Ransacking the wagon proved both disappointing and somewhat profitable. The cabins mostly contained old baubles like handheld clocks and old dolls, but he also found emergency tools like resin torches, fire extinguishers, hammers, drills, hacksaws… everything required to repair the spirit-train should it be damaged.
None of these objects carried qi of any kind though. Yuan was starting to wonder if a cultivator ever boarded this spirit-train in the past.
At least killing the centidead improved the vehicle’s feng shui, enough that it noticeably picked up speed. Yuan had Holster gather their remains in one of the leather chests from the previous wagon. He doubted that they would be able to harvest much from the corpses, but who knew.
Holster fulfilled the task efficiently and without complaint. It saddened Yuan a bit that his earlier remark seemed to bother her more than the duty of gathering lumps of flesh and cleaning up blood stains. That girl had been exposed to corpses enough to grow desensitized to them.
“Did you do this before?” Yuan couldn’t help but ask. Holster’s shy nod saddened him, though it didn’t come off as a surprise. “Whose corpses?”
Holster looked down at the ground, then put a hand on her heart.
People like her, Yuan guessed. How many tries did it take for a sect to create a human pillar? He was better off not knowing the answer to that. I ought to do something to cheer her up. She’s too young for Maurice’s drug batch, and I can’t think of anything else that could make her feel better…
Yuan suddenly recalled one of the objects he ransacked in the cabins and went to pick it up: an old blue porcelain baby doll with yellow eyes and a cracked skull. It was in bad shape, had gathered a lot of dust, and sent Yuan an eerie vibe, but it was still functionally huggable. Yuan never found the appeal of these things, though girls seemed to love them for some obscure reason.
“Here,” Yuan told Holster upon offering her the doll. “This is for you. A reward for your hard work.”
Holster’s eyes widened with excitement. She all but dropped the bag of centidead flesh to grab the doll and hug it in spite of its deteriorated state. Yuan found the sight quite endearing.
Holster examined her new gift, then grabbed her handgun. She adopted a strange pose with her weapon in one hand and holding her doll protectively with the other. Adorable.
“Are you trying to imitate me?” Yuan mused.
He meant it as a joke, only for the girl’s reddening cheeks to confirm his suspicions. Yuan felt a strange warmth course through his body. The kind that left him both happy and stammering in embarrassment.
“Well, uh…” Yuan awkwardly shifted in place before patting the girl on the head. “K-Keep doing it!”
Yuan Guang had never been someone’s hero before. It was a nice feeling.
He could get used to it.
Yuan moved to the next wagon in a much better mood than before. The universe rewarded his optimism with a good surprise for once. The next compartment was a cozy dining hall with over four dozen polished wood tables, plush seats, a kitchen, a pantry, and a wine cellar. Old crystal lamps hung from the ceiling, their lights long extinguished.
Yuan let Holster rearrange the chairs and tables while he ransacked the place for supplies. The pantry’s contents had long since rotted away to oblivion, but the wine cellar’s stored bottles remained drinkable. Yuan could sell them alongside a few remaining silver utensils for a good price. The kitchen’s oven and grills still worked too.
The next and final wagon was more of the same: a well-stocked bar with a mahogany counter, dusty sofas, and wingback chairs. A library filled with rotten books stood next to framed artworks, though Yuan’s gaze mostly lingered on a wide, cracked panoramic window offering an incredible view of the back of the spirit-train. Before searching the place, he took a moment to admire the beauty of the Thunderlands’ colorful lightning and glittering auroras in the sky. He found nothing besides alcohol and batches of rotten cocaine hidden in the drawers.
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“Disappointing,” Yuan mumbled while Holster continued to rearrange the sofas so they wouldn’t obstruct the train’s feng shui flow. “Where’s the good stuff?”
Part of him had hoped to find a buried treasure or an ancient qi artifact. This spirit-train was far too luxurious for Scraps, though Yuan was beginning to think that the cultivator wagons were lost to time. Or maybe it was meant to host a sect’s wealthier servants and pampered slaves.
Who cared anymore? The truth had long been lost to time.
Yuan counted seven wagons along with the locomotive. The engine, two seated places, the treasure chamber, the bedrooms, the kitchen, and the salon. The spirit-train was spacious enough to house hundreds of passengers.
I could take on new courier jobs with this. A spirit-train would both gather more attention and carry more cargo than a smaller spirit-car. Many would pay Yuan good money to transport heavy loads across the wastes. It will make for an attractive catch for thieves and bandits though…
Yuan brushed these thoughts off for now. He would take his revenge first and wonder about what to do next after putting a bullet through Slash’s head.
The spirit-train suddenly picked up more speed, which caused Yuan to look around. Holster had finished rearranging the tables and sofas in a way that reminded Yuan of a ‘U’ curve joining with the bar counter.
Now I see what she did. Focusing on the flow of qi confirmed to Yuan that the air inside the wagon now carried more of it. The spirit-train’s energy traveled from the engine to its wagons along a main line, curved by following the seat arrangement, and then returned back to the front. Holster had rearranged the vehicle’s inner layout into one similar to a human body. The spirit-train can now cycle qi.
The effects already showed. The spirit-train’s pace quickened and the cracks in the panoramic window slowly disappeared. The machine slowly healed its wounds, further improving its ability to refine qi from the earth’s ley lines.
This should noticeably improve Yuan’s own cycling inside its confines as well.
“Good job,” he congratulated Holster. The girl smiled happily at the compliment. “Now go grab the rations.”
It had been many days since Yuan cooked for someone.
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Yuan had to give it to Kyung-sun. The iguana meat she gave him tasted delicious when grilled.
Yuan and Holster relocated to the last salon wagon and enjoyed their dinner there. Watching the sunset on the Thunderlands through the panoramic window would likely remain one of Yuan’s favorite memories. It reminded him of the many times when he, Mingxia, and Jawlong gathered around a campfire for the evening.
Yuan missed their conversations. He rarely spoke during lunch, but he enjoyed listening to his friends’ banter. Holster couldn’t replace that hole in his heart even if she tried.
He enjoyed her light snoring nonetheless. Holster ended up falling asleep on a sofa, while Yuan cycled during the night. The spirit-train’s improved feng shui had done more than increase the quantity of qi in the air; it also removed the few radioactive impurities staining the Thunderlands from it. The engine filtered the impurities like a purifier cleaning water.
The results spoke for themselves. Yuan’s body could absorb a greater quantity of qi without suffering a blowback and his core’s tendrils grew a little faster than before. It reminded Yuan of a plant being fed fertilizer.
The metal roots in his body progressed at an accelerated pace. They now reached all the way to his hands and waist.
I’m completing days worth of cycling in an hour’s time. Yuan charged his fist with Elemental Infusion and coated his skin in iron. No surge of pain interrupted the process like last time, though he could tell that his body consumed far more qi than it should have to sustain the technique. He needed to refine all of his flesh to fully master it. The Second Coil is just around the corner.
The prospect filled him with glee. His body shuddered with excitement. Was there a greater feeling than the sensation of becoming stronger, fitter, better? Each passing minute he spent cycling qi brought him closer to the power and heights he had craved for all his life.
A wave of unease hit the rock of his optimism.
Yuan found himself snapped out of his meditation in an instant. He couldn’t quite explain it. A sharp and terrible feeling interrupted his focus. His eyes opened to face the last wagon’s panoramic window. A great sandstorm marred with multicolored lightning had arisen over the horizon, obscuring the moon and stars. Yuan sensed a great and dangerous qi imbalance surging from it; a deep and all-consuming greed tainted with hunger.
And it didn’t come alone either. The headlights of a horde’s worth of spirit-cars pierced through the veil of dust and sand, some so bright that they likely belonged to monster-trucks. Yuan heard a distant noise coming from them: a furious mix of war drums and battle-guitars.
The rad-hag was coming for them.
Her, and her army.