Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

”We’re actually assigned to the exact same class! What an absolutely beautiful coincidence!”

Gu Xunyi chirped happily, her voice carrying a sound of teasing melody as she walked smoothly beside Shen Haoran on his left side.

On his right, Huo Yue maintained a steady pace, her left hand intertwined with Haoran’s hand.

Right now, the massive group that had left the Falling Blossom Villa had significantly thinned out.

The lower five of the Ten Crowns, alongside the other girls had already broken apart at the main courtyard intersections, navigating their way through the massive academic corridors toward their respective classrooms.

Only the top five of the elite Crowns—Shen Tao, Shen Fei, Shen Xinye, Shen Jian, and Shen Ji—remained, walking like a phalanx of silent, armored guardians directly behind Shen Haoran.

”I am completely sure that every single heir from the Immortal Lineages will be packed inside this exact hall today!” Gu Xunyi continued, completely unbothered by the cold silence radiating from the youth beside her.

She lazily twirled a strand of her loose braid. ”Who do you think our lovely classmates are going to be, Haoran? Do you think the other direct descendants of the Immortal Clans will dare to sit near us?”

”Damn, woman. It is way too early in the morning for this,” Haoran let out a long, weary sigh, his golden eyes fixed on the path ahead. ”Can you not, for a single fraction of a second, reign in your mouth and allow the corridor to remain quiet?”

”Oh? If you want me to stop talking, you can always just shove something ’delicious’ right into it,” Gu Xunyi laughed loudly, her red eyes flashing with a wicked, deeply suggestive amusement as she leaned slightly closer to his arm. ”That will definitely shut me up for the morning, young master~.”

Haoran took a deep breath, and sighed. Huo Yue just giggled seeing his frustrated expression.

At the back of the three, Shen Jian’s lips twitched at her shameless dialogue and how Shen Haoran seemed annoyed.

He leaned his torso to the right, nudging his elbow sharply into Shen Ji’s muscular ribs, and whispered in a low, conspiratorial tone, ”You know... looking at how fiercely that purple-haired girl is throwing herself at him... if the young master truly doesn’t want to play this game, he should just pass the controller over to us. It’s a tragedy to let a beauty like that go to waste.”

Shen Ji didn’t look back at him. He merely kept his in his pocket, his fighting spirit humming under his skin, and asked dryly, ”The true question is... do you honestly believe you are more than capable to actually handle a woman of her caliber, Jian?”

Shen Jian instantly paused his stride. He turned his eyes toward Gu Xunyi’s shifting profile, and the moment his brain recalled her family lineage records, an involuntary, ice-cold shudder violently ran down his spine.

Handle her? Was he completely out of his mind? We were talking about a literal genetic lunatic who, during her training years, had actively and quite casually released a strain of a forbidden ancient plague that wiped out millions of living organisms in an isolated valley—strictly to satisfy her personal intellectual curiosity regarding cellular degeneration!

If he truly did attempt to tap that dangerous flower, he would be considered miraculously, exceptionally lucky if his physical corpse wasn’t already rotting, liquefying, and turning into black sludge by the next morning.

That terrifying woman openly, proudly took the legendary mad scientist Feng Yuyan as her absolute, supreme life idol.

And anyone on this continent who actively idolized the stomach-turning medical methods of Feng Yuyan was definitely not right in the head.

They were monsters wrapped in silk!

”We’re finally here,” Haoran spoke calmly, his footsteps grinding to a halt.

He stopped directly in front of a pair of massive, heavily reinforced obsidian double doors decorated with the intricate silver sigils of the Nascent Class, Grade A.

Without a single shred of hesitation, Haoran reached his hand out and pushed the heavy doors wide open.

However, the exact second the wood parted, his perception immediately flared with danger.

Moving with fluid, breathtakingly effortless speed, Haoran instantly stepped a single pace to the right, his movement a seamless blur.

*BOOM!*

He moved just in time for a massive, blood-smeared physical body to violently fly straight out of the room like a cannonball, blasting through the open doorway and slamming brutally against the solid stone wall of the outer corridor.

The impact shattered the student’s bones, leaving him to slide down to the floor in a dead faint.

Haoran’s pristine golden brows furrowed into a sharp line of annoyance as he stepped through the dust cloud and entered the spacious, colosseum-style classroom.

There, standing proudly right at the center of the broken desks and shattered floor tiles, was a highly familiar, intensely arrogant figure.

It was Hei Xuan, the prime direct heir of the Hei Immortal Clan.

He was standing in the middle of the room, his dark robes fluttering wildly, his pale face smeared with fresh crimson blood as he grinned like an absolute, unhinged maniac.

All over the wide stone floor of the lecture hall, lying bleeding, groaning, and entirely unconscious, were various senior disciples and a few freshmen.

Haoran’s passive spiritual senses swept over the fallen bodies, instantly detecting that quite a few of the defeated fighters were sitting comfortably at the advanced 8th and 9th stage of the Nascent Soul Realm.

Yet, despite their superior numbers and higher cultivation sub-stages, they had been completely, utterly decimated.

Haoran didn’t actually find the brutal sight surprising or impressive in the slightest.

Before a cultivator successfully breaks through into the transcendent Spirit Ascension Realm, the raw density of one’s foundational qi dictated everything.

Anyone possessing a supreme, heaven-defying foundation could easily utilize their pure, compressed energy to effortlessly crush opponents who were technically multiple sub-stages higher than them on paper.

As the direct bloodline descendants of the supreme Immortal Lineages—especially an absolute, resource-fed heir like Hei Xuan—fighting, breaking, and casually killing a standard 9th Stage Nascent Soul combatant despite being technically locked at the 5th stage was a complete piece of cake.

It was a basic baseline requirement of their bloodline.

However, if these geniuses ever harbored the foolish, arrogant dream of trying to fight a true Spirit Ascension Realm powerhouse using that same logic, they would rapidly discover that they were nothing more than ants praying for rain.

That was because of the existence known as the Spirit Avatar, something only those in the Spirit Ascension Realm and above can choose.

The manifestation of a Spirit Avatar was a conceptual barrier that no ordinary Nascent cultivator could ever hope to bridge with simple foundational qi.

No one in the history of the modern era could successfully overcome that specific mortal hurdle... with the sole exception of Shen Haoran, of course.

”Listen to me well, you pathetic losers!” Hei Xuan roared into the quiet room, his voice amplifying through the hall as he raised his blood-stained fists. ”From this exact moment onward, I am the absolute, undisputed boss of Grade A! Does any single person left standing in this room have a goddamn problem with my decree!?”

No one said anything.

The other students were too afraid, and those who are from Immortal Lineages were too lazy to bother with him.

”My, my... you truly seem to thoroughly, intensely enjoy showing off your meager skills to the empty seats, don’t you, Hei Xuan?” Gu Xunyi grinned widely, a deeply mocking light in her red eyes as she took a slow, deliberate step forward into the room, her boots clicking against the stones.

Hei Xuan sharply turned his venomous gaze toward the sound, his eyes narrowing as he spotted her purple braids.

However, his focus didn’t linger on her for even a millisecond; his pupils violently contracted as his sight locked completely onto the immaculate figure of Shen Haoran standing right beside her.

”Shen... Haoran...” Hei Xuan gritted his teeth so hard a sharp, grinding sound echoed from his jaw.

The memories of his previous psychological defeat back in the gates of academy and also in the past, flared within his chest.

He sneered, his tone dropping to a dangerously condescending, low growl. ”Look who finally decided to drag their feet into the classroom. Did you waste your entire morning hiding behind your women because your fragile meridians were shaking after your little scuffle with that old academy elder? If you’re exhausted, you should have just crawled back to your clan’s cradle.”

Huo Yue’s brow violently furrowed, a bright, volatile spark of crimson flame instantly dancing across her knuckles as she prepared to incinerate his face.

But Haoran simply raised a single, pristine hand, stopping her action as he shook his head with an air of supreme, absolute indifference.

”The next time you choose to open your mouth before me, Hei Xuan, do yourself a favor and do not utter such ridiculously massive, empty words,” Haoran spoke smoothly, his deep voice carrying a cold, effortless resonance that instantly swallowed the ambient noise of the lecture hall. ”It doesn’t make you look intimidating or powerful in the slightest. It merely makes your entire existence look incredibly small, desperate, and thoroughly pathetic.”

”Pfft! Bwahaha!”

Shen Jian instantly burst into a loud, incredibly boisterous fit of mock-evil laughter from the back of the line, pointing a finger.

”Oh, that is absolutely beautiful, Young Master! I can definitely tell from his desperate barking that he’s incredibly small alright. In more ways than one.”

Hei Xuan’s face violently flushed with an unhinged, dark fury at the open mockery as he snorted loudly, his gaze snapping to the Fourth Crown. ”Just a pathetic, talentless branch trash who literally had to steal someone else’s hereditary Supreme Bone just to mimic a fraction of true genius... what right do you think you possess to laugh in my presence, Shen Jian? Sit back down like the dog you are.”

”You son of a—” Shen Jian’s grin vanished instantly, his eyes burning with a sudden, murderous intent as his stolen bone thrummed with raw, golden energy, his aura flaring to its absolute limits.

But before a full-scale battle could erupt between the two, Hei Xuan’s figure violently blurred.

Utilizing an advanced, shadow-warping movement technique of the Hei Clan, he instantaneous materialized directly in front of Shen Haoran, his sudden displacement kicking up a sharp gust of wind that rattled the broken windows.

*Swish! Swish! Swish!*

Answering his silent movement, six elite, silent geniuses of the Hei Clan main lineage simultaneously emerged from the shadows, dropping down to form a tight, militaristic formation directly behind his back, their weapons partially unsheathed to support their heir’s play for dominance.

Huo Yue and the five Crowns didn’t hesitate for a single second.

Their destructive auras erupted in unison, their physical bodies shifting forward to form a protective wall of absolute steel around their master, their weapons humming with latent, violent power.

Huo Yue’s eyes seems to even turned fiercer. After all, these are the boss of the guys who had once kidnapped her teacher.

”Back down,” Haoran commanded softly, his voice an absolute decree that instantly froze the Crowns and Huo Yue in their tracks, forcing them to reluctantly step back.

Hei Xuan stood perfectly still right before the golden-haired youth, his chest puffing out as he looked down with a supreme, arrogant glare.

Because of his specific ancestral lineage traits, Hei Xuan stood almost a full head taller than Haoran, his massive frame casting a wide shadow over the youth’s robes.

He grinned widely, his face close. ”Shen Haoran... let me make the rules of this semester perfectly clear to your fucking brain. I am officially going to be the absolute, undisputed boss of Grade A this time. Do you have any single objection or problem with that arrangement?”

Hei Xuan maintained his towering stance, his breathing heavy as he actively deployed his physical mass to psychologically suppress the young master, his malicious grin widening.

Haoran remained completely calm, his expression unchanged as he slowly, deliberately raised his pristine golden eyes, looking up at the towering heir.

Then, with a fluid, terrifyingly casual motion that bypassed Hei Xuan’s defensive reflexes entirely, Haoran extended his right hand and firmly grabbed him by the solid muscle of his left shoulder.

”I don’t like looking up when I’m talking to people” Haoran whispered, his voice carrying the freezing weight of the cosmic void. ”So, can you kneel down for me?”

*BOOM!*

The exact instant the final word left his lips, an immeasurable surge of raw, physical physical strength exploded directly from his fingertips.

Haoran’s arm shifted downward with the absolute weight of a falling star, violently attempting to press Hei Xuan’s massive frame down into the broken stone floor.

Hei Xuan’s pupils violently contracted to the size of pinpricks.

Sensing the incoming, bone-crushing downward momentum, his survival instincts flared into existence, and he frantically ignited the absolute maximum output of his qi.

He dug his boots deep into the stone, his physical muscles expanding as he desperately tried to resist the young master’s downward pressure.

Massive, jagged blue veins violently popped out all across Hei Xuan’s forehead, his temples, and his neck, looking like thick, pulsing earthworms about to tear through his pale skin.

His teeth ground together so fiercely that fresh crimson blood began to leak from his gums under the sheer, unyielding mechanical strain, but through sheer, frantic willpower, he managed to barely keep his knees straight, refusing to bend.

Haoran looked at his trembling, bloodshot eyes and the pulsing veins on his neck, and a slow, chillingly elegant smirk played upon his lips.

He didn’t even adjust his posture, his grip remaining as effortless as if he were holding a teacup.

”Heh,” Haoran murmured softly, his tone dripping with a highly patronizing, amused disdain. ”It seems that over the past week of peace... you have gotten remarkably tough, Hei Xuan.”

Hei Xuan remained silent, struggling to maintain his feet.

”Back then, didn’t I use the same method to wipe your face on our floor?” Said Haoran, much to Hei Xuan’s anger and embarrassment.

Just then, Haoran’s eyes narrowed.

”However, I said what I said. So...Kneel down.”

*Boom!*

Once again, the mighty heir of Hei Immortal Clan, Hei Xuan.

Was brought to his knees.