The rad-hag lunged at him with her immense hands.

She showed no technique, adopted no martial stance, and didn’t bother with feints of any kind. She possessed none of Toshiro’s rudimentary martial arts skill nor a beast’s instinctual understanding of the enemy’s vitals.

She was just fast and strong.

The rad-hag reached Yuan in the blink of an eye, moving far quicker than anything her size had any right to. Her fists struck the spirit-train like two giant hammers, puncturing the steel roof and rupturing pipes. Her true target slipped through her fingers nonetheless.

Men invented martial arts to compensate for their lack of strength compared to other beings; to allow the weak to defeat the mighty through pure skill. Yuan was smaller than the rad-hag, but her size was as much of a weakness as it was a strength. He moved within the space between her hands and chest, coated his fists in metal, and then punched her with all his might. A shockwave traveled through the rad-hag’s exposed flesh and spilled droplets of acidic blood in all directions. Some landed on Yuan’s metal skin and left it itching.

Using Elemental Infusion weakened his Recoil Fist’s backlash enough that Yuan hardly felt it in his arms. He could afford to punch her again and again, so long as he kept up enough qi to fuel his techniques. Each of his blows struck with the power of a cannonball.

But the rad-hag’s flesh and bones proved nearly as tough as her hide. A punch that would have shattered a wall hardly left a crack in her ribs. Yuan continued to hammer away at the same spot, knowing it was bound to break under the pressure eventually.

The rad-hag attempted to envelop him in a fatal hug. Yuan nearly backflipped away, but erred on the side of caution by slipping between her legs to avoid being caught. He quickly punched her in the knee from behind in an attempt to make her stumble. Even if her skin was bulletproof, the impact should at least throw her off her feet.

The rad-hag didn’t even flinch. In fact, the sneak attack likely hurt Yuan more than her. His enemy then turned around and attempted to backhand him. Yuan quickly backflipped to dodge, only to realize his mistake when his feet landed on the whistling spirit-train’s edge.

He and the rad-hag had switched positions. Yuan was now the one with his back facing the void.

I miscalculated. Yuan cursed himself for his lack of foresight. I should have kept my distance earlier.

“You cultivators… you’re all parasites,” the rad-hag rasped. “All you can think of is to take lives; either from the world or each other. Everywhere you go, you fill graves and call it peace.”

Yuan ignored her and instead considered his options. How could he best salvage the situation? The rad-hag was far from accurate, but a direct hit might be fatal. How long could he continue striking at her chest without slipping up?

“I’m like this because of your kind,” the rad-hag said with anger. “You poisoned the earth that gave me life with your sick radiation and filled my depths with maggots!”

“Let me kill you then, spirit,” Yuan replied coldly. “You’ll reincarnate into a better self.”

“Just as you accepted death, half-life?” The rad-hag spat glowing, green blood onto the metal roof. “You smell like a corpse with gunpowder for blood. Is that flesh even yours? Or are you just a deluded piece of lead browsing through a dead man’s memory?”

A frightening question which Yuan answered with a shrug. He wouldn’t let her distract his mind during battle. He would spare time for philosophy after his victory.

If he couldn’t reach the rad-hag’s vitals, he would settle for pushing her overboard. Lure her to the edge, then knock her off with a well-aimed Recoil Fist strike to the back. Yuan extended his hands and challenged his enemy to come closer.

The rad-hag answered his challenge by charging at him with a roar. She stepped over the holes in the roof, her heavy footsteps causing bolts to fly off the spirit-train. Yuan waited for her to lunge at him, then activated his Recoil Fist with both hands while punching downwards. The resulting shockwave propelled him right above the rad-hag.

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Lightning coursed through her body in a flash of golden light.

Yuan sensed her enormous hand close around his throat in mid-flight. The rad-hag’s arm moved so fast that it became a blur and caught him instantly. She smirked at him, her teeth cackling with the sound of booming thunder.

Swiftly realizing the danger he was in, Yuan instinctively grabbed the rad-hag’s head with his left hand. A lethal pulse of qi-lightning hit his throat right after he made contact with her skull. He barely managed to redirect the current down his throat and through his shoulder before electrocuting the rad-hag with her own attack once again. The tumors growing on her skin melted between his metal fingers, as did her bones.

When the rad-hag finally cut off the juice, half her face was gone. The left side of her skull had melted away, revealing a squirming mass of crawling, finger-long centidead maggots where her brain should have been.

“That…” the rad-hag’s smirk twisted into a furious scowl. “Was unpleasant.”

She slammed Yuan against the spirit-train’s roof, face-first.

He would have been torn apart by the impact if he hadn’t had Elemental Infusion coating his head and torso in steel. It still hurt like hell though. His vision went white for a second, but the pain had only begun.

The rad-hag ran across the entire length of the wagon while keeping his face pressed against the floor. Yuan’s skin sang and screeched as it kissed the metal. The friction peeled some of it away in atrocious flashes of pain. He punched the rad-hag’s exposed flesh with his Recoil Fist again and again in an attempt to free himself. Hammering her weak points did nothing. She only tightened her grip on him.

The rad-hag reached the end of the wagon and then leaped upon reaching its edge. She fell onto the next and slammed Yuan onto the roof with all of her weight behind her. His vision went white as he and his foe crashed through the metal in a cataclysmic crash. A terrible crack echoed from his right shoulder and arm, followed by a flash of pain and sudden numbness. The bullet-tendrils inside those limbs went dark like cables decoupled from a power grid.

Their course ended on top of the dining wagon’s kitchen counter, where Yuan’s steel back sank midway through. A terrible wave of sickness overwhelmed him. He spat blood, his blurry eyes catching sight of the rad-hag’s shadow looming over him. When he recovered enough to make sense of her outline, he saw her raise her fist above his head, lightning crackling between her fingers. He tried to break free in panic, only for the rad-hag’s other hand to keep him firmly in place.

This is the end, Yuan realized, his bullet-core pounding hard in his head.

Gunshots suddenly echoed through the wagon, and a bullet bounced off the rad-hag’s shoulder. The monstrous spirit’s head snapped up at the source of the attack.

Holster.

She trembled like a leaf at the end of the wagon, her feeble hands hardly able to steadily hold the handgun that Yuan gave her. Her eyes were wide open with fear as she frantically pulled the trigger. She was a shit shot and quickly ran out of bullets, but the rad-hag forgot Yuan’s existence for a split second.

Quickly seizing his chance, Yuan slammed his left hand against the monster’s chest. With few other choices left, he desperately poured all the qi he could gather into his Recoil Fist; far more than what his flesh could handle. His carpal bones cracked under the pressure, as did the rad-hag’s ribs. The blow sent her flying across the dining wagon until she hit the opposing wall in a loud crash.

Yuan forced himself back to his feet, struggling with the pain and blood pouring out of his mouth. Holster rushed over to help him.

“Holster, the gun,” Yuan rasped. “Give me the–”

A sharp surge of pain silenced him, and a good look at his body made him realize the severity of their situation. His right arm had gone limp and was bent in a sickening way. His left hand hardly looked any better. His last-ditch attack had broken it, to the point he couldn’t bend his fingers anymore.

And worst of all, the rad-hag was still alive. Yuan’s blow had left her groggy and shattered her ribs, but her thick flesh preserved her inner organs. She slowly regained her footing with a hateful grunt.

This was bad. Really bad.

Yuan frantically searched for a solution. The rad-hag might control the Thunderlands’ qi, but the spirit-train was king inside its confines. Its energy continued to flow in the feng shui pattern that Holster devised, possibly enough to damage the rad-hag. A strike through her skinless chest would finish her off.

But Holster couldn’t charge bullets with qi, even if her handgun had any left. And how was Yuan supposed to use it without working hands? With his teeth? Unless he charged his bullet-core, what else did–

Yuan felt as if he had been struck by lightning again.

I am a gun, he realized. Quick to fire.

The rad-hag finally got back to her feet with a snarl of rage. She dashed at them at full speed while tossing dining tables and chairs out of her way.

“Run, Holster!” Yuan ordered his charge. Holster hastily ducked behind the kitchen counter while he quickly positioned himself in the spirit-train’s qi path. He quickly pivoted into the best angle he could manage in the split second he had left.

The rad-hag lunged at him to deliver the coup de grace.

Coating his head and torso in metal, Yuan poured all of his qi into his legs and activated his Recoil technique. His tendrils hadn’t yet reached the lower part of his body, so the flow of energy ruptured his muscles on its way to the heels. A shockwave erupted out of his feet, tearing off his skin.

Yuan flew.

His body surged with qi as the spirit-train’s flow of feng shui carried him forward. His bullet-core pounded in his skull with the noise of a gunshot. Yuan roared as he hit his foe at full velocity.

His metal skull punched through the rad-hag’s chest and came out on the other side.