Gunsoul: A Xianxia Apocalypse

Chapter 67: The Manhattan Project

The racers gathered to watch the devastation in fearful silence.

Mel and Hardy had stepped out of their vehicles, while Holster, Bucket, and a few other of Orient’s passengers climbed down from the spirit-train. Yuan canceled Gun Demon Incarnation to avoid wasting his qi. The thought of them turning on each other hardly crossed anyone’s mind, even Coyote’s. There was nothing left to fight over besides a nuclear cloud roaming over the ruins.

Was Slash even alive? The thought of taking revenge on that crook paled in Yuan’s mind compared to the danger Manhattan represented.

“What the…” Hardy gulped in shock. “Did he… did the Khan blow up his own city?”

“Did he lose control of his power?” Mel asked Yuan, recalling their previous conversation. “That’s what you were worried about, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Yuan replied with a scowl. The skull cloud had begun to dissipate to reveal a massive crater spewing a massive amount of smoke where Battletown used to stand. Part of him hoped the likes of Jared LaChair survived the disaster, but he wasn’t keeping his hopes up. “That’s a nuclear cultivator’s Authority.”

The siblings stared at him in utter disbelief. As for Coyote, he suddenly vanished in a blur of speed without a word and ran straight at the city. Did he intend to loot the ruins, or did he mayhaps have a loved one he intended to check upon? Whatever the case, Yuan knew deep within his bones that he would only find death.

A sharp surge of qi erupted behind Yuan. He and the twin racers turned to find Arc stepping out of the train, a Barrier restraining her Authority within a meter of herself.

“Yuan,” she said.

“I’m releasing you from the Unspeakable Vow,” she declared. “You are free to do as you wish. I shall no longer impose a condition upon you, nor ask that you confront Manhattan on my behalf.”

Yuan immediately felt a small, invisible weight constraining his bullet-core being lifted. Arc had severed his side of the pact from her own accord.

“Why?”

“That–” Arc pointed at the atomic cloud with her chin. “Is Czar Zoa’s Authority, Fukushima Paradise. The gift of death from the Nuclear Buddha himself.”

Yuan’s bullet-core pounded in his skull. He could read between the lines: an Authority was unique to its user, and there was no way to copy it.

“Manhattan is not Czar Zoa’s student,” he whispered under his breath. “He is Czar Zoa.”

It said a lot about that nuclear cultivator’s reputation that the likes of Mel and Hardy paled in horror and disbelief. Even the usually bombastic Bucket had grown deathly quiet.

“I don’t know how he survived our last clash, but I’ll make sure I bury him for good this time.” Arc pulled back her cloak to reveal her rifle-arm and aimed it at the city. “You and the others stay back.”

“No way,” Yuan replied. He refused to stand on the sidelines. “I didn’t come so far just to watch.”

“He’s right,” Mel said. “With all due respect, Lady, this guy sounds like everybody’s problem.”

“Either you watch, or you’ll die,” Arc replied bluntly. “Czar Zoa is as far beyond you as you are beyond bucket-face over there. You won’t last five minutes against him, even with Gun Demon Incarnation.”

“You were at your best back when you first fought him,” Yuan countered. He could see the writing on the wall. “You aren’t anymore.”

The scowl spreading on Arc’s face confirmed his fears. She knew she likely wouldn’t walk away from this battle alive. “Can’t let him get away with the Nuke, Yuan. It’ll be a global cataclysm.”

Even so, Yuan refused to stand idle. He hadn’t worked so hard and for so long to simply wait things out.

Holster approached Yuan and then tugged at his arm. She pointed a finger at the History Road’s landmarks, then at the ruins of Battletown.

Arc’s head tilted to the side, her mind considering something. “Actually…” she muttered under her breath. “There’s one thing you guys can do.”

He could hear the armageddon song in his head.

The Apocalypse Man walked among the irradiated ruins of the Yinyang Khan’s palace, his feet calmly stepping on broken steel while following the Nuke’s loving call. His radiating light had brought down the city of sin like the God of the Bible once smote Sodom and Gomorrah. A vast grave of burning concrete and molten steel surrounded him as far as the eye could see. Burning corpses smoldered beneath the ruins, with the few cultivators strong enough to survive his Authority moaning in agony from the radioactive burns and blisters consuming their bodies.

Although he desired nothing more than to spare these poor souls any further pain, the Apocalypse Man ignored them all. He followed the call of his creator which had echoed in his skull since he first awoke in a Siberian nuclear test site half a century ago, the ghost of a corpse who couldn’t remember his own name. The Russians had called him Czar Zoa, after the Tsar Bomba, and the Americans named him Manhattan, but neither could tether him. Names were mortal concepts meant to bind the spirit to a finite mortal existence. He was simply radiation, an emanation of the nuclear light of creation who had experienced death many times since then; some more severe than others.

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The Gunsoul Yuan Guan had spun the wheel of karma in his way, as he suspected. Challenging the Khan’s right-hand man caused the warlord to focus his and his soldiers’ attention on their pointless competition over that of his own stronghold. The distraction had allowed the Apocalypse Man to sneak into the Pagoda after killing a few guards, and then triggering his Authority within its walls.

The detonation should have taken out most of his potential opposition. By the time surviving racers returned to the ruined city, he would have already completed his holy work and brought forth the Great White Flash.

However, he couldn’t sense the Yinyang Khan’s presence; something which bothered him. The Apocalypse Man was confident in his abilities, but the tales he had heard about the warlord made him wary of the man’s power. A cultivator of his magnitude couldn’t have perished so easily.

The Apocalypse Man banished these thoughts from his mind as he ascended atop a pile of steel debris. His entire body brimmed with anticipation. His tumor core shuddered in his chest with gamma ray pulses. He tossed aside metal panels and the remains of an armored door to unveil the treasure beneath.

The Khan’s right-hand man, that so-called Slash, lay on the ground at the Apocalypse Man’s feet. Fukushima Paradise’s blast had covered his body in blisters and metal shrapnel. Though he still breathed, he had little time left.

Within reach of his dirty hand lay the cube.

The eyes on its face darted in the Apocalypse Man’s direction with the insistence of a demigod yearning for freedom. And the son of the Nuke rejoiced, for universal salvation for all mortal souls was finally within his reach.

“The promised time has come, my lord,” the Apocalypse Man said, his hand reaching for the cube. “Freedom at last–”

He turned in an instant, his fingers closing on a man’s throat.

Their collision blew away radioactive dust and steel debris for many yards, but the Apocalypse Man hardly flinched. The bold cultivator who had so brazenly tried to steal the cube struggled within his grasp, his feet dangling into the void as the Apocalypse Man lifted him above the ground.

“A thief?” The Apocalypse Man examined his captive’s hood more closely. “A coyote. Always the pitiful scavenger.”

The cultivator tried to free himself from the Apocalypse Man’s grip with a series of blindingly quick, lightning-powered punches. The Apocalypse Man would assess their speed to be at mach eight, maybe nine.

A decent speed.

The Apocalypse Man easily parried them all with his free palm, the electricity dissipating the moment it made contact with the Barrier shielding his irradiated skin, then backhanded his captive with enough force to tear off half the thief’s jaw.

“What a saddening existence you live, shackled by greed and bloodlust,” the Apocalypse Man commented with pity. He could never muster anger for cultivators wasting away their gifts; only condescending compassion. “You will never become speed itself with those brakes slowing you down.”

“Well,” the man replied with a wide smirk, coughing blood. “It was… worth a shot.”

No, it wasn’t. He never stood a chance.

The Apocalypse Man punched him through the chest and flooded his innards with plasma. The coyote cultivator’s flesh melted off his bones in an instant. His skeleton soon turned into ashes and was blown away by the nuclear wind. A painless death was mercy in the Unmade World.

A shiver of danger suddenly coursed through the Apocalypse Man’s bones, his instincts flaring with the call of incoming danger.

A bullet aimed at his brain at reentry speed.

The Apocalypse Man’s head tilted to the side in the split of a nanosecond. No projectile should be able to harm his Fifth Coil skin, but he had already tasted death once from one and didn’t plan to take any chances.

It flew past his head, then transformed into a woman with a cannon-arm pointed at him.

The Apocalypse Man immediately summoned a Barrier to protect himself. He had replayed that fated duel in his head for nearly five years, and he still failed to fully negate the impact. A Recoil Blast capable of blasting buildings apart hit his shield with such force he was thrown back a few meters.

A familiar figure stood between him and the cube; one which the Apocalypse Man had grown to respect, even fear. She was a shadow of what she used to be; her broken Authority hardly contained within a Barrier meant to concentrate its power, but she had lost none of her menacing aura.

She had murdered him once before after all.

“Bullet Teleportation?” The Apocalypse Man adopted a tense fighting stance. “Impressive as ever, Arc.”

“You’ve changed quite a bit, Zoa.” She sneered in disdain. “Were you afraid that I would recognize you and hunt you down?”

It did factor into his decision to lay low. She had already ruined his plans once, and vengeance was a doomed venture that kept souls from ascending to the Dao. If anything, the Apocalypse Man felt a sliver of respect for her. Dying at her hand had brought him closer to the light of creation and let him understand the true purpose of his Nuclear Chaos Path. He had wasted so much time destroying cities when he could have saved so many more souls in one great white flash.

The Apocalypse Man would have been content to leave Arc to her own devices, but if she insisted on courting her own demise… then he would oblige her.

“Death changed us both,” the Apocalypse Man replied calmly. “You’ve diminished since then.”

“I’m still strong enough to put you down.” Arc scoffed and pointed her rifle arm at his face. “You’re not getting that rubix cube, you toxic dump. Not now, not ever."

“This won’t end like last time,” the Apocalypse Man warned her as he extended his arms. Though fear had no place within him, she had already bested him once; he would not underestimate her again. “Death has refined my spirit. I have become one with the light.”

It didn’t impress his nemesis. A click resonated from inside Arc’s rifle arm, like the sound of a safety going off.

A mighty pulse of malevolent qi pushed both of them back.

The Apocalypse Man briefly glanced at its source in surprise, as did Arc. The so-called Slash was back on his feet, albeit as a walking near-corpse.

But something was wrong with him. His body swelled with power, his muscles expanding, his blistering skin healing its wounds in an instant and adopting a pale and black color scheme.

By the time the Apocalypse Man noticed his mask shifting into a face, two arms had started bursting out of the man’s chest.

“All I wished was for the strong to obediently follow my lead and for the weak to fear my name…” Said the man called Slash, his voice reverberating with that of another demon dwelling deep within his soul. His very core transformed into another of far greater power, like a star eclipsed by the sun. “Was that too much to ask for?!”

The Dyad Path could take many forms. Rivals on an endless warpath; brothers in arms; and in this case… two splintered minds sharing one flesh.

The Yinyang Khan emerged from his subordinate’s body like a snake shedding its skin.