Yuan–Gun Archrivalry

Yuan Guang’s archrivalry with The Gun begins as a sentence handed down by the Gunsoul cycle and ends in Yuan’s choice to destroy that cycle. The Gun comes for him when his revenge is complete, but the conflict becomes more than a compulsory duel: it threatens Yuan’s companions, binds him to the fate of Revolver, and forces him to decide what power is worth sacrificing. Yuan ultimately kills The Gun with his own bullet-core, ending its calamity and dying in the act; his later return as the Gunman transforms their opposition into a power he has mastered rather than a curse that commands him.

Unequal Beginnings

Yuan’s conflict with The Gun is not rooted in a shared history from childhood. Before he became a Gunsoul, Yuan was one of the many people born without the potential to form a qi core. He had once hoped service to a sect might earn him a spirit pill, but sects generally reserved such scarce resources for advancing existing disciples. When a sect had to choose whom to elevate after losing disciples, it chose local children over Yuan, whom its elders considered too old to train. That exclusion gives his eventual power a particular weight: Yuan begins as someone the cultivator order has already judged unworthy of advancement.

Even after becoming a cultivator, he identifies himself with hesitation. Asked to choose between Scrap and cultivator, Yuan answers cultivator and names his rank as First Coil, but feels ashamed rather than triumphant. His ascent does not erase the social identity he has carried or make power an uncomplicated prize. Against this background, The Gun is not simply a stronger opponent. It is a force capable of turning the lives of Gunsouls, and the suffering of the wider world, into an inescapable cycle of violence.

A Rivalry Written into the Gunsoul Cycle

The Gun’s first great devastation reaches Yuan at Fleshmarket. It announces its arrival with a rain of bullets, millions of qi-charged projectiles falling over the settlement. Yuan and Revolver form separate Barriers and shelter beneath their defenses. The attack makes The Gun’s power concrete: it does not need to face Yuan in a private duel to endanger him, his mentor, or everyone caught beneath its bombardment.

The destruction also implicates Yuan in the events that have drawn The Gun there. He had planned to use techniques he learned from Arc to ease Fleshmarket’s ammunition shortage, hoping the warring sects would destroy one another. When Arc confronts him with the consequences, Yuan cannot deny that he had accepted mass casualties as part of the plan. He wonders whether his actions helped lure The Gun to Fleshmarket. His rivalry therefore carries guilt as well as resistance: he is fighting the force that devastates the world while reckoning with his own part in making violence spread.

Revolver’s fate makes the conflict personal. Yuan has seen Revolver struggle against the bloodlust taking hold of him, and remembers that Revolver saved his life twice, including during the confrontation with The Gun. Yuan refuses to abandon a friend who showed him unconditional kindness. He resolves to find a way to free Revolver from the curse, even if pursuing that goal delays his own revenge. The Gun’s cycle threatens not only to kill its challenger but to make a Gunsoul’s existence an instrument of further killing.

The Pursuit and the Threat to Hope

Kaguya explains the rule governing the confrontation: once a Gunsoul has completed the quest for which he rose from the dead, The Gun comes to challenge him. Yuan recognizes the sequence in his own life. After he kills Slash, The Gun has allowed him time and power to settle his score, but that reprieve was part of a bargain whose price is now due. The rivalry is thus both intimate and impersonal: The Gun is Yuan’s pursuer, yet their duel is also a recurring mechanism that determines whether a Gunsoul kills The Gun or is killed by it.

When The Gun catches up with Yuan’s group in the wasteland, Yuan initially wonders why it strikes the locomotive instead of attacking him directly. The possibility that it intends to immobilize the train gives way to a more personal fear: The Gun wants to kill his hope. Yuan understands that Holster and Orient are in danger. Protecting them is no longer separate from confronting his rival; the threat to his companions is part of the way The Gun tries to break him.

Yuan’s purpose in the final confrontation remains tied to Revolver. He resolves to drag Revolver’s soul out of The Gun and enters Gun Demon Incarnation to fight. The scale of the struggle is stark: Yuan is scarcely larger than a toy beside his pursuer, but refuses to let that disparity determine the outcome. His aim is not merely to survive the duel. He wants to end the force that has taken his friend and perpetuates the violence that has defined their lives.

The Final Shot and Its Aftermath

At the decisive moment, Yuan realizes that he already possesses what victory requires: the bullet and the gun. He understands both the cost and the singular opportunity. With only enough qi for one shot, he transforms again into Gun Demon Incarnation, declares his challenge to The Gun, and fires his own bullet-core at it. The Gun dies. Its cry, for once, carries fear rather than the malice of hunger or the satisfaction of victory.

Yuan feels the curse break at the final impact. His core shatters against The Gun’s spirit, The Gun is annihilated, and Revolver’s soul remains after Yuan pulls it through death’s door. Yuan accepts the exchange as a life for a life. He has died saving his friend, prevented The Gun from continuing its gun-blazing calamity, and fulfilled Arc’s final wish. His death is not a victory without cost; it is the price by which the cycle is brought to its destined completion.

The ending nevertheless changes the shape of the rivalry. Yuan returns with a bullet-core empowered by qi from across the Unmade World. Revolver senses The Gun’s presence inside him, but subdued, as though its safety has been engaged. Yuan says The Gun is part of him, but that he is greater now: he is the Gunman. A familiar voice confirms that he has mastered the Gun Path. The former Scrap who once felt ashamed to call himself a cultivator has not merely defeated an overpowering enemy; he has survived the curse’s end and made its power answer to him.