Yuan shed his skin.

  His first Gun Demon Incarnation transformation took days of cycling to complete; his second finished in seconds. His arms and head turned into weapons and the thrusters on his back propelled him forward with greater velocity than ever before. He outpaced the racer brothers in a mighty sonic boom that blew dust and ashes in all directions.

  The world around him became a blur, an ever shifting mirage. His vision focused until he could only perceive the point ahead of him. Nothing existed beyond that tunnel; nothing that he could see.

  Yuan’s Gun Demon Incarnation let him reach such speed that his skin burned from the intense friction. He had transcended the world of supersonic speeds and entered the realm of the hypersonic. His body crossed kilometers worth of distance in mere seconds. His enhanced senses struggled to keep up with his own velocity.

  And it felt good! Exhilarating even!

  Yuan reached the pyramid in an instant while blowing a whirlwind of dust in his wake. He entered a dark tunnel dug into the landmark’s stones like a bullet flying through a barrel. Dimensions appeared to twist and stretch within the landmark. Yuan saw swinging blades hanging from the ceiling and arrows thrown from holes in the walls.

  Did the Khan hope to stop him with such paltry traps? Yuan didn’t even bother dodging them. He simply charged forward and fired at will with his minigun arm. An endless flow of bullets erupted from his weapon. As he had suspected when fighting Gatling Man, the weapon generated its own projectiles when wielded by a Gunsoul.

  None of Yuan’s bullets packed qi, but they didn’t need to. He fired so many of them at such high velocity that each of them hit with the strength of missiles. They pulverized the pyramid’s traps in short order, clearing the path.

  A red flash appeared at the end of the tunnel.

  All of Yuan’s honed survival instincts flared up all at once. Time seemed to slow down to an abrupt halt as he saw two crimson eyes glaring at him with murderous malice. Yuan barely had time to move to the right with a Recoil Shockwave to avoid a fatal crash.

  The crossing happened at such blinding speed that Yuan hardly saw anything. He sensed something brush uncomfortably close to the left side of his body, the sheer friction in the air flensing metal skin off his muscles and nearly ripping out his minigun arm from his shoulders. His attacker turned to pursue him in an instant by running so fast that they defied gravity and ascended up the tunnel’s walls. Yuan caught a glimpse of a doglike hood and a man running on foot faster than the naked Scrap eye could follow.

  Coyote.

  “I’m impressed!” Yuan should be flying too fast for Coyote’s words to catch up, yet they rode a wave of qi to reach him. The Speed Path cultivator ran up to Yuan’s side with casual ease. From the way he moved, reaching hypersonic speeds felt like a jog to him. “I might have to go mach six on your ass!”

  “You’ve turned back?!” Yuan asked in shock. It didn’t make sense. Coyote had been so far ahead in the race, so why would he turn around and fight competitors instead of leaving them in the dust?

  “If I hadn't, I would win without killing anyone!” Coyote’s body crackled with crimson lightning. His eyes rippled with thunderbolts the color of blood. “And where’s the fun in that?!”

  Yuan choked in burning hatred at the cruel, vicious cultivator. By the time he raised his minigun to blast him back to the hell which he crawled out from, Coyote had already swerved in an attempt to tackle him.

  Yuan abruptly reduced his speed like a driver hitting the brakes. This spared him a crash as Coyote narrowly missed him, but one bolt of crimson lightning hit Yuan in the shoulder. The projectile melted part of his flesh deeply enough to inflict pain, even after most of the electricity failed to spread to the rest of his body. It seemed that the infernal metal making up most of Yuan’s body didn’t conduct electricity.

  Yuan retaliated with both his arms, firing an endless stream of bullets from his left and flames from his right. Coyote waved his hands so fast that they whipped up a shield of whirling wind that swiftly dispersed both the fire and projectiles.

  “Plus, Slash kinda paid me top money to put you back into the ground where you belong!” Coyote admitted. So great was his moxie that he began to run backward to face Yuan and better taunt him. “You can only blame your smartass mouth!”

  Yuan scoffed in disdain. “He couldn’t do the job himself?!”

  “Can’t complain!” Coyote replied with wicked laughter. His hands swirled like dynamos. “You know what they say: ‘always get paid for what you’re willing to do for free!’”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He vanished in a blur of speed.

  Yuan panicked upon losing sight of his foe. He barely had time to blink before he sensed a hand grab him by the back of the head and then violently slam it against the nearest wall, causing intense pain to course through Yuan’s skull.

  “You’re pretty fast, I’ll give you that!” Coyote complimented him, although there was a mocking edge to his voice. He kept Yuan’s head pressed against the pyramid’s enchanted stone as they ran through the entire length of the tunnel, grinding him against it the whole way. “But your technique doesn’t let your reflexes keep up with your speed! You can only see one way!”

  Yuan responded with a snarl of rage and a burst of Black Haze. The gunsmoke produced by his Gun Demon Incarnation body ignited the moment it seeped out of his body. A cloud of fire filled the tunnel and drew a snarl of rage from Coyote upon burning off his hand. The Speed Path cultivator let Yuan go before quickly outrunning the flames.

  Yuan heard the racer siblings catching up to them from behind. He sensed their cores burning like twin furnaces in perfect synchronization, fueling each other in a feedback loop of qi. A chain of energy bound their cars together; one so sharp that it split everything it touched in two, from falling blade traps to the very air.

  Realizing he would be bisected if they caught up to him, Coyote stopped playing with Yuan and sped up until he outpaced everyone. Yuan and the siblings chased after him and soon emerged from the tunnel at lightning speeds.

  Then a bird dive-bombed Yuan from above.

  The ambusher moved at a fraction of Coyote’s speed, so Yuan had no issues roasting him with his right hand. The attacker lost a few feathers and bounced off the road. Yuan groaned upon recognizing his foe.

  “You again?!” Yuan snarled in annoyance. Did that stubborn bird never give up? How did he even manage to get ahead so quickly and avoid the Khan’s traps?

  “You’ve dodged Duckman’s Peking Press for the last time!” Duckman replied as he chased after Yuan. He looked like a roasted bird from all the damage he had accumulated so far, yet somehow managed to fly anyway. “Duckman will get you!”

  Yuan wondered how he could catch up to them before guessing the obvious solution: Duckman simply flew above the pyramid where the tunnel didn’t distort and lengthen space. Staying outside let him cover much less distance.

  The racers flew, ran, and drove across a new stretch of the road; one flanked by bright technicolored neon lights. Coyote remained firmly in the lead, followed by Yuan, a struggling Duckman, and the twins.

  “Your car was destroyed!” Yuan shouted at Duckman. “You’ve already lost!”

  “Duckman… does not… quit!” the birdman responded with pride. He flapped his wings so fast to keep pace with the other contestants that he was starting to lose his breath over it. “He… he quacks!”

  “And he’s gonna croak soon!” Coyote mocked him, his finger pointed at the pyramid’s tip. Its bricks had begun to glow with a phenomenal concentration of qi. “Penalty time!”

  The pyramid shook and fired a mighty beam of light from its tip to smite Duckman for violating the game’s rules. The birdman himself peeked over his shoulder anxiously in anticipation.

  The laser instead aimed straight at Coyote.

  Taken aback like everyone else, Coyote immediately sped up at immense velocity. He moved so fast that his body left afterimages behind with each step. But even Coyote couldn’t entirely outrun light itself, so he had to zigzag back and forth across the History Road in a vain attempt to lose the beam as the laser carved a trail of devastation across the highway.

  Yuan and Duckman were both so shocked by this turn of events that they slightly slowed down. This allowed the twins to catch up to the latter racer and hit him in the back with their energy chain. It neatly sliced through Duckman’s torso and split him in half, both parts of him crashing onto the road and rolling onto the dirt.

  If he won’t stay down after that, I don’t know what it will take, Yuan thought. He half-expected the pyramid to zap Duckman too, but the trap surprisingly deactivated itself. That’s… oddly convenient.

  Far too convenient.

  The answer to this mystery announced her presence with a whistle. Orient drove out of the pyramid with a loud fanfare and chased after the racers with all of her strength.

  Yuan quickly guessed what happened. He had no idea how they achieved it, but Holster and Orient managed to switch the pyramid beam’s target from Duckman to Coyote after the former triggered it. Perhaps Holster’s Hitobashira status gave her an empathic connection to the landmarks, since other Human Pillars fueled them, or Orient manipulated the artificial leyline to flag Coyote as the lawbreaker.

  Whatever the case, their ingenious display of qi manipulation eventually ran its course. The pyramid’s laser died out from lack of energy to fuel it—the Khan had likely installed a safety feature to ensure the other landmarks would have enough juice to power themselves—and allowed Coyote to retaliate. He ran backward across the road, throwing stones and pebbles he grabbed off the ground at his pursuers with enough velocity to rival bullets. Yuan, Mel, and Hardy moved around to dodge the projectiles while Orient simply shrugged them off.

  Then a green light suddenly swallowed Battletown whole.

  It happened so quietly that none of the racers noticed it until an invisible ripple spread through the History Road. The entire artificial leyline shuddered as a massive, skull-shaped cloud of radioactive dust engulfed its start and endpoint. There was no shockwave like the nuclear explosion that heralded the race’s beginning, no overwhelming display of widespread devastation; only the eerie coldness of a frighteningly precise tactical strike.

  Everyone abruptly stopped as neon and fire rings alike flickered out of existence. Braking wheels blew dust in all directions, Coyote slowed down in surprise, and Yuan’s legs hit the ground with such strength that the ground trembled beneath him. He had spent enough time hanging around Arc to recognize the use of an Authority.

  The foul nuclear qi that fueled it was awfully familiar too.

  A shiver of dread coursed through him while his bullet-core pounded in his skull to remind him of his Unspeakable Vow.

  Manhattan had finally made his move.

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