A Gun That Outcsses Cultivation

  The m sun cast long shadows over the open field where Emery had set up his test experiment. A dozeal targets stood in the distaheir surfaces already dented from failed tests. His test creation—a refined firearm—rested in his gloved hands. The air smelled of iron, oil, and sweat.

  "Alright," Emery muttered, levelling the gun. His grip tightened as he exhaled slowly.

  "Let's see what you do."

  The trigger clicked. A sharp crack split the air. The bullet struck the target but did little more than splihe wood. Emery frowned.

  Zafira stood behind him, arms crossed, unimpressed. "Not enough power."

  He ighe ent and immediately made adjustments, disassembling the chamber with practiced ease. The other disciples watched with curiosity and a hint of unease. Cultivation had always ruled the battlefield. To see destru born without Qi—it uled them.

  "Again," Emery ordered.

  This time, when he pulled the trigger, the firearm roared. The bullet smmed into the target, obliterating it into splinters. The disciples staggered back, their murmurs turning to uneasy silence.

  A sed shot tore through reinforced steel, sending echoes across the training ground. The sheer force of it left deep cracks iesting wall.

  Zafira and Callum exged gnces—realizing this on could ge warfare forever.

  Zafira, intrigued yet uneasy, asked, "Do you even uand what you've just created?"

  Emery, tightening his grip on the on, whispered, "This is only the beginning."

  ---

  Weeks of trial and error had led to this moment.

  Emery wiped sweat from his brow, standing before the ehat had ed his every waking thought. The mae—an intricate work of gears, pistons, and chambers—had refused to cooperate for too long. Now, with a final modification, he was ready.

  He pulled the lever.

  The engine shuddered before r to life, its metallic groan vibrating through the ground. Steam hissed from the pipes. The gears turrembling with effort. The noise was deafening.

  A, something was wrong.

  Emery narrowed his eyes, watg the mae struggle and shutting down. It was ing fuel at an arming rate, the heat dispersing ineffitly. This was not true power. It was forced. Primitive. Wasteful.

  He realizes: It's not about movement—it's about energy trol.

  He took a step back, rubbing his temples. "No," he muttered.

  "This isn't it."

  Before he could delve further, Zafira strode into the room, arms crossed. "Your materials arrived."

  Emery turned, momentarily snapped out of his thoughts. "What?"

  She gestured to the crates stacked in the er. "The raw materials you wanted for your ''chalkboards''. Enough to cover every damn wall in this workshop once you put them together. You're lucky I agreed to this."

  Emery's eyes lit up with renewed iy. "Finally."

  But the work had only just begun.

  The materials were raw ste, unfinished, uncut. Creating a single usable chalkboard took a full month of trial and error, testing different sanding teiques, reinfort frames, and mounting structures. Callum assisted relentlessly, cutting and refining sbs to match Emery's specifications while Zafira tinued her daily iions, ensuring their work remained fuhe weeks blurred together in sawdust and bor, their hands roughened from the process.

  Finally, after months of gruelling work, stacks of pleted boards filled the workshop, their dark surfaces smooth and pristine. Emery wiped sweat from his brow, taking a step baire the results. "This is it." He turo Zafira, who had been watg with a raised brow.

  "You sell the chalkboards to anyone you want now."

  Zafira smirked, stepping forward. "Sell them, huh?"

  She picked up a piece of chalk and, with exaggerated movements, began drawing on one of the freshly pleted boards.

  Emery squinted, his curiosity quickly turning into horror as the image took shape—his own face, but grotesquely exaggerated. His nose was ically rge, his eyes wide and uneven, his mouth twisted into an absurd grin.

  Callum took one look and burst into ughter, doubling over. "Oh gods, that's—That's awful!"

  Emery's face flushed red. "Zafira, what in the fuck is that supposed to be?!"

  "You," she said ily, stepping baire her masterpiece.

  "What do you think? A fine piece of art, isn't it?"

  Before Emery could argue, some of Zafira's crew, drawn by the noise, wandered in. The moment they saw the drawing, they couldn't tain themselves, chug and egging each other on. Within moments, chalk assed around, and soon the boards were filled with all manner of ridiculous doodles—some of Emery, others of Zafira and Callum in equally exaggerated fashion.

  Emery groaned, ping the bridge of his nose as the workshop desded into chaotic amusement. "I created these for sot for—!"

  Callum wiped a tear from his eye as he slung an arm around Emery's shoulder in a side hug. "Emery, my friend, you've just given the world something eveer than knowledge. You've given us eai."

  Emery, who normally despised physical tact, found himself not minding it—from Callum, at least. He simply sighed in disbelief, rubbing his temples as ughter tinued around him.

  He turo Zafira, expeg her usual smirk, but instead, she gave him a small nod of approval. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but it was there.

  His face heated slightly, and he looked away, "Tch. Whatever.".

  After the celebration died down, Emery found himself aloh Zafira and Callum in the engine room. The two stood behind him as he stepped fripping the lever with tense fingers. "Watch closely," he murmured.

  With a deep breath, he pulled the lever.

  The mae trembled, gears grinding against one another before, at st, a deep, guttural roar filled the room. Steam hissed from the pipes. The engine was alive.

  Callum's mouth parted slightly in awe. "Emery… you did it."

  Zafira exhaled through her nose, arms crossed but visibly impressed. "Not bad."

  A, Emery only frowned.

  He watched the pistons move, the heat escape in wasteful bursts. The engine worked, but it was fwed. Primitive. Ineffit. This wasn't power. This wasn't progress.

  It was still caged fire.

  Zafira g him, noting the deep crease in his brow. "You look disappointed."

  "Because I am," he admitted. "This isn't enough."

  As the mae ed behind them, Zafira found herself lost in thought, staring at the rhythmic pulsing of the pistons. For a moment, she wasn't here—she was somewhere else, in the past.

  Yasmina's voice echoed in her mind.

  "Lay is different. She's reckless, yes, but she doesn't just want to fight—she wants to ge things."

  Zafira had scoffed back then. "ge things? War doesn't ge. You either win or you die."

  Yasmina had only smiled, eyes distant with admiration. "Maybe. But if anyone could do it, it's her."

  She hadn't just meant Lay's idealism—she also meant Lay's brutality.

  Lay didn't simply fight wars; she ehem. There had been a battle, one where defeat was all but certain. Their forces were outnumbered, resources depleted, and morale shattered. A, Lay had turhe tide with sheer ruthlessness.

  She had sent her own troops ahead as bait, luring the enemy into a false sense of victory. Then, uhe cover of night, she burheir supply lines, poisoheir water, a false retreat paths littered with traps. By dawn, the enemy army wasn't just defeated—they were annihited.

  Even Zafira had been shaken by the lengths Lay had goo secure victory.

  "She doesn't just seek to ge things," Yasmina had murmured that night, watg the battlefield from the cliffs above.

  "She's willing to bee something monstrous to do it."

  And now, standing before Emery—another mind ed by progress—Zafira felt that same unease creep into her spine.

  The memory faded, and Zafira's gaze flickered toward Emery.

  Another mad genius chasing the impossible.

  Zafira watched him, arms crossed, unease curling in her gut. Emery had always been intense, but this… this was something else. His posture, the manic gleam in his eyes, the way he muttered equations under his breath like a prayer—it was all too familiar.

  She had seen this before. Lay, before the fall. The Emperor, before the rise.

  The mae still trembled in the background, an inplete beast, loud and unstable. His mind raced through every calcution, every mistake, a he didn't stop—he couldn't.

  She exhaled sharply and reached out, pg a firm hand on his shoulder. "You o take a break. Travel for a bit. Clear your head."

  Emery barely reacted. "No," he said ftly. "I still have a job to do."

  Zafira frowned. "The engine—"

  "—isn't finished." He finally turo her, eyes sharp with unwaveriermination. "You didn't recruit me to rest. You recruited me to give you power. And I will."

  Zafira studied him for a long moment, then slowly withdrew her hand. This wasn't just ambition anymore. This was obsession.

  She exhaled sharply. "You've been w non-stop sihe day we met at that spice shop," she said, her voice edged with something almost resembling . "You don't o indulge in this, Emery. You've already done more than enough."

  Emery let out a breath, running a hand through his disheveled hair. "A, it's not enough." He turned back toward the eill trembling with inefficy. "You recruited me for a reason, Zafira. I have a job to do. And I'm going to finish it."

  She narrowed her eyes. "At what cost?"

  He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he reached out and, in an uncharacteristic move, gripped her wrist—not tightly, but firm enough that she felt it. "I will get it done," he said, his voiwavering.

  Zafira blinked, momentarily taken aback. He was sy, physically unimposing, but in that moment, his grip felt heavier than steel.

  A tense sileretched between them before she clicked her tongue and pulled her hand away.

  "Stubborn idiot."

  A ghost of a smirk flickered across Emery's lips. "Takes oo know one."

  Zafira's expression cracked. Her usual trolled demeanor twisted into something more forceful, her voice rising above even the engine's groaning whir. "I'm not an idiot! You are!"

  Before Emery could react, she closed the distaween them, nearly jabbing a finger into his chest. "You're not like me, Emery. I'm not smart like you, I don't have your damions, but I see what's happening to you. You look like a—" she struggled for the right word, her tone shifting from ao something dangerously close to , "—an animal chasing something it'll never catch."

  Emery exhaled, his gaze steady. Then, without hesitation, he pushed her hand aside and stepped forward. "Follow me."

  "What?"

  "Both of you." His voice was sharper now, ced with something unreadable. He strode toward the far end of the workshop, where t stacks of part and crates of ink were piled high. "You want to know what I've been doing?" He grabbed a handful of papers ahem scatter to the floor. Pages upon pages of theories, sketches, calcutions.

  Callum k, pig one up, his eyes widening at the plex diagrams detailing circuits, energy ste, and something far beyond mere engines. He traced a finger over the intricate notes, muttering under his breath. "You're theorizing how to harness energy itself... transmission without loss... trolled output... Emery, this isn't just an engine anymore. This is something else entirely."

  Zafira picked up another sheet, her sharp eyes sing the lines of calcutions. Her brow furrowed. "Wait a damn sed—this... this was all done by you? Alone?"

  Emery turned away from them, walking toward the humming engine. "I khe engine worked before anyone else did," he admitted, voice low. "When you all left for winter supplies, I stayed behind and raest i. It worked. But it was fwed. Just as I suspected."

  Zafira snapped her gaze to him. "Then why hide it? Why gh all this?" She gestured toward the mountain of papers, the endless scrawlings of one man's genius b on madness.

  Emery finally faced them, his eyes dark with purpose. "Because I realized the truth. This e's not the future. It's a stepping stone. If I stopped here, if I accepted it as 'good enough,' I'd be er than those who g to outdated power." He swept his hand over the sketches again. "I need something greater. Not just motion. Not just heat. I need trol over energy itself."

  Zafira stared at him, fiightening around the papers in her grasp. The sheer scale of what she was holding—what had beeed by one man alone—made her uneasy.

  She exhaled sharply, then scoffed. "You think this makes you powerful? There are cultivators who split mountains with a wave of their hand. Even if you do harness electricity, you're defying the heavens themselves. The Qi, the Dao—cultivators don't follow the principles of sath."

  Emery's head snapped up, eyes burning with frustration. "Bullshit."

  Callum hesitated. "Emery, you've seen what Zafira do. You really think Qi be expined?"

  Emery smmed his fist onto the table. "Every teique, every so-called miracle of cultivation be expined. Qi is nothing more than the body adapting, being strohrough external training and internal refi. Just because no one has mapped it properly doesn't mean it's beyond prehension! It follows rules, just like everything else in this world!" His voice was raw, defiant. "You believe in Qi because you've seen it. I believe in sce because I uand it. And if I uand something, I replicate it—no, improve upon it."

  Zafira narrowed her eyes. "And if you're wrong?"

  Emery's expression darkened. "Then I'll prove myself right."

  Zafira barely had time to react before Emery spun toward the chalkbrabbing a fresh piece of chalk. With swift, precise strokes, he began drawing out diagrams, angles, aions.

  "Your footwork," he started, his voice sharp. "During the fight with that unusual swordsman, you moved at an inhuman speed. To the untrained eye, it looks like magic. But it isn't."

  He sketched a rough diagram of a human figure, marking arrows along the legs a. "You pivoted at a precise forty-two-degree ao serve momentum while accelerating forward. The force exerted on the ground—bined with the low-friovement of your Qi-enhanced muscles—allowed you to bypass normal biological limitations. It's on's Third Law in a. Every step you took transferred energy effitly, allowing expoial acceleration."

  Zafira narrowed her eyes but said nothing.

  Visibly frustrated, Emery ched his fists. "Fine," he snapped. "I'll show you."

  Before she could protest, he took a step back, adjusting his stance. "t your cloternally," he instructed, his voice sharp. "Each time I move, mark the seds."

  Zafira hesitated, something in her gut tellio stop him. "Emery, you're not a cultivator. If you push yourself—"

  "Just t," he interrupted. Without waiting for approval, he unched himself forward, mimig the exaents he had analyzed from her fight.

  His form wasn't as fluid, nor was his speed nearly as fast, but the meics were fwless. His feet struck the ground at precise angles, his weight shifting at calcuted intervals. His momentum carried him forward in near-perfect replication of her teique—albeit slower, human, and raw.

  Zafira watched, her lips parting slightly. He's actually doing it.

  She had assumed his theories were just that—theories. But here he was, exeg them without Qi, relying solely on physics, muscle trol, and calcuted force.

  Callum looked between them, stunned. "Zafira... he's proving yht by proving y."

  Emery skidded to a halt, breathing heavily but triumphant. He turo Zafira, sweat dripping from his brow. "Your teique works because of physiot magiot divine energy. Sce."

  Zafira, for once, had nothing to say.

  Emery wasn't dohen, the ssh."

  He drew another diagram, this time a motion arc of her sword. "Your bde cut through a solid steel spear. That should be impossible—unless you maniputed kiiergy upon impact. The speed of your ssh—let's approximate it to 80 m/s—bined with the trated force output of your muscles enhahrough Qi, increased the pressure per square inch of the bde's edge. By fog all energy into a single focal point, the target's structural iy was overwhelmed in an instant. The result? A seamless cut."

  Callum slowly exhaled, abs every word. "He's... he's right."

  Zafira, arms crossed, said nothing, but her lips pressed into a thin line. She had felt the teique, executed it instinctively, but never once had she thought of it in mathematical terms. A—everything he said made perfect sense.

  Emery turo her, meeting her gaze.

  Without warning, he grabbed a thick tree branch that had bee he entrance. Callum barely had time to react to dodge before Emery lu him, using the same calcuted movement principles he'd just described. The arc of his strike mirrored Zafira's teique—precise angles, trolled force, and minimal wasted motion.

  As the branch ected with the ground at a specifigle, a sharp crack echoed through the room. The wood split perfectly down the middle, both halves falling symmetrically apart. Emery stepped back, breathing heavily, watg as the splintered pieces settled.

  "See?" His voice was steady, but his eyes burned with iy. "By trolling the exact force distribution and impact vector, I created a break—no jagged edges, no uneven split. Your teique works because of physiot magiot divine energy. Sce."

  Zafira's eyes widened slightly. He hadn't moved nearly as fast as she could, but there was no denying it—he had replicated the meics of her teique, step by step, without Qi.

  Breathing heavily, Emery straightened. "See? I don't need Qi to perform your teiques. Given enough time, I could match them—surpass them, even."

  His frustration boiled over, his fists g at his sides. "I'm so fug sick of this Qi nonsense! Every time, people act like it's some divine, untouchable force. But it's not! It follows rules—it has to! If Qi masters split mountains, then there is a goddamn reason for it. And I'll find it."

  For a long moment, Zafira simply stared at him, her unease growing.

  This wasn't just about uanding Qi anymore.

  This was Emery proving he could surpass it.

  Still panting, Emery pointed a trembling fi Zafira, his entire body drenched i from exertion. "I will harness electricity," he decred, his voice hoarse but unwavering. "I will give humanity light. I will light up this world and revolutio."

  Zafira's breath hitched as she studied him. His sweat-soaked clothes g to his wiry frame, his muscles trembling from strain. His normally pale skin was flushed from exertion, streaked with grime and sweat. His silver-grey eyes, sharp and calg, burned with a manitensity, their usual glint of curiosity now overshadowed by raw obsession. Strands of his dark brown hair, usually ly kept, g messily to his forehead, further adding to the image of a maering on the edge of brilliand madness. His usually sharp eyes burned with something deeper—an obsession that teetered between brilliand madness. Even knowing he had no Qi, she couldn't shake the unease crawling up her spine.

  He shouldn't be capable of this. A, he was.

  Her fingers curled slightly at her sides. For the first time, Zafira found herself w if Emery wasn't rejeg Qi—but proving it through another path. If he could achieve this much without it, then what would happen if he truly did find the ao everything?

  Before she could dwell ohought further, she moved. In a blur, her fingers pressed against the precise Qi points on Emery's body, cutting off his movement in an instant.

  Emery staggered, his knees bug as he fought against the sudden wave of exhaustion. "Damn it—!" he cursed, gring up at her. "You used that on me again?! I hate that!"

  Zafira exhaled, steadying herself. "I know," she murmured. "I'm sorry. But you o rest."

  She turo Callum, her tone leaving no room fument. "Make sure he sleeps. He's done enough."

  Callum hesitated but nodded, moving to support Emery before he could colpse pletely.

  Zafira took o look at the chaotic mess of papers scattered across the floor. With careful hands, she began stag them ly, her fingers brushing over the endless calcutions, sketches, and theories.

  How do I support him? she wondered. Even as he teetered on the edge of obsession, she found herself unwilling to let him fall alone.

  Something about this reminded her of years ago—when she had trained under Master Li Ru, a swordsman whose methods had been nothing short of ruthless. She had watched him refine his teiques, sharpening them over and over with an almost inhuman iy, cutting down anything that stood in his way.

  And now, Emery was doing the same. But his sword was knowledge, and his battlefield was his own limits.