Yuan Guang–Gun relationship

Yuan Guang’s relationship with The Gun culminates not in the weapon’s destruction but in a reversal of mastery: Yuan becomes the Gunman, with The Gun incorporated into his Path and its presence quelled. That ending answers a conflict shaped by the difference between being made into an instrument of violence and choosing what power is for.

From Scrap to Cultivator

Yuan’s starting point is a life marked by exclusion from cultivation. Born without the potential for a qi core, he understood himself as one of the Scraps who labored for cultivators. He had once hoped service to a sect might earn him a spirit pill, but the elders’ preference for younger candidates left him behind. This history matters to his later relationship with The Gun: power is not an inheritance he takes for granted, but something he has struggled to acquire in a world that treated his lack of talent as a verdict on his worth.

After becoming a cultivator, Yuan identifies himself as First Coil and gives his zodiac sign as Yang Metal Ox. The admission is reluctant, not triumphant. His path forward is already entangled with violence and the desire for strength, but The Gun’s eventual presence will force a further question: whether gaining power means becoming a more effective killer, or gaining the capacity to protect others from killing.

The Gun’s Violence and Yuan’s Complicity

The Gun announces its approach to Fleshmarket through an immense barrage. Millions of qi-charged bullets fall over the city, accompanied by thunderclouds of gunsmoke. Yuan and Revolver each raise a Barrier; the two layered domes are suited to an attack they instinctively understand. For Yuan, the assault makes The Gun’s power a direct physical threat, one that can only be met by taking shelter against the same kind of force his own journey has taught him to wield.

The destruction also becomes a source of moral uncertainty. Yuan had hoped to use techniques Arc taught him to address Fleshmarket’s ammunition shortage and thereby encourage its warring sects to destroy one another. When Arc confronts him with what that plan accomplished, he cannot deny its purpose: he had accepted casualties in the hope that the sects would slaughter each other. He wonders whether his actions helped draw The Gun to Fleshmarket, but the evidence does not settle that question. His immediate response is not self-exoneration; he admits that he had not expected matters to become so terrible. The Gun is therefore linked in Yuan’s story not only to overwhelming violence, but also to the consequences of his own attempts to manipulate violence for revenge.

Revolver and the Burden of the Curse

Yuan’s concern about The Gun becomes personal through Revolver. He has seen his fellow Gunsoul struggle against the bloodlust overcoming him, and remembers that Revolver saved his life twice, including during the confrontation with The Gun. Yuan regards that kindness as a debt he must repay. Rather than abandoning Revolver to the curse, he resolves to find a way to free him, even if the search delays Yuan’s own revenge.

Later, Revolver describes following a violence he cannot understand back to its source, then killing the people he finds. The former fighter who once freed slaves now kills masters and slaves alike; at the barrel’s end, Scraps and cultivators appear indistinguishable. His account makes the curse’s danger concrete: a weapon may retain aim and purpose while losing the moral distinctions that once guided its bearer. Yuan’s apology acknowledges the weight of this transformation. The bond between the two Gunsouls gives Yuan a reason to seek an answer to The Gun’s power beyond simply defeating whoever stands in his way.

The Gun Becomes Part of the Gunman

Yuan’s transformation is marked by a gunshot in his soul, after which the Gunman triggers back to life. He awakens in his Gun Demon Incarnation form, now healed, with miniguns and cannons for arms, thrusters on his back, and a smoking cannon on his forehead. The decisive change is not merely his return in a formidable body: the form no longer consumes his qi. His soul has passed beyond the need for a human-shaped safety vessel.

Revolver notices the halo of outward-pointing barrels above Yuan and senses that The Gun is inside him, but altered, as if its safety were on. Yuan confirms both parts of that perception: The Gun is part of him, but he is greater than it. He names himself the Gunman. When Revolver calls this the killing of The Gun, Yuan corrects him. The Gun will not disappear while firearms continue to kill; Yuan has mastered it and made it a tool for the Gunman to wield. The difference is fundamental. The old relation made the bearer subject to The Gun’s violence; the new one places that force within a Path Yuan controls.

Significance of the Relationship

Kaguya frames the distinction through the purpose behind violence: a killer acts with nothing to lose, while a warrior fights because there is something to protect. Her words illuminate the terms of Yuan’s final relationship with The Gun. His victory does not abolish the weapon or promise an end to violence. Instead, the power that once threatened to consume its bearers becomes subject to a purpose beyond killing. Yuan’s achievement is mastery without denial: The Gun remains, but it no longer determines who he is or what he must do.