Yuan spent hours cycling his qi.

He’d seen cultivators recover from heavy wounds within hours, and the exercise taught him why. Qi fueled the body, binding broken parts together, soothing bruises, and reinforcing the flesh. His wrist and heel quickly healed.

Moreover, his core’s tendrils had started spreading to his spine. Dining on the Thunderlands’ energies let Yuan foster their growth tenfold. Once they had covered his entire bone structure he should be able to use the Recoil Fist without suffering from the blowback and fuel the Elemental Infusion technique.

How long would that process take? Days? Weeks? Yuan felt like an hour of cycling in the Thunderlands was worth a hundred in the wilderness, but he had no idea how long it took a Gunsoul to reach the Second Coil.

A slight bump drew him from his meditation.

The spirit-train was slowing down.

Yuan looked outside his window to check on the path ahead. A building appeared in the distance: an ancient, two-floor tall ruin of brick and rusted steel rising from the sand like a centidead from a corpse. An antique stone platform rested along the phantom trail on which the spirit-train rode.

Was this place of great importance to the spirit-train? Some kind of feeding ground? The spirit-car herd riding nearby wasn’t slowing down when approaching it at least.

Yuan sat in his seat as the spirit-train slowed down to a crawl along the platform. It let out a whistle and let loose a cloud of colored smoke from its chimney, then stopped.

Unwilling to climb off in case the creature woke up again, Yuan first exited his wagon to climb back onto the roof. Toshiro’s beheaded corpse was still there, lying in a puddle of blood. Funny how oni bled red like everyone else.

The Thunderlands’ veil would prevent the Deathsong’s influence from summoning the oni’s ghost, but leaving the corpse around might cause a centidead to take it over. A dangerous prospect considering Toshiro used to be a Second Coil. Yuan decided to err on the side of caution and feed the oni’s remains to the spirit-train’s oven after checking the corpse for any valuables.

Unfortunately, Toshiro didn’t carry anything useful. No ammo, no currency he could use, no nothing. His flesh didn’t earn Yuan anything either: the spirit-train’s engine simply burned Toshiro’s body without starting up again.

This greatly disappointed Yuan. He was tempted to tame the spirit-train after seeing it in action, but he had no idea how to do so. He didn’t even know whether it fed on gasoline or something else. With the vehicle refusing to budge and nothing left to lose, Yuan climbed down from the front car and stepped onto the platform.

The ancient building faced him, tall and silent. Its broken windows were devoid of glass and its doors had long since lost their hinges. A metal sign written in a language Yuan didn’t understand hung from the dusty facade. Though the place already appeared ransacked, he might find a few useful supplies inside.

Yuan only took a few steps towards the entrance when his spine stiffened in alarm.

“Show yourself.” When no one answered his demand, Yuan grabbed his revolver. “Show yourself or be cut down!”

A dreadful silence settled on the mysterious building, only broken by the sound of distant thunder strikes. Yuan was about to start shooting when a rugged figure finally emerged from the entrance’s shadows. An old man seemingly in his late sixties walked with his hands up in the air.

“Easy fella,” he said with a crooked grin that didn’t reach his weary eyes. His gray beard reminded Yuan of a wild mane and inked wolf tattoos covered his sleeveless arms. His dirty clothes showcased strange badges from the Lost Age. “Easy. I’m not here to fight.”

He didn’t look armed, but Yuan kept his revolver pointed at his head nonetheless.

“All of you,” Yuan insisted. “Tell your comrade to come out or you’ll die.”

“I see you’re not the trusting kind.” The old man rolled his eyes and looked over his shoulder. “Gru? Show yourself.”

Another man walked out of the building with a shotgun in hand. Unlike his comrade, this one was a bald colossus towering over Yuan. Patchwork armor of battle-worn ceramic plates protected most of his body, while a canister bandolier was strapped to his chest. His cold eyes appraised Yuan with grim stoicism and his finger twitched on his weapon’s trigger.

They didn’t look like cultivators and Yuan didn’t sense any other presence, but he knew better than to lower his guard.

“I’m Maurice, and this big guy’s called Gru,” the old man said with a friendly grin. He pointed at the spirit-train. “You wouldn’t happen to be that machine’s driver, would ya?”

“Maybe,” Yuan replied warily. The less information he gave away, the better. “Why?”

“Because we’ve been holed up in this place for days and we need a ride.” Maurice let out a sigh. “We used to belong to a caravan, but it got wiped out.”

“I don’t believe you,” Yuan replied. “Sane traders wouldn’t travel through the Thunderlands.”

The colossus, Gru, grunted. “They would if they had encountered that damn gunslinger.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Well said,” Maurice replied. “If you want the full story, oh nameless stranger, a skull-faced cultivator hunted us across the wastes. I’ve never seen someone blow up trucks with a bullet before.”

“A gunslinger?” Yuan squinted. He had a fair idea of who these people referred to. “Revolver?”

Maurice raised an eyebrow. “You’ve met the guy?”

“I’ve seen his poster,” Yuan replied evasively. He wondered why Revolver would attack this group. He doubted someone willing to give a former Scrap a free ride through the wasteland would rob a merchant caravan without a damn good reason, so it made him wary of these two.

“Be thankful you didn’t meet him in the flesh. Bugger wiped out half our escort before we could lose him through the Thunderlands.” Maurice shook his head. “A costly mistake that was. Out of the fire and into the frying pan.”

“The local rad-hag sent oni thugs after us,” Gru said. “They broke our car.”

“I’ve encountered a few oni myself,” Yuan confessed. Although he didn’t trust these guys, he decided to give them a chance. Whatever reason Revolver targeted them wasn’t his problem, and he needed all the help he could get to survive the Thunderlands. “I don’t drive the spirit-train. It drives itself. I don’t know why it stopped here.”

“Really?” Maurice didn’t hide his disappointment. “That sucks.”

“I know my way with cars though,” Yuan said. “Maybe I can repair yours.”

“I doubt you can, but who knows?” Maurice glanced at Yuan’s revolver. “Can I…”

Yuan nodded and allowed Maurice to lower his hands. The old man swiftly invited him to the back of the building, where an old sedan rested in its shadow. Gru kept his shotgun ready to fire all the way through.

Yuan immediately knew that the car would never drive again the moment he saw it. The bodywork showed claw marks and the right door at the front was bent inward. He quickly checked the engine nonetheless. It was in better shape than the rest of the vehicle, but that didn’t mean much.

“The battery and alternator are dead,” Yuan said. “Pouring in more gasoline won’t help.”

“Figured as much,” Maurice replied with a groan. “Anything that could help repair it on that big metal thing you rode in on?”

“No clue.” Yuan doubted that the train would even allow them to remove pieces of it even if they fit. “We’re better off catching a spirit-car.”

Maurice crossed his arms, his expression furrowing into a thoughtful scowl. “What are you doing in these parts, fella?”

“Taking a shortcut to Fleshmarket.”

“Funny, we intended to stop there as well.” Maurice offered him his palm. “How about we team up? We watch each other’s back until we escape this blasted place and return to civilization.”

“Sure,” Yuan replied after shaking the man’s hand. Such alliances were not unusual in the wastes. Numbers provided safety and they would have nothing to gain from robbing one another. “The name’s Yuan.”

“Happy to make your acquaintance.” Maurice smiled ear to ear. “Scraps like us gotta stick together.”

Scraps? Oh, of course. Few cultivators bothered to carry a gun for self-defense.

A thump came from the car’s trunk.

The sound was so soft, so small, that Yuan thought he had misheard it at first. Gru disabused him of that notion when he slammed the trunk with the back of his hand. The sound echoed again nonetheless.

“I think she wants to pee,” Gru told Maurice.

She. The word sent a chill down Yuan’s spine.

“Again?” Maurice complained. “We already let her out yesterday.”

It took all of Yuan’s willpower not to show his distaste. He suddenly understood why Revolver went after these two’s caravan.

“What’s that?” Yuan asked, careful to sound as neutral as he could manage.

“I guess you should see it,” Maurice replied with a shrug as they moved to the back of the car. “Our package.”

Maurice opened the trunk, and Yuan soon found himself staring back at a pair of fearful blue eyes.

A small girl no older than ten was bound and gagged inside the trunk. She was so pale and gaunt that Yuan would have easily mistaken her for a corpse without her soft breath. Her ragged clothes ill-fit her scrawny body, and her shaggy red hair was blackened by dirt. An explosive slave collar held her neck tightly bound in a mechanical chokehold.

Something about her disturbed Yuan to his core beyond her current state. The girl’s qi felt unnatural, like a cloud of darkness and green miasma.

“Pretty girl, ain’t she?” Maurice laughed as he pinched the girl’s cheek. She recoiled in fear and disgust, which only amused the slaver. “Look at how healthy she is.”

“She feels…” Yuan struggled to find the right term. He had a hard time focusing past his overwhelming disgust. “Wrong.”

“I’m surprised you could tell.” Maurice sneered at the child. “She's a Hitobashira.”

Yuan had heard of them. These human pillars were specially prepared human sacrifices. They could be used to strengthen a land’s qi flow, fuel feng shui rituals, suppress evil spirits, or pay supernatural entities. Amoral sects and warlocks paid top money for them.

This explained why the rad-hag’s servants attacked the caravan too. The mad spirit either sought to consume that girl for power or ensure that no one would use her to cleanse the Thunderlands.

Maurice mistook his thoughtful expression for greed. “Don’t get any ideas,” he warned Yuan. “The buyer will only answer to us. Don’t think you can kill us and sell her back.”

“The idea never crossed my mind,” Yuan replied. That wasn’t even a lie. The idea of transporting human cargo sickened him. “Who purchased her anyway?”

“A Furyland sect elder in the northwest.” Maurice shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno what they’ll do with her. Maybe they’ll keep her around to ward off spirits. I ain’t a cultivator myself.”

Yuan clenched his jaw when the girl looked at him with a gaze full of fear. The wisest thing was to look the other way. They were all stranded in the middle of a desert with little hope for rescue. Traveling with a group, even a loathsome one, was better than fighting on his own.

And yet, seeing her like this…

She’s not my problem, Yuan tried to tell himself. She’s not my problem, she’s not my problem…

“But between us…” Maurice let out a dark chuckle. “I’ve heard that her buyer is one hell of a dirty degenerate pervert.”

And now you’ve done it.

Yuan reached his decision. The helpless Scrap he used to be would have chosen pragmatism over what was right. Being born weak meant eating dirt to live long enough to see the next dawn.

But he was a Gunsoul now. A cultivator. He was strong.

He didn’t have to compromise anymore.

Yuan quickly calculated his odds and timing. Striking later meant that he could keep these two as helpers and human shields; but knowing slavers, their alliance would only last until they left the Thunderlands anyway. Doing it now meant that they wouldn’t expect it and that he could take their supplies.

“Do you do sales?” Yuan asked Maurice after he closed the trunk. “Or discounts?”

“What kind?”

Yuan drew his pistol in the blink of an eye and jumped to the side, positioning himself so that Maurice would stand between him and Gru. The latter immediately raised his shotgun, too late.

Yuan shot Maurice dead before he could react.

The qi-charged bullet blasted his chest open and then continued its course through his back. It pulverized Gru’s skull into a shower of blood, bones, and brains. Both men collapsed to the ground, their lives extinguished in an instant.

“The ballistic kind.” Yuan holstered his gun. “You guys weren’t worth two bullets.”

What did Revolver say? Ah yes.

Sometimes you had to take out the trash.