Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist

Chapter 972: Stepping Into The Core Formation Realm

The silence inside the deepest secret chamber of the Cloud-Peak Pavilion was heavy, a tangible weight that pressed against the eardrums. This was a space carved from the living rock of the mountain’s heart, reinforced by layers of isolation arrays that cut it off from the rest of the world. The air here was thick, almost viscous, saturated with a density of spiritual Qi that would have crushed a mortal into paste. It swirled in visible currents of azure and white, drawn in from the surrounding miles by the high-grade Spirit-Gathering Array that Yue Lingshan had meticulously arranged.

In the center of this storm of energy sat Wang Jian.

He was naked, his body sculpted like a statue of war, scars fading into the bronzed skin that hummed with a latent, terrifying vitality. His breathing was slow, each inhalation dragging the dense Qi into his lungs, each exhalation expelling a grey mist of impurities. He was a vessel at the brink of overflowing, a dam holding back a catastrophic flood.

Before him, floating on a cushion of invisible force, was a small box carved from thousand-year-old Cold-Jade. The box was open. Inside sat a single pill.

The Nine-Pattern Soul-Binding Core Pill.

It was a masterpiece of alchemy, concocted by Mu Lianhua, a Peak Core Formation Grandmaster who had poured her soul and the resources of the entire sect into this singular creation. The pill was not merely medicinal; it was a condensed miracle. It pulsed with a heartbeat of its own, swirling with a violet and gold mist that formed intricate, shifting patterns on its surface—the nine patterns of perfection. The spiritual pressure radiating from this thumb-sized sphere was enough to distort the air around it, creating miniature spatial ripples.

’The bridge to the heavens,’ Wang Jian thought, his eyes reflecting the violet glow. ’Or the gate to hell. Today, I cross it.’

He did not hesitate. He had spent the last month in deep meditation, condensing his cultivation, refining the massive influx of Primordial Yin he had harvested from Hua Ling, and tempering his body with the Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture. His foundation was not just solid; it was a fortress.

He reached out, his fingers brushing the cold aura of the pill. He picked it up and placed it in his mouth.

He didn’t swallow it immediately. He let it sit on his tongue for a microsecond, tasting the bitterness of the herbs and the sweetness of the spirit essence. Then, he swallowed.

It didn’t dissolve like a normal pill. It exploded.

BOOM.

A muffled detonation echoed within his body. It felt as though he had swallowed a collapsing star. The pill disintegrated instantly, transforming into a torrential river of violet-gold energy that roared down his throat and slammed into his dantian.

”Guh!” Wang Jian grunted, his body seizing up. Every muscle fiber pulled taut, hard as steel.

The pain was immediate and absolute. It wasn’t the sharp sting of a cut; it was the searing, all-encompassing agony of dissolution. The medicinal energy was too potent, too wild. It sought to expand, to tear through his meridians and explode out of his pores.

’Submit!’ Wang Jian roared internally, his will clamping down on the chaotic energy like a vice.

His Foundation Establishment spiritual sea, a vast ocean of liquid stellar energy, began to boil. The violet-gold torrent crashed into his silver-black sea, creating tsunamis of power that slammed against the walls of his dantian.

He activated the Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture.

The constellations tattooed on his soul lit up. His meridians, wider and tougher than any normal cultivator’s, flared with a dark, devouring light. They acted as channels, diverting the flood, forcing the rampant medicinal energy into a spiraling vortex in the center of his dantian.

But the heat was unbearable. The Yang fire contained within the pill was designed to forge a Core, and fire burns. His blood began to heat up, turning his skin lobster-red. Steam hissed from his pores. He felt as though he were being cooked from the inside out.

’Too hot,’ he realized, his mind retaining a sliver of icy clarity amidst the firestorm. ’Without the Yin, I would be ash.’

He tapped into the reserve he had been saving. Deep within his foundation, wrapped in layers of his own Qi, was the Primordial Yin of the Young Sect Mistress. It was a cool, pure, moon-like energy.

He released it.

The Yin energy surged forth like a breaking dam of glacial water. It met the Yang fire of the pill in the center of his dantian.

HISSSSSS.

The collision of Yin and Yang didn’t cause an explosion; it caused a fusion. The extreme heat and the extreme cold neutralized the volatility, leaving behind a pure, malleable essence of creation.

The pain didn’t stop, but it changed. It shifted from the pain of burning to the pain of crushing pressure.

”Condense!” Wang Jian commanded, his hands forming the seal of the Stellar Core.

The vortex in his dantian spun faster. The liquid state of his spiritual energy began to thicken. It turned to gel, then to sludge, and finally, it began to solidify. The sheer volume of energy he possessed—enough to fill ten normal cultivators—was being compressed into a space the size of a pigeon’s egg.

Simultaneously, the medicinal efficacy of the pill seeped into his flesh and bones. His body cultivation, the Stellar Body Tempering Art, resonated with the breakthrough.

CRACK.

His ribs fractured. Then his femur. Then his spine.

Wang Jian threw his head back, a silent scream tearing at his throat. His bones were breaking, dissolving under the pressure, and reforming instantly. The marrow within them was being scrubbed clean, replaced by a substance that was denser, heavier, and darker. His blood turned a rich, deep crimson, heavy with vitality, flowing like mercury through his veins.

His skin shed a layer of dead cells, revealing new skin underneath that possessed the luster of polished dark jade. He was becoming something more than human. He was becoming a Stellar Demon.

In his dantian, the process reached its critical point. The spinning vortex collapsed in on itself.

ZMMMMM.

A high-pitched hum vibrated through his soul.

The light in the dantian vanished, sucked into a singularity.

For a moment, there was nothing. Absolute void.

Then, a pulse.

Thump.

A sphere manifested in the center of his inner world. It was not the golden, radiant core of a righteous cultivator. It was a sphere of absolute, light-absorbing blackness. But on its surface, specks of brilliant white light glittered like diamonds—a miniature night sky, a galaxy compressed into a solid object.

The Stellar Demonic Core.

BOOM!

A shockwave of spiritual pressure blasted outward from his body. It hit the walls of the secret chamber, causing the isolation arrays to flare violently. The stone floor beneath him cracked, spiderwebs of fissures spreading out from his knees. The air in the room was instantly evacuated, pushed away by the sheer density of his new aura.

Wang Jian opened his eyes.

The darkness of the room seemed to retreat. His irises had changed; they were no longer just dark, they were abyssal, with faint, rotating pinpricks of starlight visible in the depths.

He took a breath. The sound was like a bellows drawing air into a furnace.

”Core Formation,” he whispered, his voice resonating with a metallic timbre. ”Early Stage.”

He clenched his fist. The air popped in his grip. He didn’t just feel stronger; he felt like a different species. The gap between Foundation Establishment and Core Formation was a chasm, a leap from mortal to transcendent.

But he wasn’t done.

He looked down at his hands. His skin glowed with a faint, metallic sheen. His physical body had broken the shackle as well. His flesh was now comparable to a demonic beast of the Early Core Formation realm. He could likely catch a flying sword with his bare hands and snap it.

’My spiritual energy... it is vast,’ Wang Jian analyzed, looking inward. ’A normal Core Formation cultivator has a pool. I have a lake. And my body... it is a fortress.’

He stood up. The movement was effortless, fluid. He felt light, yet incredibly heavy.

’With this strength,’ he calculated, a cold grin spreading across his face, ’I could crush a Middle Stage Core Formation expert with raw power alone. A Late Stage expert... I might not win, but they certainly cannot kill me. I am no longer prey in this sea. I am the shark.’

He stretched, his joints popping with the sound of cracking stones. The hunger hit him then—a sudden, cavernous emptiness in his gut. The breakthrough had consumed nearly all his reserves. He needed to replenish. He needed food, yes, but more than that, he needed Yin energy to stabilize the volatile new Core.

But before he could leave to feed, a surge of information flooded his mind.

The Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture reacted to the formation of the Core. The ancient text inscribed on his soul turned a page.

Stage Five: Unlocked.

Divine Ability: Stellar Demonic Clones.

Wang Jian froze, his eyes widening as the method ingrained itself into his memory. This was the technique he had been waiting for. The signature move of the Stellar Demon.

”Shadows into substance,” he muttered, the chant rising unbidden to his lips. ”Starlight into flesh.”

He channeled his new Stellar Qi. It didn’t flow; it rushed like a river. He directed it not outward, but downward, into his own shadow cast by the glowing moss on the walls.

The shadow writhed. It bubbled, defying the laws of physics.

”Rise.”

The shadow detached itself from the floor. It peeled upward, gaining three-dimensionality, gaining color, gaining mass.

In seconds, a figure stood before him.

It was Wang Jian. It wore his face, his naked body, his expression of arrogant curiosity. But its eyes were solid black, and its skin had a slightly grey, ethereal tint. It radiated a cold, stellar energy.

”Interesting,” Wang Jian said.

The clone nodded. ”Interesting,” it repeated, its voice a perfect echo.

He summoned another. And another.

Three clones stood before him. They were solid. They possessed mass. He reached out and punched the nearest one in the chest.

THUD.

It felt like hitting a bag of sand. The clone didn’t flinch.

’Seventy percent,’ Wang Jian analyzed. ’They possess seventy percent of my combat power. They can use my martial arts. They can use my sword intent.’

He closed his eyes and issued a mental command. Attack.

The three clones moved instantly. Their coordination was flawless because they shared one mind—his. They struck in a triangle formation, a perfect kill-box.

Wang Jian opened his eyes. He focused on the clone furthest from him.

Displacement.

The world blurred for a nanosecond.

Suddenly, he was standing where the clone had been, and the clone was standing in the center where he had been.

”Teleportation,” he breathed, a thrill of power shooting through him. ”Instant positional swapping with any shadow clone within range. In battle... this is invincible.”

He could attack, swap, attack from behind, swap again. He could dodge a fatal blow by swapping with a clone, letting the shadow take the damage. He could overwhelm an enemy with numbers, or escape a siege by sending a clone through a gap and swapping to it.

But he could feel the drain. The clones were voracious. They consumed his Core energy simply to exist. Maintaining three of them in combat would drain him dry in an hour.

”Dispel,” he commanded.

The three figures collapsed, dissolving into puddles of ink-black shadow that rushed back into his feet. A surge of returned energy filled him.

”Perfect,” Wang Jian laughed, the sound vibrating with his new power. He walked to a wall of ice he created with a thought, looking at his reflection.

He looked younger, sharper. His skin was flawless, his features more defined. He looked like a dark god carved from jade.

”I am a one-man army,” he whispered to his reflection.

He adjusted his aura. He used the Void-Concealment Technique inherent in his scripture to mask the terrifying density of his Stellar Core. He dialed down the pressure until he appeared to be a standard, albeit powerful, Early Stage Core Formation cultivator. There was no need to show all his cards yet.

”Now,” he thought, turning toward the heavy stone door of the seclusion chamber. ”My power is secured. My foundation is laid. But a King needs a Queen... and an army.”

He thought of the women waiting outside. His wives. His sluts. They needed to ascend. He couldn’t rule the seas with a harem of Foundation Establishment weaklings.

He walked to the door. He placed his hand on the mechanism.

RUMBLE.

The stone door ground open, dust falling from the ceiling.

Light from the corridor spilled in.

Waiting there, pacing anxiously, were two figures.

Yue Lingshan and Hua Ling.

They turned as the door opened.

When Wang Jian stepped out, clothed now in a fresh black robe he had pulled from his ring, the pressure he emitted—even suppressed—made them gasp.

”Husband!” Yue Lingshan cried out, rushing forward. She stopped a foot away, her eyes wide as she scanned him. She sensed the change immediately. The vastness of his aura was like standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. ”You... you succeeded?”

”I did,” Wang Jian smiled, opening his arms.

Lingshan threw herself into his embrace. ”Core Formation! You are a Grandmaster now!”

Hua Ling stood back, her hands clasped over her heart, her eyes shining with worship. To her, he looked like a deity descending from the heavens. ”Young Master... your presence... it is overwhelming.”

Wang Jian pulled Lingshan close, kissing the top of her head, then reached out an arm to beckon Hua Ling. The girl rushed into his side, hugging his waist.

”I have ascended,” Wang Jian said, his voice deep and resonant. ”The path is open. But it is lonely at the top. I cannot walk it alone.”

He looked down at them. ”Now, it is your turn. Before you enter your own seclusion, I will help you lay the foundation. I will give you the boost you need to ensure your success.”

Lingshan looked up, confused. ”Help us? But we have the pills...”

”Pills are dead objects,” Wang Jian said. ”My energy is living. My current Yang essence... it is extremely potent. It still carries the residual traces of the heavenly tribulation energy I absorbed. If I transfer it to you now... it will widen your meridians and shatter your bottlenecks.”

He smirked, looking between the two women. ”Come. To the master bedroom. We have work to do.”

Hua Ling blushed crimson, but her eyes were eager. Lingshan nodded, understanding the gravity of cultivation transfer, though she blushed at the implication of doing it together with the new concubine.

They moved to the master bedroom of the Cloud-Peak Pavilion. The sun was setting, casting a warm glow over the room.

Wang Jian didn’t waste time. He stripped them both, admiring their bodies. Lingshan, mature and curvy, her body familiar and beloved. Hua Ling, youthful and perky, her body still holding the freshness of her recent deflowering.

He sat cross-legged on the bed. ”Sit with me. Form a circle.”

They obeyed.

”Connect your palms to mine,” he ordered.

They pressed their hands against his.

Wang Jian activated his technique. He didn’t take from them this time; he gave. He poured his Stellar Qi, refined and tempered, into their bodies.

”Ah!” Lingshan gasped as the surge of power hit her. It was hot, aggressive, but controlled. It rushed through her meridians, burning away impurities that years of cultivation hadn’t touched. She felt the barrier to the Core Formation realm—a wall she had been chipping away at for years—suddenly develop cracks.

”Focus, Lingshan,” Wang Jian commanded gently. ”Guide it to your dantian.”

He turned his focus to Hua Ling. She was weaker, only at the Middle Stage of Foundation Establishment. The energy he poured into her was too much for her to handle alone.

”Ling’er, come here,” he said, breaking the hand seal.

He pulled her onto his lap.

”I need to connect the lower meridian,” he said, the excuse smooth and practiced.

He entered her.

Hua Ling cried out, not in pain, but in shock at the intensity. His cock was radiating heat like a branding iron.

”Circulate your technique!” Wang Jian ordered.

He began to thrust, but each thrust was a pulse of energy. He pumped her full of his power. He wasn’t just having sex; he was forcibly expanding her capacity.

”It’s... too much!” Hua Ling sobbed, clinging to him. ”I feel like I’m going to burst!”

”You won’t,” Wang Jian promised. ”Hold it. Compress it.”

He looked at Lingshan, who was meditating beside them, sweating profusely. ”Lingshan, help her. Guide her flow.”

Lingshan opened her eyes. She saw her husband coupling with the concubine, but the air was thick with spiritual power, not just lust. She reached out and placed her hand on Hua Ling’s back, adding her own wood-attribute Qi to stabilize the girl.

With the combined effort, Hua Ling’s aura spiked.

CRACK.

A sound echoed from within her body.

”Ahhhhh!” Hua Ling screamed, arching her back, her inner walls clamping down on Wang Jian.

A shockwave of energy blasted from her.

Late Stage Foundation Establishment.

She had broken through. In minutes. What would have taken her years of meditation, Wang Jian had accomplished with a session of dual cultivation.

She collapsed against him, panting, tears of joy streaming down her face. ”I... I broke through...”

”You did,” Wang Jian smiled, kissing her sweat-slicked forehead. ”My seed is the key.”

He turned to Lingshan. ”Your turn, Wife.”

He swapped them. He pulled Lingshan onto his lap.

The session continued for hours. It was affectionate, intimate, but intense. Wang Jian was careful not to crush them with his new physical strength, treating them like precious porcelain that he was filling with molten gold.

By the time the moon was high, both women were glowing. Their skin was flushed, their auras stable and powerful.

Wang Jian withdrew from Lingshan. He sat back, admiring his work.

”You are ready,” he said.

”Lingshan, your bottleneck is broken. You need only to condense the energy now. Go to the Spirit-Gathering Chamber. Do not come out until you have formed your Core.”

Lingshan nodded, her eyes filled with determination and gratitude. ”I will not fail you, Husband.”

”Ling’er,” he looked at the girl. ”You need to stabilize your new realm. Go to the side chamber. Meditate on the sensation.”

”Yes, Husband,” Hua Ling whispered, kissing his hand.

They dressed quickly, eager to capitalize on the momentum he had given them. They kissed him goodbye and left the room, heading for their respective cultivation caves.

As soon as the door closed behind them, the warmth in Wang Jian’s eyes vanished. The loving husband disappeared, replaced by the lustful master.

He stood up, stretching his arms. The energy he had given them was a drop in the bucket of his new ocean. But his own reserves needed topping up. And his darker urges... they hadn’t been satisfied by the gentle, structured cultivation sex.

”Now,” he thought, his gaze turning towards the floor, towards the hidden entrance to the underground chambers.

”Time to feed the others. Time to see how my sluts are doing.”

He walked to the hidden mechanism and descended into the dark, leaving the world of the righteous husband behind.