Yuan turned the chase on his pursuers once they reached the Bullet Church.

  Having led his enemies to where he wanted, Yuan abruptly pivoted in midair and then used a Recoil Kick to throw himself backward. He immediately followed through by opening fire at Gayak with the Kalash Angel.

  The Flesh Mansion Sect cultivator’s method of flight was less taxing than Yuan’s, but also slower. He had no choice other than to alter his Barriers and dodge to the side to avoid the projectiles.

  Gatling Man, who had been flying closely after Gayak, used the opportunity to catch up. Knowing the Kalash Angel’s bullets would fly right through his metal body—a fact Yuan used to bait him into attacking their mutual enemy—he simply ignored them and tackled Gayak from behind. The two crashed into the Bullet Church’s courtyard amidst the Scraps and barricades in a violent impact.

  Unwilling to waste more qi powering his flight, Yuan landed atop the Bullet Church’s roof. The smoking corpses of two dead Scraps lay there, assault rifles in hands; one had been shot in the head by nails, and the other blasted apart by an explosion.

  The situation below didn’t look any better on the ground. Metallist forces had stormed the courtyard, smashing its statues, trampling its altars, and burning its empty weapon stands. Even the entrance’s banner was now burning alongside the place’s defenders. The few surviving cultists found themselves hunted by towering, humanoid robots with flickering TVs for heads; the humans they caught in their metal hands were shoved through their screen-faces like food thrown into a gullet. Their captives’ minds would soon join the Magnum Opus’ Broadcast, their faces naught but a flash on a channel.

  Gayak and Gatling Man had risen up to their feet after their crash. The former found himself surrounded by Metallist borgs while the latter opened two compartments hidden in his belt and drew out a handgun in each hand.

  Unintimidated, Gayak joined his palms in a lightning-fast series of mudras signs. “Pushpaputa, Anjali, Ganesha, Pushan-Apan,” he said with a manic smirk. “By this covenant, I call upon thy protection–”

  Both Yuan and Gatling Man tried to stop Gayak from completing the sequence by shooting at him. Gayak gracefully dodged the bullets by pivoting, his limbs and body twisting in unnatural ways. He finished his chant by slamming his hands on the ground with a final incantation.

  “Demon Sumo, Asa-Zakura!”

  A swirl of mystical mist filled the courtyard, and a roaring giant sprung from it.

  Yuan’s finger let go of his Kalash Angel’s triggers in his astonishment. A towering, wretched monster had appeared out of nowhere, its skin a mottled blue-gray stretched over bulging muscles and oily fat. Yuan would put its size at around five meters; not enough to reach the Bullet Church’s roof, but enough to reach up to it with its four-fingered hands. It was downright obese, with a pair of boar-like tusks sprouting from his bestial muzzle under blazing eyes. Draped over its massive body was a rich orange robe bound by a rope.

  An infernal. A bonafide infernal.

  Yuan knew some sects bound karma demons, hunduns, and other creatures to serve their interests, but it always required lengthy and elaborate rituals. Yet Gayak proudly stood atop one’s shoulders after summoning him in the thick of battle with hand signs.

  The so-called ‘demon sumo’ Asa-Zakura thrust its palm at the nearest cyborg with immense strength and flattened him into the courtyard’s ground. Gatling Man and his men immediately swarmed the creature, either by firing at it with weapons or outright trying to climb up its immense body. As for Gayak himself, he used his summoned ally as a support platform to leap onto the roof and attack Yuan directly. Bone blades surged from his forearms in mid-flight.

  Yuan backflipped out of the way, only for Gayak to immediately rush at him the moment he made landfall. The Flesh Mansion Sect cultivator pursued his foe across the roof in a series of graceful dancing steps, his organic weapons whistling as they cut through the air.

  Yuan retaliated by stomping on the roof with a Recoil Kick and blasting a wave of stone at Gayak. He shot at his foe with the Kalash Angel at the same time, using the flying debris as cover to prevent his foe from anticipating their trajectory. This was for naught. Gayak stretched his limbs to dodge the shots while his blades cut through projectiles like butter.

  How can he anticipate my shots so– Yuan narrowly dodge one of Gayak’s tentacles lunging at his face. Damn it, he’s fast!

  Gayak suddenly changed his attack pattern, twisted his back, and rotated his arms. His bone blades brightened with searing heat which Yuan recognized as Elemental Infusion.

  Yuan might have been able to dodge this attack, if only Gayak’s tentacles didn’t surge from his stomach without warning. The intestine shot out at a bullet’s speed and then retracted back inside the stomach at a quick, chaotic pace.

  Yuan could only pay attention to so many moving parts before he slipped up. One of the blades sliced through his centidead shell chest plate and the metal skin underneath deep enough to draw churning blood. Yuan bit his tongue to suppress a grunt of pain. Worse, the slash also cut his Kalash Angel in two.

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  The five elements followed a cycle of creation and destruction. Metal chopped wood, yet melted before fire’s advance. Gayak’s infusion could cut through his own easily enough.

  Gayak moved to land another blow, only to be forced to retreat as qi-charged bullets fired from the ground forced him to back down. Gatling Man was firing at him from below even as the demon sumo rampaged through his forces.

  Yuan saw his chance and took it.

  He threw away his broken Kalash Angel, grabbed his revolver with his right hand, and quickly formed mudras with his left. “Tripataka, Shukatunda, Trishula…” Yuan clenched his teeth before charging his weapon with his qi. “Archer’s Glory.”

  A blazing bullet shot from its fire chamber like a crimson comet.

  Gayak gracefully leaped in the air to dodge the projectile, and he would have succeeded… had the sutras’ magic not bent the trajectory ever so slightly. The bullet hit him square in the chest in midair and exploded in a burst of fire with a rocket’s strength. The blowback sent him flying across the roof near its edge, though he managed to land on his feet.

  “You hit me!” Gayak laughed heartily. The gaping chest wound burning where his heart should have been didn’t bother him in the slightest. “You actually managed to hit me!”

  Either he doesn’t have a heart, or his vitals aren’t where they should be. Yuan leaned on the second hypothesis considering the Flesh Mansion Sect’s specialties. He could have backup organs for all I know. What a mess.

  “On the roof!” Gatling Man shouted at his cybernetic allies before vanishing through the Bullet Church’s entrance. “Get them!”

  Yuan suppressed a scowl of anger as Gatling Man abandoned most of his colleagues to the rampaging demon. In spite of being reborn as a Gunsoul, he had become just as callous as any other sect disciple.

  He’s trying to blindside us from below. Yuan barely had time to remove his now useless armor before two cyber-cultivators leaped onto the roof. These men were half machine, with their heads encased in a menacing fusion of a camera and a helmet. Their oversized, talon-shaped gauntlets boasted retractable claws crackling with lightning. Each of them rushed at a different foe with unnerving agility.

  “I knew you Gunsouls had a way of bypassing a Third Coil’s skin, but damn…” Gayak grabbed the bronze chain strapped around his steaming chest, ripped its links apart, and then tossed it aside; all while avoiding a claw to the face. “What’s your name, stranger?”

  “Yuan,” he replied while firing at the cyber-cultivator engaging him in melee. This time he fired an earth-infused bullet which exploded into a blast of stone shrapnel mid-flight, like a dispersed shotgun shell, but the enemy dodged with a fluid sidestep.

  The cyber-cultivator lunged at Yuan in a wild frenzy, leaping and trying to grab him with his shock gauntlets. The borg was quick, but not so much that Yuan couldn’t keep up with his attacks while waiting for an opening.

  “Yuan… I’ll remember it.” Gayak retracted his bone-blades into his body and smirked at the cyber-cultivator threatening him. “I think I’ll take your heart.”

  His emaciated body suddenly bulged out, and his qi surged outward in a crushing wave. The stench of a slaughterhouse filled with fresh meat washed over Yuan, followed by the metallic taste of blood on the tip of his tongue. Gayak’s malice overflowed like boiling magma surging from the heart of the earth; his oppressive aura briefly stunned everyone around him. It was as if his chain had contained his true power. His muscles bulged and black sutra tattoos appeared on his veins, while the hole in his stomach squirmed like a second mouth.

  Yuan focused on the flow of qi coursing through Gayak’s body. Revolver warned him that most cultivators cycled through the three dantian cores, located in the head, heart, and stomach.

  Gayak had at least seven.

  I’ve got to put a hole in his head, or he’s never going down. Yuan looked down at the rooftop. He had sensed Gatling Man’s qi signature below them. Trouble’s coming that way too.

  Deciding that the terrain didn’t favor him, Yuan ran towards the rooftop’s edge: more specifically, the one on the other side of the rampaging demon below. Gayak let out a maniacal laughter, his stomach squirming with qi. Dozens of tentacles erupted from his belly and lunged at everyone in the vicinity in a tide of churning flesh.

  The cyber-cultivator closest to Gayak was swiftly torn to pieces, the intestines tearing him limb from limb. Yuan and the other borg were far enough away to run towards the edge, only for parts of the roof to blow up as Gatling Man fired upwards from the floor below. Yuan managed to dodge an attack, then kicked the other cyber-cultivator in the way of another. The bullet blew up half his torso, and Gayak’s tentacles caught up to the rest.

  Yuan managed to reach the roof’s edge, leaped into the void, and turned around in midair to aim at Gayak’s head. He quickly activated Archer’s Glory and followed through with a metal-infused bullet aimed at his head. His intestine tentacles quickly raised a Barrier in the way, and Yuan’s projectile just flattened against it on impact.

  Falling down into the courtyard, Yuan barely had any time to blink before Gatling Man broke through the wall closest to him. The Metallist jumped at Yuan, raised his hand, and triggered the Recoil Fist.

  Yuan hastily shaped a Barrier extending from his palms and tuned it to repel his own technique. It stopped the Recoil Fist’s shockwave—likely saving his bullet-core from destruction—but not the punch itself. Gatling Man hit Yuan in the face with such strength that his jaw cracked slightly beneath his metal-infused skin.

  Yuan found himself crashing down onto the courtyard, the impact making him bounce off it. He barely had time to use a Recoil Kick to propel himself a few meters away. Gatling Man landed feet-first on the spot where his head used to be an instant before, death missing him by an inch.

  Yuan quickly rose to his feet and pointed his revolver at Gatling Man. His enemy shrugged his shoulders and shed most of his armor. Metal plates fell off his body, thinning his behemoth frame into a thinner, more agile version of itself.

  At the same time, Gayak whistled from atop the rooftop. Yuan immediately heard the demon sumo on the other side of the building charge through it in an attempt to reach his master’s enemies, the earth shaking with every step.

  Yuan put his revolver back in its holster to free his hand and then tightened his fists. He would need both hands for the upcoming fight.

  He could only see one path to victory.

  First Gatling Man, Yuan thought. Then Gayak.

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