A hundred qi-powered engines hummed in anticipation.
The residents of Battletown gathered atop its walls to acclaim and cheer on the competitors. Green flying eye-drones spread across the entire length of the History Road highway, recording and displaying everything on countless screens inside the city.
The great bridge linking Battletown to the rest of the wasteland buckled under the weight of all the gathered racers’ vehicles. Over a hundred of them gathered at sunrise to participate in the race, bearing the banners of major sects and independent Paths alike. Orient herself bore the black moon flag of the Moonlight Sect behind her locomotive’s chimney.
Yuan assessed the competition with his newly enhanced sight. His Fourth Coil senses provided him with a wealth of information on the subtle weak points of each vehicle; which thin spots in the armor would let bullets through, which exhaust ports would blow up when overheated, and which conductors looked the most fragile. His team would need every last morsel of intel to prevail today.
From what Yuan had gathered, the Khan’s men ran the various competitors through speed tests yesterday to measure their lap time and starting position; a session which he had been too busy cycling to notice. At the forefront of the racers stood a thin, gaunt man with sunglasses and a brown canine’s head and pelt over his shoulders. The infamous Coyote, no doubt. As Mel and Hardy warned him, the man participated on foot, with no equipment except for his bloodstained clothes.
Speaking of the twins, the two had secured a place side-by-side ahead in the pack; their racing cars ready to ride into the wasteland together. A colossal, dekotora-style spirit-truck roared behind them, though Yuan would rather have called it a mobile nightclub instead. The front looked normal enough—if one ignored the shining yellow eyes that served as the vehicle’s headlights—but the back was outfitted with oversized speakers on the sides, multicolored neon lights pulsing with qi, towers equipped with spinning mirror balls, and a small mobile stage on which a small group of oni were holding a loud concert. The smell of cocaine coming out of the exhaust ports quickly informed Yuan that this vehicle likely belonged to Chemzard, the race’s second most dangerous racer.
“I apologize for our placement, Honored Conductor Yuan,” Orient said, her voice coming from the metal beneath his feet. “I am truly ashamed of myself.”
“It couldn’t be helped,” Yuan reassured her. Unfortunately, the spirit-train’s need to spend qi on keeping Arc’s Authority contained meant Orient didn’t perform too well during yesterday’s speed test session. The crew would start a bit below the middle of the pack, ahead of the heavier vehicles like the Flesh Mansion Sect’s giant centidead, the ghost-ship, and the Metallists’ plane. Not too great, not too terrible.
At least they were ahead of Duckman.
Truthfully, Yuan was more bothered by his crew’s inability to form alliances beyond Mel and Hardy. Arc said that crossing the Fourth Coil would take him a day at best; he should have expected to take more time than that to complete his transformation and plan accordingly.
Alas, it was already too late to do anything about it. His crew would treat everyone today as a hostile foe with the exception of the twins, and even that truce would only last until they reached the finish line.
“Loaded and ready sir!” Bucket shouted from behind his own artillery cannon. Rifle barrels peeked out from all of the spirit-train’s windows. “We’ll shoot the heathens straight to the afterlife station!”
“What about Arc?” Yuan asked.
“Lady Arc remains undetected by our enemies for now,” Orient replied. “She, however, insisted on keeping things that way unless a foe threatens to derail me.”
“I agree with her.” Arc was their ace-in-the-hole. The longer they could keep her up their sleeve, the better. “Holster?”
“Safely stored inside my engine with the other repairmen. She volunteered to assist should I take damage.”
When she takes damage. Yuan saw dangerous cultivators armed to the teeth wherever he looked. The competition’s rules demanded that a vehicle cross the finish line—with the exception of Coyote, who registered himself as such—so many would focus on trying to derail Orient rather than taking out her crew. I’ve got to protect the engine and clear a path ahead…
Slash’s absence also bothered him. The man said he would show up on the day of the race, but neither Orient nor anybody else saw him yet. Either he was running some scheme in secret, or the Yinyang Khan put him up to something.
The sound of trumpets resonated from Battletown, catching Yuan’s attention. The camera-drones escorting the contestants gazed at the sky, their pupils producing streams of multicolored lights.
Yuan recognized that technology as qi-powered holograms. Metallists often used them either as part of advanced techniques or to make public announcements, and he leaned on the latter case. He was right.
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The Yinyang Khan manifested from the swirling light.
Yuan knew who he was the moment he caught sight of this monster’s projected face: a pale white face boasting dark hair neatly tied into a bun, a black jaw, and a smile full of razor-sharp teeth. He was every bit the monster Yuan had expected, a muscular colossus with four arms thicker than tree trunks and hands that could crush a head within their fingers. He dressed extravagantly, with a white lightning tiger’s skin strapped across his chest, fine golden clothes covering his legs, and a malas necklace of small skulls hanging from his neck.
His entire body followed a yin-yang motif. His upper chest was black as a starless night, his abs white and shaped like closed teeth. His two upper arms were pale, the lower ones dark, with sutra tattoos of the opposing colors stretching across his rugged skin. Even his pupils resembled lonely, cruel stars in a sea of darkness and malevolence.
Though it was a mere hologram hovering over the battlefield, Yuan could taste the malice flowing out of the man. Manhattan had been cold and devoid of emotions, but the Khan’s smile oozed a particularly savage brand of cruelty. A poisonous forked tongue slithered between his fangs as he applauded the racers with wide hand gestures.
“Once again, I salute you, Nowhere Riders!” The Khan’s voice reverberated through the loudspeakers, like the echo of two men speaking at once. “Once again, the blood of champions shall grace the History Road for the pleasure of Battletown!”
The crowds acclaimed their master with a deafening chorus of shouts and screams; an eerie contrast with the silent racers, who instead focused on the road ahead.
“All of you won a race while you were in your mother’s womb, and for your victory, you earned the right to be born!” the Khan declared, his holographic fingers pointing boldly at the drivers while a jolly smile stretched across his face. “Today, I invite you to seize your chance at rebirth! Those who cross my finish line shall be raised to glorious heights by my hand! I offer the victor the right to be godborn, for your second birth shall be celebrated through the death of thousands!”
Yuan’s hands clenched into fists. He sensed the foul qi building up around him and gathering inside Battletown’s palace. The flow was so subtle only a few racers noticed, Mel and Hardy among them.
“Those who survive the trial of History Road shall ride with me onwards to glorious conquest!” The Khan boasted to the heavens with a foul kind of charisma. “For I promise you, the strong shall inherit the Earth! Through the sweat of your brow and the fruits of your toil, this Unmade World shall one day be yours!”
The flow of qi grew stronger and its foul stench more noticeable. Green, poisonous specks of irradiated energy swirled around the Yinyang Khan’s cursed city, which disturbed Orient to her core. “Honored Conductor Yuan…”
“Yes,” Yuan whispered, his iron jaw tight and strained. “It’s nuclear qi.”
The Khan tightened his fists, all four of them. “All I ever desired was a kingdom worthy of my rule! A land of the mighty, ruled by strength and will! A golden highway paved with the bones of the weak, a slaughterhouse of the meek, a frontier of carnage!”
He’s insane. Hearing the demented dictator’s rant only strengthened Yuan’s poor opinion of him. Worst of all, he seemed to believe in his own deranged gospel. The Yinyang Khan had already paved the History Road with the corpses of children who couldn’t defend themselves. His heart is as rotten as Polio’s.
The Khan was filth. The very same kind of monster that turned the Unmade World into such a miserable place and robbed the likes of Holster of their future. The Khan didn’t deserve a kingdom of his own; only a bullet to the face.
Yuan would be more than happy to provide. Every fiber of his being demanded it.
“At long last, I have found the kindling to my esteemed ambition! The fuse that lights the sun!” The Yinyang Khan opened his palm. “Behold how I summon the fires of history with a snap of my fingers!”
Yuan braced himself for combat. A vibration spread across the spirit-train’s length and an invisible pressure weighted upon all the gathered vehicles. The cultivators among them had sensed the qi build-up inside Battletown and what it meant: danger.
“Let the flash of my power light your engines onward to victory! Trample the past and carve a blazing path across the ruins of this world! To the winner the cinders!” The Yinyang Khan raised his hand and rubbed his fingers together, building up anticipation. “Three!”
Yuan activated Elemental Infusion and strengthened his steel bones. Dozens of hands tightened their grip on their driving wheels.
“Two!”
The roar of the engines turned into a subtle humming sound, the calm before the final gunshot.
“One!”
The Yinyang Khan snapped his fingers and set the horizon ablaze.
The explosion happened so far away from Battletown that Yuan first mistook it for a sunlight mirage; at least, until he saw the colossal column of dust and smoke rising in the middle of the desert. It looked like a mushroom of fire and sand growing out of a collapsing stone mountain.
The shockwave hit them in an instant.
A suffocating wave of hot air and dust blew over Yuan’s face, followed by a thundering boom loud enough to wake the dead. The weaker windows among the contestants’ vehicles shattered in an instant, sending shrapnel flying in all directions; some of them included Orient’s own, the shards hitting some of their passengers. The blast blew enough eye-drones off course to dissipate the Khan’s hologram. He had been smiling ear to ear all the way to the detonation.
Yuan watched the rising plume of smoke in awe and horror. The fiery kiss of the Nuke was a wholly different spectacle than the Gun’s rain of bullets, but no less horrifying in its desolation.
A brief, heavy silence fell upon Battletown. Neither the racers nor the crowds dared to move, nor utter a word. Even the likes of Coyote and Duckman remained speechless before such a mighty display of destruction. A truth had finally dawned on them.
The Yinyang Khan’s Right of First Annihilation was no mere bluff of a diseased mind.
The power to shatter mountains and level cities was on the line.
The engines roared all at once. Vehicles big and small surged forward in a mad dash for victory and survival, while bullets started flying everywhere in a steely cacophony. Orient’s locomotive let out a terrible noise as she picked up speed.
And so began the last History Road.
With fire and fury.