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

Deathly silence fell over the Gonghexiang Wharf, where only the sound of the surging waves of the Huangpu River could be heard.

"Bang!" A sudden gunshot shattered the silence. One of Mad Dog Qiang's loyal henchmen, who had somehow pulled an old-fashioned homemade gun from behind a pile of sacks, pulled the trigger behind Wen Xiao with bloodshot eyes.

However, with the blessing of the "Battle" authority, Wen Xiao's remaining dynamic vision had already surpassed the limits of humanity. Without even turning his head, he flicked a bloodstained dagger at his feet with the toe of his right foot.

"Whoosh—!" Using the momentum from his waist and hips, the short knife shot backward! Before the henchman could even aim, the short knife, carrying terrifying kinetic energy, pierced through his right shoulder blade. With a muffled "thud," it pinned him firmly to the tea sack behind him.

The homemade gun misfired, and all the iron pellets hit the air.

"Ah—!" The henchman's agonizing scream became the final straw that broke the camel's back.

Even the top-ranking member of their own gang had his throat crushed in two seconds, what was the point of fighting? The rest of the men fled the dockyard in disarray, abandoning their armor and weapons, not even daring to collect the corpses scattered on the ground.

On the Hongmen side, all the surviving brothers were dumbfounded.

The crowd parted, and Chen Jinbiao, the old man in charge of Hongmen at the Shiliupu Wharf, emerged with a shaved head and a limp. This veteran of half his life, who had tasted blood on the front lines of Zhabei, now looked at the mangled limbs and Wen Xiao coughing up blood, his eyes filled with deep awe.

According to the "undersea" rules of Hongmen in Shanghai, it would be a major taboo for someone like Wen Xiao, who is the lowest-ranking "youngest" member, to dare to stand out in this situation.

But the rules of the world are always decided by those who survive.

Ignoring Wen Xiao's status as the "youngest," Chen Jinbiao walked to a corpse, pulled out a machete, and solemnly handed it to Wen Xiao in front of all the Hongmen brothers.

"Brother Wen, you paved the way for our gang today." Chen Jinbiao took a deep breath, his voice booming loud enough for everyone to hear. "The capable come first! From today onwards, this Gonghexiang Wharf territory belongs to you, the 'Fifth Master of Hongmen,' the leader of our gang! Anyone who dares to disobey the Fifth Master's orders will be punished according to the Hongmen family rules—three cuts and six holes, without mercy!"

"Fifth Master!" "Fifth Master!!" The Hongmen brothers around them all lowered their heads in unison, their voices booming like bells.

Wen Xiao did not refuse. He stretched out his blood-soaked hand, took the machete that represented power and slaughter, leaned on the bluestone slab, and stepped firmly on the corpse of the Yuemen Double Flower Red Stick, thus completing the leap in social class.

[System Warning: Shenhou's Battle Authority is severely overdrawn!]

[Current risk of spiraling out of control: 46% (approaching the threshold)]

The side effects came crashing back like a tsunami. Wen Xiao suddenly bent over and vomited a mouthful of black blood. His retina was filled with distorted double images, and an unbearable itching and tearing sensation came from beneath his skin, as if countless coarse ape hairs were trying to pierce through his pores and break out.

He bit his tongue hard, the taste of blood filling his mouth.

This body, riddled with holes, was at its last gasp.

"Clap, clap, clap..." A sudden burst of applause came from above the pier.

A man dressed in a pure white suit with a Windsor knot, holding a thick Havana cigar, walked slowly down the steps through the blood-soaked ground.

"What a brilliant move, Tiger and Crane Double Form! What a rising star of Hongmen!" The man in the white suit exhaled a puff of smoke, staring at Wen Xiao's trembling figure like a venomous snake. "What a pity, he's about to die of illness."

Chen Jinbiao's face darkened, and he gripped his knife tighter: "Which faction have you allied with?"

"Hongmen? A bunch of mudskippers fighting for food in the sewers." The man in the white suit sneered. "Listen up! I'm an intelligence officer under Marshal Lu. This batch of opium is military pay personally selected by the Marshal. The Guangdong Clan isn't fit to swallow it, and neither are you Hongmen!"

No sooner had the words left his mouth than blinding headlights suddenly illuminated the area around the dock. "Boom—" Accompanied by the roar of heavy engines, several military trucks crashed through the dock's wooden fence. An entire company of regular Chinese troops jumped out of the vehicles, and with a series of clicks as bolts were pulled back, hundreds of Hanyang rifles surrounded the Hongmen group.

Faced with the steel torrent of regular warlords, the union's machetes were like an absurd joke.

The Hongmen brothers all turned pale.

"Seal off the goods. As for these peasants—" the man in the white suit waved his hand casually, "bury them all."

"Gah—!!!"

The screech of brakes tore through the night sky. Three black armored Ford Model Ts, bearing English flags and Shanghai Municipal Council license plates, violently forced the warlord trucks on the outskirts to a stop with extreme arrogance!

The car door opened, and two rows of guards from the trading company, dressed in black suits and carrying American Thompson submachine guns, filed out. The dark muzzles of their guns immediately surrounded the men in suits.

On one side were outdated single-shot bolt-action rifles, and on the other were "Chicago Typewriters" capable of unleashing a barrage of fire in an instant. This was not only an overwhelming disparity in firepower, but also the absolute suppression of local warlords by the capitalist power of the foreign concessions.

The man in the white suit's expression changed drastically. In this foreign-dominated concession, Marshal Lu's troops had crossed the line. If they opened fire and triggered a diplomatic incident, he wouldn't have enough heads to lose.

The door of the middle Ford opened, and the first person to step out was a woman wearing a dark blue martial arts uniform with Chinese knot buttons. Her long hair was tied up, her phoenix eyes were cold and aloof, and two Browning pistols were gleaming at her waist.

A warlord soldier nervously raised his gun. The woman swayed halfway across the vehicle like a ghost. Before the soldier could even see how she made her move, a crisp cracking sound came from his wrist, and the Hanyang rifle fell to the ground with a "thud."

"The Eight Trigrams Swimming Dragon Step... is that Sister Yuan, the maidservant of the eldest daughter of the Xue family?" The man in the white suit's pupils contracted, and his voice immediately dropped. "You...you're from the foreign firm?"

Yuan Jie didn't even glance at him. She turned around, and the chilling murderous aura she had just exuded vanished completely.

She opened the car door, bowed slightly, and respectfully placed one hand on the top edge of the door, saying in a humble voice, "Miss Shelly, there's a strong smell of blood outside, please watch your step."

Immediately afterwards, a foot wearing a custom-made high-heeled leather boot stepped out of the car.

A woman of mixed race, carrying a silver Browning folding cane and wearing a dark brown British-style trench coat, stepped down. Her features were deep-set, possessing both Eastern delicacy and Western aloofness.

She glanced at the white suit: "Go back and tell Lu Yongxiang that Gonghexiang Wharf is the property of a foreign firm registered with the Municipal Council. If he wants military pay, he can rob someone else. If he touches my cargo yard again, I will cut off your Longhua branch's fuel supply for next month."

The man in the white suit gritted his teeth, not daring to utter a single harsh word, and waved his hand, leading his army to slink away in disgrace.

In this Shanghai, a city divided between Chinese and foreigners and rife with warlords, she, holding absolute immunity from the Municipal Council and possessing a fortune of hundreds of millions, was the true owner of this dock.

Shelly stepped through the crimson blood and walked straight up to Wen Xiao.

The haughty daughter of a high-ranking foreign firm tycoon and the blood-soaked, dying Fifth Master of Hongmen made their first eye contact in this hellish scene.

"It was you..." Shelly looked down at him, "who used your dying, worthless life to make my warehouse so filthy?"

Almost simultaneously, Sister Yuan stepped forward, her aura locking onto Wen Xiao.

Despite the excruciating pain from the brain tumor, Wen Xiao used the machete he was leaning on to prop himself up and meet her gaze.

[System notification: Core faction member detected]

[Earthly Branch Authority Node: Countdown to the Occupation of Gonghexiang Wharf...]

Before the notification tone had even finished, the double image in Wen Xiao's eyes completely collapsed, and his body, which had been holding on to its limit, crashed to the ground.

"Fifth Master!" Chen Jinbiao reacted swiftly, grabbing the unconscious Wen Xiao. He glanced warily at the two unfathomable women before him, gritting his teeth and growling, "We, Hongmen, admit defeat. Let's go!"

Surprisingly, the mixed-race woman did not order anyone to stop them. She watched as Chen Jinbiao and his group disappeared into the night.

"Miss, should we send someone to follow them and investigate?" Sister Yuan asked in a low voice.

Shelly raised a hand to stop him, tapping his cane on the flagstones at his feet, a cold gleam in his eyes: "No need. Since he dared to take on this mess at the docks, I'll have a chance to test his mettle eventually."