Several hours earlier, in Nagasaki, Japan.
Nagasaki was a city famous for having had a Fat Man dropped on it. Decades later, the radiation here had disappeared, and the city was thriving again.
The Black Dragon Society's headquarters was here.
Nagasaki lay in the west of the island of Nine Provinces. It was a port city very close to the international waters between Japan and Korea, where the Black Dragon Society's clash with Chu Ge and the others over the Azure Dragon Toe Bone had taken place.
Zhang Qiren had seized the opportunity presented by the Azure Dragon Toe Bone affair to climb another rung and become one of the Black Dragon Society's leaders. Later, he had been dragged to the Arctic Ocean as cannon fodder for the Black Tortoise incident and thrown into the book with the others by Chu Ge. During that encounter, Qiu Wuji had planted hidden controls in a group of Black Dragon Society leaders. From then on, Zhang Qiren had truly risen to power and become one of the society's leaders with real authority.
Of course, he was still only "one of" them. He could not become president or truly control the entire Black Dragon Society.
Aside from the difficulty of someone from Huaxia becoming the leader of such an important organization in Japan, the more important reason was that the Black Dragon Society itself was a subordinate organization built up with Sandru's backing. It had a special mission to carry out; it was not an organization someone could take over simply by winning a power struggle in Japan.
Zhang Qiren was an "outsider" through and through, and a Huaxia native at that-the sort they most needed to guard against. That he had become a leader with real power in such a short time was