Wu Song was a man of terrifying strength and simple honor. After a brawl in his home village that he believed had killed a man, he fled to the household of the wealthy Lord Chai to lay low.

But upon learning that his "victim" had survived, Wu Song set out to return to his hometown and reunite with the brother he adored—the short, kind-hearted Wu Dalang, who sold sesame cakes from a street stall.

His journey took him past the Jingyang Ridge, where a sign warned: "BEWARE: THE TIGER IS OUT. DO NOT CROSS THE RIDGE AFTER NOON. CROSS ONLY IN GROUPS OF TEN OR MORE."

Wu Song read the sign and laughed.

He stopped at a tavern, where the owner refused to serve him more than three bowls of wine. "Our wine is called 'Three Bowls and You Cannot Cross the Ridge.' Any man who drinks three bowls collapses on the spot!"

Wu Song drank eighteen bowls.

Ignoring the landlord's desperate warnings, he stumbled up the mountain path alone. Halfway up, the wine finally caught up with him. He found a flat boulder and lay down to rest.

That was when the tiger appeared.

It was the size of a bull, with stripes like living shadows and eyes that burned amber in the darkness. It charged.

Wu Song's reflexes, even drunk, were superhuman. He rolled aside as the beast's claws raked the boulder behind him. The tiger swung its tail like an iron whip—he dodged again. A third charge, and he seized the beast by the skin of its neck and slammed it to the ground.

With a roar that would echo through history, Wu Song raised his iron fist and rained blows upon the tiger's head. One blow. Fifty blows. He punched until both his hands were soaked in the beast's blood and the great cat lay still.

When the villagers found him the next morning, they thought they had discovered a god.

"Hero!" they cried, parading him through the streets with the tiger's carcass on a palanquin. "The tiger that terrorized us for years is dead!"

The magistrate of Yanggu County, impressed beyond measure, appointed Wu Song chief constable on the spot. For a brief, shining moment, it seemed that virtue had found its just reward.

But in this world, such moments never last.