Yuan returned to the spirit-train in the late afternoon to find Holster and the others waiting for him.

  Bucket and his fellow cultists played dice with pellets near a rifle whose barrel was planted in the ground like a tree with a helmet over the stock; Yuan guessed they buried their late comrade there. As for Orient, she diligently stood on the spirit-train’s threshold since her nature as a caretaker prevented her from leaving its confines.

  “I’m back,” Yuan said gruffly, only for Holster to rush over and hug him the moment he stepped out of the Headshot Forge. It drew a smile from his face as he awkwardly patted her on the head. “And in one piece.”

  “Praise the Gunpowder Father, thou have returned…” Bucket’s enthusiasm turned to confusion when he noticed the Saint Heckler and Kalash Angel’s absence. “Weaponless?”

  “They were confiscated,” Yuan replied with a sigh. Arc wouldn’t return them until he proved himself ‘self-sufficient.’ “I’ve met with the Rifle Woman. She won’t let us harvest ammo from her domain, but she means us no harm and offered up an alternative solution to our shortage.”

  Yuan recounted his encounter with Arc, much to the cultists’ joy; the fact she didn’t want them anywhere near her Authority and accidentally killed one of them did little to diminish their enthusiasm. The mere fact that a powerful Gunsoul rose from the dead and chose Yuan as an apprentice was a miracle in their eyes.

  “To think that the Rifle Woman would make you her disciple…” Bucket muttered, before mimicking shooting himself in the head with a finger gun; a gesture which the other cultists swiftly imitated. “Holy bullet, we may finally see the rise of a true Gun Sect!”

  “It’s just one-on-one mentoring,” Yuan warned them. The idea of founding a Sect didn’t interest him in the slightest, let alone Arc. He preferred doing his own thing. “She isn’t going to move anywhere either.”

  “I must say that I never knew mortals could damage each other’s soul,” Orient said. The prospect seemed to worry her. Yuan guessed that a spirit like her was more in tune with those things than humans. “Her duel with this Czar Zoa must have been a legendary fight.”

  Holster tugged at Yuan’s pants to get his attention, then formed a series of hand signs. Yuan recognized the mudras she used; those associated with asking for help.

  Yuan guessed that she saw herself in Arc. Both suffered from a damaged core and its own consequences; one was free but powerless, the other strong but unable to properly control her own power. Yuan wasn’t certain which of them had it worse.

  “She doesn’t think we can do anything to help her,” Yuan replied.

  “Did that Flesh Mansion Sect disciple not say they could heal Miss Holster’s core?” Orient suggested. “I concede a wounded Gunsoul’s soul might work differently than a Human Pillar, but if one can be repaired, why not the other?”

  Yuan shrugged in ignorance. He didn’t know enough on the subject to answer. Part of him did ponder Orient’s words though. It sounded like a waste for a warrior of Arc’s caliber to waste away in a prison built from her own power, waiting for death.

  Yuan chased these wayward thoughts from his mind. Arc didn’t ask for his help beyond killing Manhattan, and she had given him other tasks to complete. One which he would have to confront at sundown.

  “Arc wants to put me through a test before she teaches me how to create bullets: I must spend an entire night exposed to the moonlight, with only Barriers and sutras to defend myself with.” Not that Yuan believed his gunplay would protect him in that situation. “Alone too.”

  It said something about the danger of moonburns that even the Bullet Church cultists—with Bucket’s notable exception—briefly gave him looks reserved for fools and dead men. Holster’s eyes widened in fear and she began to shake her head in panic. Even Orient shifted in place uncomfortably.

  “With all due respect, Honored Guest Yuan, I strongly suggest against following this course of action,” Orient declared with genuine concern. “Moonburns strike by the will of the Blackmoon, a Wayfinder who has become one with the Dao. To repel it with only a Barrier would be akin to trying to reverse up and down. This would be an act of divinity rivaling an Authority.”

  Bucket immediately defended Arc’s assessment. “If a holy Gunsoul said it can be done, then it should be!”

  “You’re sure, Buck?” one of the cultists asked, his fear written all over his face. “Moonburns are no joke. Even cultivators hide from it.”

  “That Rifle Woman shot Benny dead too, and she didn’t give us the ammo we asked for,” another said with a grim scowl, his eyes wandering to his dead comrade’s makeshift tomb. “Maybe she’s just crazy.”

  “Nonsense!” Bucket protested. “This is a test of faith!”

  “It is possible to survive a night under the moonlight,” Orient conceded. “But while I highly respect your abilities, Honored Guest Yuan, I do not think you will succeed. Not with your current skills at least.”

  “This is a trial by fire,” Yuan explained.

  Orient squinted at him. “What does this Rifle Woman believe you are guilty of?”

  “It’s, uh, a figure of speech.” Come to think of it, the only trial Yuan witnessed involved stoning rather than fire. He wondered where that saying came from. “She’s putting me through a tough challenge to see how I fare under pressure.”

  “Too much pressure breaks even steel,” Orient replied, unconvinced. “This one will break you.”

  Yuan knew the risks all too well. He had seen victims of moonburns and buried a few. The lucky ones were those who simply went mad from the hallucinations. The worst of them either died or became monsters roaming the wasteland.

  Nonetheless, Bucket had a point: if someone of Arc’s strength believed he could do it, then he would have to try. He couldn’t see why Arc would give him an impossible task after going through the trouble of forming an Unspeakable Vow with him.

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  Yuan would never defeat Slash or Manhattan if he refused to leave his comfort zone.

  “What do you know of moonburns, Orient?” Yuan asked. As a caretaker spirit, she might offer him precious insight.

  “The moonlight reveals the true shape of the soul, Honored Guest Yuan,” Orient explained. “Unlike spirits like myself, mortals do not understand themselves. They doubt, ponder, and suppress. They hide the truth of their heart with lies the same way muck obstructs a river. When the moonlight sets their delusions on fire, the weak burn with them; only the strongest of will emerges purer, reforged.”

  “Reforged?” Yuan frowned. Reforged implied gaining greater strength, which confused him. He had never seen moonlight survivors coming out of the experience better than before. “Moonburns can improve you?”

  “For a precious few, yes,” Orient conceded. “Cultivation is as much the art of reinforcing the mind as it is the body. The doubts and falsehoods mortals accumulate in their heart from emotional debris slow down their qi’s flow. It blinds their soul and limits their potential.”

  “So I could improve my cycling and qi reserves by burning such debris away,” Yuan muttered as he stroked his chin. He didn’t think he had any particular emotional hang-ups to deal with, but he could simply lack awareness of them. “Gaining a better understanding of my soul will likely come with other benefits too.”

  Arc hinted as much when she sent Yuan on his way after teaching him the basics of Barrier-shaping. “To know the shape of one’s soul is to know oneself. Conquering the moonlight will let you see through the veil of the mind and catch a glimpse of your true Path.”

  Her words had confused Yuan more than anything. “I thought all Gunsouls followed the Path of the Gun.”

  “We all follow the same line of fire, true, but its target is ours alone to choose.”

  Yuan recalled that Arc had smiled back then, though she refused to tell him why. He guessed some truths could only be experienced, not told.

  Orient scowled upon seeing the interest in his eyes. “I must insist once again that you reconsider, Honored Guest Yuan. In my humble opinion, the strength you may receive from surviving the moonburns isn’t worth the risk.”

  Holster too silently begged him not to proceed with Arc’s test. Her hands were tightly joined in a prayer and her wide eyes betrayed her concern for her guardian. It pained Yuan to set his foot down to her of all people, but he remained resolute.

  “I must try anyway,” Yuan insisted. “You are kind, both of you, but Arc won’t teach me anything unless I pass this trial; and I will succeed.”

  Orient scowled at him. “And what if you do not?”

  Yuan’s jaw clenched in frustration. He could tell that she worried more about what would happen to Holster and her should he perish. Orient was a living train, meant to guide people to their destinations. He had been the one to guide her so far. Without him, she would have no purpose.

  As for Holster, she had nowhere to go. Yuan knew Orient would take care of her to the best of her abilities, but her Human Pillar nature would forever prevent her from living a normal life. She would have to stay on the run fearing capture by slavers or worse for as long as she lived.

  As tough as it sounded, and as much as he appreciated Holster and wished the best for her, burying Slash in a ditch remained Yuan’s top priority. He would need more power to pull it off, and he was ready to risk his half-life for it. He wouldn’t be able to face Mingxia and Jaw-Long in the Nowhere if he chickened out, and he had already sworn an Unspeakable Vow.

  No way he would back down now when revenge was within his grasp.

  “I won’t fail,” Yuan insisted. No one would bury him again. “You’ll have to trust me on this one.”

  Holster stared at him in silence with her big wide eyes, before meekly nodding. Yuan could tell that she remained worried about him, but she chose to believe in him. She had seen him defeat a rad-hag with nearly all of his bones broken after all.

  Orient studied Holster and Yuan, then accepted defeat. “Very well,” she said. “I shall try to help however I can, Honored Guest Yuan.”

  “Thank you.” Yuan took a long deep breath. “I swear I won’t disappoint you.”

  Failure wasn’t an option tonight.

  Yuan sat in a lotus position outside the spirit-train.

  The Fleshmancer’s white flowers surrounded him from all sides, forming a soft bed under him. Holster, Orient, Bucket, and the others observed him from the panoramic car’s window a few meters away. Yuan had to promise them that they could try dragging him back inside if it seemed that he would die from moonburning to get them off his back, though it came out more as an empty reassurance.

  Was this how Jaw-Long felt whenever he and Mingxia prevented him from stupidly endangering himself? A mix of appreciation for his allies’ concern and frustration at their lack of trust?

  Unlike Jaw-Long, Yuan did prepare himself for this excursion. He’d spent the afternoon laboriously drawing symbols and circles in the ground around himself with Holster’s help to improve the flow of earthly qi. He sat at the center of a vast bagua array with a radius of four meters on each side.

  Barriers were a form of feng shui, and thus grounded in the world itself. As such, geometric shapes drawn around the caster helped them take physical form. Arc could will Barriers into existence with a wave of their hand, but a simple circle would help a neophyte like Yuan focus more easily.

  His first attempts showed Yuan that Barriers required very little qi from himself. He mostly expended a little at the start to gently guide the ambient flow around him in the shape he desired, at which point it achieved stability on its own. If he had to compare Barriers with techniques like the Recoil Fist, the former was akin to shaping a wall from clay within his grasp, while the latter forced him to use his own flesh as the foundation.

  The real effort came from the visualization aspect. Yuan didn’t understand moonlight, so he had no idea what he was supposed to do to keep it out. Would repelling light itself spare him from getting moonburnt? Or did the moon’s rays simply carry the magical power, like how lightning coursed through water? He couldn’t tell until he actually experienced it, at which point he would have to quickly adapt the Barrier to improve its resilience. The current one only blocked his idea of the moonlight; it likely wouldn’t survive first contact with the real thing.

  Holster showed a much better, nearly instinctual affinity for the visualization aspect of Barriers. She helped Yuan draw trigrams of three lines, either broken or unbroken, around the central yin-yang circle on which he sat. From what he gathered, this specific configuration would not only reinforce the outer octagonal Barrier, but also help him recreate it quicker should it fall.

  And then there was the matter of this ‘Moonlight Demon’ which Arc mentioned. Yuan knew that some moonburn victims transformed into fiends, but he had no idea how the process worked. Would a monster emerge from his heart if he succumbed to the hallucinations? Orient couldn’t tell him, and Arc didn’t wish to.

  He would know soon enough. The sun was about to set.

  Yuan gathered his breath and then began to cycle. His Barrier, weak as it was, let qi enter it easily enough. Focusing on its flow helped take his mind away from the incoming danger. Yuan basked in the freshness of the night around him. The light of stars and the world’s outer rings was faint, almost imperceptible in the dark.

  The sun vanished behind the horizon, leaving the waxing moon alone in the night sky.

  For a very brief moment, the world seemed to hang on by a thread around Yuan. He sensed a shift in the ambient flow of qi like the needle of a clock stopping between midnight and the next day, between one universal state and another. Crossing the veil and entering the Thunderlands had been brutal. This transition, meanwhile, was as subtle and natural as the turn of the seasons. A force more pervasive than gravity took hold of reality itself.

  Yuan looked up at the waxing crescent moon, a black orb with a sliver of light peeking out; and it watched back at him like a squinting silver eye surrounded by a sclera of stars. The gaze of a Wayfinder who had become one with the Dao, with existence itself.

  The Blackmoon was seeing him.

  Knowing him.

  Judging him.

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