Characters / Kengan Ashura Worm

Kengan Ashura Main Character Index
Kengan Association (Yamashita Trading Co.) | Kengan Association Fighters {Left Block | Right Block} | Purgatory | Worm | Other Groups

Worm (蟲, Mushi)

'Where there is strife, there is the Worm.'

A deeply underground secret society of Ancient Chinese origins, with connections to The Inside, Kengan Association members, and the Niko Style. They have been involved in wars and political plots in China for millennias, yet have remained far outside the public eye and even in the deeper echelons of the criminal underworld they are a dangerous enigma occasionally thought of to be just a myth. While the full extent of their influence and power has only just begun to show, Worm has only been spoken of with a mix of fear and disgust and are the closest thing to a true villainous organization in the Kengan world. Worm is involved in the pasts of Tokita Ohma, Kiryu Setsuna and Kanoh Agito among others, and have a vested interest in advancements within the field of neuroscience and martial arts. They are also outright confirmed to have both the resources and technology to produce biological clones.

The Worm is led by a "Head" and his personal retinue who only answers to him, who passes orders on to a series of branches of the organisation around the world.

In General (HUGE SPOILERS!)

• Ancient Conspiracy: They've been around for thousands of years and have enormous financial and political influence, as well as a roster of well-trained assassins.
• The Alliance: Is in some manner of one with the Westward Wu Clan, headed by Edward Wu. They all defer to The Connector as a borderline deity.
• Animal Motifs: Centipedes and Tigers. All members of the organization have a centipede tattoo somewhere on their body, with one of their primary directives having to do with the "Tiger's Vessels". Their top brass in turn tend to have an avian animal motif, with examples so far including dragons and a hawk.
• Classified Information: Worm keeps information compartmentalized to prevent information leaks, leading to different parts of Worm not knowing about plans made by other parts of the organization. This leads to the boss sending Naidan Mönkhbat to fight in the Kengan Association vs. Purgatory tournament without Xia Ji or Fei Wangfang knowing about his involvement in the organization.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The centipede tattoos come in two variations. Black like Xia Ji's and white like Naidan Mönkhbat. Those with white tattoos report directly to the boss.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Their Modus Operandi for infiltration is having their lower-ranking members kill someone and then have their face surgically reconstructed in order to perfectly replicate the unlucky victim's life and act normal while they wreak havoc. They're so adept at this that no one except Ryuki Gaoh (their target) and Akoya are able to notice that something's even happening at first and the latter only after a thorough investigation and checking through autopsy reports of the three Worm members killed so far. They have also done this in the Philippine Army seventeen years ago and in the present, it's revealed that they have impersonators among pretty much every other crime syndicate in the world, to the leaders of said groups' horror and surprise in a briefing with Urita and Inaba Ryo.
• The Dreaded: Anyone who knows of Worm in any meaningful sense would probably rather not. Their influence is massive and even their foot soldiers are on the level of Kengan fighters and to put the cherry on top, the group is heavily implied to be directly responsible for The Inside becoming the microcosmic Crapsack World it is today. Just the fact that Hayami thought he could topple the Kengan Association with a few of Worm's members at his back speaks massively of their power.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Some Worm combatants opt to have their tattoo insignia done on their eyeballs.
• Fiction 500: Implied, as they have members in every sector of society and are willing to pay out enormous sums to researchers whose work unknowingly benefits Worm.
• Flock of Wolves: They have multiple branches who don't necessarily talk to each other when they send their own agent. During the Kengan vs. Purgatory tournament they keep getting surprised by some fighters revealing themselves as Worm agents that they’ve never met, since they answered to someone else.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The existence of Worm was hinted at as far back as Round 1 of the Annihilation Tournament. After Nezu loses, Tochigi Destiny Land's CEO Kunihiro Yumeno attempts to flee from Hayami and mentions he only worked with him to try and get close to "that" group, hinting that Hayami was just part of a larger scheme and that only the really desperate or ambitious would work with said group.
  • Despite having more or less no "real" relevance to the overall plot, the CEO who Shanghai'd Bando into the tournament and Long Min, one of Hayami's hired bodyguards, meet up after Bando's defeat, with Long Min wanting said CEO to come meet his "master". The very next scene we have is of Hayami and Long Min is nowhere to be seen. It is heavily implied that they went to meet Edward Wu, Fei Wangfang and Xia Ji instead. It should be noted that this CEO was a very unscrupulous Telecommunications CEO, and sure enough Worm seems to have used this as a way to do their extensive surveillance going on against the Kengan Association in Omega, with Kashio Toru even redirecting Kazuo's call for help during an ambush to Toru's phone.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: How the higher ranked combatants operate in comparison to the near identical impersonating tactic of the lower ranked members as seen with Lu Tian and Naidan Mönkhbat, who essentially act like themselves, never revealing their allegiance or goals unless directly ordered to. In practice it’s a lot more effective then it sounds as these examples were never found out thanks to just how diverse in fighting styles, character and appearance they are, making it next to impossible to know they’re Worm until they flash their tattoos.
• Identity Impersonator: Infiltration specialists higher on their internal latter like Hiruko also disguise themselves in a similar manner as their replacement-via-killing type of impersonation, but will occasionally do it with still living people such as Nogi's secretary to gather information, simply letting the one they're impersonating go about their daily business and editing their calendars so the chance of getting caught or slipping up/breaking character is lessened.
• Immortality Seeker: They possess the ability to produce biological clones, organ-farming services and have in recent years partnered up with the Westward Wu Clan, who are the only one of the three Wu/Kure families that still use Huisheng, a brainwashing regimen to erode the sense of self of someone related to them (especially by blood) and replace it with the personality of the one doing the brainwashing's, which has become much easier to perform in recent years thanks to inventions like wireless earbuds. It is all but stated outright that an immortal, replaceable and inhumanly strong warrior is their end goal.
• Insistent Terminology: Members are known as Worms, and their assassins and trained killers as Combatants. The leader of the whole bunch is known as the Head.
• Kick the Dog: One of their most strikingly vile actions so far is the Gu Rituals, where fifty of their most promising recruits are sealed in a stone vault with enough supplies in food, water and air for only one of them, then made to kill each other and survive for three months for the door to be re-opened. Going by Lu Tian's bracelet from the event, they have done this hundreds of times. Even Erioh, whose family has made a living on murder for 1300 years, finds the practice disgusting beyond belief. Kanoh Agito needed years of psychological aid and rehabilitation to recover after being dug out of one such vault by Metsudo, eventually becoming the bloodlust-filled purebred warrior we now know as the fifth Fang of Metsudo.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • Were the ones backing Hayami's attempted power play and later coup of the Kengan Association. They also put a generous sum of money into the hands of both Yohei Bando and Kenzo Yamashita for their research in the field of neuroscience.
  • The "Head" is this for Worm as a whole, being a mysterious benefactor behind the scenes that every Worm ally on the ground seems to defer to, despite the Head simply being the middleman for the true leader of the organization from the shadow, The Connector.
• Meaningful Name: In a non-sexual Double Entendre sort of way (Though you can easily make a case for a sexual one too, with a name like "Worm"); Worm is phonetically identical to Deathless (both pronounced Mushi) in Japanese, indicating their leaders' Immortality Seeker nature.
• Might Makes Right: Any sort of morality is completely discarded in their organisation, not just because a majority of them are heinous human beings, but because being the strongest means that you're right no matter what to them. Naidan's reward for brutally killing his teacher, a senior Worm? A promotion to the Head's personal guard.
• Mythical Motifs:
  • Their entire organization seems to be built around the concept of Kodoku/Gu, a folklore ritual where a number of poisonous insects are placed in a small enclosed space such as a clay pot and made to fight it out in the belief that the last surviving creepy crawly will become a lucky charm capable of bringing wealth and cursing the one who did the ritual's enemies. Only Worm's belief seems to be that this also applies to human beings, with its members "devouring" other martial artists as well as each other to grow stronger. The idea that Worm has effectively engineered a city-sized Gu Ritual in the form of the Inside during the fall of the Shogunate is not lost on the heroes.
  • The people at the top of their internal food chain have set up hundreds of "rituals" in China where fifty of their members are enclosed in a vault sealed by massive stone doors and putting a landfill on top for three months, strapping a pulse-tracking bracelet around each man's wrist, providing them with enough food, air and water enough for a single person to just barely cling to life and they should kill all the others with the martial arts they've learned so far if they want to survive. Whoever is dragged out alive of such a vault after the three months are up is usually absolutely insane, unfailingly loyal and dependent and one of the strongest martial artists in the world. Kanoh Agito, Lu Tian and Fei Wangfang are living examples of this horrific ritual actually working and disturbingly well at that.
  • Furthermore, their use of the term "Tiger's Vessel" seems to come from an old anecdote about emperor Han Zhangdi. Zhangdi received tigers from criminals and other people who had offended him in return for a pardon and kept these tigers in the mountains close to his palace. These were referred to by the people as "Great Spirits", believing that they housed the sins of those who had given them to the emperor, and later "Great Insects" (notably using the same character for Insect as is used for the organization's name, 蟲), when the much later Tang dynasty began hunting these tigers down because of the "evil" they were thought to contain^note The real life case is commonly thought to have been a culling of an overgrown tiger population that ended up going way too far, as wild tigers in China are thought to be entirely extinct by the time of the modern day, having not been spotted in their natural habitats since the 1990's due to extensive poaching of their body parts for "medicines" and their hides.
• Nebulous Evil Organization: It's not really clear what their end goal is yet, but it revolves around "The Connector", a "Tiger's Vessel" and involves a lot of kidnappings, murder, terrorism and a mix of mind transferring and human cloning. Somewhat justified by the fact that their rampant actions across the world in Omega were in part for other parts of the criminal underworld to saddle in with them and create splinter groups of Worm that will survive the main group's planned collapse. They claim it's for World's harmony.
• Red Right Hand: With only The Other Niko, Fei Wangfang and Edward Wu as the very few exceptions, all members of the Worm have a tattoo of a black or white centipede somewhere on their bodies. Even the branch heads like Xia Ji aren't let in on who has a white tattoo, with him expressing genuine surprise that Naidan has one.
• Tattooed Crook: With only very few exceptions like Edward Wu, Fei Wangfang and The Other Niko, admittance into Worm requires having a centipede tattoo done somewhere on your body.
• The Triads and the Tongs: The three primary members we know of meet up in Hong Kong when we're introduced to them, and their esoteric practices definitely fit the bill. Turns out they're much older than the Tongs or Triads, dating back millennias.
• Training from Hell: As one might expect from a morally reprehensible ancient conspiracy, they love to put their combatants through this. The Other Niko was a particularly huge fan of the Gu Ritual process (which consist of killing the other fourty-nine people in there with you, or dying) in which Kanoh Agito, Lu Tian and Fei wangfang were subjected to before they became formal students of his. The batch that produced Fei started out with 4000 talented young Chinese men, and ended with fifty survivors, and one in Omega's present. Naidan was put through grueling traditional Bökh training that killed or broke his four fellow trainees either physically or mentally. Safe to say, this is basically a requirement to join, as much of it's contempt for Xia Ji comes from the fact that he dodged any such training in favor of pushing underlings around.
• Villain with Good Publicity: They attempt to become this for the Japanese underground society during the Purgatory vs Kengan tournament by sending Combatants of theirs to the Purgatory side, with Naidan, Lu Tian and Fei Wangfang all dramatically revealing themselves to be part of Worm, usually by showing their Worm tattoos early in the fight. It backfires somewhat because of Naidan's match ending in the tragic death of a beloved Purgatory A-lister, Lu Tian getting his ass whooped by Kanoh Agito and Fei Wangfang dying from his suicidally dangerous Super Mode and ending a match he could have won in a draw. After the two year gap they are publicly known as terrorist doing suicide bombings among other things. This was all part of the plan as the Worm itself was the one hired to hunt the Worm and their rebranding is now seen as saviors and very lucrative private military contractors.
• Walking Spoiler: Worm, as of the most recent chapters of Omega, are only just stepping into the stage light, and so most of what's known about them is speculation based on Foreshadowing and cryptic conversations.

Xia Ji

"You shouldn't have stuck your nose in what you weren't supposed to notice. Do you know who you've picked a fight with?"

The Far-East Branch Chief and one of the three ringleaders of Worm who were trying to acquire Tokita Ohma in Ashura, and the one orchestrating the group's infiltration of the Kengan Association in Omega.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He ends up begging for his life when he's practically lost, considering Ohma and Raian's vicious dismantling of his students and himself, at least to trying and find an opening to use his poisoned needle. The only thing Raian gives is a punch meant to kill him. He does the same to Koga, trying to pass off all his sins and guilt and disdain as something he just had to do to survive, which nearly makes Koga go to kill Ji because he's so transparently scummy, but Ohma talks him out of it.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Besides all his tools to stab people with which will hurt no matter how tough or muscled the person on the receiving end is, when he pulls himself together and starts using the Kung Fu he once drilled, he's able to nearly blast a hole through Akoya with a One-Inch Punch and cracks his reinforced visor and helmet with a couple of strikes.
• Berserk Button: Only time he really breaks out of his coward demeanor is when the Head just task him to do some small work without really expecting much. This make him go from shitting his pants and pleading to the Head to calling his brother out for looking down on him.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He aspires to be the new head of Worm but being a lesser fighter makes it hard for him to gain respect from the rest of Worm.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He possesses Superman Syndrome and has a natural talent for martial arts, which his twin brother Yan (who is the current Head of the Worm, which strictly works on Might Makes Right, because he put in the work their gifts needed to truly shine) admits is greater than his own. However, this makes Xia Ji lazy and he prefers to boss people around and send henchmen to do his work than put in the effort to polish his skills.
  Yan, while having dinner with The Connector: "Not saying he isn't powerful. His base specs are the same as mine, and he's got more of a knack for martial arts. It's just that his power made him complacent, and neglect training. He's lazy and imcompetent. He makes his men do everything for him. To put it simply, he's a scumbag... If only he had a decent personality."
• Bullying a Dragon: After he fails to convince Lu Tian to side with him over Niko, he has 3 men attempt to kill him as he finds Niko's faction an "eyesore". End result is three men dead, him on the ground with Tears of Fear and only alive due to Lu Tian deciding to spare him on a whim out of amusement. He also dismisses Koga as third-rate trash because he can't grasp the sheer difference between the last time they met, where Koga knew he'd be killed just from throwing a front-kick at Xia and Xia No Selling it despite being blown back, and Koga after two years of mindbendingly intense training and effort.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Passes up going after Ryuki Gaoh when one of his "students" engages him in an alley, not because he didn't want to capture him yet, but because Xia was too busy watching the climax of a movie and eating takeout food. He sends Edward in his place, who arrives too late to find Ryuki.
• Butt-Monkey: After almost dying to Raian most of his appearances have him being a Nervous Wreck and getting humiliated as he is a lesser fighter.
• Catchphrase: "Moumantai", a Cantonese slang that translates literally to "No Problem" in the Hakuna Matata sense of the phrase.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: He ends up being subjected to this by both Kureshi and Joji, who want to repay him for the injuries he and his men inflicted on Narushima. He gets his joints dislocated and broken by Kureshi while Joji keeps him immobilised by either kicking him hard enough to crumple him, or hitting him in pressure points, leaving him in agony. Himuro threatening to slowly teach him pain with one of his own knives two years later was enough to send Xia into such a panic that he started swinging for his life and escapes as a result
• Consummate Liar: Xia Ji is really good at lying and deception in general, in part because he has zero reservations about abandoning his Pride even if he's fuming on the inside. Even as he's is quaking in fear and getting beaten up by Mitsuyo and Joji, Raian and Ohma, Inaba or Himuro or Koga, he's willing to lie and go for one of his many Hidden Weapons without any visual tells as he begs for mercy. Ohma calls him someone able to naturally act a part and blend in, every single action he does is based on deception... frequently getting Xia Ji way in over his head because of his Complexity Addiction and a primal need to win without the drive that made other characters in the series take up their strenuous training.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Xia Ji's Butt-Monkey status around the rest of Worm's big honchos does not change the fact he is a dangerous, calculated and versatile Professional Killer. Shen Wulong mentions that the two bodyguards that were with Xia Yan might be killed by Ji if they aren't careful in how they approach Xia, even if Ji's chances to win might be 1 in 10 on paper. He is also able the break out of Ryo Inaba's hair which Ohma could only do when he uses 'Advance', as well as scaling a concrete wall and leaving holes in them. It's revealed that he has Superman Syndrome, and while it's nowhere as extreme as Wakatsuki's case, it still makes him twice as strong as a regular human and he has an ungodly untapped potential for martial arts, being able to overpower Akoya and Ryuki on sheer muscle memory while panicking and already brutally beaten by Himuro earlier and still be fresh enough to give Koga a serious test of his skills.
• Cowardly Lion: He has natural Charles Atlas Superpower to the point where he can scale an entire apartment building like a cockroach when he's panicking, complete with cracking through the concrete walls with his feet and fingers. Yan's comment about Ji being "A Dragon who should've been born a Rat" seems to be bemoaning that Ji is prodigiously talented, but too much of a Dirty Coward Hidden Weapons specialist to make much use of it and is running out of chances.
• Creepily Long Arms: Even considering his hunch, Xia's arms are long enough to nearly reach his ankles as he walks, but when he takes a proper Kung Fu stance, said arms give him an enormous reach. Him being almost two meters tall, lanky yet very muscular and with incredibly long limbs seems to imply that he is double-jointed and far more flexible than most people.
• Culture Equals Costume: He wears a Changshan with detached sleeves that he covers his hands with. Said sleeves are incredibly useful for moving one of his Hidden Weapons around in secret; Among the other things in there like a knife, Xia hides a poisonous needle that becomes very well-acquainted with Ranjo's mouth in the final chapter of Ashura.
• Dirty Coward: Despite his arrogance and ambition, Xia isn't a particularly good fighter so he will only engage in a direct fight when he knows his opponent is weaker than him (such as Kazuo and Koga). When he meets stronger opponents, he prefers to hide behind other Worm soldiers, and try to lie, beg or bargain his way out of trouble when cornered. As it turns out, this is a mental weakness of his that fuels most of the worm's contempt for him. Being from the same bloodline that spawned their leader, he turns out to have a downplayed case of the same 'superman syndrome' that Wakatsuki is explicitly the pinnacle of, being only 2-3 times stronger than an average man at best, as well as a beastly instinct for martial arts, but he's so cowardly that these traits only really shine through when he's absolutely being pushed into a corner mentally and physically. Xia turns out to be strong enough to overpower Akoya in a head-on fight and push him to his knees with brute force, and skilled enough to react to Ryuki stealthily dropping on him from above with a knife, but is crying his eyes out and lamenting his misfortunes the whole time, seemingly unaware of what he's doing, because he'd much rather run and flee than fight head-on and is lashing out mainly on instinct — yet is still naturally powerful enough to put talented Kengan fighters on the back foot when he does so.
• Evil Counterpart: Ironically enough, he's the closest one to Kazuo Yamashita among all of the antagonists. He is drawn into a world-spanning Ancient Conspiracy conducted by The Worm, and while Xia has put in some effort towards becoming a respectable member of Worm, like how Kazuo had lived a moderate but not completely insignificant life when looked at in the larger span of things, it becomes clear that both are put completely out of their depths very fast. From dealing with the Worm's plans unfolding (in Kazuo's case, getting Shanghai'd into managing Ohma) because of familial connections that put unreasonable demands on their shoulders, to being surrounded by musclebound freaks of nature that could destroy them at their leisure. In contrast to Kazuo's superhuman eyesight that lets him clearly see everything that goes on, even if it should be a blur to an onlooker, Xia Ji has such a talent for being sneaky and disappearing from plain sight that he repeatedly crawls out of situations that should have ended in his death through sheer luck, cunning and stealth. They both turn out to be naturally gifted with incredible natural talents for rapidly learning and adapting martial arts as well as a genetic skill that allows them to pose a threat to fighters who are more hardened and experienced than them, but are still almost usually depicted getting the short end of the stick in most situations they're depicted in regardless. The difference is that Yamashita gradually adapts to the strange new world he's part of and eventually starts becoming legitimately competent in it, earning several people's sincere respect, whereas Xia starts out apparently in control and rapidly find the situation spiralling beyond what he can cope with, coming out as being quite pathetic in the process, and is primarily characterised by absolutely everybody who encounters him having zero respect for him.
• Foreshadowing: He is first seen in the final chapter of Ashura with the "Tiger's Vessel" and Edward Wu in Hong Kong, with it being clear that they were involved in killing members of the Guardians, with him killing Ranjo. Come Omega, he has sent his students to infiltrate both Purgatory and the Kengan Association.
  • Multiple times throughout the series, skilled and powerful fighters from various groups attack Xia and pound the living hell out of him, with a few of them explicitly trying to kill him in one blow, only to be taken by surprise when they get distracted by something and find out that he not only survived, but was well enough to crawl away to safety without their notice. He turns out to have a downplayed case of the same 'superman syndrome' that Wakatsuki has, being 2-3 times stronger and more durable than an average human, and capable of enduring a lot of punishment, especially the he's motivated by his base instinct for survival at the cost of dignity.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Niko's faction thinks of him as a freak, Edward can only stomach Xia's two-facedness for so long and The Head indirectly abandons Xia to fend for himself by revealing Worm's existence to the underground via Naidan and Lu Tian while Xia is backstage at the Purgatory arena. Two of the Worm even explicitly want him dead for being an eyesore to their organisation and an all-round pathetic excuse of a human being, because his own character handicaps his own monstrous talent and natural gift for martial arts that also elevated their leader to ruling over the organisation.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Inverted, Ji is a living monument of how a lack of hard work will make a person stagnate both as a martial artist and a person, even if the one doing the slacking is still a diamond at it's core. His twin brother is the highly esteemed Head of the Worm who worked day and night to maintain that position and bring the organisation into it's final stage in a Might Makes Right Ancient Conspiracy, who freely admits that Ji is even more talented than he is. Problem is, Ji got so caught up in the organisation's bottomless well of money and idealistic subordinates that he has barely put in any work on improving himself since his childhood, leaving him stuck where he started when he loses all his men by the end of the tournament in Omega and too prideful to better himself due to the self-feeding mindset he's developed.
  Yan: "Your worthless pride was your undoing. You're absolutely hopeless. You're mediocre at everything you do."
• In-Series Nickname: Kenzo refers to him as "Shōjō", a sea spirit from Chinese mythology and Noh plays with a similar hairstyle◊ to Xia's. When he sneaks into Kazuo's house later that day, he finds it rude, presumably because the characters for a Shōjō are written as either "Orangutan" or "Heavy Drinker".
• Irony:
  • He's an assassin whose reintroduction in Omega has him watching a movie where the subtitles for the current scene read 'Thou shalt not kill'.
  • Claims that the Gu trial is just for replaceable combatants despite every fighter who has gone through it so far being among the strongest fighters in the series. Meanwhile, Worm's replaceable Cannon Fodder so far has consisted almost entirely of Xia's students. Lu Tian even outright calls Xia unnecessary for Worm. The post-tournament arc even implies that Xia could've been among Worm's most powerful assets if he had gone through the ritual and survived.
  • He's a Dirty Coward assassin who is characterised by his absolute refusal to ever fight fair and prefers to rely on weapons, sneak attacks and misdirection to take down a target if they're even slightly a threat to him, but it turns out that he's been blessed by a physique that's naturally 2-3 times stronger than the average man and an inherent instinct for martial arts that makes him an absolute beast in a straightforward fight, overpowering Akoya and Ryuki's ambush almost on sheer muscle memory alone without fully being aware of what he's doing. This same combination was enough for his brother to become head of the Worm, and Xia's own cowardly nature is the main thing that prevents him from being an effective fighter in a World of Badass — in fact, several of the Worm want him dead explicitly because he's such a waste of potential and the fact that he is so deadly when cornered is what makes him hard to try and get rid off.
• Killing Intent: Inverted. While he has no qualms about brutally killing people, it's implied that his lack of true Killing Intent is part of what makes him able to slide right through people's expectations of him to the point that it looks like him Flash Stepping out of people like Raian, Kureishi and Joji's line of sight.
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: He is an assassin and a schemer whose skills would be more recognized if the organization didn't care more about fighting capability. While still the head of the Far-East Branch he can't get top fighters on his side because they believe in Might Makes Right. Ironically, he turns out to have a completely monstrous talent for fighting, being gifted with an inherent instinct for martial arts and a downplayed case of Wakatsuki's 'superman syndrome' that makes him 2-3 times stronger than an average man, enabling him to overpower Akoya and Ryuki when they ambush him, but his Dirty Coward nature means he's apparently completely unaware of this and it only manifests when he's pushed into a corner mentally, freaking out the whole time as he's pushing two talented fighters onto the back foot. This trait is actually why several in the Worm don't respect him and want him dead, because his disposition makes a mockery of their beliefs, being incredibly naturally powerful and ambitious, but too cowardly to properly utilise his gifts, earning their disgust as his 'waste' of potential.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: He realizes that Ohma and Raian are too much for him and his students the moment he sees them use the Advance and Removal. He then tries to beg for his life and offer information to Ohma to prevent Raian from killing him. All that gets him is a punch meant to kill him.
• Knuckle Cracking: A particularly menacing variety, as instead of doing it by the knuckles, he pulls his fingers from side to side, two at a time, while giving a Slasher Smile.
• Lack of Empathy: Struggles to even remember his own students' names and doesn't bat an eye when Ryuki Gaoh murders them.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Despite being the highest ranked Worm we are initially introduced to, Xia actually doesn't know why his higher-ups are so obsessed with capturing Ohma, and vents his frustration at Edward about how much trouble Ohma and Raian are causing them for reasons he can only guess at.
  • It is later revealed that Xia holds the rank of "Far-East Branch Chief" and that Naidan Mönkhbat is also a member of worm to Xia's surprise, having never heard of him before. Additionally, he has a white tattoo, meaning he reports directly to the boss and outranks Xia in Worm's organisation.
• Logical Weakness: Earlier in the story, Xia admits that Edward handles fights better than himself, since he specializes in assassinations. He uses his disciples to do most of the heavy lifting and resorts to ambush or his poison needle whenever he goes out for his targets. This means that he's completely defenseless in a direct confrontation against fighters of Raian and Ohma's caliber.
  • In a massive case of Irony, it later turns out that This is a self-imposed weakness of his. Xia shares the same 'superman syndrome' and natural gift for martial arts that allowed their leader to become top of their organisation, but his cowardly disposition means he'd rather rely on weapons and sneak attacks than ever fight anybody in anything resembling a fair fight. Once he is forced into one though, he freaks out so much from sheer panic that he ends up tapping into his natural traits and overpowering two Kengan fighters ambushing him at once, apparently completely unaware of what he's really doing and seeing himself as a pitiful victim in his current situation, even as he's winning the fight.
• Made of Iron: While Xia is not exactly a fighter, Koga blowing him away with an unexpected kick doesn't even get him winded, and he's tough enough to tank two strikes from Raian to the chest which were meant to kill him and still manage to drag himself away from the carnage Raian and Ohma were unleashing on his students. He does the same against Kureshi and Narushima even though they have broken his limbs and hits his vital a bunch of time they thought they accidentally killed him. He turns out to have a downplayed case of 'superman syndrome' making him 2-3 times physically stronger and more durable than an average human being accounting for his notable resilience.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Himuro notes that Xia Ji is able to leave holes in concrete walls while scaling it despite his skinny physique.
• Nepotism: While he's undoubtedly skilled in his own field, he's racked up the most failures of any Worm member still alive, and it's implied he's given more slack for this because his brother is the Head of the Worm. That said, he still tends to suffer greatly for said failures and has been left for dead a couple of times. He just likely won't have to worry about a You Have Failed Me punishment. Yet.
• Oh, Crap!: Makes one when he sees Ohma and Raian use the Advance and Removal, respectively.
  • He has several big ones after encountering Kureshi and Joji. He is seen running away from the ensuing fight between Edward Wu, Erioh and Wu Xing crapping himself before encountering Kureshi, who dislocates his arm. He then gets kicked by Joji and his pressure points hit, immobilizing him in agony, before having his arm broken. He has his final massive one when he realises that all his men have been taken out by Hatsumi Sen and Mikazuchi Rei, and that no one is going to come and save him from being tortured by Kureshi and Joji, and is left as a sobbing, terrified mess.
  • He has such an epic one when brought before Shen Wulong to answer for his failures that you get the feeling he could just drop dead from a heart attack at any moment.
  • When the Kengan fighters start mobbing him in small groups, his sheer panic at the imminent danger causes him to start tapping into his natural physical strength and instruct of martial arts as his various tricks to evade or escape are negated one by one, actually making him more dangerous the more panicked he becomes.
• Patricide: In the past, Ji sent an assassin after his own father in hopes that he'd get to be the Head of the Worm. This ends up biting him in the ass when the Connector appoints his younger twin brother, Yan, to be the Head instead of Ji.
• Professional Killer: Unlike his cohorts, Xia is an assassin first and a fighter second, claiming Edward Wu handles fights better than himself. He's completely unmatched in his own field, however, able to infiltrate the prison building on the island the Annihilation Tournament takes place on and kills Ranjo brutally without being heard or seen.
• Red Right Hand: Quite literally, since he has his Worm tattoo on the back of his right hand.
• Self-Made Orphan: He had one of his assassin kill his dad so he could succeed him as head of Worm. It doesn't work because not only is the organization not inherited, but even if his name would commend respect his brother Yan was the better choice.
• Stealth Expert: He's not just able to sneak through the Bodyguards' security around Ranjo without leaving even a trace, but also manages to flee from Raian, Ohma and Retsudo without any of them noticing him moving, after taking two blows from Raian that were meant to kill him.
• Smug Snake: Seems to think of himself as an incomparable mastermind and destined to rule the world by climbing up Worm's internal ladder, but despite this he's a sneaky coward who constantly gets in dangerous situations that are way over his head and has an almost suicidal tendency to underestimate everyone who doesn't share his astronomically high opinion of himself. Ask anyone from Koga, Himuro and Akoya to motherfucking Lu Tian.
• Too Dumb to Live: Claims the Gu trial is for "replaceable combatants"... despite the huge amount of effort and resources it takes to produce one fighter, and the fact that those who pass it end up as some of the strongest fighters around (even ones whose training is incomplete like Agito). Lu Tian even seems confused at such a statement.
• Unskilled, but Strong: It's apparent that Xia Ji is actually very naturally gifted, strength-wise. Unfortunately for him, he's too much of a coward and opportunist to use it in a direct fight. This is actually why several of the Worm hold him in contempt, as he's got the same natural skills and abilities that allowed his brother to become head of the Worm, but his Dirty Coward disposition means that he'd rather do anything than fight fair with his bare hands, effectively wasting his own massive talent without realising it, and earning their ire because of their beliefs.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Twice Xia Ji is able to escape after his plan fails because he was left for dead or seemingly unable to move. In both case the attackers decide to not bother pursuing him.
• Weapon Specialization: One of the few techniques he has mastered is the Heavy Whip, a Wushu strike using centrifugal force built up all the way from the ankles before throwing a two-finger strike which, with Xia's Superman Syndrome, is strong enough to cleave straight through a drainage pipe and cut Koga's elbows open when grazing him with the fingertips.
• Why Won't You Die?: Maybe not 'die', but several characters have attacked and tortured him extensively and are surprised when it turns out they underestimated his physical durability, enabling him to escape whilst their attention was directed elsewhere. Raian did try to immediately kill him upon meeting him, and was taken aback that he failed. It turns out he has a downplayed case of the same 'superman syndrome' that grants Wakatsuki his immense physical prows, making him naturally more durable than a human being would otherwise be...which comes in handy as he gets put through absolute hell by multiple parties whose motives range from giving him a taste of his own medicine to wanting him dead.
• Wrestler in All of Us: He blasts Ryuki in the mouth with the mother of all dropkicks after slippng through his Root Cutter.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: While the Worm is not actively hunting him down they decided to make their next move without him, which convinces Edward that he no longer needs to protect him.

Edward Wu

The King of Hades (冥王, Mei-Ō)

"Better go to sleep, kiddo. By the time you wake up, the world will have changed."

Age: 49

One of three ringleaders attempting to acquire Tokita Ohma for the Worm. Edward is the leader of the Westward Branch of the Wu clan that splintered off from the main line at the same time as the Kure 1300 years ago, heading west instead of east. While not formally a member of Worm himself, he and his branch has worked with them for many years, selling the clan's secret techniques, Huisheng and Guihun^note respectively, a brainwashing technique that in theory lets the user pass on his "soul" to a descendant of his and the Wu clan’s name for the Removal. to Worm and the Other Niko. Edward is himself the current dominant host of Wu Hei, the progenitor of the Wu and Kure, along with four other "spare" Wu Hei's. He requests one of the 13 spots on the Purgatory team against the Kengan Association in Omega, sending Alan Wu into the fray.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: The poison on Xing's knife should have been lethal, but in Edward's case, all it did was slow him down enough when combined with his neck wound that Edward goes from unstoppable to just barely beatable.
• The Alcoholic: His primary interests are cigars, steak and booze, and his favorite place in the world is his local pub.
• Animal Motif: Compared to Tokita Niko representing the tiger, a solitary predator, Edward is an alpha male lion, a pack hunter. As the patriarch and "primary" Wu Hei, he needs to cultivate suitable spare Wu Heis for the future of his clan, as the herd needs a Wu Hei to lead it somehow and if he dies without a "spare", Huisheng would end there. He will lazily let his relatives Fabio and Solomon do the work and still expect the lion's share, but will rouse to show how he became King of Beasts when provoked, as Wu Xing and Erioh learn the hard way.
• Badass Boast: When he's walking down Wu Xing after elbowing Erioh in the chest.
  "There's simply no contest. There hasn't been since the clan first split. We are the Evolved Wu, you're not even a pebble in our way."
• Bait-and-Switch: After appearing early in Omega and asking for one of the 13 representative spots for Purgatory in the Kengan Association vs. Purgatory Tournament, he is nowhere to be seen in the Purgatory lineup. Instead he sends the similarly heavily built Alan Wu as his representative. In an early draft, Edward is shown as part of the team instead. Since he's the "primary" Wu Hei, and Alan is a secondary one, it's implied he saw little to no difference in letting 'another him' take the fighting spot, and his own surprise at how much of a problem Raian was implied he'd thought that any one of 'him' would take an easy victory.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: In contrast to the mainline Wu and Kure clans who will use tools, explosive and weapons to get the job done, Edward and by extension Wu Hei believes that the clan should evolve towards producing a barehanded combatant who can treat even weapons like child's play. Thus, he'll only use a weapon if it's already on hand, like throwing his lit cigar at his opponent's eyes or throwing Xing's dao at him after Xing tied the rope on it around Edward's wrist.
  "I've got no time for antiques. You evolved the wrong way, losers!"
• Black Eyes of Crazy: He has this, just like all the members of the Kure clan, as both of them were originally part of the same clan that split off 1300 years ago.
• Blood Knight: Raian immmediately tearing through Alan Wu and going in pursuit of Eddie doesn't get him worried in the slightest. Eddie simply smacks some sense into the panicking Xia and gives him an ear-to-ear Slasher Smile thinking about what he's going to do to Raian for killing his "other half".
• Cigar Chomper: He can even pull the cap at the bottom of them open with his teeth^note  Don't Try This at Home. Even ignoring the ridiculous amount of jaw power and Scary Teeth doing this would actually require, you are infinitely more likely to tear/undo the wrapping and ruin the cigar, or dump its contents all over the floor while getting a mouthful of raw tobacco. Cigar clippers exist for a reason.. He's gone through four cigars which is more than he has opponents in Xing, Erioh and Raian at the Purgatory stadium and still hasn't gotten more than a few puffs in before one of them attacks Edward instead of his backups or Edward throwing it at them as an improvised weapon. To say he's an incredibly wasteful and inefficient smoker would be an Understatement.
  "Come on, man, I just lit this up."
• The Clan:
  • He is the Patriarch of the Westward Wu Clan, a clan of assassins that split off from the Mainline Wu at the same time as the Kure. He refers to the Kure Clan as "fakes" that have been left alone for a thousand years, and are his sole reason for fighting for Purgatory instead of the Kengan Association. It is later revealed that Edward is the current leader of a splinter group of the Wu Clan, with the main line's leader having a cordial relationship with the Kure clan. Each of the three clans specializes in different kinds of eugenics and have different allegiances and taboos.
• Combat Pragmatist: Justified. Wu Hei's personality and skills are shared among a select few in the Westward Wu, meaning they are literally three of the same person and about the closest you can get to a real Hive Mind because him and the spare Wu Hei's share the same Ego. This means that a single fighter, even one of Raian's caliber using Removal, stands not even a smidgeon of a chance against three gigantic well-trained fighters sharing the same ego and instincts, making Edward, Fabio and Solomon coordinate in eerily perfectly sync to effortlessly beat down even monsters like Raian by themself(es).
  Edward: "Hehehe, you're mad, aren't you? You think it's unfair, don't you? You're goddamn right it is. We're gonna be unfair, and take you three-on-one."
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Inverted, he is the strongest vessel of Wu Hei by a country mile, but the difference between him, Fabio and Solomon jumping Raian three-on-one and his spares' individual prowess is huge. Edward himself plays it straight by virtue of being far more powerful than his spares and only getting serious once Fabio and Solomon have already paid the price for him taking it easy.
• Cool Shades: He wears extremely dark-tinted Duke Nukem aviators to hide his unnatural-looking eyes in public. Ironically, they make him look even scarier, as the framing of his black eyes under them in certain panels makes it look as if he has empty eye sockets.
• The Dreaded: When Xia Ji asks him why he sent Alan Wu to teach Raian a lesson instead of doing it himself, Edward asks him if he's questioning his judgement. Xia Ji immediately backs down and apologizes. When Edward later picks up Xia by the collar, the smaller man is reduced to Tears of Fear and screaming in terror for Edward to not hurt him. Muteba refers to Edward as a "Monster" who's at least as strong as the Other Niko.
• Evil Brit: A middle-aged Englishman by nationality, but both due to his sheer bulk and being the final masterpiece of a Chinese assassin clan millennia in the making, he displays very few traits usually associated with this trope.
• Even Evil Has Standards: For all that can be said about Edward, he has absolutely no good words to spare for Xia Ji. In a flashback he outright tells Yan that he'd kill someone like Ji himself if they were related to him while smoking a cigar Atop a Mountain of Corpses. He also calls The Other Niko cruel for wanting to teach Guihun to some of his students since he knew no one not bred for it could handle it.
• Evil Counterpart: To Raian, being more or less the embodiment of Raian's worst habits; Arrogance stemming from his physical dominance, laziness due to his innate superiority and being so violent and proud that no one can set him straight. Further enforced by the fact that he's old friends with The Other Niko.
• The Fashionista: He fully embraces the image of a hulking Arnold-like behemoth of a man, but also wears expensive looking black jeans and leopard print shirts even when he's being targeted by the two other clans by showing up at the tournament.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride. His sheer physical prowess also means that he never feels threatened by his opponents. Instead of finishing them off when he is presented with several opportunities to do so, he eventually slips up and leaves himself vulnerable to a stab to his neck. When that doesn't kill him, Raian finishes the job by taking advantage of his newfound weak spot. He also elevated himself too much from the other vessels which lead to them getting massacred early on while Erioh has his family and friends ready to assist. Had he looked out for Solomon and Fabio he would have had no issue flaunting his strength with the two covering his blind spots.

  Erioh: "You were too strong. That's why you'll lose."

• Foreshadowing:
  • He is first seen in the final chapter of Ashura with the "Tiger's Vessel" and Xia Ji in Hong Kong, with it being clear that they were involved in killing members of the Guardians, including Long Min. In said scene, his black eyes, similar to those of the Kure, are shown through his aviators. Come Omega, he has become friendly with Purgatory's leader and is connected to the mysterious Worm organization.
  • He calls Alan Wu his "other half". This turns out to be literal: he's one of at least a half dozen living Wu Hei's. Raian ambushes Edward behind the scenes afer his "match" with Alan because he saw Edward in the stands and chased after him, only for Edward to beat Raian into the floor on his own. While Raian's down, Edward reveals he brought two of his backups along to the Purgatory Stadium besides Alan Wu: Fabio and Solomon Wu. The latter two's chit-chat implies that Alan was the youngest among them and that the fight against Raian was supposed to be a Hidden Purpose Test for Alan.
• Genius Bruiser: Confident to a fault as he is, Edward is no fool. He deliberately doesn't even listen to half of what Xia Ji says because he knows half of it is either hogwash or a deception, refuses entering Purgatory himself, despite easily being strong enough, to avoid blowing Worm's cover, knows enough about Yan to know exactly when he could leave Ji to die in the span of events during the tournament, and is an avid connoisseur of cigars, high-end beef cattle and very expensive clothes.
• Genre Savvy: Bordering on Leaning on the Fourth Wall, as him, Solomon and Fabio Wu fall into a discussion over how their Catchphrase of saying "[whoever most recently died of theirs, in this case Alan Wu] was a failure of the Wu Clan" after Edward effortlessly defeated his killer Raian is too dark for a manga or anime.
• The Giant: At 212cm and 171 kilos, Edward is a walking mountain of muscle, to the point where most of the cast, who are on average well-built to massive, look normal-sized next to him. Idemitsu is a 2-meter tall brick wall and is dwarfed by Edward in person. The Westward Wu went north-west from China in part to take advantage of Bergmann's Rule for their eugenics program, resulting in them being far taller and heavier than average. Solomon, Alan, and Fabio Wu, the other Wu Hei's, are of a similar large size, but Edward is a different beast entirely.
• Hate Sink: Is this for the Kure and the mainline Wu clans, due to betraying them to the Worm and killing both the man next in line to be head of the Kure Clan and Wu Xing’s lover. Erioh and the rest of the Kure are perfectly fine with breaking their contract with the Kengan Association for a win during the Purgatory faceoff just for a chance to sink their teeth into Edward's neck.
• Human Hammer-Throw: He casually blocks the stump of Xing's sword with one hand tied up and then proceeds to fling him across the room like he was no more than an empty can of beer; Eddie is just that ridiculously powerful. A similar throw into a nearby wall leaves Reiichi nearly dead.
• In-Series Nickname: His friends call him Eddie.
• Irony: In spite of his hatred of the Kure Clan as a bunch of fakers compared to the Wu Clan, it is later revealed that he is considered a traitor by the Kure and Wu Clan heads for teaching Guihun to outsiders, namely the Other Niko Tokita, and killing Rikuto Kure.
• The Juggernaut: Good lord. If Idemitsu had shelled out enough money to make Edward fight for him instead of Alan, he could've probably fought three of Purgatory's matches on his own and won all three of them, then taken a cigar break before he decides to take a fourth match for the fun of it. During and immediately after the final few matches of the Tournament he was essentially painting the walls with both the mainline Wu and Kure clans' blood before he took too long to gloat over killing their leader Erioh to avoid a Back Stab in the neck.
• Lack of Empathy: Doesn't even bat an eye when his spares are killed and seems more interested in showing off his strength and smoking cigars than helping Fabio or Solomon out. Given the Westward Wu's Social Darwinist tendencies and Edward being the host of Wu Hei, who has seemingly done nothing but kill for millennia, this probably shouldn't come as a surprise.
• The Leader: He's the patriarch for the Occident Wu and possesses equal authority in the overall operation as the Head of Worm, making them Big Bad Duumvirates together with The Other Niko Tokita.
• Lightning Bruiser: Is simultaneously a hulking behemoth of a man who can send Raian flying or kill a normal human with a single punch and is agile like a cat, practically walking through Erioh, Raian and Wu Xing's attacks without even getting his leopard-print shirt dirty, before removing it to kick their collective asses with such confidence and ease that he lights up a cigar halfway through, as he was getting bored with them.
• Living Distant Ancestor: Through Huisheng, the progenitor of the Wu who lived over five millennia ago persists to the modern-day, with at least four backups in case Edward, or any of said backups, bite the bullet.
• Logical Weakness: As good as he is, even he can't keep track of multiple assailants trying to ambush him, eventually Xing stabs him in the neck leaving it to Raian to finish him off and drag the fight out to the point where Edward starts suffering from both the blood-loss and poison. In blink-and-you'll-miss-it parts of Edward and Raian's fight, you can see the tension in Edward's artery slowly relaxing as he starts wailing on Raian, steadily weakening him until Raian can get an opportunity to gouge the neck wound.
• Made of Iron: His faction eugenics made him and his members incredibly resilient. Only something from the Chunky Salsa Rule can guarantee their instant death. Edward doesn't even get burnt from Xing's Breath Weapon attack and can smash his sword to bits backhandedly without even cutting himself, and shrugs off a knife driven into his arteries by pinching the veins shut by force, though this leaves him reeling enough that he can't handle Raian afterward. Even with half his neck shredded he needs to get his head crushed to shut him up.
• Meaningful Name: The character for his last name "Wu" translates to "Kure" in Japanese. The faction he leads and the Kure splintered from the mainline in the 700's and share common ancestors.
• My Death Is Only The Beginning: Edward admits he's a little bummed out he won't get to join in on the "massive party" Worm has planned as he lies dying, but the Kure and Wu's assassination of four of the five Wu Heis will inevitably spur the more moderate elements of the Westward Wu into war under the banner of Edward's "son" Gilbert, actually a Huisheng'd clone of his in a similar vein to the Masaki brothers, who kills Edward's brother Howard and takes control of the Wu entirely for Edward posthumously.
• Mythical Motifs: The ultimate Wu Technique, Mount Tai Big Dipper Eightfold Demolition Fist, references Taishan, a mountain that has been one of the oldest and most sacred sites of worship in China since the Xia Dynasty. "Mount Tai Big Dipper" or 泰山北斗, Tàishān Bĕidŏu, is an ancient Chinese idiom used to denote a person of great or heaven-sent distinction.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: A veritable walking boulder of eugenically perfected musculature who looks wide enough for his leopard-print shirt and jeans to look painted on, Edward and by extension, Wu Hei has fought bare-handed even against weapons for an unfathomable amount of time, to the point where he calls Xing's dao on a rope old-fashioned because Edward is literally too strong to be called human at this point.
  "Let me say it again; It's the 21st century now. Who'd be crazy enough to swing a sword around when you can kill a man with a single finger?"
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Once it becomes clear that his faction is playing the bassline to Worm's cloning, it's hard not to see the similarities to Arnold Schwarzenegger due to the actor frequently starring in films involving such, and Edward mirrors many of Schwarzenegger's iconic looks down to the overflowing muscles, tearing off his shirt, Cool Shades, perpetual cigar in mouth and menacing ways of walking.
• Nonchalant Dodge: He's able to casually dodge sword attacks and a smorgasbord of assassination tools from Erioh and Xing without even having to put his hands up while smoking a cigar.
• Off with His Head!: Raian nearly decapitates him by gouging the wound left by Xing's knife in Edward's neck with a finger. Raian then crushes his head with a punch to finish him off.
• One-Hit Kill: His strikes and throws while using Guihun are strong and fast enough to kill or instantly knock out a well-trained man in one blow. If you're Made of Iron like the Kure, you might last two.
• One-Man Army: A few other fighters have gotten to show off against multiple opponents at once before. Edward stands out by tearing through four elite Kure clan members alongside the head of the mainline Wu, all armed to the teeth (in the latter's case literally), and was pretty much no worse off against them while Fabio and Solomon Wu bit the bullet early in the battle
• Overly Long Name: His previously mentioned ultimate technique is word salad incarnate, even in Japanese^note 呉氏絶技泰山北斗八壊拳 in Kanji, and this is without the added ruby text which Tvtropes does not support. and consists of Exactly What It Says on the Tin; The Eightfold Demolition Fist is just smashing his target in eight vital spots nearly simultaneously.
• Properly Paranoid: He doesn't like Worm keeping secrets from him and threatens Xia Ji when Lu Tian is revealed to be another Worm agent. Unlike Naidan's case, he is proven right in his worries; Xia Ji did know about Lu Tian and outright lies to Edward's face about it because of his own agenda.
• Pyrrhic Victory: After beating the living shit out of Raian, Erioh, Xing, Reichii and Hollis with minimal help from his "spares", Edward finally drops his guard after snapping Erioh's spine in a bear hug when he won't stay down. Erioh's Heroic Sacrifice ends up buying just enough of Edward's attention for Xing to burrow a knife in Edward's neck. This leaves him concentrating on pinching his arteries and leaves Raian an opening to gouge off his head.
• Rage Breaking Point: Downplayed, but he is annoyed and frustrated when Lu Tian is revealed to also be part of Worm right after Naidan. He lifts Xia Ji by the neck and threatens to kill him, tired of Worm's compartmentalized internal communication keeping him out of the loop. He settles down once he realizes Lu Tian is one of the apprentices the "Real" Niko told him he wanted to teach Gui-Hun.
• Red Baron: "Mei-Ō" is the title of the King of the Underworld in Japanese Mythology (and also the translation of Hades' epithet). Incredibly fitting for the vessel of Wu Hei, who has transcended death by turning his descendants into new Wu Heis.
• Scary Teeth: A set of perfect pearly whites that can bite cleanly into a metallic bottlecap, or tear off the "cap" of his cigars that you'd usually use a specialized clipper for.
• Shirtless Scene: Provides this in the most intimidating manner possible by sinking his fingers into his leopard-print shirt and tearing it like it was tissue paper when he gets annoyed with Erioh and Wu Xing.
• Signature Move: The Wu Clan Ultimate Technique: Mount Tai North Star Eightfold Demolition Fist, an endless barrage of horrifically powerful punches while using Guihun that can only be countered by punching through them.
• Slasher Smile: Must run in the family between him and the Kures, and his large smileholes only make it more pronounced.
• Soul Jar: He has been subjected to Huisheng, by which he carries the personality of Wu Hei, the progenitor of all three clans. His son Gilbert is a Worm-produced clone of Edward himself to be a Soul Jar of his own.
• Smoking Is Cool: He fishes a massive cigar out of his dress shirt and lights it while Xia has his Freak Out over being abandoned by the Head of the Worm, but snaps it in half after a few puffs when Raian shows up right behind him. He lights himself a new one immediately after beating Raian into the floor.
• Speed Blitz: Using Guihun, he can send Erioh, Raian and Wu Xing flying with brutally powerful punches before they can even blink. Despite having to cross the entire wide room to hit Xing, he hits all three of them so fast that they hit the floor or wall simultaneously.
  "It's about time you fossils learn why I'm on top of us Wu Heis."
• Spiking the Camera: When Erioh presents a picture of him to the Kure elites after his murder of Rikuto, Edward is looking smugly to the side directly into the camera lens.
• Strong Family Resemblance: His face looks very similar to both Erioh and Raian from the eyes to a similar hairstyle, except on a body that makes Wakatsuki look small. Doubled with his cloned son who just had a faint resemblance when he was first introduced, but looks like the spitting image of his father wearing a hoodie after the 2-year timeskip in Omega.
• Super-Strength: Is able to effortlessly lift Xia a meter off the ground by his Changshan's collar with a loose-one handed grip and Offhand Backhand Wu Xing’s sword into bits and pieces. As the patriarch of the Wu Clan he can also use Guihun/Removal, and taught the technique to the Other Niko Tokita.
• There Is Another: After Alan's death it is revealed Edward is also a vessel for Wu Hei and later he explains there is a fifth one not present as he fights Raian with Solomon and Fabio. Edward cloned his own personality into a younger body and killed the last Wu Hei.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He has a preference for dry-aged grassfed Rubia Gallega steak and encourages both the reader and Raian to try it if they ever get the chance, but does concede that Idemitsu served him a damn good piece of Wagyu for lunch as he's lighting a cigar over Raian's beaten body.
• Unskilled, but Strong: In terms of actual fighting technique he undoubtedly subverts this with his freaky ability to parry anything from swords to Raian's Lionbite and Erioh's Zhong Kui at the same time, the latter swinging directly behind him in his blindspot. But because of the gap in speeed and strength he has against everyone and the overconfidence he gains from it, he tends to just throw a massive hook or two and then immediately go to leave because he can't grasp the idea that someone isn't incapacitated or dead on the first hit, and rarely follows up on his attacks. His Signature Move is a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that, when he's exhausted and with a bleeding neck wound, leaves room for someone strong enough to counter because he leverages so much strength into the wide swings.
• Worf Had the Flu: Raian's a formidable opponent for anyone, but Edward can comfortably take him on because he's just that strong in every aspect. But he can't do it with a poisoned knife wound in his neck, and this leaves enough of a gap in his unbreakable Eightfold Demolition Fist for Raian to beat him onto the defensive and tear Edward's throat open by his major carotid.

"Tiger's Vessel" (SPOILERS!)

"I'm the only tiger we need."

A mysterious unnamed fighter never seen without his hood that claims to be the last user of the Niko Style and posits himself as the one true "Tiger's Vessel". He's also one of the 13 Purgatory fighters for the competition.

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For more information about him, see his folder in Purgatory as Fei Wangfang.

The Other Niko Tokita (SPOILERS!)

The Last Niko

"The Niko Style's reached a dead end. I can't expect any further evolution from it. Not as it is now. So I'll use anything I can get my hand on, whether it comes from God or the devil."

An enigmatic tiger-like man who appeared before Ohma and Kiryu thirteen years before Ashura, endowing the former with the Advance and the latter with the Niko Style, as well as teaching Kanoh Agito and Lu Tian said Style and the Formless Stance years before then. His true identity is completely shrouded in mystery, but he is the penultimate surviving student of Mukaku Gaoh who stands on equal footing within Worm as the Head of the organization.

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• Animal Motifs: Between his cat-like pupils and short mane-like hair and beard, he has fully embraced the motif of a tiger, the strongest of the great cats, despite being quite the huge Pretty Boy in his youth. He even gives a Cheshire Cat Grin in several panels where he's just a silhouette with a mouth and eyes. His reappearance at the Purgatory stadium shows just how inhuman he looks compared to a normal person.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Compared to the Niko style taught to Ohma, the Other Niko favors extreme offense. He teaches a lot of dangerous techniques like Gui Hun and Fallen Demon knowing the drawbacks are severe but it will finish the fight fast. Notably while his students push themselves to the point of death or madness he doesn't practice what he teaches, as he'll rather observe than rush his opponent.
• Awesome by Analysis: He has a great sense of observation, finding creative ways to use the Niko Style and coming up with new techniques. It also plays a huge part in why he teaches dangerous techniques to his students as he gets to see the drawbacks without experiencing them.
• Bad Samaritan: While he gives martial arts lessons for free, there's always a massive price to pay, and he's usually the one who profits the most. In the case of Kiryu, Agito and Lu Tian, he might not even teach his student everything the Niko Style has to offer because he wants to see how far they can take a facet of his techniques (such as Fallen Demon used with the Koei Style by sending Kiryu to Genzan as a student, or the Formless stance), effectively turning them into crazed martial arts Misfit Lab Rats which he can then take notes from to improve his own martial arts. He claims in a flashback with Edward Wu that he abandoned the original Niko Style, as it couldn't progress further, and decided to add ridiculously dangerous techniques like Possessing Spirit, Fallen Demon and Guihun to his training regimens to stress-test his best students. The consequences of these techniques on his students come on vivid display during the Purgatory vs Kengan tournament.
• Big Bad: Possibly, or at the very least part of a Big Bad Duumvirate. While it's not really clear, he was at the very minimum the man who orchestrated the death of Ohma's teacher, and is a major player within Worm, with his own faction. He is, or was, also one of the last remaining students of Mukaku Gaoh.
• Chekhov's Gunman: During some of Ohma's dream sequences and hallucinations, a man depicted as an all-black silhouette with no face repeatedly tells him to discard all the teachings, moral or martial, his master imparted to him in search of more power. That silhouette turns out to be this very man.
• Confusion Fu: Lu Tian's Trash Talk reveals that he invented and mastered the Formless stance using the Niko Style as his basis, seeking to perfect a way of fighting that went beyond anything like set forms and stances and using whatever motion is carefully chosen to fit the situation in the fight at the time, however beastly it may look.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: The Other Niko is an opportunistic fighter who won't risk his life if he doesn't need to. If left no choices however he will use dangerous techniques like Possessing Spirit and will try his hardest to finish his opponent so they don't fight again.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Seems to invent these almost willy-nilly in search of greater power. Among other things, he's mentioned to be the creator of the Advance and the Fallen Demon, both of which have drastic side effects in return for overclocking the user's heart and brain respectively. He also taught Formless and Guihun to some of his students even though he personally would never use the latter because of the risk of death. During his fight with Kiryu he only uses the Advance after mentally declaring that he'll have to kill Kiryu no matter the cost.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: His "Leech" technique is to cause skin friction to give his opponent the sensation of being burned. It's not damaging but doing it over and over will his victim's skin fully raw and and likely go mad from the pain.
• The Dreaded: Muteba has a short exchange with him in the Purgatory stadium's monitor room that ends with Muteba cratered into the wall. Being tough as nails, Muteba mostly shrugs it off, lights himself a cigarette and then immediately dials Idemitsu to warn him that people need to get the hell out of Niko's way, whatever he's up to.
  Muteba: "And don't even think about sending anyone after him, alright? Stay away from him, or more people will die."
• Evil Counterpart: Like Ohma's Niko, he teaches advanced martial arts that can turn anyone talented into a top-end martial artist. However he turns his students into Ax-Crazy brutes and will teach them techniques even he wouldn't personally use because of the drawbacks, like Guihun, all for the sake of advancing his own techniques and ideas before he puts them into practice himself. In contrast, Ohma's Niko still treated Ohma as a kid, tried to teach him things other than martial arts and, even during the most hellish part of Ohma’s training, the one that allows Ohma to use Demonsbane, he went through the same conditions as a show of solidarity towards his student.
  "Everything comes with a sacrifice. So get sacrificing."
• Exotic Eye Designs: Coupled with Hellish Pupils, as Niko's eyes are small, bead-like and vertically slit like a feline's, giving him a fiendishly intimidating gaze.
• Explosive Overclocking: He is the creator of both the Advance and Fallen Demon, which functions as said trope for the heart and brain respectively. While originally created to stand a chance against the Wu and Kure’s Guihun/Removal technique, he eventually just learned the proper Guihun from Edward Wu instead of using his own version, though he claims he would never use it himself.
• Foreshadowing: All we know of his true identity so far is that like Naidan Mönkhbat assuring Ryuki that he is the "Real" Naidan, this man introduces himself to Ohma as the "Real" Niko.
• Genius Bruiser: Flashbacks show him to be erudite and singlemindedly obsessed with advancing martial arts as a whole, somehow finding ways to manually overclock his heart and induce tachypsychia in his brain to further the Niko Style, and how to induce the former in others just by punching them in the chest. He is also the first non-Wu or Kure to learn how to use Guihun/Removal. He was also a fierce enough opponent that Ohma's Niko nearly lost his life fighting him only to be subsequently killed by Genzan Taira.
• Human Shield: Grabs one of the dead technicians in Purgatory's monitor room to shield himself from Muteba's knife, saving himself from a Back Stab.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Flashbacks to when he trained under Mukaku showed he used to have a bishie face with a bob haircut not unlike Kiryu Setsuna's.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Connector and the Xia twins have a lot of goofy moments, so they and some other Worm members occasionally make the Ancient Conspiracy come off as a cartoon villain organization. Even Edward Wu is more of a Boisterous Bruiser than a terrifying villain. The Other Niko however is treated as a genuine menace and the direct cause of many characters' trauma.
• The Last DJ: The singular survivor of Gaoh Mukaku's attempt at Training from Hell onto The Inside's Evil Orphans to produce "Tokita Niko", a Living Legend that was supposed to bring order to The Inside, which is invoked by his epithet. Subverted in that Niko has none of the integrity usually associated with the trope, even as it gives him a lot of clout among the Worm.
• Made of Iron: Being a master of the Niko Style he can use Indestructible on short notice.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • He was the one who took advantage of Kiryu's demented state of mind and belief that Ohma is his so-called "god of destruction" to orchestrate the death of Ohma's Niko and grant the latter the Advance. Lu Tian and Fei Wangfang both desperately clinging to the hope of being Niko's ultimate successor implies that he pulls this kind of psychological trickery on everyone he teaches.
  • Even back when he was training with Mukaku, he let Five overuse the Possessing Spirit just to see what would happen.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: He really likes to dress in fancy suits and eat at fancy restaurants.
• Menacing Stroll: Niko's has him with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders pushed out while taking narrow steps with no gap between his legs, closely resembling the way Yujiro walks in Baki the Grappler. The Tiger's Vessel doubles this manner of walking when he's wearing his hooded cloak.
• The Mole: He (along with Five), secretly joined the Worm back when they were training with Mukaku. During the training in Gekigahara, both of them tried to kill the other students and Mukaku.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: His fight with Ohma's Niko blew Kiryu's mind. He also summarily craters Muteba into a nearby wall off-screen during Fei Wangfang and Wakatsuki's fight, but doesn't finish him off presumably due to noticing Muteba trying to lure him in to get shot by his derringer.
• Oh, Crap!: When Kiryu manages to land a debilitating blow on him Niko is internally freaking out as the fight is getting too even for his taste and Kiryu is adamant about killing him..
• Posthumous Character: He's initially presented as such due to Kiryu serving as an extremely insane Unreliable Narrator as to the events of Ohma's past, but it is ultimately subverted by the reveal that he survived his battle with Ohma's Niko when he reappears in the Purgatory stadium's monitor room to oversee the Tiger's Vessel's battle.
• Seen It All: When he meets Gilbert Wu he immediately recognizes him as Edward Wu that somehow got younger. Being a Top Officer of the Connector and the man that invented multiple Dangerous Forbidden Technique he has witnessed stranger things.
• Slasher Smile: He's always sporting one on his face. All of his students took after him in that regard.
• Smoking Is Cool: Like Ohma's Niko, he smokes a pipe. It might very well be one of the calling cards of Mukaku Gaoh's students who all took the name Niko Tokita.
• So Proud of You: He says as much about Agito and Ohma, even if they went off the path he had laid out for them, when he reappears in Purgatory.
• Sore Loser: Downplayed but he is still bitter about losing to Ohma's Niko, stating that he can't be stopped now that he is dead.
• Stealthy Colossus: He's massive enough that he towers over the teenage Kiryu and Ohma even when leaning in to talk to them, yet he made a fully trained teenage Ohma freeze up in fear by walking up to him without Ohma even realizing he was there until Niko started talking to him.
• Tiger Versus Dragon: Tokita Niko more or less translates as "Ten Demon Snakes, Two Tigers", poising him as the Tiger to The Connector's Dragon.
• Training from Hell: He is a fan of the Gu ritual final test, where fifty of his students must kill each other for three months with barely enough supplies for one person to live. This is how he whittled a battalion of four thousand students of his down until he was left with a singular student who could absorb his techniques and ideas like a sponge in Fei Wangfang.
• Wicked Cultured: Seems to enjoy eating at fancy restaurants and drinking Californian cult wines after a lifetime of poverty in The Inside. When he meets up with Fei Wangfang in a flashback, it's in a fancy Chinese restaurant where Niko is shown ordering more or less the entire menu and partaking in their finest rice-wines while having a laugh over his student Fei having a psychotic moment before his eyes. The wine he gets to partake in Chapter 241 of Omega is a Shout-Out to the Screaming Eagle brand. When Kiryu used the bottle as a kusarifundo by wrapping it in a tablecloth, he was more pissed about the fact that he only got to take a single sip of the 1.6 million yen wine,^note roughly 11000 USD than about the attempt on his life.
• Super Mode: He can use Possessing Spirit but having used his students and the fifth Niko as guinea pig he realizes it is better used in short bursts than to stay in the mode.
• Wild Card: According to Xia Ji, he and his lackeys are outsiders to the Worm like Edward Wu who have seemingly joined the organization out of mutual benefits rather than loyalty.
• You Are Number 6: Back when he was training with training with the other Nikos, he was known as Six.

Frankie Thomas

An Upper-Class Worm Combatant who infiltrated the Philliphine Army over seventeen years ago to get his squad of Worm Combatants formally trained by Rolón Donaire to gauge his skills and then attempt to bring him into Worm's folds if the results proved satisfactory.

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• Bullying a Dragon: Yeah dude, just open up negotiations by immediately threatening Rolón, someone sought after by Worm for his prodigious skills, with guns while revealing his True Companions had been in your pocket the whole time. surely nothing can go wrong...
• Join or Die: He offered this on behalf of Worm, who were coveting Rolón's skills as an instructor, together with Rolón's hand-picked squad of Filipino army men who were all Worms themselves. Rolón picked the third option; Killing Frankie, his squad, and spitting in Worm's face.
• Post Humous Character: Killed by a twenty-year old Rolón Donaire, who slammed the butt of Frankie's own rifle into his jaw and used him as a bullet sponge before sawing his head off with a huge combat knife.

Jadamba Sumyaabazar

An Upper-Class Worm Combatant and an expert in Mongolian Bökh Wrestling who served as Naidan's master.

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• Apathetic Teacher: When you're a Worm member and a teacher, you're qualified. He didn't bat a eye to his weeded out students who can't handle the training.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Taught Naidan in both a brutal style of folk wrestling and his Eye of the Sky.
  "Be the Hawk, Naidan. Be the hawk that looks down upon all from the sky. Do not be the wolf, bound to the ground."
• Posthumous Character: Killed by Naidan five years before Omega at the end of his training.
• Red Left Hand: Has his black Worm tattoo on the back of his left hand.
• Stout Strength: Considerably more portly than other fighters, but his treetrunk-like arms makes it obvious that it's all muscle.
• Surpassed the Teacher: Immediately after the final exam of his Training from Hell, Naidan is challenged by Jadamba to a fight to prove whether Naidan was worthy of being a Worm combatant. Naidan proceeded to throw Jadamba on his head and neck, killing him instantly. This got Naidan promoted to the Head's personal guard, which even Jadamba wasn't part of.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Is shown drinking from a bowl of Kumis, with a large jug of it standing next to him as he oversees Naidan's final training.
• Training from Hell: From what little we get to see of his regimen, it involved Naidan doing a whole lot of lunges while carrying a massive wooden log on his shoulders, and resisting being quartered by chains tied to Mongolian horses, which are exceedingly strong and fast even among nomad horse breeds, all while standing in Ma Bu. According to Jadamba's philosophy on grappling, this is to build "immobility", the power to resist outside pressure and then impose his own pressure on the opponent when they get a hold of them.

Tenjin & Ogi

Left: Tenjin. Right: Ogi

Two of The Head's personal bodyguards brought along to Tokyo by him and The Connector as part of their operation, introduced while picking Xia Ji out of the gutters to answer for his previous failures. "Tenjin" and "Ogi" are not their real names and instead Codenames given to them on the spot during a meeting with The Head.

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• Blood Knight: Tenjin gets excited when he sees Rei's speed at the start of their fight.
• Bullying the Dragon: Ogi has the suicidally stupid idea to fight Mukaku on his own without calling in his men for backup, before calling the old man "expendable". He only gets to throw a single punch before he doesn't live to regret it.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Ogi gets his neck snapped by a chop from Mukaku, then has his head hammer-punched into his torso by the old man.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Ogi severely breaks his hand punching Mukaku in his chest and then gets swiftly killed by Mukaku first breaking his neck with a chop before having his his head hammer-punched into his torso by the old man. Though its somewhat downplayed in that Mukaku himself notes that Ogi is what even he would consider quite strong for managing to make him cough up a bit of blood with a single punch that he was using Armorclad against.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Tenjin meanwhile, puts up more of a fight against Rei, managing to block most of his lightning-fast attacks. Rei gauges by the power of his strikes that just one of them would end him if it landed cleanly and went to immediately end the fight by striking Tenjin's spine and paralyzing him. Even then, Tenjin was still able to barely move for one more attempt at Rei's life.
• Cyanide Pill: After being paralyzed and getting his knees broken by Rei, Tenjin poisons himself before he could be taken in alive. The poison almost instantly kills him, in addition to making him bleed profusely out of his mouth, nose and eyes.
• Faux Affably Evil: Both of them are obedient to their master and polite and humorous in conversation, but also make it clear that they have absolutely zero respect for Ji and will kill him at the slightest convenience.
  Tenjin: "By the way, we're only smiling to keep you at ease as best we can. If you mistake that as a sign of friendship, we'll eliminate you."
• Fingore: Ogi severely breaks his hand punching Mukaku in his chest.
• The Giant: Both of them are massive, towering over the near two-meter hunchback Xia Ji and causing a passerby to turn his head and gawk at their size.
• Graceful Loser: Downplayed, but when Rei says he's stronger than Tenjin even when committed to nonkilling, Tenjin agrees and says he can't argue with that. Somewhat subverted when Tenjin immediately kills himself via Cyanide Pill.
• Lack of Empathy: Despite being partners, Tenjin doesn't show any concern for Ogi after being killed by Mukaku. Lampshaded by Willem Wu who tells Tenjin that his reaction (or lack thereof) isn't normal.
• Line-of-Sight Name: After two housing projects in downtown Tokyo.
• Lightning Bruiser: Tenjin is shown to have the power, durability, and reflexes to block most of Rei's strikes, especially notable since Rei's attacks are meant to be nigh-unreactable one hit kills. Unfortunately for Tenjin, he couldn't block them all.
• Man Bites Man: Tenjin attempts this against Rei despite being able to barely move from paralysis. Rei simply ducks it before he breaks Tenjin's knees with an oblique kick.
• New Meat: Ogi is relatively new within the organization's upper echelon, giving Tenjin opportunities to expose him and the viewer to elements of Worm that are Classified Information elsewhere in the organization.
• Those Two Guys: Lampshaded by Ogi before he gets that Code Name by saying Ji can call them "Tom and Jerry, Startsky and Hutch, Dharma and Greg", whichever he prefers.
  Xia Ji: "Dharma and Greg were husband and wife, dumbass..."
• Too Dumb to Live: Ogi's plan to find and kill Mukaku is to send his men to scout the area, go alone in the area none reported back from and punch Mukaku. The Inside is already sold by the narrative as an unforgiving place, so even if Ogi didn't know Mukaku was one of the strongest unarmed fighters in existenc, it would be stupid to walk deliberately into what appears to be a kill zone so underprepared.
• Worf Effect: Being handpicked by the Head like Naidan and built just as big as him would make them powerful fighters and they are. However their only fights are with a Living Legend and the world's fastest man, so they don't really compare.

Hiruko

An intelligence agent for Worm and a Direct Subordinate of the Head who specializes in impersonation.

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• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Is seen relishing a cigarette while discussing future plans with The Head, only to almost drop it when she becomes the target of Yan's Killing Intent when she starts asking for too much information.
• Identical Stranger: Besides slightly sharper features, she looks like the spitting image of Mana Kimishima. If her current face isn't the result of facial reconstructive surgery, she probably didn't have to change much about herself to look Mana's part.
• Master Actor: She has impersonated Mana, Nogi's secretary, on every occasion where the topic of Worm came up, causing Nogi to nearly snap due to the in-hindsight blunder and being unaware that he'd been leaking information to Worm through Hiruko for the last two years.
• Mythical Motifs: Hiruko is another name for Ebisu, one of the Seven Japanese gods of fortune, typically associated with fishermen.
• Quaking with Fear: Almost drops her cigarette doing this when Yan gives her one hell of a Death Glare for inquiring on the one subject she shouldn't; who Ohma and Ryuki are cloned from.

Luohan (SPOILERS!)

"I'm sure you've all figured it out as soon as you laid eyes on me."

Full name Shen Luohan, he is last of The Connector's Top Officers alongside Yan, Gilbert Wu and Niko. He is busy with a job overseas at the time he is first mentioned. When he makes his proper introduction, he immediately reveals himself to be another clone of The Connector and the CEO of The Death Dealers, a Worm splinter cell and an international PMC specializing in extermination of other Worm cells.

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• Affably Evil: He is ever-composed, well-spoken and very polite. He's also subservient to The Connector and threatens the Kengan Association with nuclear warheads planted around the world with a smile on his face.
  Luohan: "And now that I put it into words, I guess we are the bad guys."
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He introduces himself in an incredibly snazzy-looking suit with an elaborate pattern resembling either honeycombs or genetic sequencing, complete with a tie with the same pattern.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Luohan was overseas when he was first mentioned before the Inside Arc began, and boy has he been busy. While the Worm were buying time and espionaging, this guy more or less took over the world's private military industry through put-up jobs hunting down splinter Worm cells around the globe, becoming the richest CEO in the world in the process and legitimizing the Death Dealers in the eyes of the public as heroes fighting a Nebulous Evil Organization. As a result, Luohan made sure he would have the Kengan Association by its balls by the time he takes center stage while Worm's core players are directly working with him.
• Identical Stranger: Besides slightly older features, glasses and a pencil mustache, Luohan is almost identical to Ohma in appearance.
• Mythical Motifs: "Luohan" is the Chinese word for an Arhat, someone who has reached Enlightenment.
• The Starscream: After the meeting with the Kengan Association, Luohan is shown quietly gathering allies for a plan to kill Shen Wulong, approaching Ohma, Ryuki, and "the other" Niko for this betrayal. He states to Niko that a "screwball" like Shen "doesn't deserve to be a god", and that he wants to be the Connector. To that end, he wants Shen's memories, which he attributes as the cause of Shen's seemingly-superhuman fighting abilities, and he plans to usurp them when Shen tries to use Huisheng to transfer his consciousness into Ohma and Ryuki.
• Stealth Expert: When he first arrives in Japan to introduce himself to the Kengan Association, he sneaks past all the intense but poorly organized security teams and freelancers using his helicopter (that he's not in) as a distraction, with only Terashi noticing that something's up when he realizes Muteba of all people is posted outside instead of somewhere he can make a difference. He even wore high-class shoes that made a distinct clacking sound and had a shit-eating smirk on his face most of the way there to highlight how it's like a stroll in the park for him.

Gilbert Wu (SPOILERS!)

"Sorry, uncle. I'm afraid I've been banned from hell."

The Demon of Death (死の悪魔, Shi no Akuma)

Edward Wu's cloned "son" and the final masterpiece of the Westward Wu, gene-edited with Worm technology to take Edward's superhuman physique to the next level. Shortly after Edward's death backstage at the Purgatory stadium at Mount Godslayer, Gilbert and his faction of trustees kills his uncle-brother Howard Wu and unifies the entire Westward Wu under his and Worm's heel.

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• Always Second Best: He is the last remnant of Wu Hei's legacy, a being so powerful and vile he was seen as a demon and with Worm and Edward's conditioning Gilbert is even more dangerous than his predecessors. But he is still subservient to The Connector, a pseudo-reincarnation of a martial arts sage who is seen as a god by the Worm and Gilbert's faction, to the point that the Westward Faction folded to Worm and gave him access to their genetic studies and Huisheng technique 1300 years ago. The Connector also thinks he was better as Edward which rattles Gilbert, who thinks that his body chemistry being the one of a teenager might have actually made him worse.
• Bishōnen Line: Given Edward Wu was already quite good-looking in an oldschool 1970's casanova strongman type of way, it should come as no surprise that a clone of him would look shockingly handsome in his twenties.
• Humble Pie: Shen's condescending remark after Gilbert and Willem failed to kill Akoya or Kiryu, fighters so far below their level, he has no excuses, strike a nerve and makes him reconnect with his Wu Hei heritage instead of Edward.
  Gilbert: "Willem, I’m giving up the epithet "The Demon of Death"."
  Willem: "Finally... you’re taking up your last body’s epithet, "The King of Hades"?"
  Gilbert: "No. There’s no point in taking the same name. I’m surpassing The King of Hades. "The God of The Underworld." I’m inheriting the epithet of our primogenitor. Wu Hei."
• In the Hood: His "CAUTION!"-marked hoodie covered in lightning bolts makes him give off a remarkably different vibe than his classic Fashionista father.
• Last of His Kind: With Howard's death, Gilbert is the only person still endowed with Wu Hei's memories and techniques, assuming these weren’t taken out of his "programming" for the sake of making more space for Edward's Awesome Ego and unlike his "father", Gilbert has said that he no longer needs spares.
  Gilbert: " I'm the only ruler we need."
• Oh, Crap!: In Chapter 245, Gilbert is initially stoic upon seeing Akoya burst from the kitchen of the restaurant, internally expressing mild surprise at most that he's still alive, but then gets an incredible look of shock on his face when Akoya drops a grenade just before it goes off and causes an explosion that nearly takes down the building.
• Strong Family Resemblance: They already looked very similar, but after having taken over the clan in Edward's place for two years, he's practically just his dad in modern street-wear without the Cool Shades.
• Superior Successor: His DNA was tampered with by Worm to take Edward's already freakish physical abilities up to an even higher plateau, able to make quick work of Howard Wu while unarmed.

Shen Wulong (SPOILERS!)

"Let experience mold you. Fail as many times as you need to. Take responsibility, and give it your best shot".

The Connector (繋がる者, Tsunagaru-mono)

The Man Behind the Man of The Worm, and the Westward Wu, with the Head operating more as a spymaster and The Handler for Shen, whose ancestor took over both organizations by martial force about 1300 years ago. He is the latest in a long line of "Shen Wulong"s, the name of a secluded hermit monk from the Chinese mountains who passed his name to his descendants, creating a legend of an immortal martial arts sage in the process of bringing the Chinese underworld under his heel. He is an enigmatic double-pupiled Chinese man who Worm fears and worships at once like he is a God in Human Form, and praise him as the end-goal of their organization. He is later confirmed to be the genetic template of Ryuki Gaoh, who is by all known accounts his last clone.

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• A God Am I: This is an unusual example because Shen’s personality and general demeanor don't indicate any demands to be revered as a god. The Worm organization’s worship of Shen as a god began when his incarnation 1300 years ago descended from the mountains of China, decided he had beef with the Worm organization and subsequently curbstomped the then Head of Worm in a duel, causing the entirety of the Worm organization to believe that this solitary sage was literally Kung-Fu Jesus in all but name.
• Affably Evil: He is rather easy going and shows concern for his underlings, even though he and Yan plan on having the Worm collapse in a bloody war against the rest of the world.
• Artistic License – Biology: Double pupils, also known as Polycoria, usually results in heavily hampered vision and sensitivity to light. Shen seems to have no such issues. And while there are a lot of nigh-unbelievable things the human body can do with the mastery of breathing techniques, yogic or otherwise, outright slowing down the physical aging process the way Shen does, while still having a Big Eater lifestyle full of booze, is not one of them; If anything the carbonation of all the beer he drinks should upset his breathing rhythm.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: His memory isn't bad at all, going by the fact that he can vividly remember the report he got about Xia's operation that Koga got caught up in two years earlier despite Xia being completely beneath his notice; It also didn't take him long to realize Mukaku was Long Xiu after a hint from his elderly opponent. His attention span, on the other hand, is that of a child's. After telling Yan to hook him up with the Kengan Association just for a chance to meet Koga a few days earlier (with Yan having to explain that the idea was completely off the table due to their conflict with the Association), he gets distracted slamming down beers when Yan brings him within spitting distance of Koga.
  Yan: "Son of a bitch, you already lost interest!"
• Atrocious Alias: He presents himself as "Jackie Lee" while attending the Berserker Bowl. This sticks because he immediately hit it off with Joji over their love of food and beer, giving him a free pass for the forseeable future to spectate Kengan matches.
• Authority in Name Only: He claims that he doesn't consider himself an actual authority figure among the Worms and sees himself as an "outsider" in regards to their actual schemes, stating that he sees the society more as a cult that built themselves around him who dedicated themselves around eliminating potential threats to him regardless of his actual opinions.
• Awesome by Analysis: His martial arts aptitude and knowledge is so immense that he can help anyone reach their full potential if they can survive his training. Following a few tips about adjusting his posture allowed Ohma to exponentially increase the force of his Ironbreaker strike.
• Badass Boast: He drops an absolutely stone cold one while reuniting with Gaoh Mukaku.
  Shen: "Mukaku, have you heard of the Gaia Hypothesis?"
  Mukaku:" "Isn't that the crackpot theory some researcher at NASA or whatever came up with? The one that says the Earth is one giant organism."
  Shen: "Exactly. It posits that the Earth is a single lifeform, and that all life on Earth interacts with the Earth to create ecosystems. Now, I personally think the Gaia Hypothesis isn't entirely bullshit... And that would make me the immune system. I can hear the Earth telling me to eliminate you."
  Mukaku: "Oh, I see... You're sick in the head."
• Beware the Silly Ones: Shen is always goofing around since there is little that can even scratch him, but when he is bored by someone's resistance he brutally mangles them.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Together with Yan and the Other Niko. In terms of power and authority he's the true Big Bad of Worm's Might Makes Right Ancient Conspiracy, but leaves most of the actual work to his underlings.
• Big Eater: Nags Yan for them to go for ramen, while burping mid-sentence, after chowing down on Chinese food minutes earlier. Seems to apply to his drinking habits as well, getting distracted chugging his mug of ale when Yan brought him to the same beer garden Koga and his friends were partying in before the Berserker Bowl after he'd previously expressed interest in Koga.
• Brain Uploading: He is not satisfied with Huisheng and has financed Bando's studies to find a way to actually implant his memories into a clone instead of just overwriting someone's personality.
• Brought Down to Badass: He can do that to himself if he wants a challenge by limiting his body down to the level of his opponent. However he only does so to people already strong enough to entertain him, so he is still monstrously strong by normal human standards.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Shen is the most horrifying martial artist in the world despite being an absolute goof when he isn't in a fighting mood. In his Establishing Character Moment, he's more interested in pool fishing and complaining about being a bad fisherman than giving Xia Ji his just desserts for failure, yet still reduces him to sweating in panicked fear. When fighting Gaoh Mukaku, he takes the time to compliment his opponent, who is freaking out because Shen keeps dodging everything without breaking a sweat.
• Challenge Seeker: Understandably, Shen Wulong would rather not die for a challenge, and defending his life is one of the few scenarios where he will use lethal force without the planet's say-so. But he's not averse to the idea of a good fight or even being defeated in combat. To the point that provided they reach out to him through a trusted friend and are willing to shell out the cash for a lot of booze and food, he'll gladly give even his enemies actionable tips on how to approach his level.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Physically he is born with the same capabilities as Ryuki, but he has over a millennia of training all condensed into one body making him supernaturally strong, agile, durable and even resistant to Deadly Gas thanks to a mastery of yogic breathing techniques. With a few tips he can make Ohma break the sound barrier with his "Ironbreaker" as Shen knows exactly the peak potential of a technique thanks to lives of training.
• The Chooser of the One: Shen was the one who appointed Yan as the current Head of the organization after his predecessor died.
• Commonality Connection: He and Joji Narushima immediately bond at the Berserker Bowl in the seats next to Kazuo over being dead-eyed, fair-haired goofballs with huge eating and booze requirements; The first thing they do upon meeting one another is clacking their cans of beer and then chugging arm-in-arm before sharing Joji's snacks, all without a word between them, before proceeding to slam down a variety of beers watching the matches. By the time of the semifinals, the two of them have basically become Those Two Guys, except obsessed with trying different beers.
• Condescending Compassion: His praises about someone's strength or creativity come out as rather hollow when he simply steamrolls through it. Sometime it's him being genuinely if insensitive by calling the people powerless sometime it feels like he is just rubbing salt saying they place their feet well before just knocking them with a gentle poke.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Any fight he is in is this, to the point that calling it a "battle" is highly generous. The most effort he's ever expended in a fight is against Gaoh Mukaku, whom had trained years precisely for that outcome, specially-designed the arena with multiple traps and weapons, and used every dirty trick in the book to fight Shen....and Shen was so impressed with the effort he'd put in that he lowered himself to Mukaku's level to aim for a decent fight. Even then, it just made the fight last minutes rather than seconds.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: The incarnation defeated by Kure Erioh and Katahara Metsudo was rather old despite his appearances, and the two had to destroy the building around him and set it aflame. Even then, his dialogue implied that he might have just decided not to attack them or try to escape because he believed that his time was up and their attack on the Worm compound was impressive enough that they deserved to come out of it with their lives.
• Do Wrong, Right: While Wulong is aware that the Worm worships him and are effectively a global terrorist organization, he doesn't really consider himself as its true leader. Their interests happen to align, and all that adulation gets him free stuff. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, he's never used that as an excuse to be lazy, assisting in missions, picking out the best man to the "The Head" of the Worm, and resisting the instinctive urge to kill his unofficial underlings (even the ones who have failed their tasks) by giving them genuinely constructive advice.
• The Dreaded: His title is practically synonymous with God among Worm and they even swear by him. The Worm's pitch toward the Kengan Association is that they exist to keep the world safe from the Connector by placating him and therefore should be accomodated or a angry Shen will cause damage on par with natural disasters.
  Xia Ji, Kashio Toru, and many a Mook: "All for the Connector".
  • He reduces Xia Ji, typically suicidally unflinching in the face of powerful fighters, to freezing on the spot, shaking and sweating bullets when Ji realizes he'll have to answer to Shen for his failures; The barest of Shen's Killing Intent makes Ji, while collapsing to his knees, hallucinate that Shen throwing his fishing line out would have him sliced to bits Razor Floss style.
  Ogi: "Believe me when I say I feel bad for you."
  Tenjin: "We're shaking with fear, and we're not even the ones in trouble."
• Evil Counterpart: Like Ryuki, Shen is tactless and somewhat air-headed, while also being a remorseless killing machine. However, Ryuki only targeted Worm agents and his interactions with Koga led to him having second-thought about killing, Whereas Shen is effectively Kung-Fu Jesus Ted Kaczynski, in charge of the entire Worm organization and is willing to kill former allies if they step out of line.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Interestingly, Shen's eyes are double-pupiled◊ (though it is only apparent when he doesn’t have Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes), a phenomenon referred to as Chong Tong (重瞳) in Chinese mythology and folklore, where it is associated with innate wisdom or charisma because of five people in Ancient China recorded with such eyes, with all having been great leaders or sages ranging from the Hegemon of Chu Xiang Yu, Cang Jie◊ the Chinese inventor of writing, and Shun the Great, last of the Five Great Emperors, whose mother supposedly gave birth to him under the light of Dubhe, the alpha star of the Big Dipper, resulting in his heaven-sent distinction. It seems that this is at least part of what marks Shen for greatness, with even a megalomaniac like Xia Ji internally considering himself nothing compared to Shen. This later turns out to be foreshadowing the fact that "Shen Wulong" is actually two personalities combined into one.
• Finger Poke of Doom: During his Nonchalant Dodges against Mukaku's sleuth of Hidden Weapons, he pokes Mukaku in the shoulder with his right index finger hard enough to cause a small geyser of blood to erupt from the wound. He later demonstrates this technique in the opposite direction, knocking out or incapacitating several extremely-skilled bodyguards and mercenaries non-fatally by stroking them with one finger or sending them cartwheeling with a tap on the cheek and shoulder, with him praising the ones who were still conscious afterwards as being pretty strong.
• Functional Addict: He has a downright absurd intake of beer and whatever else with an alcohol percentage within reach, yet it doesn't seem to ever get to his head, slamming down beer after beer with Kazuo, Joji and his friends without ever even getting close to feeling the booze. Whether this comes from pure built-up resistance or an absurd caloric intake in general to fuel his extreme lifestyle is unclear.
• Gaia's Vengeance: Is worshipped as an avatar of the planet's wrath, and the preservation of his essence through various means is done by the Worm out of a desire to maintain that connection, even though he could and would kill them all if frustrated enough with the state of the world.
• The Gift: Calling whatever Shen has an exceptional talent for martial arts is like calling a diamond-cutter an exceptional kitchen knife; He is so insanely skilled and powerful that his Killing Intent becomes imperceptible to his opponents, implying his full power is too much for Mukaku to even process. Rino Kurayoshi also calls him more akin to a plant or an ancient tree due to her speculating that he's shed his sex drive, and thus is probably immune to her More than Mind Control as well.
  Shen: "Just so we're clear, I don't have Superman Syndrome. This isn't about power, it's about technique... On second thought, maybe even that's not the right word either. Principles? Yeah, the word "Principles" sounds about right. All I'm doing is holding down the point of the force. Anyone can do this if they know how it works."
  Mukaku, thinking: As if, You Monster!!!!
• Graceful Loser: His predecessor complimented Erioh and Metsudo for crushing his post-World War II operation, and despite inheriting that Shen Wulong's will, the current one has decided against getting personal revenge on either, only coming into conflict with the Kure Clan and Kengan Association when they got in the way of his present-day plans.
• Greater-Scope Villain: It has been all but stated out loud that it seems all of Worm and its plans exist entirely to satisfy Shen's personal whims; Even the underlings allowed to known about him are scared out of their wits in his presence, and on the ground level among the Worm mooks, The Connector has a reputation akin to a Living Legend feared like the Grim Reaper. Yan even complains that Shen is rather laid back about the fact that the current Worm's organization is pretty much rigged to blow already for his desires.
  Yan: "We're talking about destroying the organization for you. Shouldn't you at least show a little concern?"
• The Hermit: He is effectively a Chinese Himalayan demigod who moonlights as The Scourge of God with his unbelievable capacity for martial arts ultraviolence whenever he's pissed off. If Worm's peace offer to the Kengan Association is meant to be genuine, their entire secret society has existed with the goal of "World Harmony" in mind, and ever since Shen Wulong took it over in the distant past, their main priority has become preventing Shen from getting annoyed with modern society and deciding to eradicate it with his bare hands and all the resources he has access to.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: He and Yan have casually strolled around doing food tourism for what seems like entire days in the same neighborhood where most of the main characters live in and were on high alert due to the previous Worm attacks on Kazuo and at the Berserker Bowl he easily got in wearing the very same civvies and sit down to naturally blend in with Kazuo's group of drinking buddies, even hitting it off well with several of them. The singular thing that could have even vaguely pointed to his real identity is Kazuo noticing that his Japanese is just about fluent enough to mimic being someone trying not to sound like a foreigner, but that's hardly much to go from and Kazuo himself says he's only on the habit of noticing due to his job as The Handler.
• Horrifying the Horror: After dispatching Worm agents in Japan seventy-one years prior to the present of the Berserker Bowl, Metsudo and Erioh froze like deer in the headlights when Shen watched them from Out of the Inferno as Worm's headquarters at the time collapsed around him. Instead of striking them down, Shen simply congratulated them on their victory "in this time", as if all this terrorism, grooming into Training from Hell and deadly games of infiltration Worm commits is just a sport he engages in every generation or so. As an old man, Metsudo nearly gives up the ghost on the spot hearing that Worm is still led by The Connector.
• Ice-Cream Koan: While dining with Yan at a Chinese restaurant in Japan, he compares the fact that people and things change with time in a new environment to the gyoza he's eating having changed so much from the gyoza he's used to in China, and Yan complains that he frequently spouts things "that sound profound, but doesn't actually mean anything", even as he concedes that the Gyoza is pretty good. On closer analysis however, the comparison is horrifically apt when one considers that the Inside was engineered by Worm in the first place during the collapse of the Shogunate in the 1860's by appealing to the disgraced Samurai's Might Makes Right mentality and other social outcasts for a place where they could grow.
  Himuro: "The Inside is a paradise for outlaws."
• Identical Stranger:
  • He was the genetic template of Ryuki, so that's a given, though Shen is considerably more built and a bit taller than Ryuki, presumably because he wasn't starved and beaten half to death when he was growing like Ryuki was. His general disposition while in Tokyo reveals that he also shares Ryuki's airheaded matter-of-fact behavior and Lack of Empathy and Ohma's Big Eater tendencies and love for fighting. What makes it notable is that Ohma isn't Wulong's clone.
  • Back in the 1940's, the previous incarnation of Shen Wulong was practically a spitting image of Ohma and Ryuki, but with a soul patch.
• Immortality Immorality: Huisheng is already a forbidden technique as it overwrites the personality of someone in an imitation of reincarnation. Shen took it further through the Worm's research into cloning technology so that his body and mind would technically live on forever. Long Yi, head of the Dragon Clan, the third group originally under Shen’s command, rebelled against him over this as he could accept the use of Huisheng, but considered Shen’s research on cloning using Worm technology a step too far. The clan would be wiped out by Shen, but he spared the clan head’s grandson, Long Xiu, who would later on become known as Gaoh Mukaku.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: Rino Kurayoshi speculates that since he has no need to procreate and sustain a bloodline he's also shed any sex drive he had, thus making him highly resistant to her Compelling Voice and any attempts at seduction.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Metsudo describes the silhouette he once saw of Shen as "it" as there was no way something so full of Killing Intent could be human. Willem Wu comes to the same conclusion when he realizes in horror that even a complete and utter physical monster like Gilbert swears absolute loyalty to Shen.
• Killing Intent: By far the most extreme case in the series, to the point where even his allies compare it to a true Portent of Doom. Suppose he is not currently amused with enormous amounts of food or boozing. In that case, his presence becomes so intense that he can't even catch fish because, as Yan points out while grilling Ji, they're incredibly sensitive creatures who can notice disturbances from far away. When he "gets furious" after the semifinals of the Berserker Bowl, bystanders in the crowd he's walking through as he's calling Yan on the phone start feeling chilled to the bone without even knowing that the feeling is coming from Shen, as they go on to blame the airconditioning.
• Legacy Character: "Shen Wulong" is the name used by a long, looong line of Chinese sages and martial artists living in the mountains since pre-history and all of them have taken this name in a process that resembles Huisheng and a Collective Identity, though they have modernized through full on cloning within the last century. Most of the Shen's throughout history were apparently pacifistic or at least mostly harmless, until 1300 years ago when an ill-intentioned Shen came along and singlehandedly took over the Worm organization and then shortly afterwards warred with the Wu Clan, which resulted in the clan splitting three ways to survive.
• Logical Weakness: His capacity for martial arts is so good as to border on having genuine superpowers, but as Kuroki Gensai notes, there is one limitation of the human body he cannot overcome no matter what martial techniques he puts into practice. He still needs to physically touch his opponent to put them down, so if somebody manages to maintain enough focus and speed to perceive his attacks coming, it's possible to counter-attack him and damage him in turn the second the blow lands. The trick comes from the fact he's so ridiculously fast and skilled that only Kuroki has managed to pull this off and counter-attacking was all he could do — and even then, it's revealed afterwards that Shen was limiting himself to using only the left side of his body to attack with. Regardless, their fight was still the most damage Shen's ever depicted taking.
• The Man in Front of the Man: Parodied. When Kuroki Gensai barges into his hotel room to assassinate the Connector, Wulong suddenly remembers that his identity is technically supposed to be a secret, and he tries to pass off Xia Yan, and then Yan's bodyguard, as his boss despite how he had publicly revealed himself to the Kengan Association the night prior.
• Manchild: He is almost childlike in his behavior, blaming his fishing rod for the fact that his aura is so intense it scares the fish away, even when he's just mildly annoyed with Xia Ji, who is normally completely beneath his notice. In the post-tournament arc, he is constantly dragging Yan around to restaurants and trying out things in Japan when they both have a lot more important things to be doing and a target on their backs by the Anti-Worm Alliance, and at one point considers partially blowing his cover at the Berserker Bowl (by admitting he already knew Joji was Koga's uncle when it's brought up to him), just because he wanted to see theirs and later Yan's face if he did it.
• Made of Iron: He can catch a katana swung by Gaoh Mukaku with only a skin-deep cut to show for it and then afterwards, when Mukaku Ironbreakers the blade of his Katana to try to force his katana to cut through Shen’s hand and into his neck, Shen still manages to stop it, with only a deep cut to show for it instead of a missing hand.
• Master of Your Domain: He can manually decrease the strength output of his muscles, the positioning of his tendons and the range of motion on his joints, and even slow down his neuro-transmitters and shut off unnecessary brain circuits to make himself weaker to give someone a fighting chance. Key word being chance, as despite claiming that he’s now come down to Gaoh Mukaku’s level he's still so unbelievably strong that a mere 3 hits were enough to cause Mukaku to feel groggy and kick him into the temple's ceiling when the old man forced him into a ground-and-pound by squeezing a straw mat shut around Shen's body and still so fast that after he’s sent Mukaku flying with a punch, before Mukaku can get back up on his feet, Shen’s already standing behind Mukaku ready to punch him again and afterward notes how Mukaku’s too slow and that the old man's level of reflexes feels "awfully sluggish" compared to his norm.
• Moment Killer: He gets up and leaves in annoyance in the middle of Koga and Ryuki's bout due to being completely fed up watching what Mukaku has trained his clone Ryuki into.
• The Needless: Not quite, but close enough. A previous Shen Wulong came to equate breathing with growing old and developed a yogic breathing technique to slow down aging. While not the same as true breathlessness, the current Shen Wulong is able to fight in a room packed full of carbon monoxide with zero problems.
• Never My Fault: He doesn't see himself as the leader of the Worm or the Westward Wu, just their buddy, so he takes no accountability for all the terrorists act done in his name. He also states that he only kills in self-defense as people like Mukaku were the ones that attacked him for going against the laws of nature, which Shen doesn't really understand, which to his credit is true but his display of strength show he could definitely just knock them out no matter how hard they try.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Played With. Shen's usual demeanour is the exact opposite of this, screwing around and doing whatever happens to catch his fancy, regardless of the circumstances or his position, and generally not even seeming to care much about anything — to the point that when he tells Xia Yan that he's utterly furious, it's with his usual deadpan expression on his face and he himself admits surprise that he can get that angered. Hover, should something actually manage to motivate him to put his immense talents into killing something, he will do it without second-guessing, hesitating or giving his target any chance to evade their impending death. He initially grew intrigued with Mukaku Gaoh's attempts to kill him with any tactic or method he could, and intentionally limited himself to fighting on his level, but once he found out Gaoh's motivation was simple Revenge, it utterly killed his interest in prolonging the fight any further, and he swiftly killed Gaoh decisively not long after, shrugging off all his attempts to buy time or look for a means of evading death with his usual air headed disinterest.
• Offhand Backhand: The previous Shen Wulong did this to Mukaku and his four fellow Kings, literally defeating a gang of Advance-using armed Lightning Bruisers charging at him at once with five swings of the back of his hand, sending limbs and heads flying everywhere in the process. This one demonstrates the power of his backhand against Luohan, sending him cartwheeling across the helipad they're on into a lightpost as if he weighed nothing.
• Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: Slaughtered his way through a compound of Chinese martial artists before his squadmates Fei, Edward, Yan and Ji even arrived at the scene. Fei even expresses disappointment with not getting to see him fight. He apparently does this a lot because Fei had never even met him face-to-face, only seen him from afar.
• Older Than They Look: On top of the quasi reincarnation done using Huisheng, Shen Wulong is able to control his breathing to slow down his aging process. The current Shen Wulong is only one generation after the (already middle-aged then) one the centenarian Gaoh Mukaku met when he was 15 years old, putting this one closer to his 70's or 80's despite looking to be in his fourties at most.
• One-Man Army: Until the Inside arc began, all that Shen Wulong has shown doing fighting-wise is unleashing Mook Horror Show upon rivals to Worm in a flashback where he left a literal hill of corpses and how he’s able to release terrifying waves of Killing Intent whenever he’s mildly annoyed. 1300 years ago however, the Shen Wulong of the time singlehandedly beat The Worm organization and then the Wu clan into submission because "he got annoyed with them".
  • Additionally, it should also be noted that when Shen defeated the head of Worm and then the Wu Clan, entirely because he was “annoyed” with them and justified his actions as being akin to The Scourge of God, he was so overwhelmingly powerful and thus convincing, that everyone bought into it wholesale.
• Samurai Ponytail: His thick and messy fair-colored hair is tied back into a heavy-set loose ponytail.
• Shrouded in Myth: The Connector is a borderline mythological figure in the criminal underground, with just the mention of the title giving Katahara Metsudo pause, and somehow manages to combine a reputation of The Dreaded and Un-person; Everyone fears Shen, but no one even knows who he is.
• Stealthy Colossus: Put bluntly, Shen has absolutely mastered blending in wherever he goes to the point of being seemingly invisible. He's built like a fridge on legs, yet Xia Ji couldn't even tell Shen was present at Ji and Yan's reunion until he announced himself. He later does something similar while Ohma and Yasuo were on the way back to Kazuo's place, strolling by from in front of them with his hands in his pockets with Ohma only realizing someone might have been there after Shen was long gone. Then he proceeds to shows up at the Berserker Bowl, hosted underground in a bunker only accessible with one lift with all of Purgatory and the Kengan Association's security on high alert to sit down next to Kazuo and smash down beers with him and his friends as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He demonstrates how insanely good he is at this by using it in a combat scenario, manoeuvring around multiple highly-skilled bodyguards and mercenaries, and proceeding to knock them out one by one, with it looking like he's moving around the room like a ghost and all the conscious targets unable to see what made their allies suddenly fall down. The narration states that this is him "threading his way through the gaps in people's awareness and visual blindspots", and Shen is impressed when a few members at the venue are able to locate him despite his skill.
• The Stoic: He admits to Yan over the phone at one point that he's not really an emotional man, only to follow it up with the fact that Ryuki and Koga's match made him the most furious he's ever been... with absolutely no change in his expression save for a slightly more scornful look in his eye.
• The Strength of Ten Men: Flashbacks show that "Shen Wulong" in his previous Ohma-like incarnation was a walking, talking barehanded One-Man Army that can slaughter the entire Dragon Clan down to two people completely unscratched, without breaking a sweat and leaving them as a field of corpses before Boonk Gang'ing their head's heart from his chest in front of his terrified grandson. As that head of the Dragon Clan said, he knew he stood no chance but he couldn't let a friend of his that was so dangerous complete his research on cloning, because then Shen was practically poised to Take Over the World.
• Super-Strength: Capable of stopping Gaoh Mukaku, a roided up monster of a man himself, charging him with a spear through a sliding door by pinching the tip of the spear, and then shattering the shaft by slightly bending it from said pinch. And when Mukaku actually catches him off-guard and Ironbreakers the blade of his Katana into Shen's neck, he catches it with his hand, with only a deep cut to show for it instead of a missing hand.
• Tiger Versus Dragon: His full name translates to "Dragon Monkey God", contrasting Tokita Niko, whose name means "Ten Demon Snakes, Two Tigers" and the Niko Style in general as the Tiger.
• Time Abyss: While physically he's middle-aged but youthful-looking, consciousness-wise he's ancient. He was the one who taught Wu Hei Huisheng in the first place, which would mean that the first Shen Wulongs were already around in 3000+ BC.
• Tranquil Fury: He doesn't emote much but going by his killing intent, it feels like he is ready to cut someone to pieces if they don't answer him fast enough. When he states being furious for once his attitude doesn't change but the whole crowd he is walking through feels chilled to the bone without even knowing that the feeling is coming from Shen, as they go on to blame the airconditioning.
• Two Beings, One Body: The current Shen Wulong is technically two versions of himself in the same body, due to an unexpected split during the cloning process. This was why Ohma and Ryuki were made; the process done to make them had genetically separated the two, and thanks to advancements in science, Wulong would instead have his brain split and surgically placed in their bodies, so they can be two again.
• Ultimate Lifeform: Or at least damned near close to it; After his nonlethal rampage at a Kengan venue as part of Worm's intimidation tactics, Takayama and Misasa describe him as "fundamentally different from the rest of humanity". Highly trained elite fighters and bodyguards who live and breathe martial arts are left throwing their hands in the air and can't explain what Shen does better than "Kung Fu Nonsense", in a series that's already packed with Kung Fu Nonsense.
• Unreveal Angle: Is first introduced this way, staring out over a majestic Chinese mountain landscape as Yan is briefing him on Edward's death and Gilbert's succession, showing off back muscles that would give Yujiro's a run for their money.
• Villain Takes an Interest:
  • He hadn't given Narushima Koga as much as a second thought ever before hearing he'd beaten Xia Ji in a man-to-man fight, at which point he takes an immediate interest in him since just two years earlier, five of Xia's Mooks had nearly gutted him like a fish. He keeps a close eye on him during the Berserker Bowl and instantly makes friends with Koga's uncle.
  • He goes to watch the Berserker Bowl more or less on a whim while also scouting out the Kengan Association, and is immediately drawn into the mood by Cosmo and Saw Paing's intense first round. Going by the state he usually leaves opponents in, it's implied that both not being a participant for once and killer moves being completely off the table due to the ruleset made him feel all nostalgic while watching the following fights.
  "This is taking me back. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to fight."
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Yan's interactions paint the image that the two of them are constantly talking shit about one another, yet know that there's no one else they can rely on as much as each other.
• Willfully Weak:
  • Gaoh Mukaku's attempt to assassinate him amuses Shen so much that he gives Mukaku a chance to kill him by lowering his power down to Mukaku's level. Shen does this by relocating his tendons, suppressing his muscle power output, limiting his joints' range of motion, lowering his reaction speed and shutting down some of his brain circuits. Yet even then, Mukaku is still no match for Shen.
  • Catches on rather quickly that Kuroki Gensai is focusing all his mental and physical energies into countering his blows, rather than attacking, during their fight. Instead of opting out of doing so or commanding his bodyguards to force the assassin into action through flanking maneuvers, Shen cheerfully continues assaulting Kuroki while exclusively using his right arm and leg to attack with as a handicap.
• World's Strongest Man: Despite saying he uses mostly techniques and training any man can learn Shen is able to rend through flesh with his bare hands like it was nothing. He has to limit his muscles and articulations to give Mukaku, one of the strongest character in the series who used steroirds to increase his brute strength, a chance to fight evenly and even then Shen is casually tossing him around.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: This◊ is all the previous Shen Wulong did when the Wowang group jumped him in perfect coordination. Two chops, two backhand swings and a wrist strike before putting his hand back in his sleeve, and it was all he needed to subject his attackers to the Chunky Salsa Rule, with Mukaku describing it as a Near-Death Experience that he barely survived.
  "I'm not trying to knock the basics here. It's good to know how to form a fist, how to move your back, and where to place your feet. But you can knock someone out with even a gentle stroke, as long as you know how. I'm impressed you're still conscious, you must be pretty strong."

Xia Yan (SPOILERS!)

"I swear, you're way too easygoing. You're lucky you've got me working for you."

The Head

The leader and spymaster of Worm, the most dangerous underground syndicate on the planet, who was hand-picked for the position by Shen Wulong after the previous Head was killed by an assassin on Xia Ji's orders. He is Ji's identical twin, but is the exact opposite of his brother in many ways; Hardworking, no-nonsense and renowned for his strength among a Flock of Wolves.

---

• Aloof Big Brother: Inverted. Yan's the younger twin, but he's extremely dismissive of his older brother Ji, whom he outranks. He knows Ji best and as such is so done with Ji's shit at this point in their lives that he doesn't really care about endangering him or ask his men to kill him if he tries anything funny when sending him out for a job he knows Ji can't handle.
  Yan, to Ji begging him for recognition: "Well, this is new. I didn't even know you felt familial affection. I'm moved to tears, bro. Now, why don't you face-about and get to work?"
• Bad Boss: Gives Line of Sight Names to his agents because he can't be bothered knowing their names, orders suicide missions at his convenience and is fine with letting the whole organization collapse since he's reached their goal. Even his brother Ji is not immune to this, as he was reassigned to the Far East Branch when it became apparent he was of no use in Worm's combat missions and left him to hopefully be captured or die during the Purgatory-Kengan tournament. When Shen tells him straight-up killing Ji is going too far as punishment, Yan instead straddles his brother with borderline suicidal orders by mocking him for being useless and that he could at least do this much, which Ji immediately goes through with out of fear of proving Yan right.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Yan is considerably more no-nonsense than his boss Shen, and frequently has to go out of his way to remind him not to let his Manchild tendencies compromise their operation.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Together with The Connector and The Other Niko.
• Big Eater: One of the few things he shares with The Connector is a love of food, going plate-for-plate with his gluttonous boss when they're at a Chinese place, and internally debating whether he should be most annoyed with the Inside not having authentic sushi or Teriyaki while waiting with his fellow Top Enforcers.
• Creepily Long Arms: When folding said arms behind his back, his elbows are perpendicularly to his hip. It seems to run in the family, since he and Ji are identical twins.
• Culture Equals Costume: He wears a similar Changshan as his brother, only adorned in a myriad of colored scarfs with Worm-themed symbolism all over it and a Mysterious Veil that almost makes him look like a male belly dancer at first glance.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Unlike his twin brother who seems to be one of the few Worms who doesn't partake in some fashion or another, Yan smokes a classic thin ceramic pipe, first seen doing so while waiting for The Connector's top brass in The Inside's Hachio ward.
• The Handler: While his position as the Head makes him the one in charge of their overall operation, it is heavily implied that the Head's real priority is handling all the thinking on behalf of The Connector, who borders on being a Manchild despite being able to solve anything with enough violence.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick:
  • Since The Connector is completely absentminded of day to day reports and any mission that doesn't involve beer or food, it is up to Yan to run the entire show using his boss' authority. He has to make The Connector promise he won't just blurt out his identity for no reason after forging him an ID so he could go see the Berserker Bowl, and The Connector admits it makes him wants to do it even more, contrasting Yan who is shown warming up talking to one of his spies before going to a meeting organizing with the Connector's top brass in his place.
  • When trying to gauge Gaoh Mukaku, Shen thinks to himself that Yan would probably be one of the few people among Shen's contacts that could beat him (Mukaku), which if true, would make Yan one of the strongest characters to date.
  Yan, in Shen's imagination: Who said you could use me as your benchmark?
• Identical Twin ID Tag: He and Ji are identical twins, but due to their different hairstyles, fashion, accessories and overall demeanour, they look only vaguely alike at first glance.
• I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: Threatens to kill Hiruko when she asked who Ohma and Ryuki are cloned from.
• Large and in Charge: While nowhere as heavy-set as some of the hulking behemothic bruisers of the series at large, Yan is still very tall and visibly muscular. The security at a Kengan venue calls him huge and takes a guess that Yan clears the two-meter mark.
• Mysterious Veil: Wears one on combat missions, though it's mostly cosmetic, adding to the heavy air of mystery around him.
• Noodle People: He is very lanky, very tall and appears to be have double-jointed arms like Ji, yet is similarly very muscular despite it.
• Not So Stoic: One of the main contrast between him and his brother is how collected he looks, mostly showing nothing but annoyance at Shen's antics. When he sees Shen got bruised after his fight with Mukaku he has a stunned expression and collapse on the ground, exasperated at Shen's recklessness.
• Only Sane Man: Of Shen Wulong's inner circle Yan plays the role of the serious one having to deal with Shen's air-headedness and his own brother's cowardice.
• Red Right Hand: His personal bodyguards have a white Worm tattoo instead of a black one. This is the only tell that they're working for him; Naidan blended in among even fellow Worms so well that he had to announce his allegiances with said tattoo for them to find out.
• Shrouded in Myth: Most of Worm just know that "The Head" exists, and that's it. The Branch Chiefs like Ji and important Worm allies like Edward, Niko and Fei are the only ones privy to his identity, which is otherwise Classified Information. To keep up The Masquerade around him and other key players of Worm, he has a squad of bruisers from extremely diverse backgrounds that are Classified Information to everyone, that are allowed to do more or less whatever they please, including joining an underground fighting league that disincentivizes Worm's brutal methods so long as they're ready to throw down their lives when the order comes.
• Villains Out Shopping: Despite being the leader of the most dangerous criminal organization in the series, Yan's on-screen appearance so far consist of him doing mundane things like fishing, eating in a Chinese restaurant in Japan and heading out for ramen, though these are apparently mostly the whims of The Connector.