Kaguya took his hand, turned her umbrella, and then they were gone.

  The shift happened so suddenly and so seamlessly that he hardly noticed the location had changed until he saw piles of debris turn into small sunbaked walls surrounding weathered stone dwellings. Battletown was gone, replaced with a small village’s entrance.

  A mountain with four faces stood in the distance across the brown dry landscape. Yuan recognized it as one of the History Road’s landmarks; one of those he hadn’t reached before the race came to an end, but which he helped Orient and Holster alter. The former called it ‘Mount Rushfort’ or something; Yuan assumed the monument was dedicated to four Sect Patriarchs from the Lost Age, who severely looked down on their disciples.

  They weren’t even a day’s ride away from Battletown.

  The realization sent a chill down Yuan’s iron spine. Kaguya’s words rang true; the Gun was closer than he thought.

  “A teleportation technique?” he muttered under his breath.

  “We Moonlighters can visit any place or anyone touched by our Lord’s radiance,” Kaguya explained. “Nothing that happens under the moonlight escapes us.”

  Yuan scoffed. “So your Wayfinder is a cosmic voyeur?”

  “If people wish to keep secrets from our Lord, they shouldn’t reveal anything in front of his eye, don’t you think?” Kaguya’s mischievous smile swiftly faded away. “Beware your words and deeds. His moment of clarity won’t last long. Any rash action will trigger the Gun.”

  Yes. Yuan knew it all too well.

  He felt it too. His bullet-core pounded in his skull in alarm, like a prey sensing the presence of a lurking predator. It wasn’t as intense as the time the Gun visited Fleshmarket, but it was still disquieting; that, and the twin smells of gunsmoke and blood hanging in the air.

  The village was silent too. It was small, hardly large enough to host half a hundred souls, but it should have had guards, or at least someone keeping watch. Yet the only sounds in the air were Kaguya’s tense breath and the noise of Yuan’s steps.

  The Moonlight Sect cultivator didn’t follow him into the village. Neither did she try to stop him. Yuan walked into narrow, winding alleys squeezed between walls riddled with smoking new holes. He grabbed his revolver and loaded it

  Some of the houses’ doors had been smashed open and others barricaded. Neither saved anyone. Yuan detected traces of blood staining red clay and bricks.

  He found his first corpse in a small plaza; a man shot in the back of the head with such force that his skull exploded atop his shoulders. More followed, pieces of meat left rotting without a care.

  Men.

  Women.

  Children.

  Even goats had been shot dead in their pens, alongside the dog meant to protect them. The corpses of cultivators bearing the Khan’s insignia had been thrown across walls and often suffered multiple shots. They had likely been instructed by their master to keep the peace among his tributaries, but from what Yuan could pick up from the scene, their futile struggle barely earned them a few more seconds of life.

  Their killer had never slowed down.

  That massacre was very different from Fleshmarket’s destruction. It was more personal, more intimate, more calculated… but no less gruesome. This was the work of a merciless gunslinger rather than an indiscriminate artillery bombardment, though both were different expressions of the same evil.

  A monstrous qi guided Yuan through the open grave until he reached a stone terrace. A power cruiser lay with smoking wheels in wait next to four fresh corpses.

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  Revolver stood on a floor of stone, his back turned on Yuan and his head looking up at the moon.

  His blood-soaked clothes had taken on a deep shade of red, almost black. A dark poncho covered his shoulders, and at a certain point, its strands turned into shadowy gunsmoke carried by the breeze. His left hand had transformed into a metallic, cybernetic gauntlet with claws for fingers. His right hand carried a revolver whose skull-plated barrel was still smoking from the recent firefight.

  His qi was different from the last time they’d met too. It was intense, and malevolent, but also strangely quiet; like a deceptively still oil lake that could catch fire at any time. If Revolver had noticed Yuan, he didn’t show any hint of it.

  Yuan hesitated a moment, then opened his mouth. “Revol–”

  “Don’t take another step, Yuan.”

  Yuan stopped dead in his tracks. His old savior’s words reverberated with gunfire and an inhuman metallic echo, the same as the Gun who attacked in Fleshmarket.

  “If you do…” Revolver muttered, his back still turned on Yuan. “I don’t think I’ll be able to contain it.”

  Yuan tightened his grip on his gun. He was tempted to shoot Revolver with Arc’s bullet and then hope for the best, but the pressure in the air prevented him from making a move. Revolver’s qi stirred with menace. The demon within him was asleep, but any threat of violence would wake it from its slumber.

  A tense silence followed, which Revolver broke first.

  “I keep having the same nightmare,” he said softly. “I ride on my cruiser, driving into the wasteland. I hear pulses in the air. Heartbeats pounding in the distance. I hear laughs, cries, words, the sounds of life.”

  Revolver turned his head slightly, his neck making a clicking noise as it moved. Yuan caught a glimpse of shining eyes of crimson light gazing at the corpses surrounding them.

  “I can’t make sense of them, but I follow them anyway all the way to their source,” Revolver said, his voice heavy with guilt. “Then I grab my revolver and the laughs turn to screams.”

  Yuan’s jaw clenched in sympathy. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” Revolver raised his weapon closer to his face and examined it. “I don’t enjoy it, but I don’t hate it either. I kill like I breathe. I am a thing of point and direction, of aim and targets. I deliver death because that’s what I do.” His voice grew wearier, sadder. “I fought to free slaves from their masters once, but now I kill them both. Old, young, rich, poor, Scraps and cultivators… They all look the same at the barrel’s end.”

  It had been weeks since Revolver became the Gun. How many settlements had he wiped out during that time?

  Yuan wasn’t certain he wanted to hear the answer to that question.

  “Then I wake up, surrounded by the dead, alone with my guilt and pain.” Revolver lowered his weapon. “I try to stay awake, to stay put… but it’s so tiring, and the evil within doesn’t stay satiated forever. I fall asleep before I know it, and then I ride off into a new nightmare.”

  Revolver finally turned to face Yuan. His face had become a skull of black iron, his rounded hat hiding a barrel stuck in the middle of his forehead. His eyes had transformed into two shining crimson stars filled with deep and profound despair.

  “If you have any pity for me, Yuan, then kill me now,” Revolver said, begging. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  A knot formed in Yuan’s metal stomach. He had seen Revolver face the likes of Polio and the Gun with defiance and determination. To hear him sound so beaten, so broken… It crushed Yuan’s heart.

  The previous Gun had begged Arc for death too, the very same way Revolver now prayed for oblivion. And who could blame them? To be worn like a glove by a demon born of death, to become a soulless weapon sowing death across the wasteland and stopping only to wallow in despair sounded like a truly miserable existence. A true hell on earth.

  Arc hadn’t been able to give her old friend the peace he craved, and neither could Yuan provide it to Revolver.

  He could feel it in his gut. His instinct told him that using Arc’s bullet now would fail, somehow. The time and place weren’t right. It would just result in a fight that Yuan could only lose and more regrets.

  He wasn’t ready yet.

  “I’m sorry, but… not now,” Yuan apologized. The moment hadn’t come yet. He could feel it in his metal bones. “I’ve… I’ve made up my mind though.”

  “I see…” Revolver held his skull with his metal hand. “These moments of consciousness, Yuan… they become shorter and shorter. Soon, I don’t think I’ll be able to wake up from the nightmare anymore. I’ll sleepwalk my way through endless slaughter.”

  “I’ll free you from this curse,” Yuan promised with a heavy heart. “One way… or another.”

  Yuan owed him that for saving his life once. He hoped he could break the curse, but if not… if not, at least Revolver would find rest.

  “When I lose control again, the Gun will come for you.” Revolver studied Yuan, his crimson gaze flaring in the moonlight. “It wants to wield you. It wants to kill your hope.”

  A chill traveled down Yuan’s spine, but he showed no fear. He had never been one to back down from a challenge. “When you come for me, Revolver, I’ll be ready. I promise you.”

  It wasn’t an Unspeakable Vow, but he would fulfill it nonetheless.

  Revolver listened in silence, then offered Yuan a short, sharp nod. “Go,” he said somberly. “While you still have hope.”

  Yuan left without another word, sensing Revolver’s gaze on his back all the way to the village’s exit. They both knew a simple truth.

  The next time they met, only one of them might walk away.

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