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. Poor 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 a 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.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“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 Wayfinders 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 around 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 or 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 hit the target with perfect accuracy. So did the second and the third, which 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 along 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.
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