Yuan Guang’s Spirit-Train Battle with the Rad-Hag

Yuan Guang’s Spirit-Train Battle with the Rad-Hag is a turning point in which an attempted escape becomes an overwhelming counterattack. Pursued through the poisoned Thunderlands by a mobile army and its grotesque spirit-train, Yuan Guang draws on the qi circulating through his own train to fire a phantom bullet of unprecedented force. The projectile wrecks the pursuing locomotive and its crew, while the later purification of the Rad-Hag separates the defeat of her war machine from the cleansing of the corrupted caretaker spirit behind it.

Causes and Stakes

The danger announced itself as a vast dust storm on the route through the Thunderlands. Yuan Guang judged that it concealed at least thirty vehicles, perhaps more, each likely carrying monsters. One crew boarding the spirit-train would already have been a serious threat; an entire war party led by the Rad-Hag made a direct confrontation appear suicidal. Holster was asleep, so Yuan Guang woke her as the pursuers closed in.

Holster joined her hands in silent prayer, and the spirit-train answered with a droning whistle. Its wheels roared as it gathered speed, racing past metal pillars and ancient ruins and through the Thunderlands. The train outdistanced most of the storm, but one great cloud continued to gain on them. Yuan could see a powerful light within it, though the darkness hid its source. He estimated that they had perhaps half an hour before the pursuers caught up, too little time to escape the region. Even the possibility of uncoupling the wagons was uncertain: reducing the locomotive’s load might make it faster, but Yuan did not know whether separating the train would cripple it.

The Pursuit Becomes a Battle

A voice over the radio threatened to take both Holster and Yuan Guang. At its direction, Yuan looked back and saw the pursuer emerge from the storm, riding trails of lightning. From a distance it resembled another spirit-train, but its construction fused iron and steel with black, rubbery flesh. Centideads crawled through that flesh; a snarling maw occupied the locomotive’s front, beneath a three-lobed red eye that served as its headlight. Behind it rose a tiered stronghold of stone, brass pipes, and smoking furnaces, with Oni warriors armed with bows, spears, and rifles posted at its windows and roofs. It was a military base on wheels. Although it was not much faster than Yuan Guang’s train, it steadily gained ground.

Yuan Guang refused to surrender. He disabled the radio and gave Holster the collar bomb and its detonator, instructing her to go to the front and place it at the junction between the locomotive and the wagons. If the Oni boarded, they would have to detach the wagons by force. This was not a confident plan for victory but preparation for the train’s possible capture: Yuan Guang intended to fight rather than yield, while trying to preserve Holster’s chance of escape.

The Phantom Bullet

As the enemy drew near enough for its crew to fire, Yuan Guang found a way to make the train itself part of his weapon. Its qi traveled clockwise along its length, spreading from the locomotive and turning in the final wagon. Positioned directly in this current, his charged phantom bullets could draw power from the train’s circulation. The Feng Shui arrangement poured far more energy into his bullet-core than he could generate alone, and the force ran onward into his revolver. The weapon grew hot in his hands; the recoil threatened to wrench it away, so he used Elemental Infusion to turn his hands to metal and strengthen his grip.

The Oni’s shots repeatedly missed in the night, but the gap was closing. Yuan Guang entered the focused state in which his body and revolver became one in his perception, and the outside world narrowed to the target beyond the barrel. He held his breath, exhaled softly, and fired. The recoil was so violent that the revolver’s chamber exploded between his iron hands. Red-hot fragments flew across the wagon; Yuan Guang’s metal body deflected them, while Holster ducked behind him. The shockwave shook the wagon to its foundations.

The bullet crossed the Thunderlands like a crimson meteor, its fire bright enough to eclipse the enemy train’s headlamp. It struck the locomotive’s face, burst the red eye in blood and oil, and left a human-wide crater. Rather than stopping at the impact, the projectile pierced the diseased flesh, drove through the gears, and ravaged the engine. Explosions followed its path through the machine, tearing apart the Oni crew and throwing steel walls and debris across the surrounding sand. Finally, the locomotive lost its balance, its wheels veered off the lightning tracks, and the immense vehicle crashed from the rails. The fall shook the Thunderlands and sent a tide of sand across the horizon.

Aftermath and Significance

Yuan Guang and Holster could only stare at the destruction. Pieces of Yuan Guang’s own revolver lay at his feet. He had expected to slow the enemy or, at most, derail it; instead, the shot annihilated the spirit-train and the army carried on its back. The scale of the result depended on the train’s qi infrastructure: Revolver’s bullets had once blasted dunes apart without such support, while Yuan Guang needed the current of an entire spirit-train to reach comparable power. The battle therefore demonstrates both the reach of his technique and its dependence on borrowed energy—and ends with his weapon shattered by the recoil of the attack that saved them.

The wrecking of the locomotive did not itself purify the Rad-Hag. In the confrontation’s aftermath, Holster unraveled the caretaker spirit’s corrupted form, guiding its untainted energies into the spirit-train’s circulation while isolating the rot in its heart. The Rad-Hag shrank toward human size, and her disfigured face briefly recovered the appearance she had before radiation poisoned the Thunderlands. Centideads fell away and died without their host; the tumors and corroded parts of her spirit could not restore her. Her body turned to dust, her qi returned to the Dao, and a shapeless mass of pallid flesh, tumors, and corrupted qi remained. The sequence gives the battle two distinct outcomes: Yuan Guang breaks the pursuing force through an immense, train-powered shot, and Holster later confronts the land’s corruption by separating and purifying the caretaker spirit’s remaining energies.