Of all things to run into, Yuan certainly didn’t expect to find a treasure trove.

The third wagon had been nearly identical to the second, a wheeled house of seats facing wraparound windows, albeit with more tables, broken lamps, and pots that were once used to house plants and crops. Ancient cultivators no doubt attempted to cultivate enchanted flowers there, though none of them survived for Yuan to harvest. He and Holster rearranged the place to improve the area’s qi flow, then moved on to the next wagon.

The fourth compartment proved the most unique so far. Rugged and spacious, with sliding doors on the side and numerous overhead racks, it lacked seats and decorations of any kind. It instead overflowed with plastic and leather chests. Yuan marveled at this unexpected discovery.

“This must be the spirit-train’s treasure chamber,” Yuan muttered to himself as he examined the storage spaces. He opened one of the chests, its rusty metal lock crumbling before his strength, and swiftly checked its contents. To his disappointment, he only found clothes and shoes. The Thunderlands’ magic and the spirit-train’s decades spent buried under the sand had preserved them somewhat.

“Can you check these clothes’ pockets?” Yuan asked Holster. “Leave the chests to me. They might be trapped.”

Holster obediently pocketed everything she could get her tiny hands on while Yuan lock-picked the other containers. The good news, none of them blew up in his face; the bad news, none of them contained anything immediately useful. No weapons, no food, no medical supplies… He was starting to wonder if these chests contained the belongings of long dead servants.

“Found anything?” Yuan asked Holster. She presented him with wallets filled with rotted paper, plastic cards with words he didn’t understand, and keys that didn’t fit anything. “Makes sense, I suppose. Cultivators wouldn’t leave their stuff so easily exposed. Their own treasure chamber must be further down the spirit-train.”

At least he could probably sell these clothes and miscellaneous items at Fleshmarket. Clothes were always useful and Lost Age memorabilia always found a buyer. Holster only insisted on putting the chests back into their various compartments, so Yuan guessed they couldn’t do much to improve the place’s feng shui flow and continued on.

Further exploration of the wagon revealed the presence of a water tank and a boiler unit. It looked functional to Yuan and the measurement unit indicated that the reserve was full. At least he and Holster wouldn’t suffer from thirst.

Holster tensed up as they prepared to step into the fifth wagon.

“What’s wrong?” Yuan asked her. Holster looked at him with frightened eyes and then took cover behind his back. Yuan didn’t need a translator to understand the message.

Danger ahead.

Checking the door to the wagon only confirmed his suspicions. He felt a strong mechanical resistance when his hand touched the handle. Only when Holster touched it did the gears in the locks begin to turn.

The spirit-train had seen fit to lock this part of itself off. That meant that whatever it contained shouldn’t leave these confines.

Yuan stepped forward with his shotgun loaded and ready to fire. The fifth wagon appeared far more luxurious than those they had visited so far, with dark wood paneling and plush carpeting. Yuan only ever saw this kind of polished coziness in sect areas dedicated to cultivators, so he assumed this wagon catered to them. Compartments marked by numbered doors occupied most of the space.

Holster’s fearful grip on Yuan strengthened, alerting him to the danger ahead. He closed his eyes and focused on the wagon’s qi. It was particularly weak here. Something in the cabins was choking the flow of energy.

Yuan put his head to the ground. Though his ear struggled to make much sense out of the bumps of the spirit-train’s wheels on the phantom rails and the ambient noise, he managed to recognize familiar, rhythmic vibration patterns coming from the cabins.

Centidead. More than one.

That explained why the spirit-train locked the area. The monsters must have consumed the passengers and then began to feed on the ambient qi like maggots crawling inside a great beast’s stomach. Keeping them contained in that wagon prevented them from spreading and taking over the rest of the vehicle.

Not the best place to pick a fight. Yuan counted seven cabins in total, with the last three of them double-sized. A single and narrow corridor separated their doors from the wagon’s windows. Too little space to maneuver. At least I’ll see them coming.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

One wouldn’t have been too much of an issue since the hallway provided an excellent chokehold, but Yuan was both outnumbered and low on ammo. His shotgun could only hold three munitions at once, and he likely wouldn’t have time to dodge and reload.

Yuan glanced at Holster. He did entrust a gun to her, but she trembled in fear like a leaf. Between her lack of combat training and nervousness, he doubted that she could provide him with suppressing fire.

But Yuan could see another use for her. Mingxia never managed to aim right in her life, but she helped him in battle more than once.

“Listen to me, Holster,” Yuan whispered to his charge. “Something very nasty lurks behind these doors, and I’m not sure how many of them are hiding in the rooms. I’ll need your help. Can you help me?”

Holster bit her lip in nervousness, but mustered up her courage and nodded slowly.

“I’m short on revolver ammo, so I’ll have to rely on the shotgun. Problem is that the reloading time is atrocious and we’re fighting at close-range. Once I’ve shot three times, you’re going to reload it for me.” Yuan indicated where to put the shells. “I’ll have to switch to the revolver while you put the ammo inside. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to use your own gun. Do you understand?”

Holster nodded, albeit with some hesitation. Yuan briefly showed her how to insert the shells into the shotgun, handed her a handful of ammo, and then gently pushed her back. He slowly took a step until he stood in front of the first cabin’s door. The noise of the spirit-train likely interfered with the centidead’s ability to notice his presence, but the sound of the gunshot would alert all of them.

Yuan gathered his breath, charged his shotgun with qi, then pulled the trigger. “One.”

A hail of blazing pellets erupted from the cannon and tore the cabin apart.

The sheer power of the blowback nearly sent Yuan stumbling on his ass. The cabin’s door exploded into a thousand shards of wood and iron, as did the berth, washstand, and faucet behind it.

As for the centidead-possessed human corpse occupying the cabin, its bloodied body parts were thrown at the cabin’s window with enough force to crack the glass.

Chittering screeches resonated across the entire wagon and a few doors snapped open.

Once a centidead larva found a fresh corpse to nest inside, they animated its flesh and then used the reactivated organs to cycle qi for itself. The parasite grew in strength and power until it could find a larger host, repeating the process until it reached its enormous adult size.

The half a dozen monsters that emerged from the cabins had clearly stretched their current hosts to their limits. The centidead larvas’ thick tangle of legs clung to ancient skeletons’ bones and coiled around their spines. The loathsome bugs’ mandibles chittered inside the skull’s jaws like a hungry tongue.

Keeping the cowering Holster safe behind him, Yuan immediately took a position at the end of the hallway. The narrow space offered him a perfect line of fire as the small horde of centidead rushed at him with undying hunger.

“Two,” Yuan counted upon firing at them. His shotgun vomited lead and fire through the hallway, tearing apart the two nearest centidead into ghastly lumps of bone and flesh. The shrapnel shattered one of the nearby windows and scarred the hardwood walls.

Yuan thought he had improperly used his weapon the first time, but his second shot confirmed otherwise. Charging his revolver with qi imbued his bullet with enough strength to puncture steel and blow a man in two. Charging the shotgun instead caused the shell to detonate when it erupted from the barrel. The power dispersed in a short-ranged explosion of qi and shrapnel tearing anything within its path.

Unfortunately, this newfound power came at the cost of range. The shotgun shot pulverized everything within a three-meter radius around the barrel; nowhere near far enough to cover the entire hallway. The rest of the centidead quickly stepped over the remains of their fellow larva to get to Yuan.

“Three!” Yuan counted as he took a step closer, blasting them all to bits in one shot. The explosion caused the nearest window to shatter. The spirit-train let out a mighty whistle across its length, as if to complain about the damage.

Yuan’s relief lasted a mere second until the door to the next wagon opened up. A new trio of centidead emerged from it and rushed across the hallway in a frightening dash of speed.

“Reload!” Yuan ordered Holster as he lowered his shotgun and freed one of his hands. His charge clumsily attempted to stick her ammo into the right compartment while he grabbed his revolver. He aimed at the incoming undead and managed to shoot one through its mandible-jaw, killing it instantly. The other two tossed the headless corpse aside and ran the entire hallway’s length in seconds.

Yuan was about to waste his last revolver bullet when Holster finished reloading his shotgun in the nick of time. He swiftly shifted gears and blasted apart the last two centidead before they could close the gap between them. Their mangled flesh fell a step away from his feet.

Yuan kept his shotgun raised at the end of the hallway and waited for another challenger to manifest. After an agonizingly long minute of silence, only interrupted by the bumps on the tracks, he allowed himself to lower his weapon. Centidead weren’t too smart, and he doubted any survivor would have passed on the opportunity to seize a fresh host.

“You'll need to be faster next time,” Yuan scolded Holster.

The girl lowered her head in shame and anxiety. Yuan almost immediately regretted his words. Part of him knew few succeeded perfectly on their first try, but a few wasted seconds could mean the difference between life and death. Mingxia would have taken half the time to reload his weapon.

“I’ll teach you to do it faster,” Yuan tried to reassure Holster. He would have to. With only one revolver bullet left and his body not yet prepared to handle the Recoil Fist, he would need to rely on the shotgun for now. The way the weapon reacted to his qi raised a few questions however.

Could each firearm have its own unique technique?