Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

”I will fight!”

Shen Xun’er declared, and with a single, effortless leap that left a faint trail of crimson sparks in the air, she vaulted over the perimeter and landed squarely in the center of the makeshift arena.

The stone beneath her boots remained entirely undamaged, showcasing a refined control of her force that drew murmurs of intrigue from the front rows of the gathered crowd.

She stood tall with her chin raised, her hair swaying against her back, and looking directly at the towering bronze-armored cultivator across from her, she clasped her fist with casual grace.

”Shen Xun’er,” she declared, her clear, ringing voice carrying across the entire platform. ”5th Stage of the Nascent Soul Realm.”

Her words were simple and direct. She deliberately didn’t state her origins, omitting any mention of the Imperial Academy, the upper realms, or the lineage of the Shen Clan.

In this crowded, lower-realm gathering where native tensions and hidden eyes lingered on every rooftop, concealing their true institutional background was a necessity.

Her opponent, a man nearly twice her width with thick scars lining his jaw, let out a booming laugh.

He unslung the massive, jagged-toothed greatsword from his back, driving the heavy steel an inch into the arena’s floor with a dull THUD.

”Good courage, little girl! But courage alone won’t keep your bones intact inside the Celestial Dragon Vault,” the man roared, his eyes flashing with the pride of a seasoned border brawler. ”I am Ba Tu! A wandering practitioner of the Western Wastes, currently at the 9th Stage of the Nascent Soul Realm! Yield now if you don’t want to crawl back to your family in pieces!”

The crowd surrounding the arena buzzed with excitement upon hearing the cultivation gap.

Four minor stages in the Nascent Soul Realm was not an insignificant margin; the density of qi and the solidity of one’s core at the 9th stage typically overwhelmed mid-stage practitioners with sheer volume.

High up on the shaded VIP balustrade, Shen Haoran watched intently, his golden eyes narrowed as he focused entirely on the Shen Xun’er below.

His mind worked through cold, calculated assessments. In the past year, while the inner circle had rapidly consolidated their foundations within Boundless Sky City, Haoran had keenly noticed that Shen Xun’er’s relative performance and training metrics had started to decline.

It was not a lack of innate talent, after all her martial arts and combat instincts were exceptionally rare.

Rather, it as if an insidious hesitation had taken root in her mindset, subtly eroding the fierce, unbridled momentum that once defined her.

In fact, Haoran knew that if the lower half of the Ten Crowns weren’t so thoroughly indifferent to official internal rankings and clan hierarchy, Shen Xun’er would have already fallen several spots in their operational standings.

Down on the platform, the official White Dragon Sect referee raised his hand, stepping swiftly to the edge of the perimeter.

”Let the seventy-fifth bout... BEGIN!”

CLANG!

The starting gong resonated through the plaza.

The instant the sound tore through the air, Shen Xun’er did not charge. Instead of unleashing the explosive, earth-shattering initial rush that was the hallmark of her explosive martial style, she immediately slid her left foot back, lowered her center of gravity, crossed her forearms in front of her chest, and settled into a rigid, impenetrable defensive stance.

Her qi flickered along her skin, condensing into a dense, layered barrier of scales that locked her firmly in place.

Up on the balustrade, Shen Haoran’s brow furrowed, a visible frown forming on his face.

This was completely wrong.

The normal, untamed Shen Xun’er, the girl whose martial Dao was forged around the ferocious, devouring fury of ancient eastern dragon, would have immediately attacked like an apex beast.

She should have closed the distance in a fraction of a heartbeat, detonated her explosive dragon fists straight into Ba Tu’s chest, and forced him on the back foot before he could even raise his broadsword.

Yet right now, she was standing frozen on the defensive, her eyes darting nervously across her opponent’s stance.

”Hah! Choosing to turtle up against my Earth-Splitting Blade? A fatal mistake, girl!” Ba Tu roared, his 9th-stage Nascent Soul qi erupting like a geyser of muddy, golden-brown light.

BOOM!

The stone beneath Ba Tu’s heavy boots shattered into rubble as he propelled himself forward like a runaway boulder.

His jagged greatsword swung in a wide, vicious horizontal arc, tearing through the air with a deafening screech as dense earth-element energy condensed along the serrated edge, aiming straight for her ribs!

Shen Xun’er’s pupils constricted. Deep down, an agonizing whirlwind of doubt paralyzed her offensive instincts.

’He’s at the 9th stage... his raw spiritual volume is almost double mine. If I commit to a forward blitz and fail to break his guard in one hit, his counter-swing will shatter my meridians.’

’I can’t be reckless. I have to defend, endure, and observe his attack patterns until an absolute opening appears!’

Driven by the paralyzing fear that if she went with her usual, high-risk aggressive fighting style she would inevitably lose, Shen Xun’er forced herself to remain entirely on the defensive.

CLANG—!!!!!

The jagged greatsword slammed violently against her crossed, qi-scales covered forearms.

A shower of blinding sparks detonated across the stage.

The sheer weight of the 9th-stage strike drove Shen Xun’er backward, her boots carving two deep, smoking grooves into the white marble for nearly twenty paces before she managed to stabilize her footing.

Her arms vibrated with intense, numbing agony, the bone-rattling shockwave traveling straight into her shoulders.

”Is that all your defense has to offer?!” Ba Tu yelled, not giving her a single breath to recover.

He stepped forward in heavy, rhythmic strides, his greatsword spinning into a relentless, three-strike combo.

BANG! CLANG! BOOM!

Shen Xun’er gritted her teeth, desperately dodging the first downward chop by leaning a fraction of an inch to the side, then raising a condensed qi barrier to deflect the rising slash.

Yet with every defensive maneuver, she was forced further and further toward the edge of the ring.

She was struggling immensely.

Her breath grew ragged, sweat stinging her eyes as she dedicated ninety percent of her energy just to withstanding the crushing, continuous barrage.

Her eyes darted frantically, desperately trying to analyze his swing speed, his balance shifts, and the flow of his earth qi.

But because she had completely surrendered the initiative, Ba Tu didn’t need to worry about his own defense in the slightest—he poured every ounce of his superior spiritual reserves into overwhelming offense, suffocating her within an inescapable cage of heavy steel and flying stone.

The crowd began to jeer and murmur, watching the young girl get relentlessly battered across the platform.

High above, Shen Haoran’s eyes turned cold as he watched her retreat step by agonizing step.

She was fighting out of fear, not conviction.

By trying to calculate her way around a deficit in cultivation stages instead of letting her wild, primordial dragon intent crush through the gap, she had handed her opponent the rhythm of the battle—and if she didn’t break out of that mental cage soon, the match was already over.

The deafening roar of the surrounding arena crowds seemed to warp into a muffled, droning buzz inside Shen Xun’er’s ringing ears.

Every breath she drew felt like inhaling crushed glass and burning sulfur.

Her robes was torn at the right shoulder, singed by the explosive friction of pulverized granite, and a thin, agonizing trickle of blood escaped the corner of her lips.

Beneath her tattered sleeves, her forearms trembled uncontrollably—the dense, qi-scales she had forcefully manifested across her skin were fractured, hairline cracks spiderwebbing across the qi armor as Ba Tu’s relentless, crushing onslaught continued to hammer her into the dirt.

”Come on! Is this all you have!?” Ba Tu roared, his eyes bloodshot and bulging with feral, predatory momentum.

He didn’t give her a single second to stabilize her breathing or circulate her qi.

Seeing her continuous retreat, his confidence had ballooned into arrogant, sadistic fury.

His jagged-toothed greatsword transformed into a swirling hurricane of heavy, golden-brown earth energy, tearing up chunks of the reinforced arena stone and hurling them at her like cannon shot.

BOOM! CRACK! BANG!

Shen Xun’er was struggling desperately, pushed to the very brink of disaster.

She ducked beneath a horizontal sweep that sheared off a lock of her hair, only for the follow-up hilt-strike to slam brutally into her collarbone.

The shockwave blasted through her defensive barrier, forcing a muffled gasp of pure agony from her throat as her boots skidded across the dust, her heels hanging barely two inches over the outer boundary line of the arena.

If she took a single half-step backward, she would be disqualified.

If she miscalculated his swing arc by a fraction of an inch, the jagged steel would cleave her torso in two.

Her dantians burned with suffocating heat as she burned her Nascent Soul essence purely to maintain her crumbling guard.

’I can’t fall... I can’t lose here...’ she chanted desperately in her mind, her knuckles white, her amber eyes wide with frantic, analytical terror. ’Observe him! Keep watching! Count the footwork! Count his breathing!’

And then, amidst the agonizing rhythm of near-fatal impacts, the desperate clarity born of life-or-death survival finally pierced through the fog.

She saw it.

Every time Ba Tu executed his heavy, earth-shattering downward cleave, his massive right shoulder dipped three inches lower than his left, leaving his upper pectoral exposed.

Furthermore, because he relied entirely on the overwhelming brute force of his 9th-stage Nascent Soul Cultivation, he took a full half-breath pause after every fourth strike to violently cycle his earth qi through his lower meridians—a small delay that an ordinary mid-stage cultivator would miss, but an elite groomed to be the best could exploit.

One... two... three...

Ba Tu’s greatsword rose high into the air, blazing with a colossal, mountain-sized spectral blade of solid brown rock.

”FALL!” he bellowed, bringing the blade down with crushing momentum!

FOUR! NOW!

Shen Xun’er didn’t block.

Instead of raising her battered arms to absorb the impact, she twisted her torso with impossible, serpentine flexibility, her body sliding along the rushing slipstream of the falling blade like a red ribbon dancing through a gale.

The massive sword slammed into the arena floor where she had stood a millisecond prior, shattering thirty yards of stone into a smoking crater.

During that half-breath recovery where his earth qi stalled—

Shen Xun’er counterattacked!

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!

The qi surrounding her frame suddenly condensed, igniting into a blazing aura of celestial dragon flames that incinerated the surrounding debris into ash.

”Soaring Dragon Palm!”

Her slender, porcelain palm shot forward like a striking spear, bathed in incandescent crimson fire.

BOOOOOOM!

The palm struck Ba Tu squarely on his exposed right collarbone.

The sound of fracturing bone cracked through the air like a snapping log, the explosive dragon intent rupturing through his heavy bronze armor and sending the towering giant staggering backward with a violent cough of blood.

For the first time in the entire match, Ba Tu’s eyes flashed with genuine, petrifying terror.

”You—?!”

Shen Xun’er didn’t let him finish. Having seized the initiative, she unleashed the full, lethal arsenal of her high-tier dragon techniques, weaving through the dust with breathtaking, predatory grace.

”Nine Dragons Rending Claw!”

Her fingers curved into sharp, ethereal dragon talons, raking across his chest in a blur of crimson light.

Five deep gouges tore through his enchanted breastplate, carving bloody trenches across his chest.

Ba Tu roared in agony, wildly swinging his heavy blade in a desperate, blind arc, but Shen Xun’er was already gone.

She leaped high into the air, flipping gracefully over his head as her twin tails whipped against the wind.

”Sky Dragon Splitting Cleave!”

Her right leg, wrapped in dense, interlocking dragon scales and burning with high temperature fire, came crashing down like an executioner’s celestial halberd.

Her heel slammed directly into the back of Ba Tu’s thick neck, driving the two hundred pound armored warrior face-first into the stone floor with a bone shattering THUD that sent shockwaves rippling across the platform.

Ba Tu coughed up a massive puddle of blood, his jagged greatsword clattering out of his numb fingers.

He desperately tried to push himself up on shaking arms, his 9th-stage Nascent Soul qi flickering wildly like a dying candle in a tempest—

SWOOSH.

Shen Xun’er landed lightly atop his broad, armored back, the pointed tip of her crimson-scaled boot pressing directly against the base of his skull, her hand poised like a striking dragon’s jaw right above his trembling eyes.

The arena fell dead silent.

Ba Tu stared at the blood-stained stone beneath his nose, feeling the terrifying, incinerating heat of her palm hovering an inch from his forehead.

”I... I yield...” Ba Tu rasped weakly, spitting out broken teeth. ”I yield!”

The referee, who had been standing frozen at the boundary line with wide eyes, snapped back to reality.

He raised his wooden tally stick high into the air, his amplified voice booming across the entire plaza.

”Bout seventy-five concludes! The participant Ba Tu is defeated! The sixty-eighth spot in the Celestial Dragon Vault officially belongs to... SHEN XUN’ER!”

The hundreds of thousands of rogue cultivators and sect disciples along with watchers erupted into thunderous, deafening cheers.

A 5th-stage Nascent Soul young girl had just defeated and brutally crushed a seasoned 9th-stage brawler, showcasing a level of martial precision and explosive technique that left the spectators in awe!

In all their life, only the legendary Chen Feng was able to do such a thing!

Standing in the center of the cheering arena, surrounded by settling dust and fading crimson sparks, Shen Xun’er let out a long, heavy breath of relief.

A radiant, beautiful, and triumphant smile broke across her flushed, sweat-glistened face as her eyes shone like polished jewels, brimming with pure, unadulterated joy.

She had done it! She had overcome a four-stage cultivation gap! She had calculated the openings, endured the brutal pressure, and secured her rightful place to enter the ancient secret realm alongside her beloved young master!

Filled with eager anticipation, her heart fluttering like a bird, she eagerly turned her face, looking straight at Shen Haoran.

She looked up at him with wide, shining eyes, practically radiant with expectation—expecting to see that rare, approving nod, a glimmer of pride, or a word of genuine appreciation for defeating an opponent vastly stronger than her in raw cultivation rank.

Look at me, Young Master! I won! I didn’t let our clan down!

But instead...

What she saw felt like a bucket of freezing, abyssal ice water dumped directly over her burning soul.

Shen Haoran was not smiling. He was not nodding.

Standing on the high balustrade with his arms crossed over his dark robes, looking down upon her battered form, his sharp brow was furrowed into a deep, heavy, and unmistakably cold frown of utter disappointment.

His golden eyes held no warmth, no praise, and not a single shred of pride.

Instead, they were icy, clinical, and piercing—staring at her not as a victorious warrior, but as someone who had just put on a pathetic, disgraceful, and cowardly display of martial mediocrity.

The bright, triumphant smile on Shen Xun’er’s face instantly froze.

Then, slowly, it completely shattered.

Her breath caught violently in her dry throat, a suffocating lump forming in her neck.

Why...?

A wave of profound, dizzying confusion washed over her mind, making the roaring cheers of the surrounding crowd sound distant and hollow, like the muffled whispers of a nightmare.

’Why is he looking at me like that? I won! I beat a 9th Stage expert! I earned the spot to join him! Why is he disappointed in me?!’

In an instant, the triumphant euphoria that had filled her chest evaporated into nothingness, replaced by a sudden, terrifying freefall of panic.

Her confidence, which had barely begun to mend, completely plummeted into a bottomless, freezing abyss.

As Shen Haoran coldly turned his gaze away, entirely dismissing her presence to look at the distant profound arks in the sky, Shen Xun’er felt her knees violently tremble.

She stepped off Ba Tu’s body, her boots dragging heavily across the broken stones as she mechanically accepted the glowing jade entry token from the stunned referee.

She didn’t hear a single word the announcer said to her as her hands shook so violently she nearly dropped the smooth jade onto the dirt.

Walking blindly down the stone stairs toward the shaded pillar beneath the balcony, a toxic, suffocating tempest of intense self-doubt and deep-seated insecurities began to drown her soul from the inside out.

He’s disappointed.

He’s disappointed in me.

The dark, agonizing realization tore through her heart like serrated iron.

Tears of pure, burning humiliation and self-loathing welled up at the corners of her eyes, which she desperately blinked away so no one would see her weakness.

Her fingers dug so hard into the jade token that her own fingernails tore into her palms, drawing fresh beads of blood that stained the glowing runes.

Why? Am I really....that useless?

The terrifying thought that had haunted her nightmares for the past year flared up with undeniable, monstrous clarity.

Every past praise, every hard-earned victory, and every ounce of pride she had built across her cultivation journey felt like a hollow, pathetic joke.

She stood alone in the dim shadow beneath the grand pavilion, clutching her aching chest as her breath came in ragged, silent gasps.

Looking up at the towering, untouchable figure of Shen Haoran standing high above the mortal world, she felt smaller, more insignificant, and more terrifyingly replaceable than she had ever felt in her entire life.