Slash’s head exploded atop his shoulders.

  Yuan’s bullet-core pounded with satisfaction inside his skull at the irony of his murderer perishing from the very same way he once put the Gunsoul into the ground. Payback at last.

  However, his joy only lasted until his foe’s corpse hit the ground. Slash’s blood and brain matter had already started pulling itself back together by the will of his surviving other half. The Yinyang Khan himself remained on the defensive, his hands forming a mudra sequence that stopped all of Arc’s projectiles mid-flight.

  Realizing this, Arc charged at him with her free hands forming mudra signs of her own.

  “The last thing you never see!” she said, her voice strained with pain. “Headshot Forge!”

  A bubble of lead and gunsmoke emerged from her body, pressing back against the Khan’s own inner reality in an attempt to kill him before his other self recovered.

  Yuan had never seen an Authority clash in the past, and witnessing it first-hand sent shivers down his spine. Two different visions of the world materialized within a few meters’ range and fought over ownership of reality. The Yinyang Khan’s maddened vision of endless fighting and splintered minds pressed against the ammunition bog of Headshot Forge, the same way water sought to extinguish any pocket of air within itself.

  Arc pushed back with all of her qi and strength, but the experience wore her down spiritually and physically. Her rifle-arm cracked along its barrel and her steel-skin rusted along the edges. All of her willpower barely allowed her to expand her Authority around two meters from herself.

  But it was enough to briefly engulf the Yinyang Khan.

  A bloody hole opened in the warlord’s skull, blasting his brain apart within the physical incarnation of his soul. He let out a scream of rage and pain echoed by cracks spreading through the iron dome.

  Arc had struck a lethal blow while his other personality was temporarily dead. For a brief instant, the yin and yang that made up the Khan’s existence both perished.

  His Authority collapsed upon itself with a final shriek.

  To Yuan’s senses, it looked as if his entire reality shattered like a broken window. Pieces of space fell off to reveal the ruins of Battletown underneath. Slash’s corpse vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving only his hungry blade and Yuan’s handgun behind, while the Khan’s remains regained their lost lower two arms as he collapsed on his back. His qi dissipated as blood poured out of his broken skull.

  The Yinyang Khan, Lord of Battletown, murderer of Yuan Guang, and tormentor of countless innocent souls, lay dead on the ground.

  Mingxia, Jaw-Long… you are avenged. A powerful sense of accomplishment erupted from Yuan’s bullet core and over his entire body. He had finally accomplished what the Gun raised him from the dead for. And so am I.

  But he had no time to revel in his victory yet. The battle was far from over.

  The Khan’s Barriers disappeared with their creator’s demise. One revealed the Cube of Natho sitting among the ruins; the other showed a freed Manhattan, who sang sutras to himself with his hands joined in meditation.

  “--eath, destroyer of worlds.”

  Arc and Yuan immediately fired at him, their bullets hitting a sphere of nuclear energy expanding around Manhattan. The searing light emanating from the nuclear cultivator illuminated Battletown, and the sheer qi pressure filled Yuan with overwhelming dread.

  An Authority.

  Manhattan had been waiting for his enemies to kill each other, then sucker-punch them with his strongest technique in one final blow.

  “Yuan, grab the cube!” Arc ordered Yuan, her free hand forming another mudra. “Now!”

  Throwing himself forward with a Recoil Shockwave, Yuan reached the Cube of Natho in an instant. Since he lacked hands in his Gun Demon Incarnation, he grabbed the cursed artifact with his teeth.

  “I am the dead white flash and the silent winter that remains!” Manhattan chanted, his voice echoing with the detonation of distant explosions. “I am the hammer that cracks the cosmic egg and smashes the atom!”

  “The last thing you never see!” Arc shouted back, her broken Authority expanding around her in a last ditch attempt to stop her nemesis from doing the same.

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  “Let there be light!” Manhattan shouted, right as Arc fired Headshot Forge. “Fukushima Paradise!”

  Two Authorities swallowed the world in a clash of light and lead.

  Manhattan brightened like the sun and unleashed a flood of radioactive dust. Green energies and irradiated clouds filled Yuan’s horizon, bathing the universe in Fukushima Paradise’s destructive radiance. Yuan found it oddly beautiful, almost comforting; the same way a flame seemed graceful before it consumed the world that gave birth to it. He knew he was gazing upon the Big Bang’s light reborn, the spark that ignited the cosmos itself. It swallowed the Khan’s corpse, Slash’s sword and the handgun without leaving anything behind.

  Yuan found himself thrown backward as Arc’s Headshot Forge enclosed him, her inner reality shielding him from Manhattan’s radioactive flood. The very cosmos went haywire as two opposing wills feuded over its control. The Nuclear Buddha’s desire for annihilation clashed with Arc’s determination made manifest.

  The battle’s outcome was decided before it even began.

  Arc’s core was broken and her Authority crippled, while Manhattan’s remained intact. The flood of radiation pushed back Headshot Forge’s wavering reality with relentless determination. Cracks appeared both on the Authority’s fabric and its caster’s body. Both would soon fall, after which Fukushima Paradise would vaporize them in an instant.

  “Yuan…” Arc whispered, her voice echoing through the Authority of her soul. “End it all.”

  Something about her tone sent shivers down Yuan’s spine.

  A colossal flood of qi erupted from Arc while her body brightened with fire and lightning. Her circuits ignited as her own power broke out of its container. Ripples of energy spread across Headshot Forge until it began to push back Fukushima Paradise.

  Arc was pouring all of herself into her Authority.

  All of herself.

  “Don’t!” Yuan shouted in panic, his voice bellowing through his ammo teeth and the cube stuck between them. “You’ll die!”

  “I’m already dead, you moron!” Arc snapped back.

  Yuan flinched as if he had been blasted himself. Arc was right, she was already condemned. Either she failed to keep her Authority up, at which point Manhattan’s own would vaporize them both, or she’ll power through it and win the clash at the cost of her own existence. No Barrier nor protection would keep Fukushima Paradise from annihilating them both.

  It was the end for one of them, maybe both.

  “At least this way I can take that bastard down with me… finish the job I flubbed all those years back.” Arc tensed up, her body breaking at the seams. “Yuan, if you live through this… do me a solid… no vow required.”

  Yuan tensed up, but he did not argue. He couldn’t deny an ally’s last request. “I’ll protect the cube with my life.”

  “Don’t you stop there!” Headshot Forge was a manifestation of Arc’s core and soul. For an instant, its very air choked with fatalism and then a wind of overwhelming resolve. “The Nuke, the Gun, the Blade… all these assholes feeding on our pain… end them all!” Arc blazed like the heart of the sun. “Finish the job–”

  Her bullet-core exploded within her chest.

  A pulse of qi carrying all of Arc’s life and strength erupted from her body, vaporizing it and rippling through her Authority. The wave carried Yuan back and pushed back the light of Fukushima Paradise in one last clash. Manhattan’s shriek of pain echoed across his collapsing Authority, his very core made manifest breaking under the strain of Headshot Forge’s final counter-attack.

  Reality shattered again in a bright flash, sending Yuan crashing against steel debris. The shock knocked him out of Gun Demon Incarnation and back into his human form. The cube slipped beyond his grasp and rolled onto radioactive dust. He was back among the ruins of Battletown, the old universe reasserting itself over the lingering traces of Headshot Forge and Fukushima Paradise.

  Nothing remained of Arc. Nothing but dust and shrapnel.

  Yuan’s bullet-core skipped a beat in guilt. She had given her life to save the world. To stop Manhattan.

  “Argh…”

  Yet the enemy lived.

  Manhattan barely looked like he could stand on his feet, but he still breathed. His charred chest leaked radioactive smoke out of a set of ribs burnt to a crisp. More qi poured out of it in a second than all that Yuan could manage while in his Gun Demon Incarnation.

  His core had cracked open the same way Arc’s once did.

  “Finally dead… at last… freed from this world…” The nuclear cultivator lumbered towards Yuan, his maddened eyes glowing with a murderous gleam. “Now… your turn.”

  Manhattan closed the gap between them in a flash, his fist raised for the kill. There was no hesitation in his gaze, no pity nor remorse. Only the cold determination of a lethal killer eager to see things through.

  Yuan barely managed to trigger his Black Haze and hid himself in qi-charged smoke. He sensed Manhattan’s radioactive hand come within an inch of his face, yet successfully dodged and leaped to grab the cube.

  He’s slow. The realization hit Yuan like a brick wall. He would have been forced to use Gun Demon Incarnation to even hope to survive against Manhattan before, but here he managed to dodge a lethal blow in his human form. Arc crippled him, for now.

  An overwhelming current of qi washed over the area.

  Yuan sensed Holster and Orient’s presence washing over the leyline connecting Battletown to its landmarks. A circular Barrier arose over the city’s ruins, trapping everyone inside it in a translucent tunnel; a trap set for Manhattan himself.

  A massive fireball fell upon the nuclear cultivator a second later.

  Yuan had seen that projectile blast away Chemzard’s sutra-powered truck. It hardly fazed Manhattan, though the impact caused him to stumble. The Nuclear Buddha glanced around to find himself surrounded from all sides.

  “You thought we would let him have all the fun?” Mel taunted Manhattan as he and his brother jumped into the fray to reinforce Yuan. “It’s not a one-on-one fight!”

  “It’s three against one!” Hardy added.

  Yuan adopted a fighting stance, the Cube of Natho safe within his hands. Manhattan’s core was cracked. If he died now, he wouldn’t return from the Nowhere ever again.

  Let’s finish this, Yuan thought as he charged at Manhattan, the memory of Arc flaring in his mind. I’ll end this here and now.

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