Through that door you now block. 
- —Shang Chi, to a bodyguard who asks, "Where do you think you're going, fancypants?"
Appearing in "The Crystal Connection"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Carlton Velcro (First appearance)
- Razor-Fist (First appearance)
Other Characters:
- Clive Reston's father (Mentioned)
- Clive Reston's great-uncle (Mentioned)
Locations:
- New York
- Central Park West
- Spengler Rehabilitation Clinic (First appearance)
- France
- Gulf of Lion (First appearance)
Vehicles:
- seaplane
Synopsis for "The Crystal Connection"
Shang-Chi meets with Sir Denis Nayland Smith in his New York townhouse. Black Jack Tarr, Clive Reston, and Doctor Petrie also attend. Smith has an offer for Shang-Chi: become an informal agent of the British Secret Service and fight evildoers besides Fu Manchu. Their current target is a heroin kingpin. Smith takes Shang-Chi to the Spengler Rehabilitation Clinic and shows him how heroin can destroy the spirit. Shang-Chi has reservations about methodology but accepts the offer.
On a seaplane to the Gulf of Lions in southern France, Smith briefs Shang-Chi on the mission. Reston has become a buyer named Mr. Blue. He will go on ahead to Carlton Velcro's lavish estate and make a large purchase. Instead of leaving with his heroin, though, Reston will locate Velcro's warehouse and dispose of its contents, thus bankrupting Velcro. Shang-Chi and Tarr will use SCUBA gear to reach the estate through undersea tunnels and create a diversion so that Reston can escape. Every second counts.
Reston, as Blue, meets Velcro and an unexpected development: an "employee" named Razor-Fist. The man has had his hands replaced with swords. He demonstrates their effectiveness by slicing a statue into pieces. A pair of guards escort Reston to his room. Forty-five minutes later, on schedule, he distracts the guards and escapes. He also sets off a silent alarm, which is not part of the plan.
Petrie takes the seaplane over the estate to reconnoiter before dropping Shang-Chi and Tarr into the sea by parachute. They follow the tunnels and surface in the grotto. Thanks to the alarm, though, men with machine guns and black panthers patrol the beach. Tarr disables them with a concussion bomb.
Reston makes his way to the warehouse and enters through a window, which sets off another alarm. He finds sacks of heroin piled to the ceiling, a much larger store than expected, but gamely goes about slashing the sacks and dousing them with a fire extinguisher. Velcro sends his two bodyguards to the front entrance and takes some guards to the warehouse.
Tarr leaves Shang-Chi at the foot of the causeway and tells him to wait for an explosion. Moments later, some guards spot Tarr. He uses a gas bomb on them. Shang-Chi naturally assumes that's the signal and crosses the causeway, beneath which lies a pit full of black panthers. Velcro's two bodyguards barely have time to realize they're in a fight before Shang-Chi throws them off the causeway.
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Shang-Chi confronts Razor-Fist
Velcro reaches the warehouse and captures Reston. Smith and Petrie, in the seaplane offshore, wait for the signal to pick up their agents. Shang-Chi kicks open the front door and meets Razor-Fist....
Notes
- For the first time, neither Fu Manchu nor his minions appear in a Master of Kung Fu story.