Gunsoul: A Xianxia Apocalypse

Yuan barely had enough left to peek over his shoulder.

The rad-hag stood in place with a gaping, bleeding hole in her chest; one so big that he could see the kitchen counter on the other side. Finger-long centidead maggots slipped out of it and onto the floor only to die without their host. A putrid purple miasma smelling of rot and diseased meat steamed from her wound.

No living creature could have survived such injury, but the rad-hag still stood on her own two feet. She slowly turned her head over her shoulder to look in Yuan’s direction; though she had no eyes to glare at him with, he could sense all of her disbelief and fury.

Only then did she finally collapse. Her immense body fell onto her back not far from Yuan himself, her hand reaching for him with fizzling lightning but lacking the strength to succeed. All she could do was to rasp in agony.

I’ve won. Yuan groaned as he forced himself to crawl back on his knees and elbow. The stains of rad-hag blood burned his skin the moment he ran out of qi to fuel his Elemental Infusion. Although he was no stranger to pain and bruises, he found himself discovering new ones in places he never suspected. Doesn’t feel like it… but I’ve won.

Once she was certain that the battle was truly over, Holster emerged from her hiding spot with the first aid kit they looted from Maurice. She fearfully stayed out of the dying rad-hag’s reach and moved to help Yuan sit on a dining chair.

“I can wait…” Yuan grumbled through his clenched teeth. Revolver informed him that he would recover from most wounds so long as his bullet-core remained intact, and they had a more pressing problem. “The rad-hag… do you know how to purify her?”

Holster glanced at the agonizing rad-hag with fear and revulsion, but she nodded nonetheless.

“Do it now then,” Yuan ordered Holster. “I don’t know if she can heal from this… but we can’t take the risk.”

He was in no shape to continue fighting if the rad-hag somehow managed to recover. He doubted that his trick would work twice too. They’d best send her to the Nowhere while they still could.

Holster stared at the ground and avoided Yuan’s gaze. Clearly, she didn’t wish to touch the monster who tried to devour her, even if she was on the brink of death.

“Be strong,” Yuan reassured her. “I know you can do it.”

Holster gulped, but found her courage nonetheless. She slowly walked towards the rad-hag, whose feeble hand attempted to reach for her. Holster scowled and skirted around her grasp, before sitting behind the monster’s head. She looked down at the rad-hag with disgust while searching for a part of the skull untouched by her acrid blood and the dying insects crawling in her flesh.

“Don’t touch the small centidead,” Yuan warned her. Their maggots needed a corpse to grow into larvae and couldn’t survive long when exposed to the outside world, but they always tried to burrow their way into a living host when sufficiently desperate. “Burn them with ethanol if you must.”

Holster nodded, then grabbed the rad-hag’s skull in opposite spots. Yuan immediately sensed the flow of qi around them shift. Bursts of electricity jolted from the monster’s hands and feet before flowing into the spirit-train.

Yuan didn’t quite understand what was happening, but it frightened the rad-hag. Her fingers convulsed slightly, and the maggots infesting her burrowed deeper inside her corpse as if to hide from the incoming danger.

“Don’t…” the rad-hag rasped, her voice brimming with panic. “Please don’t… If I reincarnate, all of my knowledge… all of what makes me, me… will disappear…”

She looked so pathetic like this, feebly begging a child to spare her miserable life. Yuan would almost feel a measure of pity for her if she hadn’t threatened to kill him and eat Holster.

“Don’t care,” Yuan replied bluntly. “You should have thought of that before you attacked us.”

She had played the game and she lost. The end. A new spirit wouldn’t immediately heal the Thunderlands from its radiation and centidead infection, but it would be a start.

The rad-hag growled and rattled as lightning leaked from her hands. Her already pitiful resistance weakened quickly until her limbs stopped moving. Yuan focused on her qi until he understood Holster’s method of purification.

A land’s caretaker spirit embodied its territory. It was a mask that the region wore to interact with the outside world; a finely carved qi vessel which Holster now unraveled. She slowly guided the rad-hag’s untainted energies into the spirit-train’s circulatory system while isolating the rot in her heart.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And the results showed. The rad-hag’s massive body slowly shrank into a normal human’s size and her disfigured face briefly rearranged itself into a beautiful lady’s visage; the one she used to have before radiation poisoned the Thunderlands. She shed the centidead maggots like a snake shed its skin, the unnatural animals writhing and dying without their host. Her tumors and the corroded parts of her spirit filled the hole in her chest in a vain attempt to heal and survive.

“No…” the rad-hag rattled in agony, so meekly that Yuan could hardly hear her. “I refuse… argh…”

Her efforts to endure were for naught. The rad-hag’s body soon turned to dust and her qi returned back to the Dao. Only a table-sized, shapeless mass of pallid white flesh, tumors, and corrupted qi remained behind. Yuan noticed dripping, half-formed faces wriggling under its fatty surface.

This thing was the Thunderlands’ corruption made manifest.

“Did…” Yuan’s stomach lurched when he stared at the mass of flesh. “Did it work?”

Holster nodded slowly, though she let out a startled cry as the giant tumor moved an inch toward her. Even in its pathetic, nearly harmless state, it still sought to spread.

This thing did not belong in this world.

“I guess it’s time I teach you how to make cocktails.” Yuan glanced at the kitchen’s cellar. “Go grab a bottle of alcohol and a piece of paper.”

The corrupted mass burned for hours, and no monster bothered them again.

The sun shone brightly on the Thunderlands by the time the spirit-train reached its borders.

Yuan spent the journey cycling his qi and tending to his own wounds. The healing process let him understand why Revolver believed he could recover from nearly anything. His bullet-core’s tendrils put his bones back in place, stitched his skin back together, and replaced missing flesh with metal.

He had heard Stoneskin Sect Elders comparing their craft to agriculture once. The body was a field of potted soil that demanded constant watering to nurture and strengthen the seed of the soul.

Yuan might have taken the metaphor a bit farther than most cultivators intended.

His bullet-core’s roots had spread much farther thanks to the spirit-train’s qi acting as fertilizer. The rad-hag’s death appeared to have strengthened it somehow. The very air flowing through the wagons now carried a faint undercurrent of electricity; one that Yuan happily gorged himself on. His metal tendrils now reached all the way to his feet and filled every corner of his body.

This is it. Yuan gathered his breath, closed his eyes, and triggered Elemental Infusion. I stand on the threshold.

His technique spread from his bullet-core and traveled down his spine. A wave of lead flowed through his veins. His bones turned into the hardest of steel. His blood smelled of oil and his lungs breathed gunpowder. His tongue slickened between bullet shell-teeth. The power of qi reforged his skin in metal.

His previous uses of Elemental Infusion had been limited to his chest and arms, but his body could now sustain the technique’s full power. He became a moving, breathing weapon; the incarnation of the metal element.

Then came the illumination.

A pulse of qi suddenly erupted from his core and coursed through him like a gunshot. His consciousness expanded beyond the reaches of his skull. Yuan suddenly became aware; aware of himself, of the train, of the Thunderlands, of the world.

He suddenly realized how both small and great he truly was; a tiny piece of ammo that fit in a vast and intricate mechanism called the universe. He finally saw what Holster’s feng shui exercises all led to: that everything, from chairs to people to the dust on the ground, were all parts of a greater harmonious puzzle. An eternal cosmic current that included all that was, all that is, and that would ever be.

The Dao.

Yuan could only caress it for a moment before his consciousness shrank back into his body. His mind was clear and filled with a profound sensation of blissful and unshakable harmony. His lips curved into a smile of absolute satisfaction.

Yuan Guang had crossed into the Second Coil of Infinity.

He immediately noticed the effects. His Elemental Infusion no longer strained his body, and his mind perceived the nuances of qi around him with better accuracy. He no longer needed to focus to detect its fluctuations; he did so instinctively.

Hence why he immediately detected it.

Yuan’s eyes snapped open in alarm as he sensed an anomaly in the spirit-train’s flow of qi. A… presence? A will that permeated the vehicle’s wagons yet felt slightly separated from it. It reminded Yuan of the rad-hag’s aura, yet without the foulness and malice.

Holster, who had been cleaning the wagon’s floor with a broom that she found in the kitchen, looked up at Yuan in confusion.

“Do you sense that?” Yuan asked his charge, who nodded in assent. “An enemy?”

Holster shook her head with a small smile. She pointed at the roof, whose holes had closed on their own at this point. Their vehicle had healed its wounds in record time after feeding off the rad-hag’s power, but Yuan didn’t see how it answered his question.

He was about to ask for clarification when the spirit-train’s whistle echoed across the wagon. Only then did he figure it out.

“Ah, I get it,” Yuan muttered to himself. His senses had grown sharp enough that he could sense the spirit-train’s will. That must have been why Holster could communicate with it before. “I wonder if I’ll be able to understand you soon.”

An electrical jolt traveled through the train’s feng shui circuit in response. Yuan could have sworn he detected a hint of happiness and eagerness in it.

He might just grow attached to this vehicle with time.

“Did you finish cleaning?” he asked Holster. His charge nodded shyly. “Good girl.”

Holster’s bright smile felt more warming than the sun.

Yuan took her to the last wagon to witness their departure from the Thunderlands. The repaired panoramic window offered them a beautiful view of the region. Its golden auroras had lost some of their luster after the rad-hag’s death and the multicolored lightning fell less often. Nonetheless, the hostile aura permeating the area was gone.

The region would generate a new caretaker spirit soon enough. Yuan hoped that that one would have better luck purging the area’s infection than its predecessor.

He didn’t regret traveling through this region. Though the learning curve had proved rough, the journey had strengthened him greatly and swiftly. He understood his power and purpose better, saved an innocent’s life, and gained a sweet ride out of it too.

More importantly, Yuan had won battles with his own strength. He had defeated a cultivator and overcome a powerful spirit that would have crushed the old him. Now he knew that he would kill Slash once he found the bastard.

It was an inevitability.

Yuan sensed the spirit-train crossing the Thunderlands’ veil in an instant. He felt like a man suddenly emerging from a pool of water, the qi-rich air of the region replaced with a dry and essence-starved wind. The auroras, the lightning, and the fantastical landmarks vanished all at once though the spirit-train continued to generate phantom tracks across a desolate wasteland of red dust.

They had left the Thunderlands.

Onwards to Fleshmarket.