Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist

Chapter 899: Other Sects Take The Initiative

While Wang Jian orchestrated his own private conquests within the secluded, moonlit chambers of his valley, the world he had set ablaze with his actions was beginning to burn. The ripples from the slaughter at Serpent’s Pass were no longer subtle tremors; they were a tidal wave of political maneuvering and righteous fury, about to crash upon the shores of the entire State of Yue.

The first, and most devastating, blow was not one of steel, but of words.

The State Capital, a magnificent, sprawling metropolis where cultivators and mortals coexisted in a delicate, vibrant dance, was alive with its usual morning energy. Merchants hawked their wares in the bustling Grand Market, their voices a chaotic symphony of haggling and laughter. Young disciples from a hundred different sects, large and small, sparred good-naturedly in the public training grounds, their shouts and the clash of their weapons a familiar, comforting sound. The air hummed with the ambient spiritual energy of a thousand active formations, a testament to the city’s power and prosperity.

It was a perfectly ordinary day.

Until the sky spoke.

It began without warning. A faint, golden shimmer appeared high in the heavens, a ripple in the fabric of the sky itself. Then another, and another, dozens of them, spreading out until they formed a vast, invisible net that covered the entire capital. The chaotic din of the city faltered, then died completely. A million heads, mortal and cultivator alike, turned upwards, their faces a mixture of confusion, awe, and a dawning, primal fear.

Then, the voice came.

It was not a shout. It was a presence. A voice imbued with the profound, soul-shaking power of a Core Formation master, a voice that resonated not in the ears, but directly in the mind of every living being within the city’s walls. It was a voice of pure, unadulterated righteousness, a voice that dripped with charisma and a chilling, absolute conviction.

It was the voice of Elder Jiao Long of the Azure Sword Clan.

”Cultivators of Yue! Sons and daughters of this great and prosperous State!” the voice boomed, seeming to come from all directions at once. ”I, Jiao Long, an Elder of the Azure Sword Clan, speak to you today not as a swordsman, but as a guardian. A guardian of justice, of fairness, and of the very future of our cultivation world!”

In a tavern near the market, a group of rogue Qi Condensation cultivators, their cups of spirit wine halfway to their lips, froze, their rough-hewn faces pale with shock. In the opulent headquarters of the Golden Coin Merchant Guild, a shrewd Foundation Establishment Deacon stopped his abacus, his sharp eyes narrowing in calculation. In a dusty, hidden alley, a demonic cultivator, cloaked and hooded, instinctively tensed, ready to flee at this sudden, overwhelming display of righteous power.

”For centuries,” the voice continued, its tone shifting to one of solemn, righteous anger, ”our State has labored under the shadow of a great injustice. A sickness of the soul that has stifled the growth of countless talented individuals and weakened our collective strength. I speak of the Sectarian Hegemony of the Mystic Peak Sect!”

The name, spoken with such venom, sent a shockwave of murmurs through the now silent city.

”They, who were blessed with the stewardship of the State’s most vital strategic resource—the celestial Star-Vein Iron—have abused their sacred trust! They have hoarded this lifeblood of our world, this key to crafting powerful spirit artifacts and defensive arrays, for themselves! They have treated it not as a state asset, but as their own private treasury, selling mere scraps to the rest of us at exorbitant, soul-crushing prices!”

’Sectarian Hegemony?’ thought a grizzled, old rogue cultivator, his hand instinctively going to the heavily patched storage pouch at his waist. He was a man who had scraped and fought for every spirit stone he had ever owned. ’A strong term. But... damn it all, not an untrue one. How many times have I been forced to pay Mystic Peak’s extortionate prices for even a crumb of refining material? How many promising young blacksmiths have I seen give up their dreams because they could not afford the materials to practice their craft?’

The voice of Jiao Long seemed to speak directly to the resentments that had been simmering in the hearts of the common cultivators for decades.

”They have grown fat and complacent behind their mountain walls, their coffers overflowing with our spirit stones, while the rest of us struggle! While smaller sects lack the resources to arm their disciples properly! While our State’s collective ability to defend against the ever-present threat of demonic cultivators and monstrous beasts has been crippled by their greed!”

The proclamation was a masterpiece of political manipulation. It took a brutal, dishonorable ambush and reframed it, not as an act of theft, but as an act of liberation.

”And so,” the voice declared, its righteous fury reaching a crescendo, ”we, the Azure Sword Clan, alongside our honorable allies from the Hundred Beast Manor, the Crimson Pill Sect, and the Silent Puppet Guild, took action! We have conducted a Righteous Enforcement Action! We have broken the shackles of Mystic Peak’s tyranny! We have liberated the Star-Vein Iron, not for ourselves, but for all of you!”

A gasp of collective shock rippled through the city. They had attacked the Mystic Peak Sect? And won? It was an almost unbelievable thought.

In a quiet courtyard, two young deacons from the small ’Green Bamboo Sword Sect’ exchanged a look, their eyes wide with a dawning, greedy excitement.

’Liberated?’ one of them thought. ’Does that mean...?’

Jiao Long’s voice answered their unspoken question, his words a brilliant, irresistible lure.

”To this end, we hereby announce the formation of the Righteous Yue Alliance! An alliance of sects, big and small, dedicated to fairness, cooperation, and the collective prosperity of our State! And as our first act, we declare that the liberated Star-Vein Iron will be distributed, at cost, to any and all sects who join our noble cause!”

The effect was instantaneous. It was an explosion of hope and opportunity in the hearts of a thousand struggling cultivators. At cost! It was a dream come to life.

”No more will the path of cultivation be barred by the greed of a single, hegemonic power!” the voice boomed, its final words a clarion call to arms. ”Join us! Join the Righteous Yue Alliance! And together, we will forge a new, brighter, and more prosperous future for the State of Yue!”

The voice faded. The golden shimmers in the sky vanished. But the silence that followed was different. It was a silence filled with a million racing thoughts, with the birth of a thousand new ambitions.

Then, the murmurs began.

”Did you hear that? At cost!”

”The Azure Sword Clan... they always were the boldest.”

”But to attack the Mystic Peak Sect... that is a declaration of war!”

”A war against a tyrant is not a war; it is a revolution!” a young, idealistic disciple declared passionately.

The public narrative, in the space of a single, masterfully delivered speech, had been seized. The Mystic Peak Sect, for centuries the revered, untouchable leader of the righteous path, had been branded, in the court of public opinion, as a greedy, oppressive villain.

And the Righteous Yue Alliance, born from an act of bloody treachery, was now seen by many as a beacon of hope.

Deep within the misty, cloud-shrouded peaks of the Mystic Peak Sect, the mood was not one of hope. It was one of pure, incandescent rage.

The Grand Elder’s Hall was a cavern of hewn black stone, so vast that the flickering spirit flames in the high braziers seemed like distant, lonely stars. The shadows clung to the colossal pillars like ancient grievances, and the very air was heavy, thick with the crushing weight of centuries of power and the clashing spiritual auras of the Core Formation masters assembled within.

These were the true rulers of the sect, beings whose whims could shatter mountains, whose anger could boil rivers. And today, their anger was a palpable, living force that made the very stones of the hall tremble.

At the head of the massive, obsidian council table, Ancestor Chen, Chen Ying’s grandfather, a powerfully built man with a fiery red beard and an even more fiery temper, slammed his fist down with a force that sent a spiderweb of cracks across the ancient, enchanted stone.

BOOM!

The sound was like a thunderclap, silencing the furious arguments that had been raging for the past hour.

”An UNPRECEDENTED INSULT!” he roared, his voice a raw, guttural explosion of pure fury. His late-stage Core Formation aura, a blazing inferno of fire-aspected Qi, erupted from him, causing the air in the hall to shimmer with heat.

”That bastard Jiao Long!” he snarled, his face a mask of purple rage. ”He massacres our disciples! He steals our sect’s most vital resource! And then... AND THEN, he has the audacity to stand before the entire State and call US the villains?! He paints his bloody treachery as a ’Righteous Enforcement Action’?!”

He spat on the floor, a glob of pure, sizzling spiritual energy that hissed as it evaporated.

”I have had enough of this debate! Enough of this caution! We must declare war! We will mobilize the entire sect, call upon our vassal families, and we will march on the Azure Sword Clan! We will burn their pathetic ancestral mountain to the ground and sow the ashes with salt! Blood must be paid for with blood!”

His words were met with a chorus of furious roars from his faction of hardline, war-hawk elders. They were old, powerful men who had been raised on tales of the sect’s glorious, conquering past, and this insult to their honor was more than they could bear.

”War!” one of them bellowed. ”We will show these upstart dogs the true meaning of the sword!”

But not all were swayed by the siren song of vengeance.

At the other end of the table, the First Grand Elder, Ancestor Jin, sat as still as a frozen statue. He was a thin, ancient-looking man with a face like a dried-up riverbed and eyes as cold and deep as a winter lake. His aura was a stark contrast to Ancestor Chen’s fiery rage; it was a silent, oppressive weight of pure, unadulterated ice.

He let the roars of the war faction die down, his silence more intimidating than any shout. Then, he spoke, his voice a low, chilling whisper that cut through the heated atmosphere of the hall like a shard of glacial ice.

”You are a fool, Chen.”

Ancestor Chen’s head snapped towards him, his eyes blazing. ”What did you call me, Jin?!”

”A fool,” Ancestor Jin repeated, his voice still a quiet, contemptuous whisper. ”An emotional, predictable, and utterly shortsighted fool. You are so blinded by your own rage and your pathetic, wounded pride that you cannot see the obvious. This is precisely the trap Jiao Long has set for us.”

He rose slowly from his seat, his cold gaze sweeping over the assembled elders.

”Do you truly not see it?” he asked, his voice dripping with condescension. ”He wants us to declare war. He is praying that we will be as hot-headed and stupid as you are, Chen. He wants to paint us as the aggressors, to use our own righteous fury to legitimize his so-called ’Alliance’ in the eyes of the entire State. The moment our armies march, we cease to be the victims of a treacherous ambush; we become the arrogant hegemon seeking to crush a righteous rebellion. He is playing you, and this entire sect, like a fiddle.”

Ancestor Chen was speechless, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, his rage momentarily choked by the cold, undeniable logic of Ancestor Jin’s words.

”We cannot attack,” Ancestor Jin continued, his voice firm. ”Not yet. A full-scale war, a war on four fronts against an enemy who has seized the moral high ground, would be disastrous. We must be patient. We must be cunning. We must gather our own evidence, expose their lies to the world, and turn the court of public opinion back in our favor. We will win this war not with the sword, but with the truth.”

”The truth?!” Ancestor Chen finally found his voice, sputtering with indignation. ”Our disciples are dead, Jin! Our treasury has been plundered! And you want to talk about ’the truth’? We are the Mystic Peak Sect! Our strength IS the only truth that matters!”

The two factions were now in open, hostile opposition, their powerful auras clashing across the council table, creating invisible vortexes of spiritual energy that made the lesser elders tremble. The hall was once again filled with the sounds of furious, intractable argument.

It was then that a third voice, calm and reasonable, cut through the chaos.

It belonged to Elder Wu, a mid-stage Core Formation master with a gentle, scholarly face and a reputation for being a neutral, moderating influence in the council. He was secretly, of course, a high-ranking member of the very shadow organization that had orchestrated this entire crisis.

”Honorable Ancestors,” he began, his voice a soothing balm on the raw, angry atmosphere. ”Perhaps there is a middle path. A way to satisfy both honor and caution.”

Both Ancestor Chen and Ancestor Jin turned their glares upon him.

”Ancestor Chen’s passion for the sect’s honor is righteous and commendable,” Elder Wu said with a respectful bow of his head. ”To do nothing in the face of such a blatant provocation would indeed be seen as a sign of weakness. It would embolden our enemies and dishearten our disciples.”

He then turned to the other side of the table. ”But Ancestor Jin’s caution is equally wise. A full-scale, declared war would be playing directly into Jiao Long’s hands. It is a trap we must not fall into.”

He let his words hang in the air, his expression one of deep, sincere contemplation.

”Therefore,” he proposed, his voice resonating with a deceptive reasonableness, ”I suggest we do not declare war. But we do not remain idle, either. We should launch a limited, targeted, and overwhelmingly powerful strike. Not against the Azure Sword Clan’s main sect, but against a single, symbolic, and highly valuable outpost. Perhaps their Blackwood Spirit Mine, on our shared border.”

His suggestion was a stroke of manipulative genius.

”We will not announce it as an act of war,” he explained. ”We will frame it exactly as they framed their own attack. A ’Righteous Reclaiming Action’. We will state that the Blackwood Mine rightfully sits on lands that were historically ours, and we are merely taking back what was stolen. It is a powerful, decisive action that shows our strength and reclaims our honor. It satisfies our need for vengeance, but it does so without committing us to a total, disastrous war. It is a show of strength, not a declaration of war.”

The appeal of his suggestion was immediate and powerful. To the war faction, it offered blood and action. To the cautious faction, it offered a way to retaliate without falling into the larger trap. It was a compromise that allowed everyone to save face.

Ancestor Chen grunted, stroking his fiery beard. ”A strike... yes. A decisive, bloody strike. I like the sound of that.”

Ancestor Jin remained silent for a long time, his cold eyes studying Elder Wu, a flicker of suspicion in their depths. But he could not find a flaw in the logic. It was a risky move, but it was better than the two disastrous extremes of total war or total inaction.

Finally, he gave a slow, grudging nod.

And so, the decision was made. Not with a roar of unified purpose, but with a series of weary, reluctant agreements. The great Mystic Peak Sect, the most powerful righteous sect in the State of Yue, had been masterfully manipulated into a state of indecisive paralysis.

They would place the sect on high alert. They would mobilize their forces into a ”defensive posture.” And they would plan their ”limited” strike.

It was a decision born of anger, pride, and internal division.

And as Elder Wu sat back down, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touching his lips, he knew that his true masters would be very, very pleased. The first phase of their grand plan—to bleed the great sects, to plunge the entire State of Yue into a long, slow, and mutually destructive conflict—was proceeding perfectly.