Yuan–Gayak

Yuan Guang–Gayak is a brief but consequential recruitment negotiation: Gayak tries to hire Yuan Guang to fight the Metallists, while Yuan Guang tests whether the Flesh Mansion Sect can offer enough to justify his involvement. The exchange brings Yuan Guang’s pursuit of strength and his responsibility for Holster into direct contact with the sect’s interest in protecting its commercial route through Fleshmarket. It ends not in an alliance, but in an unresolved choice.

Encounter and Terms

Gayak identifies himself as a disciple of the Flesh Mansion Sect and says he has heard that Yuan Guang arrived aboard the large spirit-train parked outside Fleshmarket. He recognizes Yuan Guang as a Gunsoul, not a pretender, and infers that Yuan Guang’s questions about sect orders mean he is not already attached to one. His opening is practical: he wants a gun to shoot at the Metallists for a few days. The spirit-train can remain parked; the proposed work is to kill, get paid, and leave.

Yuan Guang draws a firm boundary before discussing terms. He is not available for slave runs, an answer that matters given the Flesh Mansion Sect’s trade and its treatment of Holster. But he does not reject the military contract outright. Instead, he asks what Gayak will provide. Gayak names guns, ammunition, clean pills, and a pardon for Yuan Guang’s theft. The offer is designed to make service attractive not simply as paid violence, but as a way to obtain supplies and cultivation resources.

The Offer and Its Stakes

Yuan Guang’s interest in pills has a specific context. He was born without the potential for a qi core and once hoped that service to a sect might earn him a spirit pill, only to find that sects generally reserved scarce pills for advancing established disciples. By the time he meets Gayak, he has become a First Coil cultivator, but he remains intent on gaining enough strength to pursue Slash. A Third Coil pill could improve his chances in that future confrontation, making Gayak’s offer more than a routine fee.

The other inducement concerns Holster. Her transformation into a Human Pillar has left her core storing qi rather than returning it to strengthen her body, effectively making her a living battery and blocking her progress toward the Second Coil. Gayak claims that the Metallists lack the knowledge and techniques to fix her core, whereas the Flesh Mansion Sect can perform the operation. He is willing to swear an Unspeakable Vow to support the claim, a commitment bound to the cultivator’s core and carrying the loss of the right to cultivate for anyone who breaks it. The proposed cure therefore puts Holster’s long-term safety on the table, but only through an offer from the very sect whose practices make Yuan Guang distrust it.

A Bargain Yuan Guang Cannot Settle

Yuan Guang does not treat Gayak’s assurances as proof that the Flesh Mansion Sect has become trustworthy. The possibility of curing Holster is tempting because it could prevent others from exploiting her, and the promised pill could help Yuan Guang pursue his revenge. Against those benefits stands the cost of aiding the sect. Fleshmarket is a major hub for the slave trade across the Fanged Coast, and Yuan Guang understands that damage to the city would disrupt the Flesh Mansion Sect’s regional operations. Gayak likewise frames the battle in terms of that damage: a slower victory means more harm to Fleshmarket, even if the sect ultimately wins.

That calculation sharpens the moral conflict in the negotiation. Yuan Guang could gain personal power and secure a possible remedy for Holster while helping preserve a trade route built on enslavement. He says he needs time to think rather than accepting Gayak’s offer. Gayak tells him to decide quickly, points him toward the Flesh Volcano in the city center, and warns that joining the Metallists would mean death. Yuan Guang challenges the warning as a threat, but the exchange still produces no agreement.

Parting Without an Alliance

Gayak leaves after urging Yuan Guang to choose carefully and expressing the hope that they might meet as friends. He also describes the Path of the Gun as a process of weeding out the weak, an observation that echoes Yuan Guang’s own history of being treated as an expendable Scrap before becoming a cultivator. Yet the shared language of guns and strength does not erase the difference between them: Gayak is recruiting for a sect whose slave trade Yuan Guang finds sickening, while Yuan Guang is considering the offer chiefly through the needs of Holster and his pursuit of power against Slash.

The encounter establishes Gayak as a negotiator who combines a concrete military request with personal inducements, an oath-backed promise, and pressure about the cost of delay. For Yuan Guang, it is a test of whether a compromised bargain can serve protective and personal ends without making him an ally of the system he opposes. Because he leaves the decision open, their relationship remains defined by the recruitment attempt rather than by a settled partnership.