Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Chapter 200: Chapter 200: Backups?

Shen Haoran landed on the ground with the force of a falling star, and upon impact, a shockwave of golden fire rippled outward for hundreds of meters.

The earth groaned and cracked beneath his boots, and flames erupted like a volcano, geysers of solar heat spewing from the fissures he had created.

The air, already thin and choked with ash, was instantly incinerated, creating a vacuum that pulled the surrounding oxygen into the inferno radiating from his body.

The barbarians roared at him, their voices a discordant symphony of guttural rage.

Seeing a lone human standing in the path of their charge, they instinctively reached into their bloodlines, summoning their own flame.

Crimson fire began to lick their reddish skin, and their weapons began to glow with the heat of the forge.

They intended to burn this arrogant intruder into a pile of white ash.

But there was a fundamental truth they did not understand.

When Heavenly Flames appear, all other flames must submit.

This is a universal law, a decree written into the very fabric of the cosmos.

The Gold Incinerating Supreme Flame was not a mere elemental force, it was a fundamental flame capable of burning realities!

The moment the barbarians tried to use their flames, the fire did not lash out at Haoran, but instead, it immediately flickered and died, as if the sparks themselves were bowing in terror before a rightful king.

And as the heat vanished from their clubs, the glow also faded from their eyes, leaving them vulnerable and bewildered.

”What!?”

”What happened!?”

The giants stumbled in their charge, their momentum broken by the sudden loss of their primary elemental power.

In that moment of confusion, Shen Haoran’s expression remained as cold as a frozen sea as he moved his hand toward the void at his side and summoned his sword, the Black Imperial Sword, Azathoth.

As the hilt settled into his palm, the blade emerged—a shard of absolute darkness that seemed to devour the light of the world, causing the surroundings to dim significantly.

It was a weapon that did not reflect the sun; it consumed it.

Without another word, he started his killing spree.

He became a blur of black and gold, a silent reaper moving through a forest of red-skinned giants.

Every swing of Azathoth left a trail of void energy that erased anything it touched, bisecting giants as if they were made of mist.

”Hahaha! This is what I’ve been waiting for!” Shen Xun’er laughed as she followed Haoran into the thick of the fray.

She didn’t use a weapon; she didn’t need one.

Her fists, wrapped in simple white linen, glowed with a dull, terrifying silver light and with a single leap, she closed the distance to a twelve-foot-tall barbarian and delivered a punch to his chest.

The impact sounded like a mountain collapsing as the giant’s ribcage shattered instantly, and the force of the blow traveled through his body, exploding out of his back in a spray of gore.

She landed, spun, and delivered a high kick that sent another barbarian’s head spinning into the air.

Her combat was raw, savage, and beautiful in its lethal simplicity.

The Fire Giant Tribe is indeed powerful, significantly stronger than the average cultivators of the Eastern Region.

Their physical frames were biological wonders of endurance and strength.

But just like the Vast Wilderness from which they hailed, the cultivation system of the Eastern Region is ultimately flawed.

The practitioners here lacked the deep heritage and the ancestral libraries of the Central Region.

Their foundations were shallow, their meridians were narrow, and their understanding of the soul was rudimentary.

This made them severely weaker than ordinary cultivators from other regions.

The most glaring weakness was their lack of manifestation.

They can’t even form a Spirit Avatar! In the Central Region, a Spirit Avatar was the hallmark of a true master, a projection of one’s will that could level cities the size of planets.

Here, they fought with simple qi and that spirit system.

Meanwhile, the Shen Clan, who possessed the most complete cultivation system and training in the Empire, were the absolute antithesis to these ”flawed” warriors.

Within the hierarchy of the world, even an ordinary Nascent Soul realm cultivator in the Shen Clan is enough to beat a Spirit Ascension Realm expert of the Eastern Region.

The density of their qi and the purity of their techniques created a gap that numbers could not fill.

For the Crowns, fighting people who cultivated a flawed cultivation system is very easy.

It was like a group of professional soldiers entering a tavern brawl filled with drunken peasants.

”Let’s see who can kill more!” Shen Ji laughed, his Tyrant King Sacred Physique pulsing with a dark, metallic sheen.

He grabbed a barbarian by the leg and used the massive creature as a living club, swinging him around to clear a path of broken bodies.

At that moment, Jin Ci, the representative of the Diamond Titan Sect, appeared beside him.

Jis skin had turned into a faceted, translucent grey, reflecting the ambient golden light of Haoran’s flames. ”Shen Ji, right? Do you want to compete with me? My sect’s Diamond Body is itching for a proper test.”

Shen Ji stared at him and laughed, the sound booming over the roar of the fire. ”Alright! Whoever kills the most wins! The loser buys the wine back in the capital!”

With that, the two moved with the ferociousness of beasts, two juggernauts of physical destruction plowing into the barbarian vanguard.

Every collision was a symphony of breaking bone and splintering stone.

At the side, Shen Xinye was a vision of cold, clinical death, and although she didn’t move much, but her fingers danced through the air with the grace of a musician.

She was firing a barrage of Sword Intent Bullets with her fingers, each one a compressed needle of lethal intent.

These were not mere projectiles; they were manifestations of her sword heart, and she was beheading and bisecting any barbarians that dared to come close, her eyes never losing their icy focus.

After her loss to Haoran a year ago, she had refined her technique to a terrifying degree.

She had learned to minimize the waste of energy, making her strikes faster and sharper.

She was able to use the technique more effectively than Haoran, who had merely copied her technique a year ago without the decades of sword-soul meditation she had undergone.

On the other side of the clearing, Bai Wenxin of the Purple Sky Immortal Sect was a whirlwind of violet light.

She was cleaving through the barbarians with her dark purple spear, the weapon leaving trails of crackling lightning in its wake.

She moved with a regal, mature grace that made the slaughter look like a choreographed dance.

She stopped for a moment beside Shen Xinye to catch her breath as a wall of fire separated them from the next wave.

The two girls gave each other a silent nod of approval—a mutual recognition of strength between the top female geniuses of their generation.

At that moment, a crimson flame dragon descended from the sky, its wings stirring up a storm of embers as it landed beside them.

Shen Ying can be seen riding on its head, her posture relaxed, almost bored as she sighed, looking at the endless tide of giants. ”Ugh, how annoying. My robes are going to smell like burnt giant for weeks.”

Despite her complaining, her hands were moving with blurring speed as she took out several massive bronze cauldrons from her spatial ring, threw some random herbs and volatile minerals into them, and let the flame dragon heat them with its concentrated breath.

This caused the random herbs and the cauldron to glow with an unstable, sickly bright light before she used her spiritual energy to throw them towards the charging barbarians.

*BOOM!*

The result was a massive, concussive explosion that sent limbs and armor flying in all directions.

It was a cauldron explosion, something that usually only happens when an alchemist carelessly tries to refine high-level pills.

It was a catastrophic failure in any other context, but Shen Ying had weaponized this failure, and turning ”alchemical accidents” into tactical missiles, turning the battlefield into a graveyard of bronze shrapnel.

On the city wall, Xu Xiaojun stared at the carnage below in absolute shock.

He watched as the ”heirs” he expected to be cowards tore through the barbarian army like a hot knife through butter.

He watched Shen Haoran standing at the center of the storm, a golden god of death.

”These people... are they insane!?” he whispered, his voice trembling. ”For the sake of this backwater place, they are willing to risk their lives like this?”

”Crown prince, what should we do?” one of his noble followers asked, his eyes darting toward the Ark. ”Should we retreat while they have the giants occupied?”

Xu Xiaojun glared at them, his fists clenching so hard his gauntlets creaked.

Retreat? He looked at the field. If they retreat now, while the Shen Clan and the Immortal Sects are fighting, the entire Central Region will know of their cowardice.

The story would spread like wildfire through the Imperial Court, and he would not just lose his reputation; he would lose his claim to the throne.

He would surely be laughed at by every commoner and noble alike!

At that moment, his younger brother, the Fourth Prince Xu Jingshan, didn’t even give him a second look as he suddenly jumped from the battlements, his white robes fluttering.

He landed on a sleek, flying sword and shot toward the battlefield, his eyes fixed on the enemies.

He chose to join the fray, adding his own modest power to the defense of the city.

Xu Xiaojun stared at his brother’s retreating back, his teeth gritting.

”Fuck. Fine! Since you’re all asking to die, then go and die!” He turned towards the trembling nobles, his voice cold. ”Let us wait! We are the elite—we are to act as backups! We will strike when the enemy is exhausted!”

The nobles seemed to understand the excuse perfectly, snd their terrified expressions shifted into masks of ”strategic patience.”

They grinned and nodded at him, their relief palpable.

”Yes. Yes. Backups. A very wise decision, your Highness.”

”Backups are fine too. Safety first... for the Empire’s sake, of course.”

While the heroes bled on the plains below, the ”backups” stood on the wall, safely tucked behind the fortifications, watching the world burn.