Gunsoul

Orient sped up like a bullet fired from a gun.

Yuan had already seen the immense velocities that she could achieve before, but his friend usually built-up momentum before reaching it. Necessity now demanded that she did that in seconds. Her massive bulk surged across the bridge and trampled one overhasty car which had the bad luck of getting in the locomotive’s way.

The first gunshots followed soon after.

Grabbing his revolver, Yuan quickly exchanged fire with a trio of Humvees driving under some unknown sect’s banner. His qi-powered projectiles blew up each of the vehicles in a single shot. Bucket and the others began to bombard the closest racers at will with little rhyme or reason, since almost everyone was an enemy today. Projectiles flew across the sky in a chaotic melee of dust and steel under the watchful gaze of the Yinyang Khan’s eye-drones.

A mighty sonic boom echoed out further ahead. Coyote had taken a single step forward, his feet radiating qi like twin spirit-furnaces. Such was his immense speed that he whipped up a storm of dust in his wake; Yuan’s eyes wouldn’t have been able to track him had he not crossed a few Coils already. Chemzard’s monstrous truck chased after the lead racer, outpacing Mel and Hardy who followed closely behind.

They’re fast! Yuan cursed while the Flesh Mansion Sect’s centidead monstrosity ran up to Orient, the two giant vehicles riding side by side across the History Road. It would be a nightmare for the spirit-train to catch up to the best racers. He had to pray that they would waste time fighting each other.

Yuan heard a boom at the back of the pack. He turned around just in time to see the Metallists’ ‘plane’ machine take flight with a roar of its wing-reactors. The Deathsong Sect’s ghost boat imitated it, though it flew by the power of its qi rather than any form of technology. Both colossal machines cast twin dark shadows over the spirit-train as they passed over it.

Rusted steel cannons emerged from the ship’s skeletal hull and pointed down.

“Shoot them down!” Yuan ordered his crew. He quickly waved a Barrier around his arm in preparation for a Recoil Blast, right as the metal plane’s backside opened to drop down bombs on the History Road. “Both of them!”

Bucket and the others turned their artillery up at a speed that felt agonizingly slow to Yuan’s enhanced senses. Deciding to focus on the phantom ship—since he doubted non-qi weapons could hit that spectral vehicle—he fired his blast by the time his allies shifted their guns an inch.

Yuan immediately sensed a large difference from his performance back when he was at the Third Coil. While Orient whipped up a Barrier behind his back to support him, he didn’t really need it. His body had grown strong enough to withstand most of the Recoil Blast’s backlash without requiring assistance. The attack’s power had grown slightly too; Yuan’s Gun-aligned body had a much easier time processing qi to fuel its associated techniques, even adaptive ones.

His Recoil Blast coursed across the sky at high speed, striking the phantom ship’s skeletal hull before it could open fire. The impact erupted in an explosion of qi that pulverized a fifth of the bones making up its bulk to dust and shattered cannons into a rain of steel shrapnel. Hungry ghosts shrieked and wailed in undying rage.

Nonetheless, the boat continued to gain altitude while its remaining weapons returned fire with spectral cannonballs. The Metallists’ plane also dropped a rain of explosives at the same time. While Bucket’s group did a good job at shooting down a few, they were too slow to stop them all.

Orient’s voice resonated across all of her wagons. “Everybody down!”

Yuan followed her command by crouching, as did the artillery gunners. Qi arose from the leyline and swirled around the spirit-train to form an impenetrable Barrier an inch above Yuan’s head.

Bombs and enchanted cannonballs alike rocked the History Road in a cataclysmic series of explosions. An ocean of fire and smoke obscured Yuan’s vision, though his qi-sight let him sense many SUVs, trucks, and cars blowing up alongside their drivers. A deafening cacophony of detonations followed a storm of dust and debris.

Orient’s shifting Barrier repelled them all.

Yuan wondered how she managed to keep something like this up while staying mobile, before quickly realizing that she used a method similar to Gayak’s workaround: Orient created short-lived, overlapping stationary Barriers that individually shielded different wagons.

Their protection proved solid enough for the spirit-train to leave for the highway relatively unscathed. The bridge behind them collapsed under the explosions’ strain, its metal foundations sinking into the oil mire. A landscape of ruined vehicles burned behind them to the joy of Battletown’s crowds.

However, Orient’s use of Barriers forced her to slow down a bit and allowed the Flesh Mansion Sect’s centidead monster to outpace them. The monster suffered burns from the bombardment and swiftly shed its outer scales in response, trading away its damaged armor in exchange for higher speeds.

More dangerously, Duckman and his strange vehicle began to close in on the locomotive. The birdlike driver opened his window to reveal a grenade in his hand, his throw aiming for Orient’s wheels.

Yuan turned around and fired a Recoil Blast at Duckman. For all of his ridiculous behavior and appearance, the man proved to be a skilled driver. His car swerved left at the last second to dodge the shot. The attack at least threw Duckman off his aim and his grenade ended up exploding on empty sand.

Meanwhile, Bucket’s artillery cannon successfully managed to hit one of the Metallist plane’s wings before it could gain too much altitude. The resulting explosion proved bigger and larger than what Yuan would have expected from non-qi projectiles, until he noticed sutras carved into their surface. Holster must have spent the last few days inscribing them into their artillery shells.

Whatever their effect, they pierced through the plane’s protections and threw it off course. The vehicle lost control of its trajectory until it deviated too far right off the road. It soon crashed against the Yinyang Khan’s invisible Barrier and shattered into a thousand burning pieces.

“I shot it down, sir!” Bucket boasted. “Their blasphemous wings bowed to the eternal rails!”

Yuan didn’t have time to congratulate him. Duckman had violently opened his vehicle’s door and was preparing to jump onto the locomotive. His car continued to drive by itself, likely by the will of a spirit inhabiting it.

“Duckman comes for you, gunman!” the birdman threatened. The cultivator’s chest puffed up as if air built up within his lungs. “Fois Gras!”

Yuan answered his threat with a Recoil Blast. His supernatural aim guided him well, but Duckman’s body surged with a thick coat of water that propelled him forward. While the impact of Yuan’s technique sent ripples spreading through that liquid protection, it failed to dispel it completely.

Yuan backflipped as Duckman landed onto the locomotive’s roof into a splashing crash. He immediately charged at Yuan the moment he set foot on the train, his feathers coated with water qi through Elemental Infusion.

Yuan retaliated with a few well-placed qi-shots whose aim he enhanced with mudras. “Archer’s Glory.”

Burning and wooden bullets surged from his revolver with supernatural accuracy. Duckman answered his challenge by swirling in midair and swaying his hips in a series of graceful steps. Yuan’s projectiles slid off his slick feathers and continued their course in the background while the birdman caught up to him.

Forced to engage his enemy in close-combat and requiring too much time to reload with Item Materialization, Yuan holstered his revolver to free both of his hands. Fists clashed against fists atop the wagon.

His feathers and water coat soften the Recoil Fist. Yuan’s punches packed enough power to damage a trashemoth, yet Duckman’s sweaty palms absorbed the shocks well enough. He uses Elemental Infusion to deflect hits too.

Duckman’s speed and strength took Yuan by surprise. The birdman’s fighting style reminded him of an aggressive dance that involved graceful acrobatics and wide kicks. The water coating his hands and feet formed sharp blades of liquid increasing his reach. His agility rivaled Gayak, and perhaps even surpassed it. Duckman would have shredded most cultivators in seconds.

But Yuan?

Yuan Guang hardly struggled.

His iron body had grown even more flexible after crossing the Fourth Coil, and his enhanced senses let him anticipate the trajectory of his enemy’s blows easily enough. He predicted how his foe’s joints would move before he could even start a dancing motion.

Inflicting lasting damage proved far more difficult. Yuan’s Recoil-powered punches hardly fazed Duckman. His shockwaves’ energy dispersed into nothing. His qi sight sensed his enemy’s core deep within his chest, but something soft and moist beneath the ribs shielded it from harm.

His liver, Yuan realized after analyzing the feedback he received from repeated impacts. He has enlarged his liver to protect his core and vital organs. Quite the interesting technique, but one with a fatal flaw.

Namely, it only protected the chest.

Yuan dodged a punch, bent and flipped by using his hands to support his weight, then hit Duckman’s head from below with a Recoil Kick. He heard a crack in the birdman’s beak the moment his foot connected with it. The blow propelled Duckman backward towards the wagon edge, though he managed to land on his feet nonetheless.

“Fool!” Duckman shouted in defiance, his fist raised upward to challenge the heavens. “A true duck does not need to use his hea–”

The roof beneath his feet suddenly bent into a slippery slope.

Duckman hardly had a moment to realize the danger before he lost his balance and tripped. He fell down onto the ground below at maximum velocity, his body bouncing off into the distance as the spirit-train quickly outpaced him.

“Good job,” Yuan complimented Orient after regaining his footing.

“Thank you kindly,” his friend replied with no small amount of glee. Altering her structure came naturally to her.

Meanwhile, the ghost-ship switched its focus on firing at the centidead vehicle further up ahead while continuing to fly across the landscape. They swiftly approached the first of the History Road landmarks, that strange metal pylon which Orient called the ‘Eiffel Tower’. The centidead monster crawled beneath its four steel feet, while the ghost-ship went around the landmark in an attempt to better ambush its enemy once it emerged on the other side.

A mighty surge of qi erupted from the pylon tower. Energy built up from the leylines and reached upward to the antenna on its summit, turning it into a shining beacon of light.

The tower let out a thundering boom and then rained fire.