We return to Caine's past in China. Caine witnesses a man defeat six others in the village. The man instructs Caine to deliver a challenge. He demands a fight to the death with Master Kan or he will kill a villager every day until he gets it.

Caine goes to work for a railroad which is being sabotaged, and meets a Shaolin priest he knew before.

A reclusive hermit, Tamo, arrives at the Honan monastery to inform them that the Fukien monastery was attacked and destroyed by a warlord with his cannon, and that he has survivors seeking refuge there. One of the survivors is a woman who wants to become a Shaolin monk. She later reveals the warlord wanted her to be his wife, and she fled. Now the warlord is preparing to attack the monastery and having his cannon brought there.

Caine and the others try to defend the monastery, while the cannon the Warlord SIng will attack them with is still enroute. In the meantime, he must contend with the fact that a woman who wants to become a Shaolin monk and rejected Sing's hand in marriage, has fallen in love with him.

After being stung by a scorpion, Caine remembers a time in China, where a member of the royal family poisoned him in order to discover what was on the journey to death, during which time Caine had visions of the American west.