Yuan Guang–Gatling Man relationship

Yuan Guang’s relationship with Gatling Man is a direct contest between a newly advancing Gunsoul and a heavily armed cyborg who has marked him for death. Their conflict begins with reciprocal intent to attack, but its decisive stakes emerge when Yuan recognizes that the power he needs to progress is held inside Gatling Man. Yuan ultimately kills him, takes his bullet-core, and turns the victory into a breakthrough at the Third Coil of Infinity.

The Opponents and Their Stakes

Gatling Man enters the confrontation as a formidable Metallist cyborg. His reinforced shoulders carry rocket launchers and other cannon weapons, while his hands wield a gatling gun longer than an adult man. His armor is scored by deep scars and burn marks, signs of damage that do nothing to diminish the impression of strength. Yuan, by comparison, faces him with a submachine gun and the resources of a Gunsoul still learning how to contend with opponents of this scale.

Their hostility is explicit from their first exchange. Gatling Man tells Yuan that his arrival saves him the trouble of hunting him down; Yuan makes clear that he has come with the same intention. Neither treats the meeting as a misunderstanding or a negotiation. They raise their weapons, ready to fire, and then both suddenly freeze after sensing something. That interruption delays their immediate clash, but it does not erase the mutual threat already established between them.

A Fight Within a Larger Battle

When the fighting resumes, the encounter is not a sealed duel. Gatling Man opens fire at Gayak, and Yuan uses the opening to attack Gatling Man with both of his weapons. Gayak strikes the ground to raise a Barrier against the hail of bullets, while the Saint Heckler and Kalash Angel also direct their fire at Gatling Man. Their attacks reveal the limits of ordinary force against his metal body: bullets bounce from his qi-empowered armor or pass through him without effect.

The surrounding battle clarifies Yuan’s immediate priority. He judges that defeating Gayak is beyond their reach for now, even if he and Gatling Man were to cooperate, and Gatling Man shows no willingness to form such a temporary truce. Yuan instead fixes on Gatling Man as the opponent whose defeat could change his own prospects. The conflict is therefore shaped by two pressures at once: survival amid a multi-sided fight and Yuan’s need to seize a specific source of power.

Finding the Hidden Core

Gatling Man’s metal body makes that objective difficult. His iron roots extend through his gears and servos, creating a dense network of qi that obscures his bullet-core. Yuan’s experience surviving Moonburns has improved his perception of qi’s movement, and he studies the way Gatling Man’s energy behaves rather than relying on firepower alone. He notices that the core becomes traceable when Gatling Man uses the Recoil Fist, a technique that sends a pulse of qi from the bullet-core through a limb.

Yuan waits until Gatling Man uses the technique enough times for its energy path to expose a small node at the left side of his waist. The discovery gives Yuan a concrete target, but reaching it requires spending more qi after he has already expended much of his strength. He circles toward Gatling Man’s left side and commits to an all-or-nothing attack. As Gatling Man pivots to meet him with a haymaker, Yuan uses Black Haze to make the blow strike smoke instead of his shoulder, opening the way to the exposed target.

The Core and the Breakthrough

Gatling Man tries to evade with a Recoil Shockwave, but Yuan’s momentum carries his fist through the cyborg’s armor and into the machinery beneath it. Yuan reaches a pulsating organ described as a lead heart, beating with smoke and qi. Gatling Man catches Yuan by the head in a desperate counterattack; Yuan cannot tell whether he is trying to rip out Yuan’s bullet-core or drag him into Nowhere. Before Gatling Man can finish threatening him, Yuan pulls the enemy’s core from his body.

The object Yuan takes is a spent 7.62×51mm seed threaded with metal roots. He swallows it before Gatling Man’s mechanical corpse hits the ground, making the victory an act of absorption as well as killing. Foreign qi then surges through Yuan. His metal roots become circuits that restructure his flesh with lead and iron, and he crosses the Third Coil of Infinity. Gatling Man’s defeat thus marks a sharp reversal in their struggle: the cyborg who set out to hunt Yuan becomes the source of the advancement that makes Yuan stronger.

Meaning of the Rivalry

The confrontation turns on a contrast between armament and insight. Gatling Man’s arsenal and reinforced frame make him an overwhelming physical threat, but his effort to conceal his core through the spread of qi also creates a pattern Yuan can study. Yuan does not prevail by overpowering the cyborg at range; he observes the Recoil Fist, identifies the core’s location, and risks his remaining strength to reach it.

Their relationship is brief but consequential. Gatling Man’s declared intention to hunt Yuan establishes an enemy, while Yuan’s decision to target him for the power needed to advance makes the encounter more than a defensive survival. By consuming Gatling Man’s core, Yuan converts their antagonism into a direct stage in his cultivation: the opponent’s death supplies the force behind his passage into the Third Coil of Infinity.