Klarion and Hezikiah are creeping about the National Museum of China after hours when they are noticed by another interloper: Tien Shi, the martial artist later known as Red Phoenix. Tien Shi is in museum pursuing the trail left by the Twelve Brothers in Silk. He has discovered a smuggling ring that deals in Chinese antiquities and believes the Twelve Brothers may be involved as hired muscle.
A flashback reveals that while picking through the magical trinkets and papers they pilfered from Jason Blood’s home, Hezikiah and Klarion discovered a jade hairpin reputed to have been owned by the Empress Dowager. This hairpin, if united with its mate, could provide the wearer with great powers of suggestion and the ability to perceive the interconnectedness of human relationships that involve subterfuge or other similar deceptive machinations (visualized as a web-work of silken threads).
This leads the duo to Beijing and the National Museum of China in an effort to find the hairpin’s mate. When Tien Shi moves in to question the witch-boys, all three of them are set upon by amazingly well-equipped museum guards. In fact these are agents of the bizarre and inhuman villain Chang Tzu, who has been constructing a Geomantic Reactor beneath the museum. Combining science and Taoist magic, Chang Tzu hopes to realign the entire planet’s feng shui, in an attempt to make himself and his deeds the most auspicious possible (at the cost of the rest of world’s fortune, of course).
Captured and led below the museum, the trio resolves to work together against Chang Tzu to escape and put an end to his scheme. With Tien Shi’s help they all manage to make the most fortuitous choices in the resulting fight and turn Chang Tzu’s creation against him as the reactor collapses in on itself.
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