Book Pilot: Gunsoul 1 & 2 (Patreon)

Part 1

The ground tasted of blood and the air smelled of smoke.

Pain raced through Yuan Guang’s body as he coughed out dirt. His hands grasped at empty air. He crawled along the ground, his blurry vision slowly returning to normal. His car’s husk burned behind him. Its destroyers were already ransacking it for anything useful.

Yuan struggled to remember much. He recalled shouting a warning and reaching for his gun when he saw the enemy humvees descend from the hills, right before a fireball blew his car apart. He had barely managed to crawl his way out of the wreckage when someone kicked him in the face with a hammer’s strength. He was lucky to still have a skull.

But Yuan knew his respite wouldn’t last. His attackers had already killed his two companions. He wished he had lost consciousness before witnessing their murder.

Two of the marauders dumped his friend Jaw-Long’s corpse into a ditch after beating him to death. His younger sister Mingxia would follow soon. A cultivator’s punch had shattered her ribs and killed her in one stroke. Yuan couldn’t recall the number of times he and the siblings had traded jokes around the campfire, hiding in caves and empty houses to avoid the moonburns, or driving away from spirit-beasts. They had spent years on the road together.

And now the two were gone. Killed in an instant. 

Such was the fate of Scraps when fighting those trained in the mystic arts. They snapped like twigs.

The sight of his dead friends filled Yuan with despair and anger. He wished he had the strength to avenge them, but his attackers were numerous and better armed. He counted three dozen of them, equipped with swords and heavy weaponry. They even included some borgs among them; men with cybernetic arms and eyes. They hardly paid Yuan much attention.

In their mind, he didn’t matter. And they were right.

Who were these guys? They looked like marauding cultivators, but to attack a group of three travelers with an warband of thirty… it couldn’t be an opportunistic attack. Yuan could only see one explanation besides cruelty.

They wanted the package.

A quick glance around him confirmed it. One of the marauders, a shirtless brute of a man with a red demon mask, held the package in his hands and studied it closely. The object appeared like a small black cube with closed eyes on each of its facets. Yuan didn’t know what it did, nor how to activate it. He hadn’t cared either. His team was paid to deliver cargo, not check it.

If Yuan had known this thing would get all of his delivery team killed, he would have refused to transport it.

Gritting his teeth, Yuan discreetly moved his hands to his belt. If he could grab his handgun…

“Slash,” one of the marauders suddenly said. “One of the Scraps is still alive.”

Yuan tensed up as the masked man turned his gaze on him.

“How cute,” the marauder, ‘Slash,’ said with a mocking voice. His fanged mask looked even more frightening from up close, with a crown of horns atop it and fangs longer than Yuan’s fingers. Two golden eyes peered at Yuan from behind it, cold and remorseless. A malas necklace of crimson beads dangled from the brute’s neck. He went barefoot too, carrying only a pair of black pants. “We have a survivor.”

“My bad,” one of his men apologized; a half-borg with more steel than flesh. Yuan recognized him as the one who kicked him in the face. “Thought I’d stomped his pretty head.”

“You would have been wiser to play dead, Scrap,” Slash said. He laughed upon noticing Yuan’s gun. “Wait, you actually thought you could kill your way out of this? With that toy?”

Knowing he was already dead, Yuan spat on the ground. “Let me draw it and find out.”

His answer appeared to amuse the marauder leader. “Very well,” he said before glancing at one of his soldiers. “Fetch me a gun.”

“Night will fall soon, Slash,” one of the marauders noted. “We gotta bolt before we get moonburned.”

“It won’t take long.” To Yuan’s surprise, Slash traded the cube for one of his soldiers’ revolvers. “I’ll fight you fairly, Scrap. Same weapon as you, no fists, no techniques. Just guns.”

Yuan snorted in disgust. The marauder was just toying with him. “There’s nothing fair about this. If you wanna kill me, stop wasting everybody's time and go through with it.”

“I will, but at least this way you’ll get a fighting chance.” Slash removed his gun’s safety. “If he does kill me, he’s free to go.”

His cronies erupted in laughter. “It would take divine intervention!” one of them jeered. “He doesn’t look like a prophet to me!”

“If one of the Immortals is willing to fight me for a Scrap’s life, they’re welcome to try.” Slash cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. “Dig a tomb for the loser.”

With little choice, Yuan rose to his feet and grabbed his handgun. The marauders formed a circle between him and Slash, with nothing but arid dirt and hills to witness the duel. The sun had almost set beyond the horizon and the ring of ice encircled the Unmade World. An open grave, right between Jaw-Long’s and Mingxia’s, awaited the defeated.

Yuan might have a chance if that man was a First or Second Coil. A cultivator’s skin was still soft at that stage. But that man was likely a Third and above to lead such a large group, and in that case… no guns would save Yuan.

“Ready?” Slash asked with a chuckle. He adopted a clumsy amateur posture, like someone who had never used a gun before. “One, two–”

Yuan Guang shot the marauder right between the eyes.

The iron pressing against his skin used to give him a rush of adrenaline once. Not today. The gun’s soft recoil sent a shiver through his hand, but his aim remained steady. The first bullet hits the target with perfect accuracy. So did the second and the third, who had aimed for the neck. The fourth and the fifth followed soon after by hitting the chest.

All of them bounced off Slash’s skin and mask.

Yuan Guang had never missed once in his life. He used to take great pride in his aim and gunplay; but as his flattened bullets fell to the ground, despair overwhelmed him. The wasteland echoed with the sound of laughter.

There, right there. This was the gulf that separated cultivators from Scraps. The chasm of strength that no effort could hope to close. Still, Yuan refused to give up. No matter how pointless it was.

“Don’t stop, Scrap,” Slash taunted him. He hadn’t even flinched. “Don’t waste your mercy lead–”

Yuan gritted his teeth and shot him in the left eye.

This time, Slash’s head snapped back from the impact. The sudden gesture silenced his cronies’ laughter and briefly filled Yuan’s heart with hope. If a Third Coil’s eyes proved nowhere near as invulnerable as their skin, then he might have a chance to win.

The bullet fell to the ground, its shape flattened into a crescent moon. The sight of it crushed Yuan’s last remaining hopes.

“Nice try, I actually felt that one,” Slash rasped with what could pass for pleasure. His left eye had gained a red streak from the impact, but remained otherwise intact. “My turn now.”

Slash pointed his gun at Yuan’s face. He had just been playing alone to better toy with his victim.

“Any last word, trash?” Slash asked, death waiting at the end of his barrel. “If you kneel and beg–

“No.” Yuan stood tall and resolute. “Fuck you.”

“You’re not fun at all.” Slash’s finger touched the trigger. “When a man holds you at gunpoint, your best bet is to either amuse him or tell him why he should spare you. Pride gets you nowhere, Scrap boy.”

Neither would pity. Yuan had been looked down on all his life, but at the end of it, he refused to kneel.

“You mistook me for a man who repeats himself, but I’ll indulge you this time: fuck you.” Yuan gritted his teeth and glared at his executioner. He wouldn’t give him the pleasure of sacrificing his dignity. He would die on his feet at least. “I’ll be back.”

“I doubt that.”

The bullet hit Yuan right between the eyes.

—------- 

Part 2

It had been fifty years since the Spiral Dancer ascended to the heavens by completing her Thunderdance; forty-five since the Sky-Biter unmade the world on his way out of it; and twenty since Yuan first drew breath.

Two decades of sweat and struggle, only to end up buried at the bottom of a ditch in the middle of nowhere. His murderer dug him a tomb at least, before giving him and his team their last sutras.

What a world they lived in. Killers gave their victims funerals so they wouldn’t return to haunt them as hungry ghosts.

Did Yuan want to return? The question lingered in his mind as he faced the darkness between life and death. Part of him wanted to avenge his fallen friends and live up to his final curse to haunt his murderer. If he mustered enough willpower, his ghost might endure in spite of the sutras.

Who was he kidding? Dead or undead, he would remain a Scrap.

Yuan had accepted his limits the day he learned he was one of the many men born without the potential for a qi core. It wasn’t unusual. Half the world’s inhabitants were Scraps working themselves to the bones serving the cultivators. Those who served a sect well and pleased its elders might even receive an uncorrupted spirit pill allowing them to form a core.

Yuan possessed that hope back when he worked for the Stoneskins, before realizing how slim his prospects truly were. Sects mostly used their rare pills to help Second Coil disciples ascend to the Third. Why waste them on a runt who couldn’t even cultivate on his own? Elders only elevated Scraps when the occasional spirit-beast attack or marauder raid claimed the life of too many disciples. The one time it happened to a sect for which Yuan was working, its elders chose local children over him. Cultivators became better the younger they were trained, and Yuan was pushing past twenty. Too old, the Elders had said. Too old.

At least staying at that sect let him meet Mingxia and Jaw-Long.

So he had become a courier instead. He had spent years transporting packages across the wasteland, hoping to one day scrap enough funds to buy a pill or get noticed by an Elder. Then he could have shown the world what he was truly made of.

His dream had ended up like so many others: unfulfilled.

Is this the Nowhere? Yuan pondered. He could hardly feel his limbs. His heartbeat had gone silent, and his lungs were still. His mind drifted ever downward in pitch black darkness. It’s almost peaceful.

Those who returned from death before reincarnation described the Nowhere as a void in which the dead fell until they reached their new self. Those who committed great sins suffered in wasteful skins. Perhaps Yuan had committed a crime in a previous life to be born a Scrap. He could only hope to be reincarnated as a cultivator. That was his sincerest wish.

He was tired of being weak.

And that masked man… what he would give to gun down that asshole…

Yuan had dedicated half his life to gunplay, only to have his art mocked. He picked it up when the attitude of the First and Second Coils started wearing on his nerves at the Stoneskin Sect, especially the former. Nothing annoyed Yuan more than young boys and girls half his age looking down on him. They thought his lack of core meant he couldn’t kill them.

Most of them were wrong too. Yuan had killed First and Second Coil marauders in the past. Their skin was still soft at that stage, and few could dodge a projectile at point blank range. Guns had given Yuan what he had always craved: power. Meager power, but power nonetheless.

If only there had been bullets that could pierce through the Immortals… if he had had one, Yuan would have tracked that Slash across the entire Unmade World and put three bullets in his skull; one for Jaw-Long, one for Mingxia, and the last one for Yuan himself.

A metal heartbeat shattered the silence.

The sudden noise was enough to wake Yuan from his lethargy. He focused on the sudden source of the sound, tuning his mind to its source. He looked inside himself, at a piece of cold metal stuck inside him.

The bullet.

Yuan could sense the bullet that had slain him deep inside his flesh. A core of lead and steel in a shell of flesh and bone. It pulsed like a heart. With life.

What was going on? Yuan focused further on the bullet and sensed it radiate power. A wave of energy pulsed from it. It carried the acrid scent of gunpowder, mixed with the metallic stench of oil and the burnt aroma of a discharged weapon. Yuan liked it.

Was this… qi?

Yuan had never wielded qi. No Scrap could sense it at all. He didn’t remember any cultivator mentioning that it smelled of firearms either. Then again, it was supposed to come in many different forms.

Whatever that energy was, Yuan felt it spread through his body. He began to sense his limbs answering his thoughts once more. A wave of warmth flowed into his veins. Yuan recognized it immediately.

The pulse of life.

Seizing his chance, Yuan focused on the bullet. The more he did, the more he knew it, the stronger its iron heartbeat and the waves it sent. It filled Yuan’s flesh, strengthening it, and enhancing him. His numb fingers moved slightly.

He saw a light at the end of a barrel. He went after this fleeting frame with all his might.

Then he saw a monster on the other side.

Yuan caught a glimpse of a grotesque abomination of flesh and twisted metal. Its form vaguely resembled that of an emaciated and harrowing parody of a humanoid, a maelstrom of charred bones and sinews melded with steel barrels jutting out of its back like a spider’s limbs. Its arms ended in canons of monstrous proportions breathing smoke and bloody fumes.

It barred the way back to the light.

Yuan’s will briefly faltered. Whatever that entity was, he could feel its suffocating power. It dwarfed the malice of Yuan’s own killer.

But between the certainty of death and the possibility of a new life, Yuan knew which one to take. He fearlessly went after the light, ready to stand his ground against that demon if needs be.

The monster opened its mouth, revealing jaws filled with gunshell teeth.

“Kill me,” it said with a voice loud like gunfire. “If you can.”

A gunshot resonated inside his skull, and Yuan Guang triggered back to life.

His head burst out of the shallow ditch alongside most of his chest, sending dirt flying in all directions. His lungs gasped for air, but when he exhaled, his breath reeked of gunsmoke. The planetary ring shone bright blue in a sea of yellow. It was daylight again.

How long had he slept in this tomb?

How did he even survive? The creature… where was that creature?

He couldn’t focus on anything with his awful headache. Yuan’s hand instinctively moved to his forehead, only to feel a patch of metal in the middle of his skin. The bullet was stuck in his skull, a crown of iron surrounded by lead veins. It pulsed stronger than his own heartbeat.

What… What was the meaning of this? Did the cultivator who attacked him enchant his bullet? Or had Yuan returned as a hungry ghost somehow?

The sound of a motorcycle coming from behind him drew him out of his thoughts. Yuan instinctively turned his head around, right in time to see a biker come from behind his ditch and stop at his side.

The bike was one of the strangest he had seen yet; a heavy behemoth of steel with wheels of smokeless fire. Its rider was no less intimidating; some kind of desperado clad in a black duster, boots, and heavy gloves, with a hangman’s noose for a scarf. He wore a helmet stylized after a white skull, and a rounded hat on top of it. Yuan couldn’t see his eyes behind its back lenses, though he was more worried about the revolvers hanging from the man’s belt.

For a moment, Yuan feared that this newcomer might be one of the marauders who had attacked him. Instead of returning him to his dirt nap, the stranger

“Wake up, Gunsoul,” he said with a deep, bellowing voice. “A child of the Gun doesn’t belong in a ditch.”

He offered his hand to Yuan, who stared at it in doubt and confusion.

“Who are you?” he asked a stranger.

“Revolver. A Gunsoul like you. A man on the Path of the Gun.” His words made no sense, but Yuan sensed no hostility from him. “The Gun rewarded your dedication to vengeance and firearms with a half-life. Prize it. You won’t get a second.”

The Gun? Did he mean that creature Yuan saw in the Nowhere? The biker’s words made little sense, but Yuan at least understood the gist of it. Something had brought him back from the dead.

“A half-life is still a life,” Yuan told himself as he took Revolver’s hand. His grip was strong and firm.

“Now you get it,” Revolver said upon pulling him out of the ditch. “Congrats, by the way. You’ve just triggered and passed through the First Coil.”

“The First Coil?” Either the man was mistaken or the world had gone mad in Yuan’s sleep. “I can’t have gotten past the First Coil. I’m a Scrap, I don’t have a core.”

“A core?”

Revolver laughed and pointed at the bullet stuck in Yuan’s face.

“That’s your core, buddy,” the biker said. “The source and solution of all your problems.”

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Next Chapter 

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A/N: yep, that one is the most serious of the two, though having a living firearm for a main character will lead to some amusing/black comedy situations later. That story would be more of a Cultivation Post-Apocalyptic Western. 

I'm going to post the poll for the choice with more information on each novel tomorrow for you to decide which one you prefer ;) until then, happy reading.