Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

At this moment, on the other side of the Black Iron Forest, Xia Mengyao was walking side by side with the young man she encountered when she was first dropped here.

Her flowing robes swayed with rhythmic, effortless poise, the hem skimming inches above the loam without picking up a single speck of mud.

Even in this untamed, beast-infested wilderness, Xia Mengyao carried the natural, tranquil elegance of a scion to a sect from the upper realm.

Her deep blue eyes were sharp, scanning the shifting tree line with habitual caution, yet a subtle, persistent crease lingered between her brows as her gaze occasionally drifted toward the companion beside her.

Apparently, his name was Yan Xiao, but Xia Mengyao doesn’t know if that’s his real name or just a made up one.

In the lawless expanse of the lower realms, where rogue cultivators shed identities like cicadas shedding husks to evade debts and vengeance, an alias was as common as dirt.

He was an ordinary-looking youth in worn traveling leathers, sporting an easygoing, slightly boastful grin, with a ring that he seems to treasure more than his life, caressing it every so often and even whispering to it.

Although she finds it weird, but she didn’t say anything. Everyone has a quirk or two, her good friend Mingye is a selective masochist who enjoys getting hurt by Haoran.

So Xia Mengyao hadn’t pressed him on the veracity of his background.

Or rather, she couldn’t care less whether he called himself Yan Xiao, Li Er, or an immortal emperor reincarnated in the mud.

But what she wants to know is how Yan Xiao fought just like her friend, Xu Xiansu.

During their brief skirmishes against the packs of shadow wolves and venomous bramble serpents that had ambushed them along their path, Xia Mengyao had watched him fight in mounting bewilderment.

His skills, his movements, the timing—it was like a cheap carbon copy of Xiansu.

The way he tilted his shoulder by a fraction of an inch to let a beast’s fangs graze the wind, the subtle rotation of his wrist when redirecting kinetic momentum, the rhythm of his footwork that seemed to anticipate the exact millisecond an enemy shifted their weight—every sequence was eerily, undeniably familiar.

Yet, where Xu Xiansu’s martial execution was an untouchable art form bathed in the detachment and seamless perfection, this boy’s technique was rough, unpolished, and conspicuously flawed.

It was as if Xu Xiansu decided to teach someone halfheartedly just for the sake of it—perhaps scribbling down a handful of basic stances on a scrap of cheap parchment during a moment of profound boredom, or tossing a few dismissive corrections at an annoying follower before walking away without ever looking back.

The fundamental principles of the stances were there, but entirely stripped of their divine marrow, reduced to a hollow pantomime.

Is he somehow related to Xiansu?

Xia Mengyao pondered the thought with guarded curiosity.

Was he a distant relative from a mortal branch family?

A servant who had swept the training courtyards and stolen glances at the Young Miss practicing beneath the peach trees?

Or perhaps some wandering stray that Xiansu had crossed paths with during her travels through the lower star domains?

Of course, Xia Mengyao just chalked it out to a coincidence.

After all, it’s impossible for Xiansu to have descended here and teach some random guy, right?

She shook her head, deciding to not think about it.

...it was at this moment...

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!

The peaceful stillness of the midnight grove was violently obliterated.

Without warning, the earth trembled.

The shockwave tore through the tectonic plates beneath their boots like a subterranean beast awakening from slumber.

The ancient, thousand year old iron-bark trees swayed violently, their thick boughs screeching as clouds of nocturnal birds shrieked into the sky.

Debris, shattered bark, and falling pine needles showered down through the canopy as a suffocating, tyrannical atmospheric pressure descended from the clouds above.

Xia Mengyao and Yan Xiao both snapped their heads upward, looking through a gap in the thick foliage.

There, rising majestically into the midnight firmament hundreds of meters away from them, a Spirit Avatar was materializing.

It was a gargantuan, thirty meter tall colossus forged of luminous sapphire and golden spiritual energy, clad in towering celestial battle armor and brandishing a ninety-foot lightning halberd that tore open the rain clouds.

The thunderous roar of an ancient warrior echoed across the entire valley, rattling the teeth inside their jaws.

A Spirit Ascension realm powerhouse!

Xia Mengyao grew curious and sent her divine sense across the forest like an invisible arrow, cutting through the swirling tempest of ambient qi.

But then, she suddenly locked onto an unmistakable, breathtakingly familiar aura—the subtle resonance of the sun and moon hovering weightlessly beneath the towering giant’s brow.

”Is that....” Xia Mengyao’s eyes widened. ”Sister Xiansu!”

So without hesitation, she ran towards her!

SWOOSH—!

Xia Mengyao’s robes fluttered as her form dissolved into a dazzling streak of light, vaulting over the mossy boulders and sprinting directly toward the epicenter of the cataclysmic spiritual storm.

Behind her, Yan Xiao hesitated for a moment.

His jaunty grin had vanished entirely, replaced by a pale, sickened grimace as he looked at the colossal thirty meter war avatar towering over the distant tree line.

The terrifying, soul crushing power radiating from that manifestation made his knees tremble, his breath catching in his throat.

Normally, he was so fearless.

In every ruined tomb, every dangerous skirmish, and every arrogant standoff with rival geniuses across the province, Yan Xiao had always walked with brazen audacity.

He had mocked experts twice his age and stepped into forbidden zones without blinking an eye.

But that reckless swagger had never been born from true, unshakeable martial courage—it was because he was confident that his master will come and save him.

Whenever he was cornered, whenever a blade touched his skin, the mysterious, ancient soul residing within his spatial heirloom would awaken, lending him boundless primordial power, whispering tactical secrets, or forcefully taking over his body to sweep away all opposition without effort.

But now... his master wasn’t responding to him anymore.

No matter how frantically he called out in his sea of consciousness, there was only cold, impenetrable silence.

The safety net that had made him invincible was gone, leaving him as nothing more than a common, fragile cultivator standing before the wrath of heaven and earth.

To step into the battle ground of a genuine Spirit Ascension master without his guardian spirit was nothing short of suicidal madness.

His survival instincts screamed at him to turn around, duck into the dense underbrush, and flee in the opposite direction as fast as his legs could carry him.

THUD. THUD.

He watched the graceful silhouette of Xia Mengyao leaping through the canopy ahead of him, her hair catching the starlight like a fallen celestial maiden.

Damn it... Yan Xiao gritted his teeth, his jaw clenching tightly.

A woman of such peerless, immortal beauty—carrying an air of nobility that made every jade maiden in his home province look like common village fowl—was an opportunity that appeared once in ten lifetimes.

If he ran away now like a cowering dog while she charged bravely into the fray, she would look down upon him with disgust for the rest of his days.

But if he stood by her side, weathered the storm, and shielded her when the danger peaked...

Thinking of gaining some affection with a beauty, he decided to follow her.

”Hey! Wait for me, Mengyao!” Yan Xiao yelled, putting on a forced, heroic front to mask the panic in his voice, unsheathing his broadsword as he bolted through the trees after her trailing violet robes.

*

*

*

The air within the gray, desaturated clearing groaned under the catastrophic weight of the Spirit Avatar.

Blue lightning cascaded from the ninety-foot war halberd in blinding, jagged branches, turning the midnight gloom into an arena of strobing, violent electric arcs.

The ancient warrior manifestation roared, a sound that split the bedrock and flattened the canopy for miles around, before bringing its titanic weapon crashing down in a relentless, earth-shattering barrage.

BOOM! CRASH! BOOOOOOM!

Trenches hundreds of paces deep were carved into the forest floor in fractions of a second.

Shockwaves of compressed spiritual qi pulverized thousand-year-old iron-bark trunks into airborne sawdust.

Yet, amidst this storm of divine violence, Xu Xiansu dodged all attacks, hands behind her back, still holding the dagger.

She moved with an infuriating, weightless serenity, her hair drifted gently in the slipstreams of the descending lightning bolts, her boots skimming millimeters above the scorched earth.

She did not sprint, leap frantically, or burn core essence to escape the blast zones.

With microscopic, languid shifts of her heels and subtle tilts of her slender neck, every single swing of the colossal halberd, every sweeping horizontal cleave, and every thunderous vertical thrust whistled harmlessly past her silken robes.

She was playing around with him despite him having a Spirit Avatar.

To the elder, who had poured centuries of blood, sweat, and secluded comprehension into condensing this transcendent avatar, the sight was a sanity-shredding nightmare.

His titanic Spirit Avatar, capable of laying siege to mortal capital cities, looked like a clumsy, blind bear flailing fruitlessly at a drifting autumn leaf.

”HOW?!” the old man screamed at her at how she is able to dodge, his vocal cords tearing as he roared from the colossus’s forehead. ”You are merely a Nascent Soul brat! How are you slipping through my domain?! What kind of demonic art is this?!”

Xu Xiansu came to a graceful halt atop a single, floating speck of gravel, and hearing his frantic, hysterical screeching, she decided to humor him.

Her lips curved into a faint, mocking smirk, her vibrant orange eyes, burning with the interlocking wheels of the sun and moon, locking onto his bloodshot pupils, ”It’s simple really. I can see it all.”

”See it all...?” The old man was confused, his brow furrowing in wild, uncomprehending rage. ”What nonsense are you spouting, you arrogant wench?!”

Xu Xiansu tilted her head, her tone as calm, conversational, and detached as an immortal lecturing an insect, and explained her words in detail.

”The passage of time is not an unbending iron rail to those who hold dominion over its flow,” she spoke, her voice carrying a rhythmic, crystalline resonance that bypassed the roar of the lightning. ”To you, every second is a mystery that must be endured. But to my eyes, causality has already laid out its branches. Three breaths ago, I watched you pivot your avatar’s left shoulder to prepare the vertical chop. Two breaths ago, I observed the exact angle of the lightning arc that would bleed from the crossguard. I do not react to your strikes, elder. I simply stand in the empty spaces you failed to touch before you even chose to move your hands.”

”Absurd!”

The old man attacked, this time, more wilder and faster.

”Preposterous, lying demon!” he howled, completely burning the vital essence of his life force.

SWOOSH-SWOOSH-SWOOSH!

The thirty-meter Spirit Avatar accelerated into a terrifying, frenzied blur of celestial destruction.

The ninety-foot halberd transformed into a howling net of blue lightning, stabbing fifty, a hundred, three hundred times per breath.

He abandoned all refined martial forms, raining absolute, unhinged devastation upon the clearing, the sky screaming as spatial cracks tore open across the fabric of the valley.

But Xu Xiansu dodged all of them.

She took a half-step left.

The point of the halberd gouged a canyon an inch from her shoulder.

She dipped her head back; an arc of lightning parted her bangs without singeing a single hair.

She stepped forward, casually sliding through the blind spot beneath the giant’s armored wrist just as a sweeping cleave obliterated the mountain ridge behind her. .

Every frantic, hysterical maneuver he attempted was met with effortless, mathematically impossible evasion.

”It is indeed absurd, but this is not a lie,” Xu Xiansu smiled, her orange eyes gleaming with cold amusement as she drifted effortlessly between the howling waves of electric death. ”You can go faster, you can change your fighting style, you can change tactics. But... I have already watched them all.”

The elder’s face contorted into pure, demonic madness.

Desperate to assert his superiority, gathering every single remaining drop of his soul to unleash a final, suicidal spatial collapse.

”Die beneath my heavens, you insolent insect, for your soul shall feed my ancestors!”

Yet, as the words tore from the elder’s throat, Xu Xiansu’s lips moved with identical, effortless precision, speaking the exact same words in the exact same cadence at the exact same time.

”Die beneath my heavens, you insolent insect, for your soul shall feed my ancestors.”

Her melodious voice harmonized perfectly with his guttural roar, syllable for syllable, intonation for intonation, matching his cadence down to the millisecond.

The old man froze.

The colossal Spirit Avatar’s descending strike hitched mid-air.

The elder stood paralyzed upon the giant’s brow, his bloodshot eyes wide, his jaw slacked, the color completely draining from his face as a suffocating, soul-crushing terror gripped his heart.

It wasn’t an evasion technique. It literally was ability to see the future.

She had known his words before his vocal cords had even vibrated.

Xu Xiansu smiled, looking up at his petrified, trembling frame with an expression of quiet, absolute supremacy.

”I told you that I can see it, didn’t I?”

Her patience for the spectacle had expired.

Slowly bringing her hands from behind her back, Xu Xiansu held the dull, matte-black dagger between her thumb and index finger.

With a sharp, effortless flick of her wrist, she began twirling the blade upon her fingertips.

SHUUUUUU—!

The dagger spun into a dizzying, liquid wheel of black steel.

With the authority of the Sun Moon Divine Physique, she forcefully manipulated the temporal flow around the weapon, accelerating the rotation by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of times beyond physical reality.

”Anyways, let’s end this.”

The microscopic friction of the blade tearing through the compressed air reached a catastrophic thermal threshold.

Adding her own dense, celestial qi into the hyper-accelerated vortex, the spinning weapon ignited.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT—BOOM!

A blinding, iridescent sphere of hyper-compressed, star-hot plasma coalesced around the dagger.

It burned with the incandescent, blinding white gold fury of a miniature star, humming with an unstable, reality melting frequency that instantly vaporized the surrounding rain, dust, and lightning!

With a casual, dismissive flick of her wrist, Xu Xiansu threw it towards the elder!

WHOOSH—!

The sphere of plasma tore through the air like a descending judgment from the heavens!

The elder didn’t even have time to scream as the colossal Spirit Avatar didn’t even have time to raise its shield.

The instant the plasma struck the giant’s armored chest, there was no explosion, no shower of gore, and no scattered debris.

The blinding solar heat and temporal decay collapsed inward.

The thirty-meter ethereal warrior, the ninety-foot lightning halberd, the dark iron armor, and the Spirit Ascension elder himself were instantly, completely vaporized into non-existence!

Not a single bone fragment, not a drop of blood, and not a single shred of his transcendent soul remained—erased from reality as cleanly as ink washed from parchment.

The roaring tempest died. The gray temporal domain collapsed back into natural midnight.

Xu Xiansu stood alone in the center of the smoking, glassy crater, catching her falling dagger with a casual, reverse grip, flicking her silver-white hair over her shoulder.

Then...

”Xiansu!”

A breathless, familiar voice echoed from the shattered tree line.

Xu Xiansu turned her head, her bright orange eyes softening slightly as she watched Xia Mengyao burst through the scorched boughs in her flutteringg robes, followed closely by a breathless, bewildered young man.