Yuan’s Duel with Gayak

Yuan’s Duel with Gayak is a decisive battle at the Bullet Church in which Yuan survives a demon’s summoned arena and Gayak’s punishing techniques by adapting under pressure. Its victory is not clean or effortless: Yuan’s body is pushed toward collapse, and the fight ends only when he turns Gayak’s own attack into an opening for a Recoil Blast.

The Duel Begins

Gayak arrives through smoke in tattered clothes, dragging the bisected torso of a cyborg before letting it fall and taking a fighting stance. His sadistic presence makes the encounter feel like another threat added to an already dangerous battle. Rather than begin with a straightforward attack, he joins his palms in a rapid sequence of mudras and calls on a protective covenant. Yuan and Gatling Man shoot at him to interrupt the ritual, but Gayak dodges by pivoting and twisting his body in unnatural ways. He completes the incantation and summons Asa-Zakura: mystical mist swirls through the courtyard, and a towering infernal emerges, nearly five meters tall, its massive body draped in an orange robe. The duel has become a fight staged within the power of Gayak’s summon, not simply a contest between two combatants.

The Gatling Fist and the Breaking Point

The fight turns when Yuan draws on Gatling Man’s muscle memory to unleash the Gatling Fist. Recoil-powered bursts drive his fists and elbows in a lightning-fast combination, making his arms work like pistons and keeping Gayak under a relentless barrage. The technique had been used earlier against a Flesh Mansion Sect cultivator, but Gatling Man had lacked the skill to execute it properly. Its speed and strain normally demanded extensive qi-powered machinery from a fighter who had not reached the Third Coil; Yuan’s newly enhanced body can perform it unaided.

At first, speed alone is not enough. Each blow breaks the sound barrier, but Gayak’s palms and gut-tentacles deflect the attacks, turning the barrage into a test of whether Yuan can sustain it long enough to find a way through. When the combination finally slips past Gayak’s defense, Yuan presses the advantage instead of stopping. He drives Gayak back against Asa-Zakura’s Barrier, where the infernal’s protection becomes a wall behind him and the continuing blows leave him no room to escape. Gayak’s skull breaks, his eyes burst, and the repeated shockwaves tear apart his gut-tentacles.

Yuan is close to paying for that pressure with his own body. His arms ache, the metal skin peels from his knuckles under the speed, and cracks spread across Asa-Zakura’s Barrier. His exhaust ports and skin struggle to expel the qi flooding through him; he understands that even a pause could trigger a terrible backlash, while stopping the attack would leave him liable to collapse. He continues until his fist shatters both Gayak’s skull and the Barrier. The momentum carries Yuan into the Bullet Church wreckage, with Gayak’s ruined body thrown among the stones; as the summoned arena’s colored mists disperse, Yuan drops to his knees, limbs spasming. The win has left him in no condition to face Asa-Zakura itself.

Recoil Blast and Final Outcome

The earlier battering does not end the confrontation. In a later close-range exchange, Yuan spins in midair and raises his free hand, coating it in a cylindrical Barrier as he points toward Gayak. Only a few centimeters separate Yuan from the ground and his arm from his opponent; in that cramped position, he recognizes the mistake that has left him exposed. He identifies the answer as Recoil Blast and turns Gayak’s own technique onto a predictable path, setting up the detonation for maximum damage.

The blast throws Yuan to the ground and tears Gayak apart. Compressed air erupts from Yuan’s makeshift cannon, cracking the bones in his fingers, while the impact ignites Gayak’s overheated body and scatters scorched flesh, bones, and viscera across the courtyard. This time nothing remains of Gayak but scraps and boiling blood, and he does not reassemble. Yuan lowers his revolver, coughs black oil from his lungs, and recognizes that he has won. The victory is decisive, but its narrow margin defines the duel: on this battlefield, a single mistake could have meant death.

Significance of the Duel

The encounter sets two forms of cultivated power against each other: Gayak’s covenant-bound summoning and Yuan’s rapid adaptation of techniques, barriers, and bodily force. Its outcome turns on more than strength: the duel’s ritual framework and its improvised counterattack show how knowledge becomes survival when neither a spectacular technique nor an apparent victory can be trusted to end the danger.