Sagat, the final boss of the first Street Fighter, the former King of Muay Thai, a national hero of Thailand—until Ryu’s Shoryuken carved that humiliating scar across his chest.
Ever since then, even though he could still maintain an emperor’s dignity through violence, the scar on his chest would always ache faintly.
Ryu’s silhouette had become his inner demon.
For the sake of revenge, he had joined the Shadowlaw organization.
At this moment, Sagat stood before the Hibiki Dojo and kicked the half-shut gate wide open.
His towering, two-meter-twenty-six frame passed through the doorframe as he coldly regarded the father and son, Go Hibiki and his boy, inside.
“I hear it’s you two who want to challenge me?” Go Hibiki narrowed his eyes.
The man before him seemed somewhat familiar, but Sagat had, after all, vanished from sight for a long time, and his appearance had changed considerably compared to years ago, so for a moment Go couldn’t place him.
Yet that two-meter-twenty-six height, those long limbs, and that bronze-colored, sinewy muscle still brought a suffocating sense of pressure.
Go Hibiki reached out an arm to stop his son, Dan Hibiki, who wanted to step forward, and said calmly, “I don’t know you.
Where does this challenge come from?” “Kowloon Street is Charudo’s turf.
Not paying protection money means defying Charudo—means defying me.” Sagat’s voice carried no warmth whatsoever, his expression equally cold.
Go Hibiki gave a cold snort, a look of disgust surfacing on his face: “I already told your thugs—unless you’re signing up for the training class, there’s nothing to discuss.
A martial artist teaches means of self-defense; he has no need to fawn over street hoodlums with tribute.
If there’s anything here you want, then prove it with force.” Hearing Go Hibiki’s words, Sagat felt no anger at all; instead, a barely perceptible curve rose at the corner of his mouth.
He craved battle.
This man before him… at least his fighting spirit was reasonably pure.
And in the midst of their exchange, several of the lackeys behind Sagat began to move to either side.
From those ill-intentioned glances, it was clear they were trying to surround Go Hibiki and his son.
Sensing the disparity in numbers, Go Hibiki secretly clenched his fists.
But before he could even act— Vwoom!
Sagat’s right leg blasted out like a cannon shell.
One lackey was kicked flying three or four meters, knocking over several chairs before he came to a stop.
“Eh?” Go Hibiki and his son were stunned, while the Charudo thugs off to the side were utterly dumbfounded on the spot.
At this, Sagat remained expressionless, only saying calmly: “No one is to interfere.
Unless you’re helping him.” The lackeys swallowed hard, finally understanding that this boss who had come down from “up top” had only come for the mission and had never regarded them as comrades.
“Of course, boss.” They hurriedly drew back.
Sagat cracked his fingers, the joints popping, and looked toward Go Hibiki: “Now then, let me see your strength.” Hearing this, Go Hibiki nodded thoughtfully as well.
And before the battle began, as if sensing Dan Hibiki’s worry, he turned to his son, raised a thumb, and said with a smile: “Relax, Dan.
I’ll make this quick.” To this, Sagat offered neither approval nor denial.
He merely tore off his shirt with an expressionless face, exposing that body of bronze-colored muscle—his towering frame like a moving fortress.
Especially his arms and legs, which were extraordinarily long, giving him an attack radius far exceeding that of an ordinary man.
His elbows and knees were covered in thick calluses—marks of arduous training befitting the name “King of Muay Thai.” Go Hibiki knew this would be a hard fight.
Sagat crouched slightly, raising both arms before his body, one foot planted firmly, the other resting on its toes, swaying slowly in rhythm with his breathing.
There was no probing.
The fight erupted in an instant.
Go Hibiki struck first, his footwork swift as lightning, his body low, trying to slip into Sagat’s inner range—the only blind spot of a giant’s reach.
But Sagat remained expressionless.
The instant Go Hibiki closed in, before he could even launch an attack, Sagat’s thick, long lead leg—like a battle-axe fitted with springs—shot out a teep that split the air with a whoosh.
Go Hibiki crossed his arms to block.
Bang!
Sharp pain shot into both arms.
So heavy!
One move from an expert is enough to tell.
This man before him was absolutely nothing like those street hoodlums from before—he was a true martial artist.
That stance, that power generation, the marks on his body—Muay Thai.
The Eight-Limbed Fist, hailed as the most ferocious of combat arts.
Go Hibiki swiftly adjusted his strategy, switching from charging in to defensive counterattacking.
Once a Muay Thai assault began it came fierce as a downpour, but its drain was equally astonishing.
As long as he waited for a gap to appear in his opponent’s breathing, the turn would be his.
Using techniques of inner and outer parry, he deflected Sagat’s attacks off their trajectory with subtle force.
The strategy seemed to be working; he could even land sporadic counters amid his defense.
However— “If this is all there is.” Sagat’s voice rang out.
“I’m about to grow disappointed.” At those words, Go Hibiki’s heart jolted, and he immediately looked toward Sagat’s face.
That coarse face still bore no expression at all.
But what was truly terrifying was—even the rhythm of his breathing hadn’t been disturbed.
Go Hibiki had to give his full concentration, his whole body taut, just to neutralize the man’s fierce blows.
And his opponent’s breathing… was as steady as ever.
This made Go Hibiki, as a martial artist, swiftly realize the gravity of the situation.
After that, Sagat too drew a deep breath.
Veins bulged at his temples, and that bronze-colored body began to take on the luster of surging blood.
The barrage came crashing in like a violent storm.
Those absurdly long legs, in Go Hibiki’s perception, were like two devastating steel whips.
A low sweeping kick howled into his supporting leg, and at the moment of impact, Go Hibiki even lost all sensation below the knee.
His mind went blank, and before he could recover, a mid-section roundhouse smashed into his ribs like a sledgehammer.
The searing pain swiftly restored his composure.
Forcing down the blood rising in his throat, he barely held on with his thousand-times-tempered blocking technique.
Every block let out a dull, thunderous crack.
His arms and shins rapidly swelled red, sprouting one purplish-red welt after another, formed by swollen muscle fibers and ruptured capillaries.
Yet no matter how Go Hibiki employed his so-called technique, before Sagat’s absolute power and reach, it all seemed as pale as paper.
He could predict the trajectories, yet he could not break through that airtight net of attacks, much less block those heavy blows that looked so utterly obvious.
In less than half a minute, the absolute disadvantage had already revealed itself.
After one all-out high block, the heavy impact unavoidably opened a sliver of a gap in Go Hibiki’s center guard.
Only for an instant.
But Sagat’s beastlike instinct precisely seized upon that opening.
That massive body burst forth with terrifying speed unfitting its size.
Stepping forward, his left arm—like a giant python lunging from its den—smashed toward Go Hibiki’s cheek.
Go Hibiki gritted his teeth and pulled his arm back to block.
But his stance had already collapsed, his center of gravity forcibly shattered, and his whole body toppled to one side.
Before he could even hit the ground, Sagat landed a diagonal upward sweep squarely on his abdomen.
Bang!
Go Hibiki was kicked flying, crashing into a pile of sandbags stacked nearby, lowering his head to vomit blood.
At this, after a moment’s silence, Sagat merely pressed his fist disdainfully and turned his head toward the lackeys in irritation.
“This is the expert you spoke of?” Hearing Sagat’s words, Charudo’s gang thugs all wore embarrassed faces.
To be fair, by any measure Go Hibiki could be called a true expert.
Back then, more than a dozen of these big, burly gang thugs had rushed Go Hibiki at once, surrounding him in their midst—only to be knocked down one and all by Go Hibiki head-on.
And right up until the last of them fell, not one had managed to so much as touch the hem of Go Hibiki’s clothes, while Go Hibiki himself hadn’t even drawn upon his full power, using only the most basic punches and kicks.
To say those gang thugs were utterly routed would be no exaggeration.
But now… Overwhelming strength.
Whether in talent, technique, power, or even attitude toward effort, Sagat was overwhelmingly stronger than Go Hibiki.
At the thought, Sagat felt a surge of fury blaze within him.
A victory of this degree provided Sagat with not the slightest sense of accomplishment— Or rather, compared to that man’s power, a fight of merely this level could in no way advance his own art; it could only sink him deeper into this feeble quagmire.
He craved battle, craved power, and craved revenge even more.
But now… “They’re just a pile of trash.” Sagat said irritably: “Don’t waste my time with this kind of thing.” And hearing Sagat’s contempt, Go Hibiki too clenched his teeth.
Being looked down on as a low-grade martial artist, fine… Among different martial paths there had always existed a kind of mutual ladder of scorn.
But to fight with everything he had, only to be appraised in his opponent’s eyes as merely ‘a waste of time’—that was something no martial artist could ever accept!
In an instant, Go Hibiki abruptly leapt into the air.
And sensing Go Hibiki’s movement, Sagat too whirled around sharply.
But this rage-laden strike—Go Hibiki had hardly come away from the earlier fight with nothing.
Quite the opposite: amid that continuous defense, Go Hibiki had already discovered that Sagat’s right side—or rather, his right eye—always showed a faint, almost-imperceptible lapse.
This stemmed from an old injury Sagat had suffered in his youth during a Muay Thai ranking-defense match.
Though not yet blind, it had left Sagat’s right eye with a limited field of vision, like a leaking display screen unable to render full, saturated colors.
At first, Go Hibiki had assumed this was a flaw in Sagat’s own training, that he had failed to notice his own weakness.
But now, having felt Sagat’s overwhelming strength, Go Hibiki could be certain that a flaw and lapse even he himself could detect, Sagat surely had long since known about as well.
And the only reason he had been able to discover it before was that his opponent had not been putting any heart into the fight at all— had not regarded him as a true opponent in the slightest!
It didn’t even matter whether Go Hibiki noticed the weakness, because from the very start Sagat had never believed Go Hibiki could exploit it!
And in fact… Sagat’s judgment had indeed not been wrong.
Because even having discovered Sagat’s carelessness—or rather, his contempt—Go Hibiki still could not exploit that weakness to launch an effective counter.
But now, feeling the fury accumulated in his own martial heart— “Haaa!!” Limbs surging with power, his body tearing up from the ground, Go Hibiki delivered a flying jump kick through the air.
Sensing something was wrong, Sagat instinctively turned his head, and upon feeling the battle intent erupting from Go Hibiki, he too swiftly realized the danger.
He wanted to dodge, but his inner contempt for Go Hibiki prevented Sagat from immediately driving the blood-circulation of half his body.
Forcibly mobilizing it, the old wound in his right eye began to ache faintly because of it.
Crash!
“Gah!!” Although his body barely evaded Go Hibiki’s sudden attack, caught off guard, that fighting-aura-wrapped strike—though it did not strike Sagat’s body—easily shattered Sagat’s right eye, which was already aching faintly from the old wound.
Drenched in blood, Sagat let out a beastlike low growl.
The fury within him devoured all reason in an instant.
Sagat spun back, his thick arm nearly burying itself into Go Hibiki’s abdominal cavity.
There was no protection of bone, nor any mercy like Yang had shown Chun-Li.
The violent, searing pain whited out Go Hibiki’s mind, and before he could recover, Sagat landed a high kick squarely on his face.
Amid teeth flying sideways and a tooth-grating crack of bone, Go Hibiki’s body was kicked clean into an off-road vehicle parked at the roadside, his flesh-and-blood frame smashing a massive dent into its body.
He slumped inside, spitting blood, his eyes vacant, breathing out far more than he breathed in—the very picture of a man on the brink of death.
And with his mind already clouded by rage, Sagat did not stop there.
Feeling the blood streaming from his right eye, hatred and fury surged within him.
His arms spread wide, surging life energy turned into golden currents coiling about them, and as he swung forward, a golden wave roared out like a tiger, splitting the air toward Go Hibiki’s utterly defenseless, broken body.
Seeing this, nearly everyone’s heart leapt into their throat— Anyone with a brain, upon seeing this, would more or less realize that someone was about to die.
Even in this world where martial arts flourished, injury and death were two entirely different matters.
Or rather, precisely because martial arts flourished, allowing civilians to freely fight and brawl, the laws of every nation came down especially hard on the sentencing of injury versus death.
And now, even Sagat himself, in this very instant, fell into a daze.
What am I doing?
Is it I who want to kill him, or is it the rage that wants to kill him?
But it was at this moment that a swift figure leapt out from one side at astonishing speed.
His gaze full of cold detachment, in the instant he closed in his right arm surged with power, muscles bulging, transforming into a vicious sheathing strike that fell upon that golden wave and shattered it to pieces with sheer hatred.
But as the price, along with the impact of the golden force, Yang’s arm was instantly covered with mottled bruises large and small, oozing tiny spots of dark-red clotted blood.
Yet Yang clearly didn’t mind.
This bruising, floating merely on the surface of the skin, didn’t even require a heavy strike; with just a slight activation, Yang expelled it directly out through his pores.
It was only after seeing Go Hibiki behind him that Yang, unhurried, channeled in a stream of life energy to stabilize his vital state, then turned his gaze toward Dan Hibiki at the side.
“Go get a mat, and take good care of your father.” “R-right, okay!” At those words, Dan Hibiki snapped out of his daze and hurried off to fetch a mat, while Chun-Li too came rushing in quickly from one side.