After discovering that his full-strength punch posed no threat to Richard—not even causing the slightest tremor in his opponent's body—Wenwu realized with grim certainty that his chances of leaving this encounter alive were vanishingly small.
Hearing Richard's declaration about claiming the rings, Wenwu immediately retracted his left fist, desperately attempting to create distance between himself and his adversary. Before he could retreat, however, the five iron rings adorning his left arm flew toward Richard as if compelled by an invisible force.
In the next moment, they arranged themselves perfectly around Richard's left wrist, joining their five counterparts.
Though mystified by Richard's ability to commandeer the ancient artifacts, Wenwu quickly regained his composure. Having lived for thousands of years, he had witnessed phenomena far stranger than this.
Wenwu, now stripped of the ten rings that had been the source of his power for millennia, lowered his hands and regarded Richard with calculating eyes rather than resignation.
"So you've taken my rings," he acknowledged, his voice betraying no fear. "But you've made a mistake coming here alone."
"Have I?" Richard asked, genuinely curious about what the ancient warlord thought he could accomplish without his primary weapons.
"You may have power," Wenwu continued, "but you lack understanding. My son may have escaped me for now, but I've had decades to prepare for threats like you."
Richard's enhanced hearing detected the subtle sound of approaching aircraft—more Ten Rings reinforcements arriving by helicopter and jet.
"You think numbers will save you?" Richard asked, amused by the desperate gambit.
"No," Wenwu replied with cold confidence. "But they'll serve as a demonstration of what happens to those who interfere with my family. I've spent years building contingencies."
Before Richard could respond, Wenwu produced a device from his jacket—a signal transmitter.
"Every Ten Rings cell in North America received orders an hour ago," he announced. "If I don't send an all-clear signal by dawn, they begin executing their contingency protocols."
"Which are?"
"Systematic elimination of anyone connected to Richard Wesley," Wenwu stated flatly. "Your associates, your employees, your allies. Starting with the mutants at your manor in New York."
Richard's expression darkened at the threat to Emma and the others.
"You would murder innocents to get to me?"
"I would burn the world to protect what's mine," Wenwu replied without hesitation. "My son fled from his responsibilities, but he's still mine to reclaim. Anyone who interferes with that will face the consequences."
"Your son?" Richard's voice carried a dangerous edge. "You mean the child you systematically tortured and broke? The boy who's so traumatized he can barely function in normal society?"
Wenwu's expression hardened. "I trained him to be strong. To survive in a world that would destroy the weak. If he was too weak to appreciate that—"
"You turned a child into a weapon," Richard cut him off, his killing intent beginning to manifest visibly. "You murdered his mother's memory along with his innocence."
"His mother died because I wasn't careful enough!" Wenwu snarled, his composure finally cracking. "Because I allowed sentiment to make me soft! I made sure he would never suffer the same weakness!"
"Weakness?" Richard's voice dropped to a whisper more terrifying than any shout. "The only weakness I see here is a coward who tortured his own child because he couldn't face his own failures."
"You know nothing!" Wenwu roared. "I gave him everything! Power, training, purpose! He chose to throw it all away for what? To grovel as a parking attendant for foreigners?"
The contempt in Wenwu's voice when he spoke of his son's chosen life made Richard's blood boil. This wasn't a father's disappointment—this was the rage of a tyrant whose property had escaped.
"The difference between us," Richard said, his voice taking on a deadly edge, "is that I don't hide behind children and innocents. I face my enemies directly."
With those words, Richard withdrew the Masamune from his system space.
"Since you've chosen to make this personal by threatening those under my protection," he continued, "let me show you the difference between a warrior and a terrorist."
The legendary blade gleamed with silver light, but rather than immediately attacking, Richard activated his telepathy once more. This time, however, he didn't probe Wenwu's memories—instead, he projected images directly into the ancient warlord's mind.
Every moment of Shang-Chi's childhood trauma. Every session of "training" that was actually torture. Every night the boy had cried himself to sleep, begging for his father's love instead of his cruelty. Every scar, physical and psychological, that Wenwu had carved into his own son's soul.
"Look at what you've done," Richard commanded, forcing Wenwu to experience his son's pain from the child's perspective. "Look at the monster you became."
Wenwu staggered under the psychic assault, experiencing decades of his son's anguish in compressed moments. When the visions ended, his face was pale but his eyes remained defiant.
"He needed to be strong—"
"He needed a father!" Richard roared, his composure finally breaking. "Instead, he got a monster who destroyed everything good in him!"
Without warning, Richard lunged forward with inhuman speed. Masamune flashed through the air in a silver arc, but instead of a killing blow, the blade carved a precise line across Wenwu's chest—painful but not fatal.
"That," Richard said coldly, "was for every night that child cried because of you."
Wenwu clutched the wound, blood seeping between his fingers. "You think you understand—"
The blade moved again, opening another shallow cut across his shoulder.
"That was for every time you made him kill when he should have been playing."
Another cut, this one across his leg, dropping Wenwu to one knee.
"That was for stealing his childhood and replacing it with nightmares."
"Stop!" Wenwu gasped, trying to rise. "You don't know what it's like to lose—"
"To lose what?" Richard's voice was arctic. "Your wife? Your son lost his mother AND his father the day you decided revenge was more important than love!"
The Masamune moved faster now, opening dozens of small cuts across Wenwu's body. Each one precise, designed to cause maximum pain without triggering immediate death.
"This is for every scar you left on his soul," Richard said, his movements becoming almost surgical in their precision. "Every moment of terror you put him through. Every time you made him believe he was worthless unless he killed for you."
Wenwu collapsed fully now, his body covered in bleeding wounds. Yet his eyes still burned with unrepentant rage.
"He... was... mine..." he wheezed defiantly.
"No," Richard said, raising Masamune for the final strike. "He was a child who deserved better than you."
The blade descended in a perfect arc, separating Wenwu's head from his shoulders in one clean motion.
As the ancient warlord's body fell lifeless to the rooftop, Richard felt no satisfaction—only a grim sense of justice served. He had seen enough abusive parents in his time to recognize the type: those who confused control with love, who broke their children and called it strength.
Using his matter manipulation abilities, Richard disintegrated Wenwu's corpse, ensuring no trace remained. Then he turned his attention to the frozen Ten Rings operatives scattered across the surrounding buildings.
A wave of his hand activated his telekinesis, and one by one, the assassins were lifted into the air and crushed like insects. Within minutes, every Ten Rings operative in San Francisco had been eliminated.
But Richard wasn't finished. The contingency protocols Wenwu had mentioned needed to be addressed immediately.
Richard reached into his system space and retrieved a communicator he had taken from one of Wenwu's lieutenants. Using his telepathic abilities to extract the proper codes and frequencies from the deceased operatives' minds, he accessed the Ten Rings' global communication network.
First, he sent Wenwu's all-clear signal using the dead warlord's personal authorization codes, canceling the contingency protocols before they could be activated. Then he followed it with his own message to every Ten Rings cell worldwide:
"This is Richard Wesley. Wenwu is dead. The Ten Rings organization is disbanded effective immediately. The contingency protocols have been canceled by Wenwu's own codes—extracted from his mind before his death. Any attempt to continue operations or seek revenge will result in the complete annihilation of your cell and everyone connected to it. You have twenty-four hours to disappear permanently. After that, I hunt you down personally."
To ensure his message was taken seriously, Richard used his matter manipulation abilities to simultaneously destroy every major Ten Rings facility he could locate through their communication network. Explosions erupted across the globe as weapons caches, training compounds, and operational bases simply ceased to exist.
The demonstration was clear: Richard possessed both the knowledge and the power to find and eliminate any remaining Ten Rings operatives anywhere in the world.
After ending the transmission, Richard returned to the sisters' apartment. Ying Li and Ying Nan were tending to the damage from Wenwu's attack, but they immediately turned to face him as he materialized in their living room.
"Is it over?" Ying Li asked quietly.
"It's over," Richard confirmed. "Wenwu is dead. His organization is finished."
"And Shang-Chi?"
"Will finally be free to heal," Richard said. "Without his father's shadow hanging over him, he can start to build the life he actually wants."
Ying Li studied his face carefully. "You could have simply killed Wenwu quickly. Why didn't you?"
Richard was quiet for a long moment before answering. "Because some crimes deserve more than a quick death. What he did to that boy... there are some sins that demand payment in full."
Though she might not fully approve of his methods, Ying Li found herself nodding in understanding. She had seen the fear in Shang-Chi's eyes whenever his father was mentioned, had witnessed the deep trauma that no child should ever carry.
"What happens now?" Ying Nan asked.
"Now," Richard said, "we go to Ta Lo as planned. The boy can decide his own future—whether that includes learning about his mother's heritage or simply continuing to build his new life here."
For the first time since arriving in San Francisco, Richard felt he had accomplished something truly worthwhile. Shang-Chi would never know the full extent of what had happened this night, but he would wake up tomorrow in a world where his greatest nightmare could no longer reach him.
That, Richard decided, was worth more than any amount of plundered power.
The next morning, after breakfast at the hotel, Richard used his Teleportation ability to transport Ying Li, her sister, and Dijiang Qiuqiu away from San Francisco.
While the films never specified the exact location of Ta Lo's entrance, Richard had gleaned from Ying Li's memories that the mystical gateway was nestled somewhere in the Himalayas. This meant transporting his companions across the vast Pacific Ocean to reach the labyrinthine forest concealing Ta Lo's entrance.
Despite the considerable distance, for someone with Richard's abilities, the journey required merely a series of consecutive teleportations. In less than ten minutes, they traversed the distance from San Francisco to their destination—or more precisely, to the airspace above the maze-like woods.
From their aerial vantage point, the forest appeared unremarkable compared to the surrounding woodlands. However, according to Ying Li and Ying Nan, the entire forest was saturated with psychic energy and protected by specialized guardians.
Typically, during the annual Qingming Festival, a path would materialize within the woods, leading directly to Ta Lo's entrance. Though the path would appear, locating it remained a challenge for outsiders.
This posed no obstacle for their group, however. Being natives of Ta Lo, Ying Li and Ying Nan knew how to navigate the labyrinthine forest even without the festival's designated path.
After surveying the woodland below, Richard descended with his companions, landing before a familiar waterfall. Beside the cave beneath the cascading waters stood two enormous stone lions covered in moss—sentinels guarding the threshold between worlds.
This cave served as Ta Lo's entrance—the sole passage connecting the mystical realm to Earth. Though Ta Lo's environment resembled Earth's in many ways, it existed within its own unique dimensional plane.
Upon landing before the waterfall, Qiuqiu darted toward the cave without hesitation. As the creature disappeared into the darkness, Richard and the sisters followed at a more measured pace.
Inside the cave, they encountered a surreal phenomenon—water flowing in apparent defiance of gravity, drifting through the air like ethereal currents. As they ventured deeper, these floating streams converged to form what appeared to be a shimmering portal.
Passing through this aqueous gateway, they emerged into a magnificent cavern—their first glimpse of Ta Lo's wonders.
Exiting the cave, Richard beheld a verdant landscape that seemed plucked from ancient myths. Lush forests stretched toward towering mountains under an azure sky. Phoenixes soared in fiery pairs overhead, while nine-tailed foxes prowled with their cubs among the underbrush. Majestic wild emperors roamed freely, unicorns with melancholy expressions grazed in herds, and golden-maned Suanni—lion-like creatures of Chinese legend—basked in sunlit clearings.
Though Richard had glimpsed these wonders in films, the experience of witnessing them firsthand was incomparable. Unlike Richard, who stood transfixed by the spectacle, Ying Li and Ying Nan had grown accustomed to these sights. Rather than rushing him, they patiently explained the nature of the magical creatures surrounding them—from how the mouthless Dijiang managed to eat, to why the Qilin maintained their perpetual melancholy, to whether the Phoenix's flames ever ignited the forest.
As he absorbed the sisters' commentary, Richard felt his ambition intensify. A realm this magnificent deserved to be claimed. What kind of transmigrator would he be if he didn't seize this paradise for himself?
Veni, vidi, vici! Julius Caesar's famous declaration echoed in his mind. I came, I saw, I conquered!
In the village's main hall, Richard sat calmly at one side of a square table, his gaze fixed on Guang Bo seated across from him. Ying Li occupied the chair to his left.
To his right sat Ming Yue—a powerfully built man in his twenties who had harbored feelings for Ying Li since childhood and now served as captain of the Guardians. Ming Yue made no attempt to disguise the hostility in his glare.
After Ying Li had introduced Richard as her boyfriend from San Francisco, Ming Yue's antagonism had become palpable.
Though Ying Li and Ying Nan had guided him to the village, Richard's arrival had caused considerable commotion among the inhabitants—particularly after they learned of his dual intentions to conquer Ta Lo and destroy the Dark Dwellers.
Ying Li had originally planned to inform Guang Bo only of Richard's mission against the Dark Dwellers, omitting his territorial ambitions. However, once she had finished speaking, Richard had boldly declared his ultimate goal.
Noting the silence that fell over Guang Bo, the village elder, and Ming Yue, the Guardian captain, Richard spoke deliberately:
"It's not as dire as you imagine," he assured them. "While I intend to claim Ta Lo as my personal domain, I have no objection to your continued residence here." His tone remained measured. "Provided you don't interfere with my affairs, I won't concern myself with governing your people."
"Ta Lo encompasses vast territories. I'll establish my palace elsewhere," he continued. "As for the Dark Dweller and the Soul Eaters, I'll eliminate them single-handedly. You need only observe from a distance."
Since arriving at the village, Richard had discovered that its population was even smaller than he had anticipated. Even counting infants and young children, the entire community numbered barely a thousand souls. Against the immense expanse of Ta Lo, such a population was negligible.
Allowing Guang Bo's people to maintain their current way of life would hardly impact his plans. He could simply consider it a courtesy extended out of respect for Ying Li.
Despite Richard's assurances, Guang Bo and Ming Yue struggled to accept his declaration of conquest. Nevertheless, his offer to destroy the Dark Dwellers and Soul Eaters without assistance held undeniable appeal.
No community would willingly tolerate malevolent extradimensional entities dwelling on their borders. Even with the creatures sealed away, the mere sight of the Dark Portal across the lake served as a constant reminder of potential catastrophe should the ancient bindings ever fail.
After nearly a minute of tense silence, Guang Bo finally spoke.
"You are Ying Li's chosen companion," the elder acknowledged carefully. "Should you marry her, we might consider permitting you to establish permanent residence in Ta Lo." He drew breath to continue, "However—"
Richard cut him off sharply. "I address you respectfully as Guang Bo because of your age and your relationship to Ying Li," he stated firmly. "But understand this—I'm not seeking your permission. I'm merely informing you of my intentions."
His voice hardened. "Whether you consent or not, I will claim Ta Lo for my own. Should you attempt to oppose me, I will eliminate everyone who stands in my way."
"Since you clearly comprehend neither my nature nor the extent of my power," Richard continued, rising from his seat, "gather all villagers at the lake. There, I will demonstrate the abilities at my disposal."
With that declaration, he turned and exited the hall, his expression betraying no emotion.
In his wake, Guang Bo and Ming Yue exchanged grim looks. After regaining his composure, the elder turned to his captain.
"Assemble everyone at the lake," he instructed. "And ensure all Guardians are equipped with their weapons and armor."
"At once!" Ming Yue responded without hesitation.
Soon, the entire village—men and women, elders and children—congregated at the lakeshore. Richard observed the Guardians donning their dragon-scale armor and readying their weapons, immediately recognizing Guang Bo's strategy. The display of force did not concern him.
"Are you certain you can accomplish this alone?" Ying Li asked worriedly, standing at his side.
"Let's make a wager," Richard proposed. "If I fail to neutralize the Dark Dweller and all Soul Eaters within one minute, I'll depart immediately and never return to Ta Lo. However, if I succeed, you must grant me one request."
Though he didn't specify the nature of this request, when his gaze lingered appreciatively on her form, the word "striptease" flashed unbidden through Ying Li's mind.
"You leave me no choice," she replied, color rising to her cheeks. "Wait until you've actually succeeded!"
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Marvel x Star Wars: Avengers in the Clone Wars
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