Gunsoul: A Xianxia Apocalypse

Pain, followed by a sensation of boiling alive, filled Yuan’s chest.

The tip of Slash’s katana stuck out of his back. The rest of the blade sliced through his heart and spread moonburns across his chest. If Yuan still needed organs to survive instead of a bullet-core, then he would have died on the spot.

His agony wouldn’t be so swift.

“You don’t really care about your old teammates,” Slash taunted him. “You never allowed yourself to.”

The hallucination tried to lift Yuan up by his katana and gut him open like a fish. Yuan grabbed the blade with his hands before he could do so, his hands burning at the steel’s contact.

“You kept them at arm’s length because you were both pathetic weaklings,” the hallucination said. “Scraps whose lives I snuffed out in an instant."

“That’s bullshit!” Yuan hissed back while blisters covered his fingers. “They were my friends!”

“Right, you were so close that you replaced them with a train and an orphan a week later.” Slash pushed back in an attempt to bury his sword into his enemy’s flesh. “Look into your memories. What do you know of their dreams? Their hopes? Nothing.”

Yuan grit his teeth. His mind tried to come up with a clever retort and came up empty. He knew that Jaw-Long wanted to become a cultivator—he and Yuan both worked together in hope of eventually buying a pill—and that Mingxia set money aside for something, but he couldn’t recall why or for what.

Yuan banished these questions from his mind before they could distract him from the battle at hand. He managed to force the sword out of his flesh inch by inch, but the pain grew sharper anyway. His body ached worse than ever before. He felt sick on the inside.

“You’re not pursuing me to avenge Jaw-Long and Mingxia. You’re chasing me to avenge your wounded ego.” Slash leaned forward to whisper into Yuan’s ear. “Do you think killing me will prove that you’ve risen above scraphood?”

“You talk too much,” Yuan replied angrily.

He headbutted the hallucination with all of his might. The blow hurt him worse than the fake Slash, but it pushed him back enough for Yuan to fully extract the blade. He kicked the illusion in the chest and forced him back.

Slash easily adjusted his posture and shifted into a battle stance. “Ready to fight back now?”

“Sort of.” Yuan gathered his breath and then joined his fingers except for his pinkies. “Mahamayuri!”

The mudra’s name echoed across the night and caused the fake Slash to flinch. Encouraged by his reaction, Yuan frantically repeated the incantation as if his life depended on it; because it probably did.

“Mahamayuri!” Yuan repeated. The pain of the burns lessened with each utterance, the smoke dying out and the blisters growing cold. “Mahamayuri! Mahamayuri!”

Slash’s body wavered and blurred like a mirage in the sun. His golden eyes flickered into two quicksilver moons glaring at Yuan, while his sword undulated like rippling water.

The Mahamayuri mudra cleansed the user of poison and toxins. From the illusion’s reaction, that included mental ones. The moon was losing its hold on Yuan’s mind.

It’s working! Yuan continued to utter the mudra while grounding his feet into the ground and focusing on the lunar qi. I can dispel the hallucinations!

“You think you can keep me out with a mudra?” Slash exploded into a deep, maniacal laughter. “I’m inside your head, dumbass!”

“Maham–” Yuan gulped as a surge of pain suddenly overwhelmed his chest. A viscous liquid erupted from his wounded lungs and forced its way up his throat. “Mayu…”

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Yuan covered his mouth with his hand and suddenly collapsed to his knees. His bullet-core pounded so hard his skull hurt. His throat burned with smoke rising from his nostrils. Something was clawing its way out of him. Something big, vile, primal.

“You feel it, eh?” Slash’s laugh echoed inside Yuan’s head to the tune of his core’s pulsations. “Everything you hate about yourself coalescing? All your lies, your fears, your anguishes… your worst self trying to escape your hollow shell?”

I can… hold it… Yuan forced his mouth shut and covered his nostrils in an attempt to keep the thing inside him. It only increased the pressure within and without. The weight of the moon’s gaze grew stronger. It called out to whatever lurked inside Yuan and beckoned it to come out. It…

It came from his soul.

His soul...

I get it now. The path to victory became clear to Yuan. I finally get it!

Yuan hastily drew a small circle in the ground around himself using the last of his strength. He called upon the flow of the earth’s qi to rise around him, and a Barrier formed in answer to his plea by surrounding him from all sides.

The pain vanished in an instant.

The moonburns didn’t disappear, but Yuan briefly grew numb to them. The viscous liquid filling his lungs receded. Whatever horror threatened to erupt from his flesh crawled back into his bowels.

Slash looked at the circle with disdain. “What’s that supposed to keep out?”

Yuan coughed. “Myself.”

Slash glared at him, then attempted to bring his sword down on Yuan’s head. The steel harmlessly bounced off the Barrier without inflicting any damage. The illusion’s expression twisted into a snarl of rage, its furious assaults clashing again with an impenetrable defense. His attacks were waves crashing on an eternal shore.

Yuan watched the pitiful display with morose acceptance. Part of him wished he had guessed wrong.

The danger of moonburns didn’t lie in the light, but what it revealed.

“You’re part of me, aren’t you?” Yuan asked the hallucination. “My… what, doubts? My moonlight demon?”

Slash growled in response. He punched and kicked at the Barrier, his blows unable to shake its boundaries. Yuan glared back at the apparition in frustration. How could this thing arise from his own mind?

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How was he supposed to conquer it? Would he have to maintain the Barrier until dawn? In that case, it would simply be a matter of waiting–

A surge of pain arose from Yuan’s chest, distracting him. His hand reached for his burning skin and again felt the steam rising from the wounds. The liquid thing wriggled back in his stomach and reasserted itself.

It’s not over! Yuan realized to his horror. He quickly formed a mudra. “Mahamayuri…”

“Come out, you coward!” Slash taunted him. “Are you going to hole up until the stars die out in the sky?!”

“Shut up…” Yuan growled back, only for a sensation of nausea to overwhelm him. The mudras didn’t do anything to quell his pain this time. What was happening? The Barrier kept Slash out, but not the moonburns?

“You would have lived your life to the fullest if you’d cared about your dead teammates, ‘cause that’s what they would have wanted for you,” Slash mocked him. “They would have wanted you to raise that orphan girl in peace, but we both know you won’t. You’d cast her aside to face me, after all.”

“Lies!” Yuan snapped back, only for his chest pain to worsen. The moonburns affecting his wounded heart had spread all the way to his shoulders. Yuan felt his body bursting at the seams as boiling liquid tried to force its way up his throat.

Yuan always wondered how moonburn victims turned into monsters, and he had the very bad feeling he would experience the process firsthand very soon. He couldn’t hold the thing inside him for long.

Calm down, calm down… Yuan forced himself to breathe and focus. There has to be a solution… I stopped the moonburns before, so I was on the right path. What changed?

“Rise up, coward,” Slash taunted him while kicking the Barrier. Ripples spread through its foundations. Would it crack soon? “Go on, tell me I’m wrong!”

Yuan would have an easier time focusing without this hallucination blurting out lies and–

Yuan’s eyes widened in understanding. He stared at the hallucination. Now that he looked at Slash, he seemed to have grown a tiny bit taller since Yuan raised his Barrier. His previously blurry appearance had sharpened. He had regained his power over Yuan’s mind.

And he had an idea how.

“The more I deny you…” Yuan glared at Slash. “The stronger you get…”

The hallucination smirked ear to ear, his fangs gleaming in the pale moonlight. The pain in Yuan’s chest lessened a tiny bit.

“I don’t care about them as much as I should?” Yuan muttered under his breath. “That’s what you’re trying to say?”

“You don’t want to kill me for them,” the illusion replied cruelly. “You’re doing it for you. Just for you.”

Yuan almost answered that a man wouldn’t work so hard to avenge people he didn’t care for, but he stopped himself. Denying the hallucination’s taunts only strengthened the moonburns. Instead, Yuan forced himself to sit down, breathe, and think.

Was there any truth to his words?

Yuan had cared for Mingxia and Jaw-Long as much as someone like him could afford to in their line of work. He was certain of it.

But did I care enough to track down their killer across the wastes like I do now? Yuan pondered. He tried to imagine what would have changed if Slash’s band had ambushed him alone; his answer was nothing. I would have pursued him anyway.

Yuan pursued Slash to avenge himself first and foremost, because he wanted to prove his strength. To show the world that he had risen above his status of Scrap and could fight back against those who killed him so casually.

Avenging his teammates was just an excuse to assuage his conscience, a way to tell himself he had nobler intentions than the power-hungry cultivators he despised.

Yuan glanced at the spirit-train and its blackened windows. He wondered if Holster and the others were staring back at him from behind the glass. How did this whole encounter look to them? Did they hold their breath while he let a manifestation of his own subconscious mind torture him in the hopes of grasping more power?

Yuan wasn’t the kind of person to put his guns away, even for the sake of the innocent. He wouldn’t stop even after killing Slash. He knew that now. He would keep looking for opponents to defeat and mountains to climb. He wanted to grow so strong that nobody would bury him in a ditch ever again.

Is that all I am? Just another power-hungry cultivator? Yuan glared at his heart’s reflection outside the Barrier. A Slash with guns?

Yuan searched for the answer deep inside himself. Seeing the ugliest parts of his soul physically manifested in front of him didn’t give him too much leeway to deny the truth, but he felt that he was missing an important detail.

Would he have bothered to carry Holster around and look for a cure for her if he only cared about proving his strength? He might have killed her previous owners for the sake of his pride, but a heartless cultivator obsessed with strength would have surrendered her to the rad-hag or sacrificed her for his own purposes. Instead, Yuan let her tag along with him and sought to protect her.

He hated what Holster represented: a dog-eat-dog world where Sects could turn children into living sacrifices and kill whoever they wanted.

That was why Yuan wanted to ascend through the Coils of Infinity: to spit on that rotten wasteland that treated Scraps as nothing but slaves and resources.

No wonder Bucket’s plan to screw over both of Fleshmarket’s Sects appealed to him so much. Yuan would wipe them out himself if he had the strength to do so, alongside Manhattan, the Yinyang Khan, and other cultivators who killed others without blinking.

“I hate those assholes,” Yuan told himself, figuratively and literally. “I want to kill them all.”

It suddenly occurred to Yuan that his hallucination hadn’t spoken in a while. He focused back on Slash to find him gone.

A monster stood in his place.

The creature in front of Yuan was as fearsome as it was otherworldly: a fiendish entity rising from gunsmoke, with a loaded gun’s barrel and slide protruding from its ghoulish metal face. Its eyes burned with a fierce, fiery light, and a bright glow shone between its jagged fangs. Its body was an amalgam of flayed flesh and steel, with iron skulls forming most of its chest. A blazing cannon seamlessly merged with its right arm and a gatling gun with its left. Only its armored legs were sleek and vaguely humanoid.

Most would have felt fear at the sight of this demon, but Yuan found it comforting. Familiar even. He knew what this creature was the moment he laid eyes upon it: his soul’s true shape, revealed to him by the Blackmoon’s will.

“Bullet Hell.”

The words escaped Yuan’s mouth on their own, clear and unmistakable. The monster vanished in the blink of an eye upon hearing them. It simply disappeared without a trace, never to return.

“Bullet Hell,” Yuan whispered under his breath. “Where does that come from?”

“From within,” a melodious voice answered him.

Yuan looked up at the moon. A young woman gracefully drifted down from the night sky above, her intricate umbrella spinning under the stars.

Yuan thought he was dreaming for a moment. The ethereal figure hovering above him carried herself with otherworldly grace, her long-sleeved black gown flowing in the night’s wind. Her pale skin was a striking shade of blue and her long curly hair the color of quicksilver. Two curved horns peeked out from under a wide-brimmed hat. Her crimson catlike eyes studied Yuan’s bullet-core with amusement, while her lips stretched into a spirited smile.

“You received a glimpse of the Path your soul wishes to take,” said the stranger. “The truth previously hidden by your fears and doubts.”

“Who are you?” Yuan asked. Though he sensed no hostility from her, he still kept his guard up.

“My name is Kaguya, a messenger of the Moonlight Sect.” The Blackmoon’s hidden worshipers. “My sincere congratulations on braving the first of our lord’s trials, Gunsoul.”

“The first?” Yuan squinted. “There are more?”

“Of course. To conquer oneself is a long and perilous journey. Facing one’s doubts is only the first step towards enlightenment.” The woman chuckled lightly. “But rejoice, for few are brave enough to take it.”

“It’s a meager consolation,” Yuan replied with a snort. “I failed my mentor’s trial. I was supposed to block out moonburns with a Barrier, and I failed.”

The woman smiled kindly at him as she landed on the ground outside the barrier, her umbrella closing. “Your master is either ignorant or a trickster,” she said. “No power short of an Authority can obscure our lord’s gaze. Such a task was doomed from the start.”

Yuan pondered her words for a moment. Though he knew her Sect had an interest in overstating their patron’s power and influence, she sounded sincere enough. Yuan’s Barriers failed to keep the Blackmoon’s influence out too; he only managed to triumph over himself, not the Wayfinder.

“I wouldn’t have tried if I knew,” Yuan guessed.

By making him think he could block out the moonburns with the correct Barrier, Arc forced him to quickly focus on mastering the art and challenge his inner demons.

“A likely possibility,” Kaguya confirmed. “The Path revealed to you is but one of many open to you. Your success tonight grants you entry among the Moonlight Sect. Allow me to invite you among our numbers, if you wish to understand yourself through secrets and reflection.”

“I’ll pass,” Yuan replied instantly, politely yet firmly.

His answer drew a laugh from her. “Why is that?”

Yuan gazed at the moon. “It just occurred to me that I hate Sects.”