Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

”Astraeus said you have to ’overcome’ yourself... but tell me, Shen Xun’er... how are you going to overcome someone you’re completely terrified of becoming?”

The dark reflection’s mocking voice echoed through the vast arena, bouncing off the towering obsidian pillars and disappearing into the cold, uncaring cosmos above.

Shen Xun’er’s jaw tightened until her teeth ground against one another with an audible rasp.

She didn’t waste breath on an answer, every lingering ember of frustration, every ounce of humiliation from the selection arena in Glorious Heaven City, and every word of Haoran’s chilling disappointment ignited into a furious, defensive blaze inside her dantians.

BOOM!

The basalt floor beneath her boots pulverized into black dust as Shen Xun’er launched herself forward.

”Soaring Dragon Palm!”

Her body blurred into a streak of incandescent red lightning, her right palm bathed in raging solar dragon fire aimed straight for the dark reflection’s smiling throat!

Yet, the dark reflection did not even blink.

With sickening, liquid-like fluidity, the darker copy took half a step backward, tilting her neck just enough for the roaring crimson palm to graze the air beside her cheek.

”Too slow,” the dark copy whispered into Shen Xun’er’s ear, her breath carrying the smell of ozone and rot.

CRACK!

Before Shen Xun’er could even begin to redirect her kinetic momentum, an identical, pitch-black palm wreathed in corrosive void flames slammed violently into her exposed solar plexus.

The kinetic shock tore through her protective qi barrier as if it were parchment.

Shen Xun’er coughed out a spray of crimson blood, her body rocketing backward like a cannonball, carving a smoking, shattered trench across thirty paces of reinforced stone before she dug her boots into the floor to arrest her slide.

She had barely looked up through her tangled hair when the dark reflection appeared directly in front of her face, hovering weightlessly in the air with her arms crossed, laughing with manic delight.

”Is that the best you can muster after all that groveling?!” the dark reflection mocked her, her red eyes gleaming with vicious joy. ”You think you’re fighting an enemy? You think you can outmaneuver your own mind?! Open your blind eyes, you idiot! Everything you know, I know! Every technique, every step, every breath, every martial secret the Shen Clan ever carved into your bones—I possess it all, and unlike you, I don’t hesitate!”

”Shut up!” Shen Xun’er roared, her pride flaring in desperate rebellion.

”Nine Dragons Rending Claw!”

Her fingers curved into sharp, ethereal dragon talons as she unleashed a relentless, blinding storm of hundreds of lethal crimson arcs.

Every slash tore through the spatial fabric, capable of cleaving mountain ridges in two.

Yet, the dark reflection only smiled, her own hands transforming into larger, thicker shadow talons that met every single strike with mathematical, effortless precision.

CLANG!

CLANG!

CLANG!

BANG!

SHATTER!

Sparks of conflicting red and black light detonated across the arena in a continuous, deafening cadence.

”Tsk,” Shen Xun’er clicked her tongue, and without hesitation, jumped towards her reflection in a head on clash.

But...

This wasn’t even a clash—the reflection was blatantly toying with her.

Whenever Shen Xun’er feinted left to target the liver, the dark copy was already there, parrying the attack with the back of her wrist while driving an elbow into Xun’er’s jaw.

Whenever Xun’er attempted her signature leaping kick, the reflection predicted the trajectory before the muscle even tensed, sweeping her legs out from under her and slamming her face-first into the unforgiving basalt.

”Look at this pathetic form!” the dark copy cackled, kicking Shen Xun’er violently across the ribs, sending her tumbling through the dirt like a ragdoll. ”Look at how you overthink every single swing! You’re so scared of missing, so scared of leaving an opening, that your moves are as stiff as a corpse’s! You’re not fighting a battle, you’re just desperately begging the world not to hurt you!”

Shen Xun’er pushed herself up on trembling, bloody arms, her breath whistling in jagged wheezes through cracked ribs.

The despair was a physical, suffocating weight pressing down on her lungs.

It wasn’t just that the opponent was strong; it was the horrifying, undeniable realization that she was fighting an apex version of herself—a version stripped of doubt, stripped of restraint, and completely free of the paralyzing fear that had chained her soul for the past year.

Every move she tried, every clan art she channeled, was immediately dismantled, countered, and turned back against her with tenfold the cruelty.

”Twin Dragon Hurricane!” Shen Xun’er screamed, rushing towards her reflection as silhouettes of dragons covered her legs as she lunged a barrage of spinning licks.

SWISH.

The dark copy didn’t even bother to dodge and she just simply reached out with her bare hand, catching Shen Xun’er’s flaming heel mid-air with a casual, sickening CRACK that fractured the ankle bone.

”GAH!?” Shen Xun’er screamed in pain.

”A predictable parlor trick from a predictable failure,” the dark reflection sneered.

With a brutal twist of her wrist, the copy spun Shen Xun’er around and violently slammed her whole body spine-first into the cold stone floor.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

”GAHHH!”

Shen Xun’er’s vision turned completely white, the breath exploded from her lungs in a fountain of blood, the stone beneath her back cratering into a web of deep fractures.

Before she could even attempt to stand up or roll away, the darker copy stepped heavily onto her chest, her dark-scaled boot pressing down directly over Xun’er’s sternum with bone-splintering pressure, completely pinning her to the ground.

”To think a weakling like you believe you deserve to stand beside him. Have you know no shame?” The reflection growled at her, ”If not, then let me carve this into your body.”

The brutalization that followed was mercilessly and devoid of dignity.

The dark reflection knelt down, raining savage, bare-knuckle punches straight into Shen Xun’er’s face, chest, and throat!

CRUNCH! THUD! CRACK!

Blood splattered across the dark basalt, painting both of their faces in gore.

Shen Xun’er’s nose shattered, her lip tore open, and her dragon scales cracked and flaked away like burnt ash under the relentless, crushing impacts.

She tried to raise her forearms to guard, but the dark copy ruthlessly grabbed her left arm, twisted it behind her back, and snapped the elbow joint with a sharp, sickening pop.

”Aaaaagh!” Shen Xun’er shrieked into the empty sky, tears of pure agony and humiliation mixing with the blood pouring down her cheeks.

”Where is your fire now, little lizard?!” the dark copy whispered venomously into her ear, wiping a smear of Xun’er’s blood across her own lips with a sadistic grin. ”Where is that proud Crown of the Shen clan?! Nowhere! That’s because you’re nothing! You’re just a frightened little girl clinging to the robes of a young master who already looks at you with disgust!”

SKRRRRRRRR—SHUUUUUU!

The dark reflection stood up, raising both of her hands as the living midnight around the arena boiled into existence.

From the undulating pools of shadow beneath their feet, five massive, jagged, six foot long shadow swords forged from concentrated dark qi materialized in the air, humming with reality corroding malice.

”Let me pin you down where you belong,” the dark copy laughed, her voice dripping with cruel amusement.

With a simple, callous flick of her fingers—

THWACK-SQUELCH!

The first shadow sword plunged straight down through Shen Xun’er’s right palm, pinning her hand to the stone with a sickening squelch of torn flesh and shattered metacarpals.

”GAAAH!”

THWACK-SQUELCH!

The second sword drove through her shattered left forearm, locking the broken limb to the floor.

CRUNCH-SQUELCH!

The third and fourth swords descended simultaneously, stabbing mercilessly through her thighs, impaling her legs deep into the astral bedrock.

SQUELCH!

And finally, the fifth, largest shadow sword impaled directly through the center of her stomach, pinning her torso flat against the cratered stone, the cold, corrosive void qi eating away at the edges of her vital meridians.

”... perfect.” The reflection grinned, staring at her masterpiece.

Shen Xun’er was completely pinned down on the ground, unable to move a single millimeter.

Her limbs, chest, and stomach were nailed to the earth by foreign dark blades, blood steadily pooling beneath her battered frame, her dress soaked until it turned a deep, morbid black.

Her breathing had devolved into pathetic, choking gasps, her purple eyes wide and glassy, staring up into the endless, rotating constellations of the arena ceiling in total, hopeless despair.

The dark reflection stood over her battered form, looking down at her like an executioner admiring a butchered carcass.

She threw her head back and laughed—a loud, piercing, and hysterical laugh that mocked the very concept of her existence:

”HAHAHAHA! Look at you! Nailed to the floor like a slaughtered dog!”

The reflection leaned down, her face hovering barely an inch above Xun’er’s bloody nose, her glowing red eyes boring straight into Xun’er’s trembling soul.

”You truly are useless, aren’t you? You couldn’t even force me to use a real stance. With you being this weak, this cowardly, and this pathetic... you don’t deserve to stay by young master Haoran’s side.”

The dark copy smiled, a wide and venomous grin that promised total erasure.

”You’ll only drag him down. You’ll only make him frown. So don’t worry, Little Failure... I will do what you never had the courage to do. I will devour your weak, miserable soul, take over this body, and stand beside our young master as the true, ruthless dragon he deserves!”

The dark reflection raised her pale hand, her fingers morphing into dark void tendrils that hovered directly over Shen Xun’er’s forehead, preparing to rip her consciousness apart and claim her existence forever.

*

*

*

High above the brutal slaughter unfolding in the astral arena, suspended in the boundless, silent cosmic expanse where dying stars cast long violet shadows across the vacuum, the floating projection mirrored every drop of spilled blood with horrifying clarity.

Astraeus, the God of Space, stood with his starlight-woven robes billowing gently against the cosmic currents.

His sculpted, celestial face had lost its earlier detached composure, his starry brows were pressed into a deep, urgent furrow, and his luminous eyes darted between the dying girl in the mirror and the cold, unmoving youth standing beside him.

”This has gone beyond the parameters of a standard tempering trial,” Astraeus spoke, his deep, resonant voice vibrating through the starlit void with unmistakable gravity and severe warning. ”This test has fully inverted her psyche. That reflection is no longer a mere spectral construct, but has coalesced from the concentrated essence of her self-loathing, fueled by the ancient arrays of my divine sanctuary, and became a genuine soul.”

The ancient deity took a step forward, his starlight hand hovering near the edge of the astral projection, ready to weave a cancellation mudra to collapse the pocket dimension.

”Mortal, no, Shen Haoran , I must warn you, if you do not stop this trial this very second and she fails to break those shadow shackles, and even allow that dark reflection to consume her consciousness... she will really die.”

Astraeus’s voice hardened, carrying the heavy, ancient solemnity of a creator who had witnessed countless promising prodigies crumble under the weight of their own ambition.

”I already said this before, this is not an illusion where she will simply wake up with a bruised ego.”

”Her soul will be thoroughly devoured, erased from the karmic cycle of the universe, and that dark aberration will claim her physical vessel as a hollow, soulless husk, and your candidate will cease to exist.”

”Let us hallt the trial now and let me extract her broken spirit, and perhaps with some soul nurturing pills, her cultivation can be preserved.”

Shen Haoran just remained silent.

He did not raise a hand to signal the deity, he did not tell him to stop the trial, and he did not utter a single word of concern, panic, or hesitation.

Draped in his flowing dark robes, his hands resting casually behind his back, Shen Haoran stood completely motionless upon the platform of compressed starlight.

His tall silhouette was bathed in the cold violet radiance of distant nebulae, looking down upon the bloody spectacle not with the frantic desperation of a master about to lose a loyal subordinate, but with the icy, unwavering detachment of an emperor watching an inevitable trial reach its boiling point.

He just stared at Shen Xun’er.

His golden eyes, piercing and fathomless like twin pools of primordial solar fire, remained locked onto the battered, pinned figure of the girl.

He saw the jagged shadow swords tearing through her palms, thighs, and stomach.

He saw the dark crimson blood pooling beneath her tattered clothes, staining the floor.

He saw the dark reflection’s clawed fingers hovering barely a fraction of an inch above her forehead, ready to rip her origin soul from her skull.

Yet, deep within the ruthless, calculating depths of his mind, Haoran’s resolve did not waver by a single millimeter.

A broken blade that could only whine when hammered upon the anvil had no right to be wielded in the wars to come.

If she could not find the will to shatter her own chains, if her devotion to him and her pride as a Crown of the Shen Clan were so shallow that a mere phantom of her own insecurity could crush her into the dirt, then her life ended here, justly and deservedly.

’Show me, Xun’er,’ Haoran thought silently, his golden pupils narrowing into cold, predatory slits as he stared down at her trembling frame. ’Are you truly nothing more than an overgrown lizard waiting to be slaughtered... or are you going to remember why the heavens gave you the fangs of a dragon?’

The cosmic winds howled silently through the void, carrying the ticking countdown of her final heartbeat, while Shen Haoran watched in merciless silence.