Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Shen Haoran gently swept his gaze across the vast, continent-sized empty field of solid white spirit stone.

The brilliant, light-absorbing golden luminescence within his pupils gradually settled back into its default state of calm, bottomless liquid gold.

All around him, the environment was completely, deathly still.

He looked to his immediate right and saw Huo Yue, her long, magnificent crimson hair hanging motionless over her shoulders, her wine-red eyes shut tight beneath her soft brows.

Beside her, Zhu Ziyan stood like a flawless stone statue, her dark cat ears slightly pinned back against her head, completely locked within the depths of her own internal struggle.

Further back, Ning Xueli, Ling Luochen, Xia Mengyao, and Luo Mingye were all frozen in various postures of absolute rigidity, their breathing shallow, their minds entirely swept away by the infinite, swirling currents of the Thousand Life Illusion.

To the far right, he saw Gu Xunyi also motionless like everyone else.

It seems not a single soul within the thousands of gathered scions had managed to open their eyes.

They were all currently trapped within the endless, recursive wheels of Samsara, desperately trying to anchor their fragmenting identities against the heavy, destabilizing memories of a thousand artificial lifetimes.

With absolutely nothing better to do to pass the idle time, and seeing that the external world was effectively paused around his coordinate, Shen Haoran let out a short, unhurried sigh.

He casually adjusted the flowing gold silk sleeves of his majestic royal robes, crossed his legs in a graceful, fluid motion, and sat down directly on the cold white stone.

He closed his eyes once more, entering a state of serene, deep meditation to systematically consolidate the newly mastered abilities of his Law of Absolute Severance.

To him, the supreme trial of the ancestors was nothing more than a quiet, convenient waiting room.

*

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*

Meanwhile, deep within the inner sanctum of the viewing amphitheater, the thousands of watching faculty members were suddenly thrown into an absolute, unprecedented state of chaos.

”This collective trial will probably take quite a while to yield any real results, honored colleagues,” a high-tier Master Teacher remarked, casually adjusting his robes as he reached for a cup of spiritual tea. ”Let us temporarily go and review the spiritual registries of the previous generations to pass the—wait, what in the nine layer of heavens is that?! Look at the tracking arrays! Someone has already successfully broken through the formation?!”

”What did you just say?!” another instructor shouted, nearly knocking his inkstone off his desk as he violently stood up. ”That is absolutely, structurally impossible! It has not even been a single day since the formation was activated! According to the historical baseline of the institution, this specific test was supposed to take an entire uninterrupted month for even the most elite geniuses to fully complete!”

”Quick! Stop wasting words and immediately shift the primary holographic projection! Show us exactly who this monster is!”

The massive holographic screens in the center of the hall violently shuddered, the gold-and-blue light rapidly shifting its focus away from the generic crowd blocks.

The image instantly zoomed in, displaying the solitary, completely relaxed figure of Shen Haoran calmly meditating in the middle of the empty white field.

The eyes of the thousands of Master Teachers violently widened in recognition, a collective, suffocating gasp echoing across the tiers of the amphitheater.

”That’s... that’s the sole heir of the Shen Clan? Shen Haoran?”

”I see...” an ancient elder muttered, slowly sitting back down into his seat as the panic in his chest instantly smoothed out into a deep, helpless resignation. ”If it is him... then I suppose it is perfectly normal. The standard rules of logic simply do not apply to that bloodline.”

Up on the high platform, Venerable Sky Cloud couldn’t help but stare intently at the golden youth’s reflection, his deep blue eyes filled with an intense and unadulterated appreciation, along with a trace of long forgotten awe.

Indeed, this young man’s raw conceptual talent and the absolute stability of his Dao Heart were significantly better, sharper, and more terrifying than his own mother, Chu Xueyu, and his aunts back during their glorious youth.

The ancient sage thought back to that grand era eight hundred years ago.

He remembered that it had taken Chu Xueyu and her sisters a full, grueling three days of non-stop mental combat before they finally broke out of the Thousand Life Illusion, an achievement that was already universally recognized as the single fastest completion time in the entire history of the Imperial Academy, remaining absolutely unbroken and untouched to this very day.

Yet now, this boy had casually treated the trial like a brief passing shadow, shattering the eternal record within a fraction of an hour.

Beside the golden thrones, Emperor Xu stared blankly at the magnificent image of Shen Haoran on the screen.

His pale fingers clenched the dragon-carved armrest of his throne so hard that his joints turned white, a long, heavy sigh of profound regret escaping his regal lips.

’Ah... if only he were my own biological son,’ the Emperor thought bitterly, his majestic blue eyes clouding over with a deep, torturous jealousy. ’How incredibly proud would I be to carry his path before the ancestors? Why must the absolute peak of the world’s destiny always belong to the children of the Shen Clan?’

*

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*

Down below the grand tiers of the elite faculty, seated all the way at the furthest, absolute darkest spot of the lowest amphitheater row, sat Xiao Long.

He sat completely alone, visibly secluded, isolated, and ignored by every single other Master Teacher within the grand hall.

Across the academy, he carried the pathetic reputation of being the single weakest, least talented, and most useless Master Teacher to ever cross the threshold of the institution, a low-born nobody who had only managed to secure his official position through dirty backdoor connections and the leverage of an old favor.

While virtually every single Master Teacher present in this hall possessed a terrifying cultivation base of at least the Nirvana Rebirth Realm, Xiao Long was currently sitting at merely the absolute first stage of the Spirit Ascension Realm.

To make his reputation even worse, he had only managed to crawl to that mediocre level by forcefully consuming mountains of herbs and medicinal pills that had permanently warped his internal meridians.

Consequently, he wasn’t respected or acknowledged in the slightest, not just by his fellow, elite Master Teachers, but even by the ordinary students of the capital who looked down on his thin aura.

At this moment, he stared up at the holographic image of Shen Haoran in absolute, unbridled shock, his hands trembling slightly against his modern white trousers.

Having lived in this cultivation world for quite a while now, his mind had naturally already studied and memorized all the previous historical records of the academy’s testing grounds.

’This test was supposed to last for an entire, grueling month,’ Xiao Long thought, his breath catching in his throat as a cold sweat began to gather at his temples. ’And the absolute record holder to ever complete this test was three days... yet now, this guy just walked through before a day has even passed? What kind of broken, rule bending cheat code is he playing with?’

He wondered if this man was just that talented, or is he also transmigrated person like him who has a system, or has some insane treasure or inheritance from a higher world.

’System... please, immediately scan his parameters for me,’ he thought fiercely, invoking the reality warping interface of his personal cheat.

At that exact microsecond, a sharp, translucent blue screen popped up directly in front of his eyes, its digital text flickering with an unstable, erratic energy.

[Name: Shen Haoran, Age: 24]

[Cultivation: Fifth Stage of the Nascent Soul Realm]

[Traits: ??? / ??? / ??? ]

[Evaluation: High-Level Dangerous Individual. Absolute Anomaly. Do not approach under any circumstances. Fatal entity.]

Right at that exact, terminal fraction of a second, as the system’s evaluation text fully crystallized on the blue screen, Shen Haoran, who was sitting thousands of miles away on the white field, suddenly opened his magnificent golden eyes.

Then, he slowly, casually tilted his chin upward, his golden pupils looking straight up into the high sky, piercing directly through the spatial distance of the monitoring arrays.

To Xiao Long’s absolute horror, it felt as if the golden youth was looking directly through the holographic camera, locking his gaze straight onto his exact physical coordinate in the dark corner of the amphitheater.

Xiao Long’s entire body violently shook as an absolute, primordial sense of suffocating dread instantly slamming down upon his soul like a collapsing sky.

A mountain of cold, icy sweat poured out of his back, soaking through his white suit as he frantically, violently jerked his head away, looking down at his boots in a panicked, breathless desperation.

’W-What... what in the world was that?!’ he thought, his chest heaving rapidly as he breathed heavily, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped beast. ’What on earth was that terrifying thing?! System, tell me right now! What the hell is that thing standing in the center of the field?!’

[System Alert: Host, the target individual is a certified cosmic Anomaly who operates completely outside the pre-written laws of destiny. Please, do not carelessly approach his position under any circumstances, and do not even allow his eyes to see your physical form. If you engage with this entity, the Heavens Secret System cannot guarantee your safety, your survival, or the preservation of your soul.]

’But... how can I just sit here and do nothing?’ Xiao Long thought bitterly, his teeth grinding together as he looked toward the frozen figures of Huo Yue, Zhu Ziyan, Qian Yunxi, and Xu Xiansu on the adjacent screen blocks.

Those extraordinarily talented, destiny heavy women that his system had explicitly demanded he take in as his personal disciples... every single one of them seemed to naturally, permanently hover around that golden youth like moths to a flame.

If the system was warning him that he couldn’t even approach the guy without risking absolute deletion, then how in the hell could he possibly step forward, separate them from his shadow, and take them as his personal disciples?

”Shit,” Xiao Long muttered through his teeth, his ambition violently clashing against a cold, primitive fear that refused to leave his bones.