The tension in the air was thicker than gunsmoke.

On his left stood Gatling Man, his namesake loaded and ready to fire at the first provocation. On his right was Gayak, who carried himself with the easy nonchalance and predatory menace of a spirit-tiger about to pounce.

The three cultivators observed one another, none of them making the first move. Yuan swiftly grabbed his Kalash Angel with his left hand and wielded his Saint Heckler with the right, each weapon pointed at a different foe. Neither of them attacked. Doing so would open them to retaliation from the other parties.

They were at an impasse… for now.

Gatling Man broke the silence first. “You’ve got guts showing up alone, fleshcrafter trash.”

“Why would Elder Polio need to send anyone else?” Gayak lazily grabbed his tattered rags and tossed them to the ground, now wearing only a pair of shorts. “You tin cans are all so weak.”

Yuan suppressed a shiver of disgust. Gayak’s ashen skin was a mess of stitches and sutures, his pallid limbs having been attached to his torso through surgery rather than naturally grown. Four snakelike yellow eyes replaced the nipples on his thin chest, a bronze chain coiled around them. As for his stomach, it didn’t hide anything. A bloody hole stretched from his shorts to his ribcage, with a set of coiling purple tentacles squirming where his intestines should have been.

Gatling Man scoffed in disdain. “Big talk from trash who needs to steal the flesh of slaves for strength.”

“It would have been wiser for you to skip town, stranger,” Gayak told Yuan as he stretched his legs. Though he seemed utterly unintimidated, Yuan could see the razor-sharp focus in his posture. The eyes of his chest constantly darted between him and Gatling Man. “I suppose you haven’t come back to join us?”

Yuan briefly considered lying in order to take down Gatling Man first, but something told him Gayak would immediately pick up on it. Besides, he knew himself. Mingxia told him he had the charisma of a stone wall.

Yuan pointed his Heckler at Gayak’s chest. “I’ll pass.”

“A shame, but I was hoping you’d say that.” Gayak’s manic, yellow smirk oozed bloodthirst and malevolence. “I’ve never killed a Gunsoul before, let alone two of them.”

“And you never will,” Gatling Man replied, his minigun ready to fire. “I’ll slaughter the both of you, and your deaths will free me from the Gun’s curse.”

The tension sharpened even further. Yuan gripped his weapons tighter, as did Gatling Man with his own. Gayak adjusted his posture, crouching slightly and extending his fingers as if they were claws.

Yuan’s bullet-core pounded like a heart in his skull. He had the feeling that Gayak was primarily a close-range threat from the way he stretched his muscles, so keeping him at a distance should be his top priority. Gatling Man’s minigun was powerful, but could only attack one of his foes at a time with their current positioning; his shoulder weapons did remain an unknown factor. Considering that Gayak was his sect elder’s apprentice and Yuan was a fellow Gunsoul, whose powers he shared, he would likely consider the former the greater threat.

Yuan had a pretty good idea of how the first strike would resolve and planned accordingly.

One, he counted in his head, all the duelists moving subtly. Two… Thre–

Gatling Man opened fire at Gayak with a mechanical roar.

Yuan, who had anticipated this development, attacked Gatling Man with both of his weapons. Meanwhile, Gayak struck the ground with his fist at blinding speed. A line-shaped Barrier arose in response to the impact, creating a shining wall against which the hail of bullets shattered and flattened.

The Saint Heckler and Kalash Angel unleashed their volleys at Gatling Man. The former’s bullets harmlessly bounced off his qi-empowered metal armor; as for the latter, they phased through his metallic body. All of them.

Including the ones aiming for his head.

The seemingly organic skull was just as artificial as the rest of the walking oven.

I knew it! Yuan raged while charging at Gatling Man to engage him in melee, where his heavy minigun would be an impediment. A decoy!

A Gunsoul’s life was tied to their bullet-core, but as Arc proved, they didn’t all need to be shot in the head to rise from the dead. Gatling Man’s skull was a decoration, an enticing target meant to fool enemies into focusing on it and wasting precious time.

In Yuan’s case, this helped him confirm that his enemy likely had no biological components left to speak of. His bullet-core could be located anywhere in his body too. Yuan focused on his foe’s flow of qi in an attempt to locate its source, but Gatling Man’s energies flowed through his metal armor as an impenetrable wall obscuring his occult sight.

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Since striking at the usual vital spots wouldn’t do much, Yuan decided to focus on his enemy’s joints. He closed the gap between them before Gatling Man could reposition his weapon quickly enough and jumped at him with his feet extended, a Recoil Kick ready to trigger.

A familiar clicking sound echoed across the air, and Gatling Man’s body moved out of the way.

He didn’t jump, twist, or step to the side, no. His entire body was propelled five meters to his right, like a doll pushed aside by an invisible force. It was unnerving to watch.

What the hell? Yuan’s eyes widened in surprise as he landed on an empty spot. He recognized the familiar, clicking noise of the Recoil Fist, but Gatling Man used neither his hands nor feet. It’s like the shockwave was evenly distributed across his entire body!

He didn’t have time to question it for long. While Gayak rushed at them with bone swords surging from his wrists, Gatling Man’s shoulders opened up to reveal rows of missile launchers.

Realizing the danger, Yuan hastily did a Recoil Kick and propelled himself backward. He intentionally leapt off the wall and into the city with a swarm of small rockets flying after him. The rest of them bombed the encroaching Gayak, though Yuan couldn’t tell if any of them hit him.

Yuan let himself fall down the wall and shot at the missiles with the Saint Heckler. His enhanced reflexes and accuracy let him hit them all, their blasts echoing in bursts of smoke and fire.

Yuan quickly took a look at the world below. The spirit-train had entered the city beneath him, with Revolver blowing a path forward through makeshift barricades and Metallist cyborgs alike. Fleshmarket looked like a mess, with fleshy abominations rampaging through the streets amidst growing screen-faced towers and drones. A few fires spread across the landscape and threatened to worsen into an inferno that would engulf the city.

A rain of violent gunfire forced Yuan to focus. Gatling Man fell through his exploded missiles’ smoke, his minigun pointing at him. What it lacked in accuracy, it more than made up for in sheer cadence and firepower. A few of his projectiles hit Yuan’s armored breastplate with enough strength to leave an impact and inflict damage. Without the centidead armor softening the impact and Elemental Infusion reinforcing his skin underneath, he would have been torn apart; and it hurt like hell even with it. Worse, Gayak followed closely after Gatling Man, though he was vertically sliding down the wall rather than falling into the void.

Gotta lead these two away from the spirit-train. Yuan quickly looked around mid-fall and noticed the Bullet Church’s base to his left. Its outer perimeters and fortifications had been breached by advancing Metallist soldiers, but Scrap gunmen still held the central building. There!

Yuan first slammed into Fleshmarket’s wall with a Recoil Kick, redirecting his fall and propelling himself towards the Bullet Church. This helped him briefly escape Gatling Man’s line of fire, calculate a good angle, and retaliate with the Saint Heckler. Gatling Man easily deflected most projectiles with his hand, but a few ricocheted off the wall and hit his left eye. The hit caused Gatling Man to briefly stop firing.

He didn’t dodge the direct attack, which meant his Recoil technique must either have a downside or cost a lot of qi to activate. Yuan guessed his enemy was trying to pace himself since he would have to keep up some power to fight Gayak with. This left him open to sneak and surprise attacks.

Gatling Man should have also run out of bullets by now too, or at least started pacing himself. Miniguns couldn’t sustain their rate of fire for long. Even if Gatling Man could replenish his stock with Item Materialization, he would have needed to stop to refill his reserves.

Maybe that was the minigun’s special Gunsoul ability? A bottomless magazine?

Leaving Gatling Man behind, Yuan used repeated Recoil Kicks to propel himself towards the Bullet Church. He was halfway there when he sensed something moist coiling around his weapons. He looked at them just in time to see that two of Gayak’s intestine tentacles had lengthened across dozens of meters and grabbed his firearms. A third one of them had found a different target in Gatling Man’s minigun.

By the time Yuan realized the danger, his foe already tried to wrest his weapons away. Yuan first attempted to resist, but his firearms weren’t designed to survive being pulled by two superhumanly strong cultivators in different directions. His Saint Heckler snapped in two like a twig.

Fortunately, this allowed Yuan to free his right hand and punch the tentacle holding the Kalash Angel, but Gayak immediately recalled it before his enemy’s fist could make contact. Meanwhile, Gatling Man had made the same mistake as Yuan earlier before by pulling back his weapon and accidentally shattering it. He roared in frustration, let go of his destroyed minigun, and then took a page from Yuan’s book by flying after Gayak with a series of rapid-fire Recoil Kicks.

Gayak dodged his pursuer by leaping off the wall and then running across the air itself. Arc had warned Yuan that someone could use their body as a support for Barriers, and the Flesh Mansion cultivator proved it. He created small ones from his hands and feet capable of repelling Gayak himself. They were hardly any larger than small disks, but they gave him physical support on which to run.

Yuan pondered how their bout was going as the three pursued each other in midair. It would have been easier for Gayak to strike their ankles or more vital spots, but he instead went for more difficult targets.

He avoided grabbing our bodies because he feared a Recoil Fist counterattack. Gayak wisely focused on destroying his enemies’ weapons, thus limiting their options and resources. Cunning.

Worse, his method of flight was less taxing than Yuan’s. The Recoil Fist consumed his personal qi like any other technique, while Barriers drew upon ambient one. Gayak had hardly spent any energy since the fight started.

He’s not an elder’s apprentice for nothing. Gayak seemed to be the most dangerous of Yuan’s foes—quicker, more skilled, smarter—but Gatling Man was no slouch either. These two were nothing like the rad-hag he fought in the Thunderlands or Toshiro. They were a cut above his opposition so far.

Yuan would have been intimidated once, but today? Today, his body trembled with anticipation. At long last, he could put his new skills to the test against the best recruits their respective sects had to offer. They embodied the systems which had oppressed him, his fellow Scraps, and the likes of Holster.

And today, Yuan Guang would fight back.