Gunsoul: A Xianxia Apocalypse

“Let’s start with the basics,” Arc said as she began their first lesson. “What do you know of the three pillars of cultivation?”

An easy question. Yuan guessed she was checking on his general knowledge. “Techniques, sutras, and feng shui.”

“All of them come into two forms: innate and adaptive. Innate abilities are exclusive to a Path because they require a specific soul or morphology to pull off. Adaptive abilities can be learned by everyone, but take different forms depending on the Path and caster.”

“Wait,” Yuan said, before catching his mistake. “Ugh…”

“I won’t kill you for asking questions,” Arc said sharply. “I don’t care for honorifics or protocol either. I’m not a Sect Elder.”

This reassured Yuan. He would rather ask what was on his mind than tiptoe around his teacher’s pride. “I thought everyone could use any sutras.”

“That’s a common misconception,” Arc retorted. “A sutra draws power from the Wayfinders, the Dao itself, or other forces, so Scraps can use them, yes… but it doesn’t mean they’ll let anybody play with their big toys. Some really powerful sutras will only trigger when used by the right person. Same with some feng shui rituals. The choice of location determines much, but some places will only answer to certain voices.”

Yuan pondered that information. It lined up with what Orient taught him about the Prithvi Mudra. Only earth-aligned cultivators could wield its full potential.

“So, if I understand correctly.” Yuan tightened his fist and turned it into steel. “Elemental Infusion is an adaptive technique, while charging bullets with qi is an innate one?”

Yuan blinked in genuine shock. He hadn’t expected that answer.

“I don’t get it,” Yuan confessed. “I’ve never seen anyone other than a Gunsoul doing it.”

“Because most cultivators never bother to learn how to replicate the feat.” Arc shrugged her shoulders. “The qi-bullet trick originates from the Gun Path and its subpaths, true, but it’s not exclusive to us. Only Third Coil cultivators and beyond can learn innate abilities, because crossing the Fourth Coil involves engraving one in your body and soul to permanently dedicate yourself to a Path.”

“Yeah, but I can charge bullets with qi because my body treat firearms as an extension of myself,” Yuan argued. “Other cultivators can’t do that.”

“Any Path can charge a bullet with qi to generate special effects,” Arc explained. “They just can’t do it the same way we do. You can charge a bullet with qi because your Path treats firearms like an extension of yourself. A Metallist cultivator could shape metal from their iron body in the form of a bullet, charge it, and then fire it.”

“Ah, wait, I get it.” Yuan snapped his fingers as he finally understood the concept. “The result is the same, but they use a roundabout method to reach it.”

“Yup,” Arc confirmed. “Swimming is an adaptive technique in a way. Sure a fish knows how to do it instinctively, but a human can learn how to do it with enough time and effort. You won’t swim exactly like the fish, but you’ll still swim. Adaptive abilities are general skills that must be adapted to a given Path.”

Yuan pondered the implications for a moment. “I fought a oni cultivator in a patch of Thunderlands who had crossed the Second Coil, I think,” he informed his new mentor. “He could generate mist and turn his body into a fog. You’re saying I could create a Gun Path variant of his techniques?”

“You catch on quickly,” Arc confirmed. “The best cultivators are those adept at understanding the foundations of all cultivation arts, whether to incorporate them into their own Path or to counter them. Always keep your eyes open. The fact that your enemies walk different roads from yours doesn't mean they have nothing to teach you.”

Arc opened her palm. Yuan watched intently with his qi sight as a small rifle bullet materialized between her fingers. To his surprise, his teacher didn’t draw raw material from the Authority around her; the object simply appeared to materialize from raw metal qi energies.

“This is Bullet Materialization,” his mentor said while playing with her new creation. “Which category does it belong to?"

Yuan sensed it was a trick question of some sort. He briefly wondered if creating bullets was exclusive to Gunsouls before remembering the Metallist example Arc gave him earlier.

“It’s an adaptive technique,” he guessed.

“You’re half-right,” Arc replied, which was a fancy way to say Yuan messed up. “It’s a feng shui spell. An adaptive one.”

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“Feng shui?” Yuan blinked as he registered that information. His experience with the discipline mostly involved manipulating leylines or directions to improve the flow of qi, and thus his attacks. Orient did show the ability to restore objects within her confines to a previous state, but even she couldn’t manifest objects out of thin air.

Moreover, feng shui relied on exploiting a location rather than the user’s qi. Arc drew the energies used to fashion that bullet from the world itself rather than herself. How did she achieve this feat?

“Item Materialization is a sub-branch of the Barrier class of feng shui spells,” Arc explained. “A Barrier is a feng shui spell that excludes something from a set territory. The first cultivators called them Sīmābandha, Kekkai, and Forbiddances.”

“I’ve encountered a few.” The Stoneskin Sect raised a few around their compounds to keep outsiders out of restricted areas. Yuan always pondered about their inner mechanics.

“The strength and range of a Barrier is determined by three factors: what it excludes, its shape, and its caster’s visualization. The more things a barrier repels, the more it shrinks.”

Arc waved her hand. Yuan saw the flow of qi around her reshape itself at her command in the shape of a small circle barely extending beyond her body. Darkness overwhelmed everything inside its confines until his mentor vanished from inside a cone of shadows.

“Take light. Light is made of many colors. Red, green, blue…” The barrier suddenly doubled in radius. Arc appeared again, though Yuan immediately noticed that her red hair had turned black. “A Barrier that excludes red light will have a larger range than one that excludes light itself, because it keeps fewer things out.”

“How do you separate red light from the rest?” Yuan asked, his mind struggling to grasp the concept. Light was light to him. He hardly imagined how to fraction it.

“That ties into the visualization restriction,” Arc replied. “The better the Barrier’s creator understands what they exclude, the stronger its boundaries. Any cultivator can create a Barrier that keeps demons out, but those who never encountered one in the flesh will have an incomplete understanding of what they’re supposed to repel; making it easier for a real fiend to break through.”

Yuan nodded to himself. He had never studied light nor its physics; since he didn’t understand how it worked, he couldn’t understand how to fraction it. His limited knowledge greatly reduced the number of things he could repel.

Yuan understood bullets well enough though. He wondered if he could create a Barrier that would repel them.

“Observe closely,” Arc ordered. “See how a boundary is breached.”

Yuan paid attention to her Barrier and noticed how the ambient flow of qi battered against its outline like a river against a dam. It eventually pierced through, and the Barrier collapsed into nothingness.

“Barriers are created when a cultivator temporarily reshapes the area’s flow of qi, which then seeks to return to its original state,” Arc explained. “The more stable its shape, the longer it’ll last. That’s why most cultivators resort to using circles or octagons.”

Yet Yuan knew the Stoneskin Sect’s defenses lasted for years. He wondered how they achieved that until he hit upon a likely solution. “Can you layer multiple Barriers upon each other?”

“Yes,” Arc confirmed with a shrug. “That’ll only matter if you’re trying to create a Barrier that lasts for years on end though. Most rarely last longer than seconds or minutes in battle.”

That checked out. Yuan guessed that the Stoneskin Sects used layered Barriers to durably reroute the flow of qi around their compounds, the same way communities used networks of dams to reroute water and reduce its friction.

“Now, knowing all these details…” Arc flipped the bullet within her hand. “How did I create this?”

Yuan pondered her question for a moment. From what he observed earlier, Arc manipulated metal-aligned qi present in the environment to materialize the bullet. How did keeping things out of a perimeter achieve this?

Unless he was thinking along the wrong lines. He thought only Gunsouls could charge bullets with qi, but Arc insisted that other cultivators could imitate them with roundabout methods.

What if… what if Bullet Materialization involved a roundabout use of Barriers?

“Can you reverse a Barrier?” Yuan asked. “As in, keep something in rather than out?”

“Pretty sharp,” Arc confirmed his hypothesis with a nod. “Yes, cleverly built Barriers can be engineered to keep something inside them and create powerful seals. This Manhattan likely used this trick to mask their presence by containing his qi inside a small perimeter.”

“Then I think…” Yuan cleared his throat. He was no quick-talker, so it took him a moment to find his words. “I think you created a bullet-shaped, reversed Barrier that would keep metal-aligned qi within itself and repel everything else. That way you concentrated metal qi to such a degree that it took physical form. Like a mold.”

A Barrier that would exclude everything except a specific element would both be small and extremely short-lived. The latter didn’t matter much though. Once the metal qi condensed into a bullet, it would retain its shape even after the Barrier that created it disappeared.

For the first time since he met her, Arc gave Yuan a small, wry smile. “Not bad, not bad. Rather impressive actually. Yeah, you guessed right. I used one Barrier to keep the metal qi in, another to keep everything else out, and then layered them together. It’s easier said than done though.”

That was one way to put it. Layering those two forms would require extreme precision, and both Barriers wouldn’t last longer than an instant. The sheer degree of focus required boggled Yuan’s mind.

But now that he knew it was possible and how to achieve it, he couldn’t wait to try it.

“Here’s your first exercise,” Arc said after placing her bullet on the workbench. “I’ll teach you how to create Barriers. When sunset comes, you’ll have to cultivate outside my Authority for an entire night in the open.”

Yuan froze in place. “Outdoors?”

Arc nodded sharply. “You’ll have to spend a night under the moonlight with your Barriers as your only protection.”

“That’s suicide.” Moonburns would kill him within the first hour of exposure.

“For the cowards and the weak-willed, sure.” Arc shrugged without concern. “Those who cannot survive the moonlight and face themselves will never stand among the greats. If you can’t create a Barrier that’ll protect you from Moonburns…”

Arc’s lips stretched into a fearsome, predatory look.

“Well, then you’ll have to create one to keep your Moonlight Demon in.”