Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The scorched crater where a Spirit Ascension powerhouse and his titanic avatar had stood just moments before was still hissing with radiant, fading heat.

Sand and shattered basalt had melted into smooth, glassy obsidian under the violent passage of the plasma sphere, giving off thin ribbons of pale, sulfurous smoke that drifted through the fractured canopy.

The heavy silence that followed the annihilation was suffocating, broken only by the distant drip of moisture from severed pine branches.

Yan Xiao followed closely after Xia Mengyao, vaulting through the splintered perimeter of fallen iron-bark trees.

His breath hitched as his boots skidded along the edge of the glassy trench, his eyes darting frantically across the empty clearing in search of the colossal Spirit Avatar he had seen from afar.

There was nothing. Only a terrifying, smooth hollow in the earth that reeked of primordial heat.

And then, his gaze landed upon the girl standing at the center of the devastation.

Her silky black hair hung in pristine, undisturbed silk past her waist, her embroidered robes immaculate, her delicate hand loosely twirling a matte-black dagger as if she had just returned from a leisurely afternoon stroll in a private pavilion.

The instant he saw her, his jaw dropped slack, the air violently freezing in his windpipe.

The world around him faded into background noise as his mind short-circuited under the impossible sight before him.

The elegant, arched brows, the sharp and aristocratic contour of her jaw, the untamed cascade of midnight hair, and those vivid, unforgettable eyes burning with ancient sovereignty—it was an image that had been seared into the deepest sanctum of his soul through hundreds of nights of cultivation guidance.

”Master!?”

The word tore from his throat with visceral, instinctual disbelief.

Xu Xiansu, who had now stood in front of Xia Mengyao, suddenly frowned and looked at him.

The casual, bored amusement that usually lingered upon her lips vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp crease between her delicate brows.

Her vibrant orange eyes drifted away from Xia Mengyao’s face to pin the boy where he stood.

The sheer weight of that gaze felt like an icy physical blade pressed directly against the bridge of his nose, chilling him to the bone.

”Who are you?” Xu Xiansu demanded, her tone flat, aloof, and utterly devoid of warmth.

The freezing frost of her voice snapped him out of his daze like a bucket of icy well water dumped over his head as panic surged through his chest.

He frantically waved his hands in front of him, taking a half-step back, his cheeks burning with hot, awkward embarrassment as he quickly apologized.

”Apologies, apologies! I mistook you for someone! Truly, a thousand pardons, senior sistere! My tongue slipped, please don’t take offense!”

He bowed rapidly, bobbing his head with a subservient, self-deprecating smile that he usually reserved for pacifying angry sect enforcers.

Yet, beneath his bowed forehead, his thoughts were racing in wild, frantic circles.

’What’s going on?’ he thought, his heart hammering violently against his ribs like a trapped beast. ’Why does this woman look so much like Master?’

A cold sweat broke out along his collarbones as desperation clawed at his chest.

He turned his focus inward, frantically channeling his spiritual sense into the ring wrapped tightly around his middle finger.

’Master! Master, please wake up!’ he pleaded into his sea of consciousness, practically screaming his thoughts into the dark void of the artifact. ’Who is this girl?! Why does she share your face?! Are you awake?! Master!’

He tried to call out to his master in his ring, but just like before, there was no response.

Not a wisp of the ancient, ethereal soul essence that had saved him from countless mortal perils stirred to answer his plea.

But before Yan Xiao could sink further into his internal panic, Xu Xiansu turned her gaze away from him entirely, dismissing his existence as if he were nothing more than an unsightly clump of mud clinging to the heel of her boot.

She fixed her cold, piercing glare upon Xia Mengyao, whose robes were still disheveled from her sprint through the forest.

”Mengyao, why are you bringing along some random man?” asked Xu Xiansu, frowning at her with unmasked irritation. ”Since when did you develop a habit of picking up stray dogs in the wilderness?”

Xia Mengyao sighed softly, raising a delicate, porcelain hand to brush aside the loose strands of hair that had caught against her eyelashes.

A rueful, slightly sheepish smile crept onto her lips as she looked at her lifelong friend.

”I can’t help it, sister Xiansu,” Xia Mengyao admitted, her melodious voice carrying a touch of helpless embarrassment. ”I’m lost, and I wanted someone to guide me through these damned woods. I found this fellow after I was sent away and he claimed to know the terrain, so I permitted him to walk along.”

Xu Xiansu stared at her for two unbroken seconds, her orange eyes wide with profound, incredulous disbelief.

Slowly, deliberately, Xu Xiansu raised her right hand, curled her slender index finger, and—

THWACK!

Xu Xiansu flicked her forehead with enough force to produce a sharp, resonant snap.

”Ow!” Xia Mengyao flinched, clutching her forehead with both hands, tears of sudden, stinging pain welling in the corners of her eyes as she pouted indignantly. ”What was that for?!”

”Did all your brains go to your chest?” Xu Xiansu retorted without a shred of mercy, crossing her arms over her chest and looking down at the voluptuous, curvaceous figure of the beauty with sharp, condescending pity. ”I thought you were smarter than that. Did you forget that our academy token has a map function?”

Xia Mengyao rubbed her reddening forehead, frozen mid-pout.

The words echoed in her mind, and she was suddenly stunned.

The academy token...

She immediately took out her academy token and activated it, as a blue screen appeared from it.

She scroll around, and sure enough, beneath the primary identity seal, an intricate projection of the entire Ancient Heaven Star was pulsing quietly, complete with flashing golden coordinates marking the exact positions of her friends.

How could she have forgotten this!?

A vibrant, burning flush of pure, unadulterated humiliation rushed from Xia Mengyao’s neck straight to the tips of her ears.

She lowered her head, staring at the moss beneath her boots, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

Xu Xiansu shook her head with a long, theatrical sigh, thoroughly unimpressed by her companion’s lapse in basic intellect.

”With that said,” Xu Xiansu turned towards Yan Xiao and shooed him with a dismissive, flicking motion of her wrist.

”Go. We don’t need you here. I feel annoyed just looking at you.”

Her voice held no polite restraint. It was a cold, arrogant expulsion delivered with the authority of a high noble ordering a beggar away from a feast.

There was something profoundly irritating about the youth standing before her.

It wasn’t merely the clumsy, familiar way he had blurted out ’Master’ upon laying eyes on her, nor was it the greasy, self-important way he held his chin while pretending to be a valiant protector.

It was a deep, instinctual revulsion humming within her soul—an inexplicable, nauseating dissonance that made her hair stand on end whenever she caught his spiritual scent.

This feeling was just like when she encountered that guy during the first academy trial a year ago.

Encountering someone whose entire existence radiated the sickly, manufactured aura of unearned providence always made her blood boil.

Speaking of which, she also felt this when facing Huo Yue, though, it wasn’t as severe.

Every time she stood within ten paces of that stubborn, hot-headed fire-wielder, an inexplicable urge to grind the woman’s face into the dirt seized her chest.

With Huo Yue, it wasn’t outright disgust, but an intense, volatile territorial friction—like two apex predators forced into a cage that was too small for both of their egos.

This was the main reason why she couldn’t help but want to butt heads with that woman every time they meet.

And this boy standing before her reeked of that exact same, intolerable flavor.

”Let’s go,” Xu Xiansu said to Xia Mengyao as she turned around, het hair swirling behind her in a clean, elegant arc.

Xia Mengyao immediately followed after her, eager to put distance between herself and the profound embarrassment of having forgotten her own map, walking briskly toward the southern trail.

Yan Xiao stood frozen, staring at the back of the two women leaving as he instantly felt uncomfortable.

The sensation was not a simple bruise to his masculine ego, nor was it the natural disappointment of a wandering rogue watching two peerless, jade-skinned beauties walk away from his reach.

It was an overwhelming, suffocating dread that clawed at his chest—a sudden, horrifying premonition that if these two women disappeared into the mist of the forest, something fundamental to his destiny would be permanently severed.

As if an invisible thread of heaven’s favor, an irreplaceable fortune that was rightfully meant to converge upon his path, was about to walk out of his life forever.

His breath hitched.

He couldn’t let them leave. Not like this. Not without answers about that face, about her identity, about the strange resonance vibrating in his soul!

So, he called out, his arm reaching forward.

”Ah, wait—”

FLASH!

He couldn’t even finish his words.

A blinding, razor-thin arc of pure, crescent silver light flashed before his eyes!

There was no sound of footsteps, no displacement of air, and no warning flare of spiritual qi.

The concept of distance was entirely bypassed—one millisecond Xu Xiansu was ten paces ahead with her back turned, and in the very next instant, an executioner’s edge was whistling straight toward the soft hollow of his throat!

The terrifying specter of immediate, violent death bypassed his conscious mind entirely.

Without even thinking, his body seemed to turn into light as he backed away.

ZAP—!

His physical flesh dissolved into a shimmering, incandescent blur of golden-white illumination.

His weight, his density, and his momentum vanished in a fraction of a heartbeat, his vessel translating backward through the air like a beam of pure sunlight refracting off polished crystal.

He traversed fifty paces in a sliver of a second, reappearing near the jagged roots of a shattered iron-bark trunk.

GASP! HUFF! HUFF!

He breathed heavily, his chest heaving violently in ragged, terrified gulps, his knees trembled uncontrollably, his knuckles white as he reached up to his face, his trembling fingertips touching something warm, thick, and wet on his cheeks.

He brought his hands to his eyes, and saw a red liquid.

His blood.

Before he knew it, a thin, perfectly horizontal laceration had opened across his left cheek, precisely three millimeters deep.

If his body had not reacted on pure, animalistic instinct, if that flash of light had hesitated for even a single second, that black blade would have cleanly decapitated him, sending his head spinning into the canopy while his corpse sprayed crimson upon the moss.

His eyes widened in sheer, petrified horror as he stared at Xu Xiansu, who was holding a dagger.

She was standing at the exact position where he had been standing half a heartbeat prior, holding a dagger in a reverse grip, its tip dripping with a solitary drop of his crimson blood.

He was about to ask what her problem was, ready to demand why she had suddenly launched an unprovoked, lethal ambush against someone who had merely spoken a word of parting.

Yet, the words died in his throat like withered ash.

He noticed her face was completely solemn.

Those orange irises were blazing with an intensity that made the surrounding air feel as though it were boiling.

She has the appearance of someone looking like they could kill—not with the hot, passionate fury of an insulted maiden, but with the cold and uncompromising finality of an ancient executioner preparing to cleanse a generational sin from the world.

He gulped.

The swallow was dry, painful, and loud in the dead stillness of the woods as a cold chill seized his heart, locking his boots to the earth.

”Where did you learn that movement technique?” Xu Xiansu asked, her voice stern.

Every single syllable fell like an iron anvil dropping through frozen water.

It was not an inquiry born of curiosity; it was an interrogation backed by the intent to erase him from the karmic cycle if his answer failed to satisfy her.

Sunshine Steps.

That was a movement technique she developed in her past life when she gained insights from observing the first rays of the sun while cultivating on a cliff.

She had carved those insights into her own bones, weaving the fundamental laws of light and spatial displacement to create an evasion technique that was uniquely, exclusively her own.

It was an art she had never recorded onto spirit jade.

It was an art that wouldn’t exist until decades later.

Although the version this guy used was a mere cheap imitation, clumsy, leaky, burning three times the necessary spiritual essence, and lacking the true, seamless temporal refraction that allowed the practitioner to phase through solid matter, she can be sure that it was her own technique.

The trajectory of the light particles, the specific spiritual circulation through the three auxiliary meridians in the heels, the way the body dissolved from the extremities toward the heart—every fundamental law underlying the movement bore the undeniable, unmistakable signature of her own soul.

How could an ordinary, lower-realm brat living in a backwater province possess the unique martial creation of her past life?!

Xu Xiansu took a slow, deliberate step forward.

The dagger twirled once in her grip, its edge humming with a terrifying killing intent that threatened to sever his soul from his flesh before his next breath could form.

Her orange eyes locked onto his terrified pupils, and she spoke, her voice ringing with the chilling finality of an ancient monarch.

”Boy... who are you?”