Asa-Zakura crashed through the Bullet Church’s walls with a raging roar.

  The building collapsed in the demon sumo’s wake in a cataclysmic waterfall of stone and debris. The creature brought down his immense palm on Yuan and Gatling Man with the speed of crashing thunder.

  The two Gunsouls immediately moved out of the way, albeit in different ways. While Yuan backflipped, his body brimming with qi and superhuman strength, Gatling Man used the same Recoil Fist variant he used to dodge his earlier attack atop the wall. His body disappeared and reappeared a few meters forward in an instant without any effort on his part.

  He didn’t just dodge, however. Gatling Man used his technique to appear in front of Yuan, his foot aiming straight for his enemy’s bullet-core.

  Yuan saw it coming this time. More than that, his enhanced sight picked up on the intricacies of Gatling Man’s technique. The man distributed the Recoil Fist’s shockwave across his qi pathways and then through exhaust ports on his metal armor. This distributed the shockwave through one side of the body and pushed it in any direction the user wished. Rudimentary, but effective.

  So rudimentary, in fact, that Yuan had little trouble copying it.

  Triggering the Recoil Fist and splintering its impact across the right side of his body, Yuan’s body dodged Gatling Man’s blow in the blink of an eye as the shockwave tore off half his shirt as the blast burst out of his skin.

  Yuan quickly realized why Gatling Man didn’t overuse the technique. Not only did it cost quite a lot of qi, but he barely avoided tripping from the sudden shift in direction. His muscles ached too. Unlike Gatling Man’s custom exhaust ports, he had to expel the qi through his skin’s pressure points; a quite painful process.

  It would take some practice to get used to it.

  Nonetheless, using this technique gave Yuan greater insight into its inner workings. He gained greater awareness of which qi pathways his bullet-core used to distribute the power across his body.

  This knowledge would soon come in handy.

  “You copied my technique…” Gatling Man scoffed as he and Yuan danced among the dust. “You don’t know what that power will cost us.”

  Yuan remained careful to keep Asa-Zakura’s leg positioned between the two of them to deny his enemy a direct line of fire. The demon sumo tried to trample both of them, but they proved too swift for him.

  “Our bullets are seeds,” Gatling Man said as he struggled to find an opening. Yuan continued to stay on the move, only for him to catch a glimpse of Gayak jumping atop his summoned demon’s shoulders. Their common enemy would soon go on the offensive. “Crops that the Gun cultivates until the day they can bloom into flowers of death.”

  “Then why do you seek to take mine?” Yuan replied, his qi sight meticulously examining every disturbance in his enemy’s aura. He continued to circle Gatling Man from the left, his previously destroyed eye making that side a blind spot. I’m nearly there… I must bait him into using that Recoil shockwave again…

  “Once I cross the Third Coil, I can engrave the Metallist’s innate techniques into my soul!” Gatling Man’s body heated up, his steel joints steaming and whitening. “I will free myself from the Gun’s Path and become pure metal!”

  Yuan was preparing for his enemy’s counterattack when he heard Gayak’s whistle above his head. Asa-Zakura suddenly stopped trying to crush his quicker prey. He instead stretched his legs, crouched, raised his hands, and then shouted a chant with bestial pride.

  “Dohyō-Shiomaki!”

  The demon’s qi expanded outwards in a transparent bubble that swiftly engulfed Yuan and Gatling Man, alongside a large section of the courtyard. It extended until it reached a meter above the tip of Asa-Zakura’s head, then rippled into the form of a translucent barrier. A layer of salt covered the ground beneath Yuan’s feet and white dust filled his lungs.

  Is this an Authority? Yuan decided against it, since this arena lacked the oppressive, awe-inspiring aura of Arc’s Headshot Forge. No, it’s something different. A modified Barrier combined with a technique.

  He briefly retreated to the edge of this new arena and punched the bubble. It absorbed his blow without flinching. Since Asa-Zakura remained frozen in his strange stance rather than attack again, Yuan guessed that his Barrier would keep everyone trapped inside it until he stopped maintaining it.

  Yuan quickly realized that the strange field did more than restrict their movements. He sensed the salt in the air creep into his lungs and slowly corrode his iron skin. Gatling Man didn’t take kindly to the barrier either. Yuan could hear his servos grinding from here.

  He would need to finish this quickly.

  Gayak leaped off his demon’s shoulder and unleashed his gut-tentacles in midair. A veritable hail of flesh rained upon the Gunsouls on the ground, forcing them to navigate around them while impaired by the restricted area.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Yuan didn’t strike back, however. He didn’t even consider a counterattack. His complete attention, every fiber of his being, was entirely focused on defense and observation. He swiftly calculated Gayak’s trajectory, then positioned himself so that the Flesh Mansion Sect cultivator would land squarely between him and Gatling Man.

  The latter took the bait.

  Seeing his chance to strike, Gatling Man rushed at Gayak in a blinding rush of speed the moment his feet hit the ground. His fist heated up, then blurred as it lunged forward. Gayak’s hands quickly parried the blow so fast that Yuan heard a familiar, awe-inspiring boom following the crash.

  The sound barrier shattering.

  This perfectly illustrated the gulf between Second and Third Coil cultivators. Yuan and Gatling Man could move at supersonic speed through heavy use of the Recoil Fist, while Gayak did so with sheer muscle strength alone. His limbs rippled with power.

  Gatling Man’s technique nonetheless managed to force Gayak on the defensive. Through a combination of the Recoil Fist and immense speed, his hands began to blur as they pummeled his foe. Small shockwaves pushed them back and forth without pause like stressed pistons in an endless combo.

  Gayak’s hands and tentacles remained entirely focused on deflecting punches, the onslaught being so quick and savage that it left no room to counterattack. Moreover, the blows slowly pushed him towards the arena’s edge.

  From the way Gatling Man snarled, he hadn’t expected so much trouble getting past Gayak’s guard. He probably thought he could finish him with a surprise attack and then move on.

  The two were frozen in a stalemate until either Gayak slipped up or Gatling Man ran out of qi. So intense was their duel that they seemed to forget Yuan; or rather, they couldn’t afford to split their attention away from their current opponent. A single misstep would allow the other to inflict a lethal blow.

  This state of affairs wouldn’t last long, but Yuan didn’t give them any reason to split their focus for now. He waited for his chance, his eyes fixated on his true prize.

  Defeating Gayak was too long a shot for the moment. The Flesh Mansion Sect cultivator was too strong, too skilled, and packed enough sub-cores to outlast them all. Yuan doubted he and Gatling Man could best him by forming a temporary truce, and his fellow Gunsoul didn’t show any willingness to do so anyway.

  To beat Gayak, Yuan would have to upgrade—one whose key was within Gatling Man’s possession.

  Surviving the moonburns did more than improve the flow of his qi’s circulation; it also gave him greater insight into its movements. Gatling Man’s qi spread all over his metal frame. His iron roots had taken hold of every gear and servo, every inch of steel. This dense network obscured his bullet-core from detection… except when he used the Recoil Fist.

  This technique worked by unleashing a powerful pulse of qi from the bullet-core across a limb. Observing it closely would let Yuan retrace the energy movements and pinpoint their source.

  And as Gatling Man continued to pummel Gayak with it, Yuan began to slowly narrow down that spot. He was now almost entirely sure the core was located somwhere around his waist.

  I’m almost there. The hard part would follow soon after: namely, opening a path to the bullet-core without destroying it or alerting Gatling Man to the incoming danger. If only I could do something like Toshiro did and obscure my movements…

  That passing thought turned into a flash of insight.

  Arc taught him that adaptive techniques could be replicated by other Paths.

  Yuan’s gunsmoke breath coursed through metal lungs. His qi traveled along the length of the roots coiling around his muscles and squirming beneath his skin. If he expelled it through the latter from his pressure points, he might mimic Toshiro’s mist-shrouding fist technique. The fog-transformation was beyond Yuan for now, but he could still produce a haze of gunsmoke.

  Gayak finally managed to break away from Gatling Man’s combo by opening his mouth and exhaling a cloud of searing flames from his lungs. His enemy was forced to jump back to avoid the fire with a Recoil-powered shockwave.

  As he used that technique one time too many, Yuan finally saw it. That tiny node of qi buried in the left side of Gatling Man’s waist; his bullet-core’s hiding spot.

  This is my chance. Yuan immediately circled Gatling Man from his blind spot on the left, readying his body for the clash. He had burned through a lot of qi so far and this maneuver would cost him a lot more. He wouldn’t have much strength left to survive longer should it fail. All or nothing.

  Yuan lunged at Gatling Man with a mighty Recoil Kick, crossing the gap between them in an instant. His enemy pivoted on one foot to intercept him, his fist unleashing a deadly haymaker.

  Yuan pushed his qi out of his skin in a burst of gunsmoke. A faint cloud arose around him, obscuring his hands the same way Toshiro hid them behind a veil of mist once. Yuan quickly came up with a name for this improvised technique.

  Black Haze.

  Disoriented, Gatling Man’s fist missed Yuan’s shoulder by an inch and hit only smoke. Yuan’s own hand emerged from the cloud, his metal fingers aiming for his enemy’s waist.

  Gatling Man immediately attempted to move out of the way with a Recoil Shockwave, but it was too little, too late. Powered by his momentum, Yuan’s fist punched through his enemy’s armor, through the gears, cables, and servos.

  His fingers immediately closed on a pulsating organ: a lead heart pounding with smoke and qi.

  Gatling Man’s hand closed on Yuan’s head with a snarl of rage and desperation. Yuan’s skull began to hurt like never before as an impossibly strong grip pressed against his metal-infused skin and bones. Whether Gatling Man was trying to extract Yuan’s bullet-core first or making a desperate attempt to drag his enemy to the Nowhere with him, he couldn’t tell.

  “I’ll rip out your brain from your sku–”

  Yuan ripped out Gatling Man’s bullet-core from his body before he could finish his sentence.

  His hand gripped a spent 7.62×51mm seed bursting with metal roots and quickly pushed it down his throat. Yuan swallowed his prize before Gatling Man’s mechanical corpse even hit the ground, his hands losing their strength and the light in his last eye shutting down.

  You’ll become metal alright, Yuan thought as he consumed the bullet-core. The steel of my soul.

  Time seemed to stretch on forever at first, with nothing happening. Yuan sensed the bullet fall down his throat into his stomach, his metal roots coiling around it like a net catching a fish.

  Then he heard the sound of a trigger being pulled in his head, followed by power.

  Foreign qi coursed through Yuan’s body in a wave of fire and smoke. His metal roots became circuits restructuring his weak flesh with lead and iron. His senses sharpened and his mind burned within his skull.

  Yuan Guang crossed the Third Coil of Infinity with a thundering roar.

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