Duckman

Duckman is a birdlike cultivator and racer whose absurd self-confidence conceals a serious physical threat. Introduced during the preparations for the History Road competition, he functions first as an antagonist and comic irritant, then as one of the contest’s most memorable survivors. His repeated returns turn his boast that he will never die into a strange, partially confirmed fact, while his eventual retreat gives the rivalry an unexpectedly practical ending.

Identity and Appearance

Duckman drives a bright yellow all-wheel-drive tractor fitted with buoys for wheels and an oversized birdlike mascot. His body is muscular and covered in white feathers; he has a flat beak, palmed hands, black eyes, two bandoliers across his chest, and a green beret. The vehicle and its driver are so conspicuous that they become part of his identity: he is not merely a competitor in a machine, but a flamboyant mobile persona built from military imagery, animal features, and theatrical menace.

His voice is strikingly high-pitched, and he refers to himself by name rather than using an ordinary first-person identity. He announces threats as performances, turning every encounter into a public declaration of Duckman’s supposed superiority. His language is deliberately childish and grandiose, but the story repeatedly places real violence behind it. The contrast makes him funny without making him harmless.

Duckman’s social identity is also tied to the path he claims to follow. Mel explains that the Spiral Dancers hired him, which suggests that his strange appearance and ridiculous presentation do not indicate mere incompetence. The same report warns that he may be more dangerous than he looks. Duckman later proudly declares that the Duck Path is superior and offers to prove it, treating his personal fighting style as both a creed and a challenge to Yuan Guang’s Gun Path.

Entrance into the History Road Conflict

Duckman first confronts Yuan Guang in the parking area at Battletown, where the racers’ vehicles are gathered under military supervision. He threatens to defecate on Yuan Guang’s grave, and Yuan Guang answers with dry contempt, saying that he has shot many birds dead before. Duckman responds by naming himself the nightmare-haunting “quack,” establishing the rivalry’s characteristic rhythm: Duckman escalates through theatrical insults, while Yuan Guang punctures the performance with blunt confidence.

The contest turns that verbal antagonism into a moving battle. When Duckman opens his vehicle’s door to leap onto Orient, the yellow car continues driving by itself, apparently guided by the spirit inhabiting it. This detail makes Duckman’s vehicle more than transport and allows him to attack while his machine remains in motion. He presents the assault as a personal hunt, warning Yuan Guang that Duckman is coming for him before using a technique called “Fois Gras.”

Yuan Guang counters with a Recoil Blast. The attack strikes accurately, but Duckman’s body generates a thick coat of water that propels him forward and absorbs enough of the impact to keep him moving. His defense establishes a recurring pattern in the race: Duckman suffers damage that should remove an ordinary contestant, yet water, momentum, or sheer persistence carries him back into the chase.

Pursuit, Survival, and the Duck Path

Duckman continues pursuing Yuan Guang after earlier setbacks. Dirt covers his face and his eyes are bloodshot, but he remains alive and drives past the racing twins before ramming the rear of the truck. Later, he dive-bombs Yuan Guang from above. Yuan Guang roasts him, knocking away feathers and sending him bouncing onto the road, yet Duckman immediately resumes the pursuit and claims that Yuan Guang has dodged his Peking Press for the last time.

His ability to stay ahead of the racers has a practical explanation. Yuan Guang realizes that Duckman flew above the pyramid tunnel, where the distorted space inside the passage did not lengthen the route for him. Duckman’s survival is therefore not presented as pure luck: he repeatedly exploits the course’s geography and the differences between ground travel and flight. His movement becomes a form of tactical intelligence, even when his boasting makes him appear foolish.

The decisive reversal comes when the pyramid’s laser targets Coyote. Yuan Guang and Duckman slow in shock, allowing the twins to catch Duckman with their energy chain. The chain slices through his torso, splitting him in half; both pieces crash onto the road and roll into the dirt. Yuan Guang expects that such an injury should finally keep him down. Instead, Duckman’s fate remains unresolved because the pyramid’s trap deactivates before finishing him. The interruption turns his survival into an ominous recurrence: every apparent conclusion is followed by another opening through which he can return.

Defeat, Medical Rescue, and Withdrawal

After Battletown’s destruction, Yuan Guang finds Duckman among the wounded. Both halves of Duckman’s bisected body lie on a surgical couch while Jared LaChair attempts to sew the severed flesh together. The image confirms that Duckman did not merely evade the earlier injury; he was physically cut in two and still lived long enough to receive treatment. His recovery is aided by Mel and Hardy, who insist that the doctors treat him even though he had tried to kill them and their allies.

Duckman greets this rescue with renewed defiance, insisting that Yuan Guang could not rid himself of him so easily and proclaiming that Duckman would never die. The declaration is comic, but it is supported by the sequence of events: he survives the race’s attacks, a Recoil Blast, a fall and pursuit across the road, and the energy chain that bisects his body. His boast therefore operates as both self-dramatization and a description of the role the narrative has assigned him.

The encounter also reveals the limit of his bravado. When Yuan Guang warns that he can still finish what they began during the History Road, Duckman looks afraid. He stops challenging Yuan Guang, announces that he is returning to his pond, and says that he is done with the wasteland. The retreat marks a small but clear change. Duckman does not become noble, and the earlier attempt on Yuan Guang’s life is not erased, but the immediate feud ends when he recognizes that Yuan Guang’s threat is credible.

Narrative Role and Significance

Duckman is a deliberately unstable mixture of comic relief, rival, menace, and survivor. His body and vehicle make him visually ridiculous, while his affiliation with the Spiral Dancers and his performance during the competition establish genuine danger. The story uses that contradiction to keep the History Road conflict from becoming a simple ranking of fighters: the strangest participant can still alter the race, obstruct stronger opponents, and survive consequences that appear final.

His movement also reflects the competition’s larger transformation of mobility into power. Duckman’s yellow vehicle, aerial route above the pyramid, autonomous car spirit, and repeated attempts to overtake Orient all make speed and positioning central to his identity. He is dangerous because he can keep moving through a course designed to kill or trap its contestants. Even when split apart, he remains narratively and physically in motion.

Most importantly, Duckman provides a darkly comic contrast to the deaths surrounding the competition. Yuan Guang is irritated that Duckman lives while Arc perishes, and that contrast prevents Duckman’s resilience from being treated as uncomplicated triumph. Survival here is arbitrary, bodily, and morally uneven. Duckman’s final decision to leave does not redeem him; it simply converts a murderous rivalry into an abandoned one, leaving behind the unsettling image of a feathered racer who has failed to die exactly when the story expected him to.