Gunsoul

The brothers’ fireball would soon reach critical mass.

It had already accumulated enough qi to become a bright star illuminating the road. It was only a matter of time before its speed and size became unmanageable to the siblings. Yuan had no idea if their Dyad-powered projectile would successfully break through Chemzard’s sutra protections, and he was in no hurry to find out.

Yuan took a step toward the stage’s edge when he felt an overwhelming urge to vomit.

He hadn’t eaten in days, since his Fourth Coil body sustained itself on qi. His intestines had long since transformed into twisted barrels designed to improve his cycling rather than process food. Yet his stomach suddenly ached and growled with enough pain to force Yuan to hold his chest.

What’s going on? Yuan saw the world shift around himself. The rings of fire encircling the History Road now shone with many colors, and the stone pyramid in the distance looked like a blob of chocolate. Yuan staggered on a stage of skin screaming with loudspeaker mouths. I’m not seeing things right.

Yuan turned his focus inward and began to cycle his qi. He immediately detected a vile substance clodding his circuits and saddling his bullet-core with a cloudy veil. A drug had infiltrated his circulatory system.

The vapors.

Yuan had hardly inhaled them before he started holding his breath. Had a mere whiff of the drug been enough to infect him?

Whatever the case, he had a solution. Yuan holstered his revolver and joined his hands together in the form of a mudra. “Mahamayuri.”

The mudra’s power instantly cleared the illusions… and revealed a person sneaking up on him from the left.

A theatrical figure—which Yuan assumed to be Chemzard herself—had emerged from a previously hidden trapdoor in the stage. They dressed in a sleek, form-fitting leather outfit that clung to their thin frame. A dark cloak fluttered behind their back in the hot wind battering History Road, and a wide-brimmed pointed hat sat atop their gas mask. Two eyes looked at Yuan from behind yellow goggles with amusement while their right hand held a gas sprayer weapon connected to their chest by intravenous tubes. It vaguely resembled an iron wand of some kind.

“What’s wrong, gunslinger?” the figure said with a high-pitched woman’s voice. “Havin’ a…” She marked a short pause, as if exceptionally proud of her next words. “Very Bad Trip?”

That terrible pun hurt Yuan almost as much as the following spray of acid did.

A stream of pressurized green liquid sputtered out of Chemzard’s wand and hit Yuan in the chest before his drug-slowed senses could react in time. The substance ate through his Elemental Infusion and iron flesh alike the same way water dissolved sugar, burning his metal skin and exposing his ribs in an instant. Yuan barely had time to step out of the way before the substance could destroy his bones.

“That’s for slaughterin' my boys, you iron dickhead!” Chemzard threatened with a maniacal laugh, her finger pressing the spray’s trigger with wild abandon. “Shoot shoot!”

Gritting his teeth, Yuan dodged a few shots and then used a Recoil Shockwave to close the gap between them in the blink of an eye. He undid his mudra and raised his fists to punch her head off her shoulders.

The world blurred into madness the moment he freed his hands.

Chemzard vanished from his sight while the sky sang and clouds of gold swirled around Yuan. He sensed the drug take hold of him again, forcing him to revert back to using the mudra to clear the illusions. By then, his enemy was gone.

“That’s the thing with Moonlight Ayahuasca!” Chemzard mocked him from behind. “It speaks to the soul, not the nose!”

The truth hit Yuan like a bullet to the face, followed by a spray of acid to the back. A sharp surge of pain coursed through Yuan’s body as the liquid exposed his metallic spine and trigger-muscles.

The drug vapors didn’t need to be inhaled to affect their victim. Simply being in their presence was enough for them to disrupt his qi circuit and blind his senses to Chemzard’s presence.

Yuan had to give it to her, very few people would have the skill to create drugs and poisons capable of affecting other cultivators. She probably mimicked the Moonburns from the technique’s name.

Keeping his hands locked into the Mahamayuri mudra, Yuan retaliated with a lightning-fast series of Recoil Kicks. A mix of what appeared to be cocaine and sugar coursed through Chemzard’s intravenous tubes as she began to dodge the attacks. Her body moved and twitched at a frenetic pace, the two duelists engaging in a lethal dance across the stage. The duel reminded Yuan of his earlier fight with Duckman, albeit the roles reversed: Yuan was now the one struggling to hit an elusive adversary.

I can’t hit her! Yuan knew a well-placed Gatling Fist would do the job, but that would require freeing his hands and opening him to the drugs. He was also loath to use Gun Demon Incarnation so early in the race. Gotta lead her to the stage’s edge, reduce her movements!

Unfortunately, Chemzard saw through his plan easily enough and bombarded Yuan with pressurized acid sprays to force him back. The roles quickly reverse, with Yuan being forced to run around to avoid a wild and unpredictable series of projectiles.

“Oye, been partying in the moonligh’, haven’t you?!” Chemzard taunted him. “That mudra won’t save you from my cookin’ forever, mate!”

No, it wouldn’t. The Mahamayuri Mudra cleansed the body of poison, but it required both hands to use and the vapors only took seconds to affect him. Yuan needed his hands free to fight at his full potential, leaving him in a deadlock.

However, he didn’t have to fight Chemzard at all.

Mel and Hardy’s fireball had now grown bigger than their own vehicles, and was moving so quickly now that they struggled to keep it going between them without being incinerated by their own projectile. The sphere shone brighter than the sun.

“Get off the truck!” Mel shouted at Yuan in the split second between each pass with his brother. “Now!”

Abandoning the fight with Chemzard, Yuan leaped from the stage… only for an invisible force to yank him back to it the moment he stepped over the edge. He sensed unseen ropes coil around his feet and heart dragging him closer to the stage’s center. No amount of strength or force allowed him to escape this strange gravitational pull.

“Uh, uh, uh!” Chemzard said, her wand stomping the stage as if it were a giant drum. “No runnin' away from my Malignant Chains of Addiction, my little human shield!”

She intended to keep him onboard as insurance against the twin brothers’ attack. Yuan was pretty sure the siblings would eventually be forced to drop their projectile at one point or another, but to their credit, they continued bouncing it between each other rather than betray their ally.

A quacking noise echoed in the distance.

Yuan watched Orient chugging after them at full speed, only for a smaller yellow vehicle to furiously outpace her. Neither gunshots nor artillery projectiles managed to slow it down. The driver at its helm savagely smashed his vehicle horn to announce his presence.

Duckman.

His face was covered in dirt from hitting the pavement earlier and his eyes were a bloodshot shade of red, but he remained alive and quacking. He drove past the racer siblings—miraculously avoiding the fireball while at it—and then angrily rammed the back of the truck. Chemzard’s head snapped in this new challenger’s direction.

A split second which Yuan immediately exploited.

Realizing he would have to temporarily repel the vapors overtaking the stage, he unleashed a mighty Recoil Shockwave from every qi pressure point in his body. A blast of air briefly repelled the fumes and Chemzard to the edges of the stage; a situation that would hardly last more than an instant, but it proved to be long enough.

Yuan closed in on Chemzard and activated the Gatling Fist. His hands moved at such a great speed he felt his knuckles burn from the air friction. A coat of smoke created by Black Haze obscured their trajectory.

Chemzard managed to dodge the first few, but it only took one hit to the face for her to lose her balance. Yuan’s first blow shattered her goggles and bent her mask, the second cracked her ribs, and the hundreds that followed broke every single bone in her body. Cocaine, sugar, heroin, and plenty of other chemicals Yuan didn’t recognize dripped from her clothes.

The mangled Chemzard was thrown off the truck and landed on Duckman’s windshield, cracking it. The weight keeping Yuan chained to the stage immediately vanished.

“You thought you could get rid of Duckman?!” Duckman shouted angrily as he angrily rammed his car into Chemzard’s truck once more. “Duckman is foreve–”

Yuan ignored him and leaped off the truck.

Mel tossed his fireball at the vehicle a second later.

The cataclysmic explosion that followed the impact threw Yuan dozens of yards forward. The sutras protecting Chemzard’s vehicle dispelled in a blast of fire and debris that engulfed Duckman’s car. By the time Yuan recovered enough to fly ahead with repeated Recoil Kicks, only smoke remained of the two vehicles.

“Well done!” Hardy congratulated Yuan as he and his brother drove by his side. “T’was a stellar fight!”

“Good shot too,” Yuan complimented them back. “You could have dropped it earlier.”

“You saved my hide beforehand, it’s only natural we returned the favor,” Mel countered. He pointed a finger at a tunnel located at the stone pyramid landmark’s base. Coyote had already vanished inside it. “We’ve got to catch up to that asshole before the gap becomes too wide for us to cover!”

“Let’s show him our top speed, bro!” Hardy replied, his vehicle suddenly cackling with power. “Can you keep up, Yuan?!”

Yuan responded with a bold smile and three words.

“Gun Demon Incarnation!”