Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Shen Haoran stood tall at the absolute apex of the giant desert predator, his dark robes rippling gracefully in the residual wind.

His posture was one of supreme, unbothered nobility as he looked down at the group gathered on the shifting red sands below, his cold, piercing eyes landing precisely on the faction led by the two distinct young women.

Beside him, Shen Xinye kept her focus as she swiftly scanned the targets to confirm their identities for her lord.

”Young master, that’s them. Ling Yinchi and Su Meilin,” said Shen Xinye, her voice sharp and carrying a clear tone of recognition.

She subtly extended her hand, pointing out the figures standing at the front of the frantic student group. ”Ling Yinchi is that orange-haired girl, surrounded by men, and Su Meilin is that blue-haired girl standing further apart from the crowd.”

Haoran nodded slowly, his expression entirely unchanging as he absorbed the information.

His gaze casually brushed past the seductive allure of Ling Yinchi and the icy, isolated presence of Su Meilin as if they were nothing more than ordinary scenery.

He didn’t care about their bloodlines, nor was he interested in their standing among the Nine Immortal Clans.

Instead, as his eyes continued to sweep across the immediate area, they suddenly locked onto a figure standing slightly behind the ruins—a man dressed in the simple linen garments of a low-ranking academy servant.

It was Lin Che.

And without hesitation, he raised his palm.

”Die...” he said.

His voice was a calm, chilling whisper that somehow echoed above the roaring desert winds, carrying the weight of an absolute imperial decree.

There was no warning. There was no exchange of arrogant words, no grand declaration of intent, and no cinematic hesitation.

To Shen Haoran, protagonist fall into two types, one that is under him, and one that is against him.

Since this Lin Che wasn’t going to join him, then he must be eliminated.

There is no concept of neutrality.

Then, his raised hand suddenly descended.

In that instant, the sky above the sandstone ruins violently warped.

The blazing sun was completely obscured as a terrifying, world-crushing pressure materialized out of thin air.

From the sky, an enormous, translucent palm that shimmered like a polished diamond descended with the weight of a crumbling world.

The atmosphere shattered under its immense velocity, the air whistling violently as the sheer density of the manifestation compressed the space beneath it.

This was the World Suppressing Diamond Palm, an ultimate battle technique of unfathomable power that only those who have thoroughly mastered at least the first stage of the Unbreakable Diamond Sacred Technique can ever dream of wielding.

The diamond-like structure of the hand sparkled with billions of intricate defensive and offensive runes, threatening to grind everything beneath it into microscopic dust.

Down below, Lin Che’s eyes widened in absolute shock.

The lazy, and relaxed mask he had worn for months completely shattered in a fraction of a second.

He could feel the absolute lock of divine sense pinning him to the desert floor; the space around his body had become as rigid as steel, making standard evasion entirely impossible.

’Shit. This guy is completely insane!’ he screamed internally, his mind racing at a million miles an hour.

He hadn’t even spoken a single word to this young master, nor had he shown any hostility. Yet, the man had unleashed a world-erasing strike on him as casually as one would swat a common fly!

’Damn it!’

Faced with imminent annihilation, Lin Che knew his peaceful life had just been violently brought to an end.

Without hesitation, he decided to stop holding back his strength.

He stopped suppressing his Qi, and in an instant, the superficial aura of a weak, low-tier academy servant vanished, and the full-blown, terrifying power of a 1st Stage Spirit Ascension realm expert exploded outward from his body like a volcanic eruption.

A column of dark red, turbulent spiritual energy blasted into the sky, tearing through the restrictive spatial lock of the diamond palm.

Up on the worm’s head, Haoran raised an eyebrow slightly, a faint, amused glint passing through his dark eyes as he witnessed the sudden transformation.

”1st Stage Spirit Ascension, impressive,” Haoran murmured, his voice entirely steady as he maintained the downward pressure of his palm. ”To hide such strength within the outer academy while masquerading as a mere janitor... you certainly possess a decent amount of secrets. But that’s not enough. If you want a fighting chance against me, at least reach Nirvana first.”

Lin Che gritted his teeth so hard they nearly bled.

The immense weight of the diamond palm was already pushing him down, his boots sinking inches into the compacted sand as the ground beneath him began to crack into a web of deep fissures.

He knew that a normal defensive barrier would be shredded instantly.

”SPIRIT AVATAR!” Lin Che screamed, his voice carrying the full, explosive resonance of his hidden cultivation.

The desert floor tore open completely.

From the ground, a massive, terrifying figure of a three-headed oni with six arms made entirely out of dense, blood-red spiritual aura climbed from the burning earth.

The manifestation was awe-inspiring and grotesque, its three faces snarling with savage fury, its long fangs protruding over its lips.

It stood up with a towering height reaching a staggering 300 meters, casting a massive, dark shadow across the ancient sandstone temple.

Lin Che was standing securely inside the glowing forehead of his Spirit Avatar, his hands crossed over his chest as he screamed and held up all six of his Avatar’s arms simultaneously to catch the falling sky.

*BOOM!*

The giant translucent diamond palm and the six massive arms of the crimson oni made violent, earth-shattering contact.

The impact was cataclysmic.

A massive hurricane of pure, raw kinetic energy and fragmented qi blasted outward in a perfect circle, creating a shockwave that was actively rearranging the entire desert terrain.

Colossal dunes thousands of meters away were leveled instantly, turned into flat plains of drifting dust, while a massive crater opened up beneath the combatants.

Ling Yinchi and Su Meilin’s group was also blown away by the sheer velocity of the residual gale.

The arrogant young masters screamed as they were sent tumbling across the sand like autumn leaves in a storm.

Haoran couldn’t really care less about them. They were completely irrelevant to the unfolding battle.

”Go,” Haoran ordered coldly.

Before the dust could even settle, he reached down, grabbing Shen Xinye securely by her waist, and jumped off the earthworm’s head, floating gracefully backward through the chaotic air.

The moment his feet left the creature, the deep psychic imprint of submission he had placed on the beast’s primitive mind was replaced by a single, burning command: Destroy.

The giant earthworm suddenly let out an inhumane, blood-curdling wail that shook the stone pillars of the ruins.

Its segmented body surged forward with terrifying speed.

Blinded by instinctual terror and the driving will of Shen Haoran, it shot directly towards the 300-meter Spirit Avatar, opening its massive, lamprey-like mouth and beginning to savagely eat the manifestation from its legs up, its crystalline teeth grinding through the red aura with terrifying efficiency.

Inside the forehead of the giant oni, Lin Che felt his vision blur as the system’s emergency red indicators flashed violently across his consciousness.

[Host! You are in grave danger! The opponent’s baseline capability far exceeds estimated parameters! Chances of survival in a direct confrontation are slim! Please escape! Go to the Inheritance Site right now!]

’Alright!’ Lin Che didn’t hesitate for a single second.

He trusted his system more than anything in this world; after all, it had been his sole companion, his cheat, and his guide ever since he had transmigrated into this dangerous, volatile universe.

If the system said he couldn’t win, then staying here to fight was nothing short of suicide.

”System, use Arcane Breaker!” Lin Che roared, his hands forming a rapid sequence of ancient hand seals.

[Activating Arcane Breaker...]

[Targeting foreign spatial and physical constructs... Activated!]

A brilliant, piercing golden light erupted from Lin Che’s chest, taking the form of a fragile, glowing needle that shot directly into the center of the descending diamond palm.

*Crack!*

The sound was like a thunderclap echoing through a frozen valley.

The enormous, translucent palm that had been grinding down his avatar’s six arms suddenly stopped its descent as deep, jagged fractures rippled across its diamond-like surface before it completely shattered into countless shimmering fragments, dissolving into the burning desert air like melting snow.

The Arcane Breaker was a legendary, single-use conceptual item that Lin Che had obtained from one of his previous Sign-Ins at a forbidden ancestral altar.

It was entirely capable of breaking, shattering, or nullifying any supernatural phenomenon including but not limited to battle techniques or formation arrays, of course, it must be weaker or relative to the user’s cultivation level.

With the pressure from above suddenly vanished, Lin Che seized the initiative and commanded his spirit avatar, its six massive arms reaching down to grab the giant earthworm that was biting at its legs.

With a surge of ferocious, Spirit Ascension qi, the avatar lifted the behemoth into the air and violently tore it into two separate pieces.

*Splatter!*

A massive torrent of thick, green, acidic blood splattered across the desert floor and the stone walls of the temple, falling so heavily that it looked as if it were raining poison in the middle of the wasteland.

[HOST! ESCAPE NOW!!!]

Lin Che was startled by the system’s frantic, overlapping alarms, and before he could even realize what was happening, a sudden, deafening screech tore through the sky.

A literal rain of condensed sword intent bullets—each one no larger than a finger, yet vibrating with a sharpness that could pierce through mountains—suddenly descended from the heavens.

The sheer volume of the attack was terrifying, turning the sky into a curtain of silver light as it tore through his 300-meter Spirit Avatar, shredding the dense crimson aura like a piece of fragile paper.

”Gah!” Lin Che let out a sharp cry of pain as one of the stray sword intent bullets bypassed his collapsing avatar and hit him directly on the left shoulder, cleanly piercing through his flesh and spraying blood.

[Warning! Critical damage detected! Host is in extreme danger... automatically activating Shield of Aias!]

At that precise moment, a beautiful, translucent green light erupted around his wounded body.

Four giant, glowing energy petals materialized in a star-shaped formation around him, rotating rapidly to form an absolute, impenetrable kinetic barrier.

Shield of Aias, a conceptual shield wielded by a legendary hero from another world, one of the items that Lin Che received in his previous Sign-Ins.

With the shield up, the remaining sword intent bullets just slammed into the green petals, producing loud, metallic clangs but failing to break through the defensive artifact.

Through the gaps of the rotating green petals, Lin Che raised his head, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and disbelief as he looked up into the sky.

There, floating effortlessly in the air with his dark robes fluttering in the wind, was Shen Haoran.

The young master of the Shen Clan didn’t even have his sword drawn, he was simply hovering there, pointing a literal finger gun directly at him, his index finger glowing with a blinding silver light as he casually shot the mountain-shredding bullets with a relaxed, indifferent expression.

It was as if he weren’t engaging in a life-or-death battle against a Spirit Ascension expert, but rather playing a casual game of target practice.

’Monster! He’s an absolute monster!’

Lin Che didn’t dare to delay a single millisecond longer.

Gritting his teeth through the throbbing pain in his shoulder, he utilized the full speed of his Spirit Ascension cultivation.

Turning his body into a streak of desperate red light, he immediately flew straight towards the dark, open entrance of the massive sandstone Inheritance Site and disappeared into the shadows of the ancient temple, leaving the chaotic desert behind.