Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

”The Empire is like a dog. And as a dog, even if we take its food, they would have to lick our hands and wag their tail for us.”

Qian Yunxi and Lu Xinglan stared at each other, their eyes locking in a silent, loaded exchange that lasted for only a few brief heartbeats but contained the collective weight of a thousand years of political ambition, ancestral suffering, and desperate plotting.

The realization of what Shen Haoran was casually suggesting, the absolute bowing of the central imperial throne to his family’s whims, was the final catalyst they needed. In that shared glance, all hesitation evaporated from their minds.

Then, moving with a synchronized, fluid grace that felt almost ceremonial, they both walked to his right side and knelt upon the cold, polished marble floor, their posture radiating an absolute, unyielding submissiveness.

”Young master,” Lu Xinglan spoke first, her voice ringing out with a sharp, resonant clarity within the quiet confines of the office. ”The Tian Yuan Empire has rotted to its very core, becoming a parasitic beast that suffocates the peripheral domains while feeding the bloated gluttony of the Capital. For millennia, the imperial throne has heavily taxed the Eastern Region, stripping away our spiritual stone veins, our premium alchemical herbs, and our most promising young talents, only to treat us like primitive barbarians the moment we require aid. When the Fire Giant Tribe broke through our region, the imperial court didn’t send a single legion of their elite Imperial guards; instead, they sent that sniveling, incompetent coward Xu Xiaojun and a flock of useless noble scions who did nothing but hoard resources and plan their retreat behind our city walls while common soldiers bled on the plain. The central administration is thoroughly corrupt, completely stagnant, and blinded by its own historical arrogance. We, the Spirit Hall, are entirely willing to serve you and the supreme Shen Clan with every drop of our blood and influence. Please, help us in shattering these ancient chains and establishing our own independent empire.”

Shen Haoran stared down at them, his golden hair catching the sharp glare of the morning sun as he closed his eyes in deep, clinical thought.

The rhythmic, silent thumping of his fingers against the armrest of his chair vibrated down to the floorboards, creating an unhurried, heavy atmosphere that seemed to press down on the heads of the two kneeling women.

For him and his clan, whoever officially sits on the imperial throne doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, as long as there is an official emperor sitting there to hold the crown.

After all, they only care about the massive, centralized pool of worldly luck that the empire’s structured laws and grand administrative borders provide to the region.

However, a sudden, dark variable began to form within the calculations of his mind.

What if they could systematically bypass the traditional parameters of the system?

What if they could take all that concentrated, worldly luck entirely for themselves, reaping the absolute benefits of its reality-warping properties without ever having to bear the crushing, suffocating karmic burden and heavenly restrictions of being the official Imperial Family?

Throughout the millions of years that comprised the long, turbulent river of cultivation history, there should at least have been one or two incredibly dominant powers that attempted to perform this exact feat, right?

Some ancient, forgotten sect or hidden family must have looked at the throne and thought of the same shortcut.

Have they failed? Surely they did. After all, if it was truly that easy to exploit the system, then the supreme Shen Clan, with all their boundless archives, ancient sages, and inexhaustible resources, would have already done it generations ago.

They would have already completely, covertly controlled the Imperial Family like a collection of wooden puppets, pulling their strings from the dark corners of the Ancestral Void.

But no; for hundreds of thousands of years, the ancestors had deliberately chosen to let the Imperial lineage rule the central plains without actively interfering in their daily governance, maintaining a strict, calculated distance from the actual throne.

Although currently, the Xu Family appeared rather subservient to them, but that was because they are wary and afraid of the Shen Clan, and not because they are completely under the control of the Shen Clan itself.

But why? What was the invisible wall that kept the old monsters of his clan back? Could it be the absolute, immutable will of the Heavenly Dao itself? Was the universe actively preventing those who are not its explicitly chosen, mandated bloodlines from accumulating too much unearned worldly luck?

After all, the logic of the heavens was a delicate balancing act.

If a certain supreme clan did somehow manage to successfully take all the concentrated luck of a vast empire without being bound or constrained by the heavy karmic laws, oaths, and administrative restrictions that an official Imperial Family would normally have to endure, then that specific clan would basically become the absolute, unmoving center of the entire world.

They would bypass the natural cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death, becoming a permanent anomaly that threatens the balance of the universe.

But none of the major factions in recorded history had ever successfully accomplished this.

It was a stark fact. It meant either none of them had ever even possessed the supreme audacity to think of such a cosmic theft, or, more likely, they had desperately tried to break the system and failed catastrophically against the wrath of the heavens.

Haoran firmly believed it was the latter. The history of the upper realms was a graveyard of overambitious factions whose names had been completely erased from the records.

He doesn’t believe that none of them even thought of putting a puppet regime and take all the luck of the empire without bearing the restrictions.

Is this the hidden, underlying reason why, after around thirty thousand years of absolute supremacy, dominant powers would eventually, invariably begin to decline and wither away into obscurity?

Is it because the cold, calculating heavens simply do not want any single mortal entity to possess too much luck for too long? Is the universe a system that periodically purges its apex predators to reset the board?

But what about the Shen Clan? His own bloodline was a blatant contradiction to this supposed rule.

They had been around for millions of years as a premier noble line, and they had officially ascended to become a dominant, unmatched power around a hundred thousand years ago.

By all the standard laws of historical decay, they should have rotted away tens of thousands of years ago.

Why is it that they have yet to decline? Or rather, looking at the current state of the world, why is it that only now, after a full hundred thousand years of unmatched supremacy, did the cold eyes of the heavens finally decide to aggressively target them?

According to his great grandmother, Shen Daiyu, the Shen Clan had indeed begun a silent, rapid decline recently behind the closed doors of the Central Region.

The foundations were fraying, the luck was leaking, and the ancestors were failing their tribulations. But because of him, because of Shen Haoran’s birth and his ruthless actions, the clan’s fading destiny had suddenly started to violently bounce back, tearing through the net of suppression.

In other words, if it wasn’t for his direct intervention and his unique existence, the Shen Clan would have really declined into ruin during this specific generation... so why now? What made this specific era the chosen hour for their execution?

And that led to another, even more disturbing question: why are these seven-colored protagonists appearing so frequently, so aggressively, in this exact era? An era where he was born into the world?

From the future Flame Empress to the system users, protagonists with ridiculous luck were sprouting from the mud like weeds.

Is this bizarre frequency just a massive, cosmic coincidence? Or did the cold, calculating mind of the heavens foresee his birth, recognize him as a fundamental threat to its balance, and intentionally spawn these chosen ones to systematically suppress, weaken, and eventually execute him?

But if that truly was the case, if the Heavenly Dao wanted him dead that badly, why didn’t it just strike him down with a bolt of chaotic lightning when he was just a helpless, crying newborn baby in the inner chambers of the Shen Clan?

Why play this long, elaborate game of destiny?

He frowned deeply, his golden eyes flashing with a cold irritation.

He was just getting more and more complex questions with every single step he took across the domains, yet he had absolutely no solid answers from the world around him.

He downcast his gaze, staring at Lu Xinglan and Qian Yunxi who were still kneeling silently on the marble floor beside his boots, their heads bowed in absolute submission as they awaited his judgment.

’Well, nothing will come out of just standing here and thinking about the infinite patterns of the universe,’ Haoran thought, his expression returning to its usual mask of calm indifference. ’For now, let us simply do what we can with the pieces currently resting on the board.’

He was a villain—an anomaly who, according to Shen Daiyu’s observations, could effectively resist, distort, and shatter the heavy influence of the Heavenly Dao through his sheer ruthlessness and unique soul.

So... what would happen if his direct subordinates were the ones to aggressively take the luck of the empire instead of him doing it openly?

Since they were his bound subordinates, all that stolen, unearned worldly luck would naturally accumulate back toward the main trunk of the Shen Clan through the hidden channels of his karma.

And since the Spirit Hall would be the ones sitting on the newly formed independent throne, the Shen Clan themselves naturally wouldn’t be bound to any of the various restrictions, heavenly oaths, or geographical limitations of being an official Imperial Family.

Not to mention, since his subordinates were the ones who took over the territory through standard political warfare rather than an external immortal invasion, the rigid laws of the Heavenly Dao would find it incredibly hard to directly interfere without breaking its own rules.

It was a perfect loop in the system. It was just like how his personal maid, Qing’er, was able to easily kill that chosen protagonist, Chu Fang, under his direct orders without triggering an immediate, apocalyptic bolt of heavenly tribulation down upon her head.

Although, that was probably mostly because of Chu Fang not having enough luck, but still!

’It’s definitely worth a try,’ he concluded, a sharp, dangerous smirk forming on his face.

Shen Haoran stood up from his plush armchair and stood tall before the two kneeling women, his shadow completely engulfing their forms as his robes caught the morning light. ”You truly want to serve me and my clan in exchange for our absolute help in your little regional rebellion? You want to use my hand to draw the map of a new empire?”

Qian Yunxi and Lu Xinglan nodded in unison, their foreheads almost touching the polished floorboards. ”Yes, young master. We are entirely yours to command, without reservation.”

Haoran smirked, a low, cold chuckle escaping his lips as he stepped closer to them. ”Alright, a fair proposition. But for someone who can so easily betray their official central empire for the backing of another, stronger clan, I highly doubt the permanent nature of your loyalty. Words are like the wind in the world of cultivation; they carry no weight when the storm arrives.”

He reached into his sleeve and took out two small, bright blue alchemical pills, their surfaces smooth and emanating a cold, faint scent of winter frost.

He held them out in his open palm, the spheres catching the light. ”Take these. Don’t worry yourself too much; as long as you don’t do anything that will directly harm me or my clan, or even entertain a single, passing thought of betraying my orders in the future, then this pill will just remain an ordinary, harmless mass of nutrients within your dantians without any negative effects whatsoever. But the moment your loyalty wavers... well, you don’t want to find out what happens to your meridians.”

Qian Yunxi and Lu Xinglan stared at the blue pills resting in his palm, their pupils shrinking as they felt the hidden, restricted arrays sealed within the alchemical shells.

They looked at each other one last time, reading the absolute finality of the choice, but without a single second of hesitation, they reached out, took the pills from his hand, and swallowed them down without water.

Haoran chuckled softly, his golden eyes glowing with a satisfied, dark light as he watched the pills disappear down their throats. ”Good. You have a proper understanding of your situation. I promise this much before the heavens: I will absolutely help you form your own independent empire... but, not right now. The time is not yet ripe for a central confrontation with the Capital. For now, focus your entire military force on a single task: unify the entire Eastern Region under the banner of the Spirit Hall. This should be an incredibly easy task for you now, considering the fact that the surrounding mortal kingdoms have pretty much lost their armies, their kings, and their operational power due to the devastating fire giant invasion.”

”Yes, young master! We will begin the unification campaigns before the week is out!” Lu Xinglan shouted, her voice full of a sudden, roaring ambition.

”Good,” Haoran said, turning his back to them as he walked towards the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the grand, rebuilding city. ”I expect truly great things from the two of you, so see to it that you don’t betray my expectations. The world is watching, and I don’t enjoy wasting my resources on failures.”