Ching Kwan was quite possibly the most skilled non mystical vampire hunter of all time. He is believed to have killed up to 700 vampires during his lifetime, as well as over 200 Demons. His greatest legacy however was his creation of the new fighting style, "Jineng Chaoguo Liliang" skill over strength, which through careful, precise technique's, allowed normal people to take on vampires, demons, vandals, monsters and other supernatural creatures in direct combat. It's no exaggeration to say that almost all vampire hunters around the world have utilised this method of combat to some extent, and whilst there have been many variations of the practice, its core principles still stem from Kwan's pioneering work.
Sadly however despite these great achievements Kwan remains a controversial figure to many modern vampire hunters due to his role in the Hatsuka tragedy. Whilst he did what he did to protect those closest to him. Kwan was still indirectly responsible for the slaughter of countless innocents as well as the return of many dangerous Demonic creatures to our world. His most ardent followers will tend to downplay the Hatsuka horrors and his role in it, but ironically that is the last thing Kwan himself would have wanted. He carried the guilt over this catastrophe to his grave and spent the rest of his life trying to make up for his mistakes. He would be horrified to see the lives he had taken be airbrushed from history. Above all else however Kwan devoted his life to helping people combat the forces of darkness and therefore he would want his mistakes to be known, to prevent anyone else from repeating them. His entire philosophy was in learning to overcome superior odds which cannot be achieved unless you acknowledge your vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
With this in mind please do not view this as an insult to what was in spite of his flaws, a hero and a great man. It is simply an attempt to chronicle the cause of a real life tragedy that took so many lives, and understand how good men can be forced to do terrible things by the forces of darkness.
Ching Kwan was born in the year 1943 in Hong Kong. After the chaos it endured during the war, Hong Kong, along with mainland China suffered an infestation of vampires, who attempted to take advantage of their strife and hardships. Kwan's home town of Jaisa was hit particularly hard by the vampire plague however. By the time he was a teenager, the bloodsuckers more or less ruled the town. As a result of several near fatal run ins with the local undead inhabitants. Kwan developed an interest in martial arts and study into the occult from a young age. Though books on vampires were banned in Jaisa once the vampires really got their hooks into the towns leaders. Kwan's family were still able to hold onto their collection in secret, as they were a wealthy family.
Despite this however, Kwan's parents were always careful not to antagonize the vampire forces of the town as they grew stronger. They wanted their son to be able to defend himself if need be, but they were not foolish enough to try and take on what was one of the largest vampire communities in Hong Kong at that point. Kwan however like a lot of young boys was rebellious and frequently got into fights with the vampires human servants and broke curfews and deliberately provoked the vampires as much as he could. Even as a child, the young Kwan often shouted at the vampires as they went by the window of his house, whilst carrying the remains of their victims.
Eventually however when Kwan was 18 he would have his first major confrontation with the undead when his girlfriend, Michelle was captured by them. Her own brother had been a familiar of the vampires and agreed to hand her over in order to be turned. It was a typical test from vampires to see if someone was worthy of becoming one of their own. Not only did the familiar hand over the person they loved the most, but they were also forced to feed on them after turning.
Kwan fought his way into the vampires stronghold, killing up to 17 of them, including Michelle's recently turned brother, before rescuing her. The vampires were completely unprepared for someone to challenge them, and furthermore Kwan's knowledge of their weaknesses allowed him to catch them off guard. Even then however by his own admission it was a desperate fight, and he was forced to rely on long range weapons, such as a crossbow bolt, holy items and the sun itself to destroy them. He frequently said that had he attacked the bloodsuckers during the night they would have easily torn him to pieces.
Following this, Kwan, his family and Michelle were forced to flee to mainland China to escape the wrath of the vampires. It wasn't an easy move, as Kwan's fathers business was local. In China the family were more or less reduced to paupers and Kwan's father was soon forced to take loans from the Triads to make ends meet.
This in turn led to Kwan falling in with the Triads, when he learned that their main enemies were vampires, he offered to help pay off his fathers loans by taking jobs to slay the undead. The Triads were actually able to gain a lot more influence by offering protection to people from the vampire horde.
At first Kwan was happy to work with the Triads as they certainly made his hunts easier and he even learned many techniques from them. However it didn't take long for Kwan to become disgusted with their ruthless practices and the fact that they charged people for help against the undead.
He soon went on to hunt vampires on his own which earned him the wrath of both the Triads and the vampire population. Kwan was not only in direct competition of the Triads as a vampire killer, he also supplied knowledge to many people on the weaknesses of the vampire which further rendered their services obsolete.
Eventually the Triads responded by killing his family, and Kwan in retaliation murdered the leader of the Triads before being forced to flee from the police. Michelle remained behind, having grown to be a formidable vampire hunter in her own right thanks to his training. She initially wanted to go with Kwan, but he told her to remain here as someone needed to spread the knowledge on how to combat vampires so that the Triads hold would vanish. Michelle reluctantly agreed though what became of her is a story for another time.
Kwan fled to America where he became a freelance vampire hunter. He hated having to charge some of those he saved for money, but sadly he had no choice. He had many successes against the American vampire population, who similarly were not used to being targeted in such a direct way, and his antics soon brought him to the attention of an eccentric millionaire named Harold Jackson. Jackson's home city, Lawless had been infested by vampires much like Kwan's. The bloodsuckers owned everything in the city. The media, the police, etc. Jackson's own father, a big shot tv producer had even been a slave to the vampires, supplying them with some young actresses he felt had future to feed on. Desperate to make up for his fathers sins, Jackson adopted a costumed identity, the Devil of Lawless and along with Kwan, who adopted the costumed identity of the Dragon of Lawless, they battled the vampires and their human allies on the streets of the city throughout the early to mid 60s. Whilst they endured many losses over the years, ultimately the costumed vampire hunters were able to crush the bloodsuckers stronghold in the city by the end of the decade. Afterwards both Kwan and Jackson went their separate ways and continued to hunt vampires in different parts of the world. Many believed that the two had a clash, but in truth Kwan simply wanted to explore Europe next and spread his new knowledge and techniques there.
In Europe Kwan worked with many other famous vampire hunters over the next few years and continued to improve on his knowledge and fighting skills. He decided that many traditional forms of vampire hunting were inefficient for single combat. Prior to Kwan's pioneering work, most vampire hunters avoided direct, one on one combat with vampires if they could.
Legendary vampire killers like Daniel Holtz and the Cushings preferred to hunt the undead using traps, long range weapons such as crossbows, flaming torches and crosses. They also preferred to combat them during the day time and when they were on their own too. When it came to staking meanwhile, it was often a messy and prolonged process. Simply stabbing a wooden stake through a normal persons chest would be a very difficult process contrary to how most modern vampire hunters make it look. Vampires meanwhile often have stronger bodies than humans and therefore most vampire hunters for centuries were forced to use a hammer or a mallet to drive the stake into the chest. As a result hunters could only really stake vampires during the day when they slept.
That's not to say that the likes of Daniel Holtz and the Cushings couldn't handle themselves in a fight, and that there were never any instances of a skilled fighter overpowering a vampire. Generally speaking however, one on one fights were things that vampire hunters wanted to avoid, due to vampires supernatural strength, speed, agility and endurance.
Kwan however was determined to find a way for an ordinary human to defend him or herself from the undead in any scenario, and so he built a new method of fighting that not only incorporated many different kinds of martial arts, but also numerous different techniques from vampire hunters too.
Using this style Kwan worked out how to use a vampires greater strength and endurance against it, studied all of the information available on the different breeds and matched them with the correct forms of martial arts. Perhaps his greatest contribution however was the creation of a new method of staking vampires.
Using a similar process to the famed one inch punch. Kwan worked out a method where an ordinary person, through carefully pressing their entire body weight, through the palm of their hand onto the stake, could push it with enough force to cut through even a vampires chest easily.
This method soon spread throughout the vampire hunters community thanks to the many contacts and allies Kwan had built up during his time in Europe and it eventually become mandatory training in most vampire hunting organizations. Even freelance and lone vampire hunters would study and learn Kwan's new staking technique that was jokingly referred to as the "one inch stake."
Many tall tales and stories were told about Kwan during this time, with some claiming that he could beat any vampire or demon or monster. Kwan himself however always remained humbled by the admittedly few defeats he had endured. He constantly reminded his students that no one is unbeatable, and that one must never become arrogant when dealing with the supernatural. The basis for Kwan's entire philosophy was that it's not just about the punches you throw, the kicks you make, but also the environment, the weapons and above all else your knowledge of your opponent. The second you buy into your own hype as unstoppable vampire killer and forget that, then even the most inexperienced, common vampire can defeat you.
Kwan's new fighting style that he dubbed Jineng Chaoguo Liliang proved vital in pushing back the massive wave of vampires that had emerged in Europe after the second world war. Whilst the Nazis were thankfully crushed at the end of the war, the vampires they had allied themselves with and who had been given a chance to spread and unify throughout Europe, continued to thrive and grow in power throughout the 50s, 60s and early 70s to an even greater extent than in the East.
Kwan's technique couldn't have come at a better time, and in addition to this, Kwan himself also played a vital role in taking down one of the leaders of the European vampire war machine, Roskaria, a vampire king and former friend of Hitler, who was carrying out a eugenics program on a secret island. Roskaria wanted to create the perfect human who in turn would make the perfect vampire. Those he captured were subject to horrific experiments as well as put through gruelling tests to make sure they were strong enough mentally to be part of his super race of vampires. From this island Roskaria also controlled many of the vampire operations throughout Europe.
Kwan was part of a special team, which also included his old friend and former partner Harold Jackson and his former lover Michelle who infiltrated the island, though it was Kwan himself who personally slew Roskaria.
Following this incident, Kwan then travelled back to Hong Kong. Feeling that he had somewhat neglected his own people by focusing too much on the vampire crisis in the West.
First Kwan took care of the original vampires that had forced him to flee from Jaisa in the first place. He dispatched them within the space of a week, showing how far he had come.
Following this he came to settle in the town of Hatsuka, which also had a thriving vampire population He initially hoped he could free this city as easily as he had done his own town and Lawless, but Kwan soon learned that these bloodsuckers were much better organised and were in fact at the centre of the vampire operations of Hong Kong, forcing him to stay a lot longer than he he had intended.
Whilst there he soon fell in love with a young woman named Valerie Yeoh, whose husband had been killed by a particularly vicious vampire. With her help, Kwan tracked down and killed the vampire which would subsequently inspire other people in the city to start fighting back against the undead. Kwan also opened his own martial arts school in Hatsuka, which helped many others learn how to fight back against the vampires.
Kwan and Valerie meanwhile later married in 1973, with Kwan becoming the adopted father of her teenage daughter, Amy born in 1957. Unfortunately however, Amy did not like Kwan. In spite of the fact that he had avenged her fathers death, she viewed him as a menace, who was antagonizing the vampires unnecessarily and that sooner or later it would lead to catastrophe. In all fairness to Amy this was later proven to be correct somewhat, not only by the constant attacks by vampires against the family. (At one point Amy's school was even attacked by a pack of vamps) but the greater tragedy that was to befall Hatsuka as a result of Kwan's notoriety.
Just as in most other places, the local gangsters, the "Red Dragons" in Hatsuka had been feuding with the vampire community for many years and the vampires had by and large emerged victorious. Prior to the war, the Red Dragons had been the equals to the vampires who also always had a presence in the city, but the greater influx of vampires after the war had diminished them to a small, pitiful collection of thugs and amateurs, forced to carry out a few petty crimes just to make ends meet. Most people weren't even aware they still existed.
This proved advantageous to the remnants of the gang however when they were able to successfully capture both Valerie and Amy, who they threatened to kill unless Kwan agreed to destroy a powerful resurrection spell contained within the legendary Hatsuka Pagoda.
The Pagoda was located outside of the city and was long believed to have been abandoned. Rumours however persisted that it was haunted or populated by unnatural creatures, but no one, including even the vampires were seemingly brave enough to check it out.
In truth however the Pagoda contained a powerful spell that had been created by the supreme vampire king of the East, Hu Sian. Once a powerful wizard who fought to protect the people of China. Hu Sian had fallen victim to a vampire during one of his many battles against the undead. Slowly but surely he united his new people, the vampires and other supernatural creatures together under his rule. Sadly for him however any empire or organisation he tried to build never lasted, as vampires were such cowardly, self serving creatures. Still using his various resources and knowledge of magics. Hu Sian was able to build a powerful spell which could bring anyone who died in one particular area back to life, regardless of how they died. It was arguably the greatest resurrection spell ever devised in the history of the planet at that point, outside of the Gods own resurrection spell to revitalise the earth after Set's rampage.
Hu Sian then built a stadium of sorts using magic in this area where he forced creatures to fight one another over and over again. Each creature would be allowed to die five times after which if they had failed then they were then banished through a portal to Quortoth, the darkest of the dark worlds. If they survived however they would not be released, but they were given extra lives. Obviously none of the combatants were volunteers. They had all been kidnapped by Hu Sian's vampire and demon minions from all over the world.
The arena was located below the city of Hatsuka. Most of the cities population didn't even know it existed and even Kwan himself was sceptical.
These sick and twisted games became a useful way for Hu Sian to further gain influence and power as vampires from all over the world came to see the fights and payed anything, magic, victims, favours of various kinds to see them.
The magics required not only to resurrect the creatures involved, but keep them locked up and the portal to Qurtoth open were kept at the very top of the Pagoda in the form of a large magical sphere. Hu Sian had tremendous affection for the Pagoda, and Hatsuka in general, as it had been the scene of one of his greatest triumphs as a man. Though some think by making it the center of his new vampiric empire, Hu Sian was also wanting to purge himself of his former humanity as most vampires do.
Each floor to the Pagoda was guarded by a creature that had previously fought in the games and proven its worth. There were five floors in total. Kwan knew that he would have no chance to defeat the creatures on his own, but fortunately he was allowed to take only two men to accompany him on the floors of the Pagoda. The magic that guarded it prevented any more than three people from taking part in this twisted game. Quite why Hu Sian had designed it this way, is not known, but many suspect that it was because he never lost his sense of honour and wanted to give even his opponents a sporting chance. Kwan chose his two most promising students, Yixen Chan and Ying Hung who had already helped him take down a particularly vicious nest of vampires.
The Red Dragon wanted Kwan to destroy the talisman that was creating and sustaining the games in the hopes of crippling the vampires empire and influence. Sadly there was nothing Kwan could do to save his wife and adopted daughter other than to go along with the Red Dragons wishes. The criminals had enlisted the aid of a powerful demonic sorcerer and rival to the vampires for help, and through dark magics he had encased both Kwan's wife and step daughter in a bubble which would rip them slowly apart if any of the Red Dragon were killed. It would also only evaporate if the Pagoda's spell was destroyed.
Finally the Red Dragon had also lied to Kwan, stating that the vampires were forcing innocent humans to take part in the games. (The bloodsuckers only didn't use humans because they didn't last long enough.) Kwan however should have investigated further and would have if it had been any other case. Sadly he was all too eager to brush aside the larger consequences for the sake of his family. To be fair even the Red Dragon themselves had no idea of the full horrors they would be unleashing, thinking that the monsters would turn on the vampires for enslaving them. They also did not think there were anywhere near as many monsters as the more elaborate tales had claimed and that whilst things would get difficult, they could easily ride it out.
Kwan insisted that he and his students visit the Pagoda during the daytime however. He wanted to be sure to have the sun as an advantage if there were any vampires nearby.