The shopkeeper's wife, Remo figured. He looked about, in search of the author of the warning. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure in black. Then, he turned his attention to his own adversary.
Reacting, Chiun grabbed the female gyonshi by her plump wrist and seemed to exert only an easy tug. The woman's feet left the ground and she orbited once around. As she passed him, Chiun's other hand flew out and her throat slashed itself open on the outstretched fingernail.
Centrifugal force deposited her against a light pole, where she slid slowly to the sidewalk, her arms and legs bent at crazy, impossible angles.
It would have seemed to any onlooker as if the pair had simply performed a rather flamboyant dance step, after which the woman had sat down to catch her breath.
The orange mist seeped from her open throat.
"You are free now," the Master of Sinanju told the broken corpse without malice.
Satisfied, Chiun turned away. His wrinkled face smoothed in shock.
For there was no sign of his pupil.
"Remo!" Chiun called plaintively. "My son!"
And far in the back of his mind, he remembered the words of his ancient enemy.
The words were, "Separate and conquer."
Remo used his thick wrists to block the driving nail of his foe. But the gyonshi was stubborn. With the first parry, he cracked a wrist bone against Remo's wrist. He tried again. Another bone broke.
The hand hung off the fractured wrist like a drooping sunflower. The man's flat face also drooped.
Defeated, the Chinese shopkeeper ducked inside his shop. Without hesitation, Remo went after him.
He found the man trying to claw his way through the thick, triple-locked security door in the back storeroom.
"Sorry, pal," Remo said, spinning the man around by the shoulder. He slashed at the exposed throat, but his fingernails-although capable of cutting glass-weren't long enough to pierce pliable flesh, and Remo was forced to use a box-cutting razor against the man's yellow throat. He felt like a ghoul-Masters of Sinanju were forbidden the use of weapons.
Remo waited until the body had vented its puff of orange smoke before he left.
When he emerged into the sunlight a moment later, a crowd had already begun to form around the shopkeeper's wife. Ignoring the commotion, he glanced up and down Mott Street.
It was deceptively quiet. People passed in and out of doorways. Horns honked. Children shouted.
A lone squad car had arrived to investigate the disturbance at the Neighborhood Improvement Association.
But there was no sign of Chiun.
Remo's heart gave a leap of fear.
From somewhere, he seemed to catch a whisper on the wind. The whisper seemed to be in Chiun's squeaky tone of voice.
And the words the wind seemed to whisper were, "Separate and conquer."
Chapter 15
The aged door creaked in a slow and deliberate complaint as it was opened, the rotted wood around the hinges threatening to tip the warped slab of wood back out into the musty hallway at any moment.
The single bare bulb clicked on, illuminating the cluttered living area.
Chiun stepped in.
He stood in a long, musty room covered in bookshelves, work tables, and display cases. Hung along the walls were yin-yang symbols, warped circular mirrors, tattered bamboo umbrellas, rusty swords made of beaten Chinese coins, and the eighteen legendary weapons of China-including esoteric swords, spears, sais and nunchuks.
"I must apologize, for I did not expect to bring the Master of Sinanju home with me," said the creature the Master of Sinanju had followed to this place. He wore a simple black tunic, black kapok pants, and black Chinese slippers.
The man was thin, with a square face, a round chin, flat nose, and beady, amber, almond-shaped eyes. His hair was the color and consistency of wheat, but the most remarkable thing about him was his eyebrow.
He possessed but one. It stretched across his brow and dropped on either side of his face almost to his shriveled cheeks, like a frame of bristly hair.
Chiun picked his careful way through to the center of the shabby living room carpet and stood in stony silence.
The door creaked shut behind him, blocking off the sounds of a strident argument in a neighboring apartment.
"You do not need to thank me for warning you of the gyonshi female," intoned the creature.
Chiun's countenance remained impassive. "And I will not," he replied flatly.
A heavy pause clung like fog to the room's damp air.
"You know of me, then?"
Chiun's head turned, ever so slightly. "You are the Taoist with one eyebrow," Chiun responded. "An embalmer of Chinese. You are familiar with the ways of the dead-living or otherwise."
The Taoist with one eyebrow kowtowed elaborately.
"I am called Won Sik Lung," he murmured. "Like you, I have ancestral obligations. Like you, I am a sworn enemy of the gyonshi, who were thought extinct."
Chiun returned the bow with a studied nod of his aged head. "You will tell me what I need to know that I may vanquish the vermin known as the Leader," he said coldly.
The single eyebrow crept upward in surprise.
"You must have seen him around here somewhere!" Remo was saying, his voice urgent.
"About this high? In a silver kimono? No? Damn!"
The Chinese girl skipped off, leaving Remo to prowl the byways of Chinatown. He had no idea where Chiun had gone off to. He had vanished.
It would be like Chiun to do something like this, just to teach Remo a lesson. With Chinese vampires popping out of every doorway, Chiun decides to pull a disappearing act.
"This had better be a stunt," Remo muttered to himself. "Please let it be a trick designed to teach me a lesson," he whispered.
With a shiver, Remo suddenly thought of the orange wisps of smoke that had slipped from the throats of the poor Chinese couple behind him. This was no lesson. Chiun was gone. And Remo was getting that cold feeling again. The one that reminded him that Chiun was now a hundred years old, and had not been quite the same since he had been brought back from the dead.