The Nuke

The Nuke is the nuclear demigod imprisoned within the Cube of Natho, a sealed entity whose confinement becomes one of the central burdens inherited by Yuan Guang. Its decisive importance lies in the contradiction it creates: the Nuke is no longer free to devastate the world, yet its continued existence makes the cube a target powerful enough to endanger every settlement and companion connected to its guardian. The story therefore treats The Nuke less as an ordinary visible character than as a hostile will concentrated inside an object, exerting pressure on events even while contained.

Identity and Imprisonment

The Nuke’s identity is established through the Cube of Natho rather than through an extended physical introduction. After the clash involving Manhattan, Arc, and Yuan Guang, the cube survives among the radioactive remains of Battletown. Bucket carries it back to the recovering Yuan Guang, and its baleful eyes appear to look at him with gleaming malice. Orient confirms that Manhattan is gone, while the cube remains, preserving the prisoner inside it and transferring responsibility for that danger to Yuan Guang and his allies.

The cube’s survival is itself a revelation of The Nuke’s scale. Yuan Guang is relieved that the Nuke has not escaped its binding, but he also recognizes that the need for such an apparently unbreakable prison demonstrates the magnitude of what it contains. The artifact is not merely a container waiting passively in the background. Its presence changes the meaning of victory: Manhattan has been destroyed, the Yinyang Khan’s empire has fallen, and Battletown has been lost, yet the aftermath still contains a power capable of drawing ambitious fools and madmen toward renewed violence.

The Destructive Power Within the Cube

The Nuke is connected to the catastrophic nuclear power represented by Manhattan and Fukushima Paradise. During the final confrontation, Yuan Guang seizes the Cube of Natho while in his Gun Demon Incarnation, using a Recoil Shockwave to reach it and gripping the cursed artifact with his teeth because he has no hands in that form. Manhattan then invokes the cosmic violence of the atom before unleashing Fukushima Paradise, while Arc answers with Headshot Forge. The resulting collision of radioactive dust, green energy, light, and lead consumes the battlefield and destroys Manhattan, Slash’s sword, and the handgun.

The Nuke does not escape during this destruction, but the scene makes its containment inseparable from the annihilating forces around it. Arc’s bullet-core explodes, releasing all her life and strength in a final counterattack that breaks through Manhattan’s manifested core. Yuan Guang is thrown back into human form, and the cube rolls across the radioactive dust before the old universe reasserts itself over the remnants of the competing Authorities. The Nuke’s continued imprisonment is therefore not a minor technical detail after the battle; it is the surviving condition that prevents the catastrophe from becoming still greater.

Threat, Custody, and the Search for an End

Yuan Guang does not regard containment as a sufficient solution. When Kaguya proposes an Unspeakable Vow in which the Moonlight Sect would refrain from seeking the cube so long as Yuan Guang did everything possible to keep The Nuke contained, he accepts the value of their neutrality but immediately asks whether the prisoner can be destroyed. His aim is permanent resolution rather than indefinite custody. Kaguya explains that every Path contains the seed of its demigod’s destruction, so a friendly nuclear cultivator might eventually provide a means to destroy The Nuke. Such a person would be extraordinarily rare, but Mordiggian confirms that kind and selfless nuclear cultivators do exist.

The possibility of destruction does not remove the danger. The cube’s location creates a continuing chain of pursuit, because anyone who seeks The Nuke must first overcome Yuan Guang and the people protecting him. Hardy proposes a brutally practical disposal method: strapping the cube to an anchor and throwing it into the Oil Sea. Yuan Guang recognizes that such an act would not solve the long-term problem, but promises to keep the cube safe. His guardianship is consequently both defensive and provisional. He must prevent immediate escape and hostile seizure while searching for a way to eliminate the imprisoned power altogether.

The Nuke and the Gun’s Cosmic Ambition

The Nuke belongs to a wider order of demigod powers whose appetites threaten to become principles of reality. Kaguya explains that The Gun, like all cultivators, seeks union with the Dao and wants to become the underlying principle of existence. Its desired universe would make death by firearm not merely possible but inevitable. The Nuke’s presence in the same larger mythology places nuclear destruction beside firearm violence as another path toward world-defining annihilation, while the Cube of Natho functions as the material point at which that danger can be held, contested, and possibly destroyed.

This connection also clarifies why Yuan Guang refuses to treat The Nuke as someone else’s problem. The Gun’s reincarnation cycle grows stronger with each successive Gunsoul host, and Yuan Guang refuses to allow either himself or Revolver to become mere links in that endless chain. His response to The Nuke follows the same ethical movement. After the destruction of Fleshmarket, he has already been forced to confront the consequences of trying to manipulate violence: he had armed warring sects in hopes that they would destroy one another, then had to face the possibility that his actions helped draw The Gun to Fleshmarket. The imprisoned Nuke becomes another test of whether power can be contained without reproducing the devastation it threatens.

Later Status and Narrative Significance

Four years later, The Nuke remains safely contained under the protection of the Long dragon sage, who agreed to safeguard the Cube of Natho until Yuan Guang and his companions found a way to destroy the evil within it. Yuan Guang has turned his attention to other demigods in the meantime. The Gun and The Bow have already been put down, while The Blade, The Biohazard, and The Arson remain free. The hunt for The Truck brings the group into another region, but The Nuke continues to define the background of their mission: one danger has been secured, not erased, while several others still torment the world.

The Nuke’s character function is therefore deliberately paradoxical. It possesses immense agency as a destructive force, yet the evidence presents it mainly through a cube, a prison, and the decisions of those who fear or guard it. The Cube of Natho gives material form to a problem that cannot be solved by victory alone. Manhattan’s death, Arc’s sacrifice, and the defeat of the Yinyang Khan do not end the age of demigod violence; they leave Yuan Guang with a sealed power, a promise to defend it, and the harder obligation to discover whether destruction can finally be prevented rather than merely postponed.