliant part of "Havoc in Heaven," where Sun Wukong was incredibly arrogant.

"Boom—!"

A deafening roar, like a thunderclap from a clear sky, abruptly shattered her soaring vocals.

The mahogany gate of the Gongwu Stage, carved with a hundred dragons playing with a pearl, was smashed by a Vickers armored vehicle painted in camouflage green.

The erhu string snapped with a sharp "clang".

Huang Jinrong suddenly opened his eyes, and the covered bowl in his hand fell to the ground with a "crash" and shattered into pieces.

He lifted his pendant and jogged to the railing of the private room to look down.

More than a hundred regular military police officers in gray-blue uniforms, carrying Hanyang rifles with gleaming bayonets, flooded the entire first-floor lobby like a gray tide of steel.