Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

At that precise, monumental moment, right as the billowing clouds of ancient, white spiritual fog began to lazily spill over the threshold of the stone arches, a deep, incredibly solemn voice suddenly resounded throughout the entirety of the majestic plaza.

The sound did not originate from any single physical direction; rather, it vibrated straight out of the high, shifting atmospheric currents, carrying an absolute, crushing weight that instantly caused the soul-force of every single youth present to tremble in primitive submission.

”Be silent, young talents of the Tian Yuan Empire, and hear the decree of the sky.”

Everyone immediately quited down, staring at the sky.

”I am the one known across the vast star systems as Venerable Sky Cloud, a Rank 10 Master Teacher and the Imperial Tutor, an 8th stage Heavenly Saint expert tasked with the sacred duty of overseeing the spiritual development of this era.”

Those words caused an uproar. One should that the Venerable Sky Cloud was the one who taught the current Emperor, and is also the master of the previous Emperor, who had already ascended to Supreme realm and guards the empire.

However, it is said that hundreds of years ago, during the era of Chu Xueyu, Feng Yuyan, and Leng Shuang, the Venerable Sky Cloud wanted to accept them as disciples but was rejected.

And since then, he had remained in seclusion and never appeared again, saying that he had already seen the pinnacle of talent in Chu Xueyu and her sisters, and there are no disciples worth nurturing.

Yet now, this old man actually came out of seclusion!?

Everyone subconsciously turned towards Shen Haoran.

But at that moment, the Venerable Sky Cloud once again continued his words.

”You stand here today at the precipice of the supreme testing grounds, a place where names are carved into immortality or thoroughly erased by the sands of time.”

”Let it be known to every single scion, noble, and commoner gathered beneath these arches that the Imperial Academy does not exist to coddle mediocrity, nor does it exist to provide sanctuary to the lazy.”

”We exclusively select the absolute best of the best, the true chosen ones of destiny who possess the unyielding will to break through the natural restrictions of this world. If you carry cowardice in your heart, turn back now, for the path ahead treats the weak as mere fuel for the furnace.”

”For the rest of you who believe your bones are forged from true iron... step forward, enter the crucible, and take the trials of the ancestors!”

The grand, rumbling echo of his voice gradually faded into the upper atmosphere, leaving a heavy, crackling static in the air.

”Hear the parameters of the first trial: the Trial of Perseverance. Turn your eyes to the peak, climb the endless stairs of the ancestors, and enter the true gates of the academy under your own natural strength.”

At that moment, the gates which was just in front of them, suddenly rose to the sky.

Along with it, stairs descended to the ground.

After a momentary awe, the tens of thousands of gathered youths slowly, cautiously began their advance, their boots clicking against the pristine stone as they moved to climb the massive stairs leading directly towards the high gate of the academy.

They believe themselves to be capable of climbing it, after all the structural design of the trial was beautifully, but terrifyingly simple.

The grand academy gates is now situated unimaginably high above the swirling clouds of the capital, and there were tens of thousands of individual steps of steep, array-fortified stairs left for them to climb.

To an ordinary mortal, it was an impossible mountain; to a cultivator, it was a battleground against the planet’s gravitational pull.

Before the main crowd could even establish a steady, rhythmic pace, a certain reckless, overconfident weakling from a minor peripheral sect suddenly rushed forward first, his eyes filled with a desperate greed to claim the absolute top position.

”Hahaha! I’m going to climb first you losers!” He unleashed his qi, leaping across the first dozen steps with a loud laugh.

*BOOM!*

The exact millisecond his boots touched the thirteenth step, the invisible, crushing gravity of the trial’s internal arrays slammed down upon his shoulders like a collapsing mountain.

His arrogant laughter was instantly cut short, and his entire body was violently thrown forward, his face planted completely flat on the hard stone ground as the immense pressure forced him to cough up a massive spray of dark blood, his meridians instantly fracturing under the sudden kinetic shock.

Seeing his pathetic, twitching form rolling back down the steps, everyone behind him couldn’t help but slowly shake their heads in absolute disdain at that sheer, uneducated recklessness.

If the legendary trials of the apex institution were truly as simple as climbing an ordinary flight of stone stairs, then the Imperial Academy wouldn’t deserve its undisputed spot as the number one academy across the entire history of the Tian Yuan Empire.

If you even have a little bit of decent talent, you would already know that the stairs didn’t care about your speed, they tested the absolute structural integrity of your foundation.

”Let’s go,” Haoran said in a low, perfectly calm drone, his golden eyes completely ignoring the weeping cultivator on the floor as he casually stepped onto the first tier of the stairs.

He moved with an unhurried, majestic grace, leading the way for his alliance, with Huo Yue and Zhu Ziyan naturally following closely right behind his shoulders like a twin vanguard of fire and shadow.

Behind their steady, advancing silhouettes, Ning Xueli suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, her purple eyes widening into massive circles of pure, unadulterated shock as her gaze locked onto the cat ears twitching on the black-haired girl’s head.

’Wait a single second... that cat ears... That figure...no wonder she seems so familiar... That’s Ziyan! What on earth is she doing here in the Central Region, standing beside Haoran?!’ she wondered frantically, her mind spinning with a thousand unanswered questions.

She remembered hearing the news that the Ogre Academy was destroyed and all students were killed, so she assumed Ziyan is among them... But who would’ve thought that she’d find her old friend here!?

Unable to contain her chaotic thoughts for another second, Ning Xueli completely broke her formal rank, bypassing everyone else, and immediately ran straight to the very front of the ascending line, her voice rising into a sharp cry.

”Ziyan!”

Zhu Ziyan paused her stride instantly, her ears twitching sharply as she turned her head around after hearing someone familiar call her personal name amidst the crowded staircase.

Her slitted, beast-like pupils violently widened in absolute shock the moment her gaze locked onto the short black hair and bright features of the girl running towards her.

”Xueli!?”

”Ziyan!”

Without a single care for the watching descendants of the Immortal Clans or eyes of the Ten Crowns, Ning Xueli immediately threw her arms around her old friend, hugging her tightly, and Ziyan let out a happy gasp, wrapping her arms around Xueli’s shoulders as they hugged each other back with an intense, long-awaited warmth.

Soon after, realizing the eyes of the entire Shen Clan fleet were fixed upon them, they softly broke the close embrace, though their hands remained connected.

Xueli smiled brightly, her silver eyes shining with a profound joy. ”Ziyan! I really thought you died when the academy was destroyed! I honestly didn’t expect us to ever meet again!”

”Yeah, I left the academy before it was destroyed.” Ziyan smiled softly, a rare, gentle warmth softening the predatory contours of her eyes as she squeezed Xueli’s fingers. ”I knew that you have been with young master Shen this entire time, but I didn’t expect us to meet under these circumstances.”

At that moment, hearing the emotional commotion behind her, Huo Yue slowly turned her body around on the step above them.

Her wine-red eyes narrowed into a sharp, highly analytical line as her gaze casually swept over Ning Xueli’s figure.

Slowly, deliberately, her eyes wandered straight down the front of Xueli’s dress, locking onto her chest as a highly specific, competitive thought flashed within her mind.

’So... is this the girl, the close friend and classmate that Ziyan mentioned to me years ago? The one who supposedly possesses a pair of boobs that are completely comparable to my own massive size?’

A sudden, silent spark of primal, feminine rivalry ignited within the Flame Empress’s chest.

She walked back down the steps towards the two girls with a slow, unhurried stride, her hands resting on her hips as her long red hair swayed behind her.

She then patted Ziyan on the shoulders as the cat eared girl looked at her before moving to the side, thinking that she probably wanted to talk to Xueli.

However, Huo Yue just stood in front of Ning Xueli, completely silent.

Before Xueli could even voice a question, Huo Yue suddenly and aggressively stepped into her personal space and slammed her massive boobs directly against Xueli’s chest, as if to physically and undeniably compare their absolute mass and volume right there on the steps of the trial.

*Thump.*

Ning Xueli blinked her eyes in an absolute, paralyzed shock, her mind completely short-circuiting from the sudden, soft kinetic impact.

She subconsciously looked down at the overlapping mass between their bodies, before staring back up into Huo Yue’s face with an expression of profound, unadulterated confusion and utter bewilderment.

Huo Yue cast her own gaze downwards, carefully measuring the exact displacement and curvature of their respective chests.

After verifying the structural layout, she let out a loud, highly satisfied snort through her nose, a smug, triumphant smile spreading across her beautiful face as she clearly saw that her own massive chest was still distinctly and undeniably bigger by a full margin.

She gracefully took a step back, shaking her red-haired head from side to side with a theatrical, lazy sigh, as if to loudly communicate to the entire universe: ’Ah, it truly is a lonely, tragic existence to be permanently invincible in every single category.’

Satisfied with her absolute victory, she turned around with a bouncy stride and walked straight back to resume her spot beside Haoran.

Ning Xueli stood frozen on the step, her gaze slowly tracking Huo Yue’s swaying hips before she downcast her eyes back to look at her own chest.

Slowly, her eyes narrowed, and her entire expression turned completely and terrifyingly dark.

You might be Haoran’s fiancee, but how dare you insult my proud chest like this?! Just because you’re a little rounder...a little softer...a little firmer...shit, damn it!

”Xueli... please, don’t mind her behavior too much,” Zhu Ziyan whispered frantically, a helpless, wry smile pulling at her lips as she gently patted her friend’s trembling shoulder to prevent a literal duel on the stairs. ”Ever since we started traveling together, she always had this incredibly weird, unhinged pathological obsession with constantly comparing cup sizes with every outstanding woman she encounters. In fact, her method of identifying who will be leader of the group is by the size of their chest.”

Ziyan immediately thought of Medusa, who remained with Lady Liu Ruyan in the Flame Moon Pavilion, as she was always the subject of Huo Yue’s comparisons.

Ning Xueli stared blankly at her for a long three seconds, before letting out a massive, exhausted sigh, forcefully calming the roaring qi within her core.

She then turned her head slightly to face Ling Luochen, who had quietly, calmly walked up the steps to join their small group, her icy blue silk robes fluttering softly in the mountain wind.

Ning Xueli’s dark expression suddenly shifted into a highly mischievous, wicked smirk.

She reached out her hand and gently patted Luochen’s shoulder, leaning in close to whisper in a low, teasing voice that was perfectly audible to their circle.

”Take a good, long look over there, Luochen. That beautiful red-haired woman right beside the young master... that is the official fiancée whose man you secretly slept with and stole last night inside the bedchambers.”

Ling Luochen’s pale ears instantly turned into a violent, burning shade of absolute crimson, the heat of the comment threatening to melt her on the spot.

However, much to Xueli’s immense disappointment, Ling Luochen surprisingly managed to utilize her supreme mental focus to maintain a flawless, perfectly frozen poker face, her eyes remaining fixed straight ahead as if she hadn’t heard a single syllable.

”Still, comparing chest size huh, then if I’m being honest,” Ning Xueli continued smoothly, her smirk widening as she glanced back toward the convoy of the Luo Clan and Flower Mountain Sect disciples, ”I am entirely sure that Xia Mengyao and Luo Mingye possess far bigger chests than Huo Yue. Especially Xia Mengyao... her volume is practically a crime against the natural laws of cultivation.”

A few paces behind them, the two high-born ladies who had just been explicitly mentioned within the conversation suddenly, violently perked up their ears, their bodies stiffening as their faces flushed with a deep embarrassment.

However, despite the intense psychological urge to turn around and defend their honors, they resolutely kept their gazes locked on the steps ahead, refusing to join in on the scandalous topic.

After all, they were currently acting as the primary, official representatives of the supreme forces they were leading to the gate.

It would be entirely unbecoming, disgraceful, and politically disastrous for daughters of their standing to be seen publicly debating the structural volume of their chests during the sacred Trial of Perseverance.

Huo Yue’s sharp ears immediately twitched violently as the whispered comments drifted up the stairs.

Her wine-red eyes flared with a sudden, competitive fire, and she was just about to whirl around to angrily argue the metrics of her dimensions when a strong, heavy arm suddenly wrapped securely around her soft shoulders, pulling her back against a broad chest.

”Stay perfectly still, Yue,” Haoran’s low, smooth voice resonated against her ear, filled with a calm, absolute authority that immediately cooled the rising fire in her core. ”Those trivial, aesthetic things can easily wait for later tonight behind closed doors. For now, keep your mind focused entirely on the parameters of the trials.”

Huo Yue pouted her lips into a sharp, adorable line, her cheeks puffing out slightly, but she ultimately nodded her head in absolute compliance, leaning her body back into his touch.

Indeed, as the crushing gravity of the higher steps began to aggressively multiply with every single pace they took, she knew that the ancient trials of the Imperial Academy were far, far more important than a petty war of cups.

The real climb had officially begun.