Shou Wang

The **Shou Wang** (兽王, *Shou Wang*, lit. "Beast King") is a Hong Kongese syndicate that has recently been expanding its influence across East Asia. While they present themselves as a pharmaceutical company, their primary business lies in the development of poisons, viruses, and truth serums used in the underground. Their executives are identified by large jeweled rings with an engraving of a beast.

## Members

* Fu Jian Huang: executive in Beijing
* Tony Lau: executive, leader of operations in Japan
* Shunsuke Saruwatari: freelance hitman hired by Tony

## Background

Under the facade of their pharmaceutical company, the organization has been collaborating with various other companies and organizations in their research and development of new drugs. Away from the public eye, their main source of income is from the selling of illegal drugs and viruses on the black market to be used for war and terrorism.

As a new group that has been rapidly expanding its influence, the Shou Wang has made a number of enemies out of various opposing organizations, particularly those connected to Central and South American drug cartels. After the assassination of the Kakyuu Association president, Long Fang Wang, in the second light novel, the syndicate began to move in and expand its influence in Japan with the intent of overthrowing the rival group. In late July, it sets up its first branch in Japan in Ropponmatsu, an area of Chuo Ward to the south of Ohori Park, and purchases a warehouse on Hakata Pier to store merchandise.

## Synopsis

### Shou Wang Arc

The Chinese freelance killer Feilang is hired by an organization opposing the Shou Wang to assassinate the Beijing executive Fu Jian Huang and obtain the virus samples in his possession. Feilang infiltrates the man's penthouse and beats him into submission with ease, decapitating him after locating his safe. Using his head, voice recording, and a severed finger, Feilang accesses the safe and retrieves the cases inside for his client. His kleptomaniac nature compels him to steal a vial of virus and anti-virus from the cases, and he relieves Fu Jian Huang's body of his ring and other valuables before departing. After discovering the body, the Shou Wang flees mainland China and focuses on its business in Japan.

In Fukuoka, the executive Tony Lau meets Naoya Nitta in Ohori Park showing an interest in hiring the Submarine Ninja to help eliminate its rival organization, the Kakyuu Group. Tony gives Nitta two files on Kakyuu Association executives, offering an employment examination for Saruwatari, and questions Nitta on their relationship. He is satisfied to hear that killers are only tools to the consultant, and the Shou Wang and the Submarine Ninja begin their partnership.

The Kakyuu Association turns their attention to the Shou Wang with the murder of two of their executives, and they hire Feilang to help deal with the troublesome organization. At the Shou Wang warehouse on Hakata Pier, five subordinates are unloading a truck when Feilang enters the warehouse and dispatches three of them. As Tony Lau, Nitta, and Saruwatari survey the bloody scene a short while later, one of the two missing subordinates appears with his comrade's severed head in a box, telling them that in the Kakyuu Group headquarters, the two men were imprisoned and told to fight each other to the death. One man refused and tried to attack the redheaded hitman, and he was decapitated. Inside his mouth, Tony finds Fu Jian Huang's ring and suddenly loses his will to fight, ordering Saruwatari to back down. Recognizing the object, he believes that a larger international organization is backing the Kakyuu Group, and he reaches out to the enemy requesting amnesty.

At the peace talks between executives of the Shou Wang and Kakyuu Association at Club Eve, Tony meets with Ruixi Li and Suzuki, who stand in for their leaderless group. As part of the truce between the two groups and in compensation for their murdered members, Tony and Li each agree to hand over their hitman.

Tony again meets Nitta at Ohori Park to inform him of the truce and give him a powder sleeping drug meant for Saruwatari. The next day, Nitta brings the unconscious hitman to the cleaned Shou Wang warehouse. When he awakens, bound to a chair, Tony explains the situation and points a gun at him. Though Tony and Li had agreed to exchange killers alive, Tony worries about Saruwatari changing his loyalty while in the Kakyuu Group's possession and decides to kill him before the trade in order to protect the Shou Wang. He gives Nitta 50,000,000 yen in compensation money, but when he prepares to shoot Saruwatari, Nitta shoots him in the hand. Nitta intends to let him go, but Saruwatari, furious at them both, takes out a kunai and slices Tony's throat without hesitation. The organization's Japanese operations are left leaderless and severely weakened.

### Cartel Arc

Several months later, though the group has dispersed in Japan, their drugs are still circulating underground. When Xianming Lin asks a rising Chinese drug dealing organization in Fukuoka for a painkiller, he is given a vial of a strong morphine-based drug developed by Shou Wang for soldiers in battle.