Meanwhile, deep within a stretch of towering mountains perpetually shrouded in thick fog in the Dragon Kingdom.
An enormous base stood here, perfectly combining classical Chinese pavilions with modern high-tech defensive fortifications-the headquarters of the Ten Rings!
On the Training Ground, hundreds of elite assassins dressed in black were undergoing brutal combat training, their shouts shaking the sky.
In one corner of the Training Ground, Shang-Chi, a boy of only twelve or thirteen, was drenched in sweat, his fists bleeding as he frantically struck a heavy wooden dummy. Beside him stood Death Dealer, wearing a Peking opera mask and holding a dagger as he sternly supervised him.
Behind a pillar in a nearby pavilion, young Xialing clung to the railing, secretly watching her older brother practice martial arts with envy all over her face.
It was 2012, and only five years had passed since Wenwu's wife Ying Li had been murdered. The siblings Shang-Chi and Xialing had yet to escape this prisonlike assassin base.
Yet inside an antique ancestral hall in the deepest part of the base, the atmosphere was particularly oppressive and still.
A middle-aged man wearing a dark-patterned Tang suit, his face resolute and cold, stood quietly before the spirit tablet of his late wife, Ying Li.
He was Xu Wenwu, the legendary overlord who had relied on the power of the Ten Rings to remain ageless and had secretly ruled the underworld for a full thousand years!
Five years earlier, his beloved wife Ying Li had died tragically under an assault by his former enemies, utterly shattering Wenwu's dream of retiring to an ordinary life.
From that day onward, Wenwu had put on the long-sealed Ten Rings again. Filled with grief and brutality, he had slaughtered all his enemies, once again becoming the cold-blooded tyrant whose