Arc had been right: altering himself came easier now that he had crossed the Fourth Coil.

Since his soul and body were now aligned with the concept of ‘firearm’ and all of its components, shifting from metal to gunsmoke felt like water being transformed into steam: almost natural.

As he cycled inside the metal wagon until his entire self became gaseous mist, his senses faded away until only his awareness of qi remained. Gunsmoke didn’t have eyes, a nose, or fingers to touch objects with; only his spiritual senses let him perceive the world around him. His gun and clothes merged with his insubstantial form, perhaps because the technique considered them extensions of himself.

Yuan couldn’t quite explain this state of being. He felt more fragile than ever, and his core’s hold on his body had become so incredibly weak that it took a lot of willpower just to keep himself from breaking apart into smaller pieces. A gust of wind could send him spiraling away. The mental effort and qi expenditure were extremely high too.

But on the other hand, Yuan felt that nothing could actually harm him. While Arc once warned him that his transformation made him especially vulnerable to spiritual attacks, most physical blows would phase through him. Being able to float around and slip through cracks could also have its uses.

Yuan canceled the technique and returned to his physical form. He had managed to continuously keep it up for about half a minute, much longer than Toshiro’s second-long use of his ability. The transformation itself hardly took an instant to unfold.

Nonetheless, Yuan doubted he would use the technique for so long. His gunsmoke form prevented him from attacking, and his invulnerability to physical hits came at the cost of exposing his core or risking being blown away by a strong breeze. For all of his boasting, Toshiro’s tactic of using it as a short-lived defense against incoming attacks seemed to be his best option.

“Since it’s an evolution of Black Haze…” Yuan wondered out loud. “How about calling it… Black Mist? Black Smoke?”

“How about Black Mirage?” Orient’s voice asked lightly from the walls, which caused Yuan to look up at the ceiling. “My apologies if I startled you, Yuan. I… I thought you were used to me watching.”

“It’s fine.” Yuan noticed that she had started calling him by his name, without the honorifics. “I like Black Mirage. It sounds good.”

“I’m… I’m happy you think that way.” An awkward silence followed. Yuan could almost feel Orient’s nervousness in the air. “I will leave you to your meditation.”

Yuan nodded and took her suggestion to heart. The desire to avoid an uncomfortable conversation did wonders for his focus.

Things had been awkward with Orient since their last hug, mostly because their last moment together had been rather… charged. Yuan still hadn’t figured out what he should do about it, and he guessed Orient hadn’t either.

In fact, Yuan wasn’t even certain what happened in the first place. He did have moments of camaraderie with Jaw-Long and Mingxia in the past, and even hugged them at times, but never so… intimately.

Arc did call Orient his girlfriend in her final letter and suggested he make a move on her. It sounded like teasing to Yuan, although he began to wonder if she might have had a point. He had never let any woman get close enough to him to start a relationship with, let alone a spirit. Were they even capable of that kind of love? And if so, should he return it?

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Yuan banished these thoughts from his mind. He guessed he would figure it out after he dealt with the Gun. Orient was driving at full speed across the wasteland, but he knew her best efforts would only delay the inevitable. Yuan had to use every moment to prepare.

Yuan spent the next couple hours focusing on qi bullet frequency. Having successfully combined two during his fight with Slash through sheer trial and error, he only had to reverse-engineer the process to gain a better understanding of it.

Yuan had thought that he imbued that particular projectile with two qi frequencies in synchronization to apply both effects at once, but reexamining his technique showed him otherwise. Instead, he had accidentally created a new frequency that began with one effect and ended with the other.

The more he considered the process, the more Yuan began to visualize it like a music script. The key was to pre-charge a bullet with a specific qi frequency that would change and evolve once fired. The bullet that slew Slash followed a very specific gun song: one that started with the armor-ignoring effect of a Kalash Angel and finished with the qi-charged explosion of a revolver.

If there was a way to apply multiple effects in one go, then Yuan still hadn’t found it; but this method worked fine on its own. If he timed the ‘qi song’ right, then Yuan could achieve an extremely powerful combination. Shotgun shells caused shrapnel to explode upon launch; if he combined them with a qi-charged revolver bullet, then it would magnify the power tenfold.

Even better, why should he stop with just two effects? Starting the frequency script with the armor-ignoring ability, then following with the shotgun explosion, and finishing with the qi-charged revolver blast would create a projectile that could bypass armor and then erupt in a mighty detonation inside a target’s body.

It’s all in the sequence and timing, Yuan thought as he experimented with charging various materialized bullets with various qi scripts. One effect leading into the next.

Charging bullets wasn’t too difficult in itself, but timing the series of events demanded a certain dexterity and foresight. Putting the qi-charged explosion before an armor-ignoring effect would amount to nothing, though Yuan supposed a shotgun shrapnel explosion followed by the latter could impair some foes.

He spent a good hour or so experimenting with various combinations through Item Materialization. Thankfully, he quickly found that he could alter the ‘Gunsong’—that was the best name Yuan could come up with for the technique—so it would only trigger either on impact or when he fired the pre-prepared bullet. A few shots also confirmed that the effect could stack with his revolver’s unique sutra elemental infusions.

The number of combinations boggled the mind. If Yuan infused a bullet with fire to multiply an explosion's power, or put the armor-ignoring effect in a wood projectile so its flower would bloom inside an enemy’s flesh–

Thump.

The faint beat of Yuan’s bullet-core drew him out of his thoughts. It was a subtle pulse, hardly noticeable at first; but then another followed, stronger and pounding like a war drum inside his skull. His entire qi circuit stirred with the nervous dread of a prey sensing a predator on their trail.

The chase had begun.

Yuan was back to his feet by the time Orient’s alarm whistle screeched across her wagons. He knew what to expect when he looked through the metal car’s window.

Orient’s path across the wasteland had led them across a vast desert of sterile stone that seemed to stretch on into the distant mountains. The leyline passed near the ruins of a massive city; a set of crumbling, once towering ‘skyscrapers’ buildings leaning perilously against one another like dominos cast down by an immense hand. A faint miasma of eerie blue qi filled with the regrets of the dead hovered over its empty streets and cracked bridges. Orient passed by the remains of a station, but did not stop there.

Gunsmoke thunderclouds covered the empty horizon far behind them, blanketing the red sunset with shades of gray. They encroached closer and closer as a bullet drizzle fell upon the desert. Yuan’s enhanced eyes noticed a small point on the ground below the incoming storm; a cruiser whose fiery wheels raised a cloud of dust hovering over its driver. Though he couldn’t see it, Yuan sensed a malevolent force glaring back at him through the veil.

The Gun had caught up to them.