Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The mountain breeze whistled softly through the open windows of the modest wooden pavilion, carrying with it the faint, crisp scent of wild pine and damp loam.

Outside, in the lower courtyards of the valley, a chorus of bizarre shouts, frantic running footsteps, and unhinged laughter constantly broke the serene silence of the mountains.

Inside the quiet tea room, Ling Luochen sat poised upon a woven bamboo mat, her posture as straight and unyielding as a drawn imperial saber.

Her silk black dress fell in clean, flawless lines around her slender frame, the hem shimmering with faint, dormant frost runes.

Her sharp, crystalline pink eyes were fixed in unwavering scrutiny on the young man sitting casually across the low cedar table from her.

He is the sect master of this sect.

Ling Luochen stared at him, and couldn’t help but find him rather... normal?

”Normal” was, in fact, an understatement when contrasted with the screaming lunatics currently roaming the outer grounds.

During the time spent on their walk, Ling Luochen felt as though she had entered a realm populated entirely by escaped madmen afflicted with acute soul deviation.

She had witnessed grown men sprinting in full iron plate armor while carrying three massive wooden logs on their backs, chanting rhythmic nonsense about ”daily stamina quests.”

She had seen two disciples aggressively rolling down a rocky hill over and over again, enthusiastically discussing their ”evasion proficiency gains.”

One woman had repeatedly thrown herself into a thorny briar patch, joyfully recording the ”damage feedback,” while a pair of young boys were standing near a vegetable plot, rhythmically punching a cabbage for twenty unbroken minutes while shouting about ”unarmed skill grinding.”

They spoke in an incomprehensible, fractured dialect—babbling about ”patch updates,” ”server balance,” ”drop rates,” and ”hidden quest triggers”—all while wearing mismatched scrap armor that offended every aesthetic sensibility known to the civilized clans of the central heavens.

In stark, jarring contrast to that chaotic asylum, the man sitting across from her was impeccably composed.

He appeared to be in his early twenties, dressed in a clean, simple robe of sky-blue cotton trimmed with plain white linen.

His black hair was loosely tied behind his neck with a dark ribbon, a few stray bangs framing a pleasant, remarkably unremarkable face.

He carried no grand posture of haughty arrogance, no terrifying killing intent rolled off his shoulders, and his hands, which were currently busy rinsing a pair of glazed clay teacups with boiling mountain spring water, were relaxed, steady, and devoid of the hyper-vigilant calluses common to lifelong swordmasters.

He looked like an ordinary, well-mannered mortal scholar who had decided to open a private academy in the hills.

Ling Luochen had subtly circulated her divine sense the moment she entered this place.

And when her invisible probe washed over this young man, it felt as though she were casting a pebble into an empty, bottomless well.

There was no Golden Core spinning with condensed law, no Nascent Soul hovering in his sea of consciousness, and not even the faint, rhythmic pulse of basic meridian circulation.

He felt completely void—a hollow silhouette sitting in the center of the world, neither absorbing heaven and earth qi nor repelling it.

To Ling Luochen, who had gotten used to the people of the Shen Clan, where every living being radiated their spiritual standing like a lantern in the night, such an unbroken blankness was unnatural.

In her experience, only an ancient, transcendent entity like the Seven Enshrined Elders and those at their level could suppress their cultivation to such an undetectable, seamless extreme.

’Could this man be an expert like that? It seems he held a lot of secrets.’

For some reason, she completely never thought that there are skills and items that can conceal presence and cultivation, so her not being able to see through him is considered normal.

In the vast, endless expanse of the cultivation world, low-tier rogues cultivators frequently used breath holding talismans, shadow skin cloaks, or turtle breathing arts to mask their meager cultivation from ferocious spirit beasts and predatory bandits.

Furthermore, a completely ordinary mortal who had never cultivated a single day in his life would naturally possess zero detectable qi.

But for some reason, she haven’t thought of those possibilities, and to her, ordinary didn’t mean weak; it meant a terrifying master who had returned to the origin, disguising his divinity beneath the mundane veil of mortal clay!

The young man finished pouring the tea, setting a steaming cup of fragrant green brew before her with a gentle, polite clatter of clay against cedar.

Ling Luochen placed her right hand over her left fist, performing a formal, dignified martial greeting from her seat:

”Greetings, sect master. I am Ling Luochen.” She gave a polite bow, ”Due to an unforeseen circumstance, I was lost, but thankfully your disciples found me and brought me here. So allow me to express my gratitude.”

Her tone was cool, aristocratic, and precise, carrying the natural, dignified authority of someone accustomed to commanding legions of sword disciples.

She deliberately omitted her affiliation and the true reason for her presence in this uncharted territory, keeping her origins shrouded while measuring his reaction.

The young man looked up, waving his hand in an easygoing, dismissive gesture, a bright, friendly smile spreading across his lips.

”No problem, no problem,” he replied warmly, leaning his elbows lightly onto the cedar table. ”I hope those idiots didn’t bother you, since they are foreigners from another continent with weird culture. Ah, and I am Yun Ming, Miss Ling, the sect master of Rising Dragon Sect.”

Foreigners from another continent with weird culture...

Ling Luochen committed the phrase to memory.

That certainly explained the absurd, alien vocabulary and the shameless, suicidal behavior she had witnessed in the valley.

If they hailed from some distant, untamed land beyond the boundless see, their manic, incomprehensible conduct made a bizarre sort of sense.

Yun Ming picked up his own teacup, blowing gently across the steaming surface before taking a slow sip.

”It must be quite turbulent to find yourself separated in the wilderness, Miss Ling,” Yun Ming said casually, his tone carrying the polite curiosity of a genial host. ”The mountain passes around here are treacherous, and the local wildlife doesn’t take kindly to wandering travelers. What are your plans going forward? Do you intend to head toward the trading capitals of the border provinces, or perhaps search for a transport formation?”

Ling Luochen shook her head slightly, her bangs brushing against her brow as she took a measured sip of the tea, noting its clean, unpolluted mountain purity.

”My separation was an accidental dispersal caused by a spatial anomaly,” she stated calmly, her eyes unwavering. ”My companions are individuals of exceptional capability. They will inevitably sweep through the surrounding coordinates to establish contact. Until our designated communication frequency aligns, roaming blindly through unfamiliar territories will only waste energy and complicate our reunion. I intend to remain in this general sector and wait.”

Hearing this, a subtle, microscopic gleam flashed through Yun Ming’s eyes, though his casual, genial smile remained completely undisturbed.

”Well, if that’s the case, Miss Ling, wandering the wilderness alone is hardly comfortable,” Yun Ming said, gesturing broadly toward the open window and the lush, forested valley outside. ”While my Rising Dragon Sect is admittedly somewhat... modest, and our disciples are a bit unorthodox in their daily pursuits, our valley is quiet, well-protected, and quite peaceful. We have plenty of vacant guest courtyards up on the eastern ridge, completely isolated from the noise below. If you have no urgent destination, you are more than welcome to stay here for the time being while you wait for your friends to reach you. Consider it an open haven.”

The invitation was smooth, natural, and carried an air of effortless hospitality that seemed completely devoid of hidden daggers.

Ling Luochen thought for a moment and decided to agree.

Her cold, calculating mind weighed the variables in a matter of heartbeats.

She was indeed far from her friends, the other Crowns and Shen Haoran; That spatial turbulence from the realm’s unstable entry point had scattered their group across vast, unknown distances.

Furthermore, this valley was strange, and these people are weird.

The disciples outside didn’t fear death, possessed bizarre regenerative properties, and spoke of reality as if it were a game to be dissected into numbers and metrics.

And their sect master, sitting before her with the aura of an ordinary mortal, commanded this flock of lunatics with total, effortless compliance.

And she remembered that Haoran once told them that they should watch out for people that seemed weird and out of place.

She could still vividly recall Shen Haoran’s calm voice during their strategic councils in the Imperial Academy.

Watch out for the anomalies.

Watch out for the individuals, the sects, and the phenomena that seem weird, incongruous, and out of place with the natural laws of the realm.

Those are the seeds of unforeseen variables.

This entire Rising Dragon Sect reeked of being an anomaly.

Rather than wandering blindly through the wilderness where she would be vulnerable to localized spirit beasts or hostile native tribes, staying here placed her directly at the epicenter of this oddity.

So she decided to observe them.

She would accept the hospitality, station herself in the eastern courtyard, and use this vantage point to thoroughly monitor the sect master, decipher the strange behavior of his followers, and uncover what was truly being played behind this facade—all while waiting for Haoran and the others to inevitably arrive and dismantle whatever scheme lurked in the dark.

”Then I shall accept Sect Master Yun’s gracious hospitality,” Ling Luochen nodded respectfully, her voice cool and formal. ”I will not intrude upon your sect’s private affairs, and I shall ensure that my presence does not bring disturbance to your grounds.”

”Not at all, not at all! We’re thrilled to have an NP—ahem! A distinguished guest!” Yun Ming beamed, raising his cup in a cheerful toast.

Meanwhile, behind that pleasant, easygoing mortal smile...

Yun Ming was over the moon!

His internal soul was practically screaming in hysterical, unbridled ecstasy, doing wild, celebratory backflips inside his mind.

HOLY SHIT! IT WORKED! SHE ACTUALLY AGREED TO STAY!

Yun Ming was, in reality, a reincarnated soul from modern Earth who had been bound to a system.”

To the world, he was the sect master of an obscure, struggling lineage; to the hundreds of degenerate gamers he had summoned from Earth via holographic soul-capsules, he was the chief administrator of the revolutionary, hyper-realistic, fully immersive VR-MMORPG known as Rising Dragon Online!

His ”disciples” were literally a horde of deranged, min-maxing, quest-addicted players who treated the sacred, unforgiving cultivation world as an open-world playground!

And this girl sitting across from him—this ice-cold, peerlessly beautiful, outrageously powerful maiden who radiated the aura of an apex endgame boss—was the greatest jackpot his system had ever encountered!

When his disciples had dragged her back to the sect, Yun Ming had nearly suffered a heart attack just looking at the glowing, question mark filled red threat level hovering over her head.

Now now, with her acting as an NPC, a lot of possibilities have now opened up!

Yun Ming’s entrepreneurial, system-fueled gamer brain was spinning at ten thousand revolutions per second, laying out a grand master plan for his game’s first major content expansion.

An NPC of this caliber... she’s an absolute goldmine!

Think of the content!

He could immediately launch a brand-new, limited-time Server Event: The Cold Frost Maiden’s Request.

He could assign her a custom interaction dialogue tree and turn her into a premier, high-tier Faction Representative.

The players would go absolutely rabid over her design alone—a cold, haughty ice beauty with an ethereal design that looked like it had been sculpted by the gods of graphic design! The forum threads would explode with thousands of posts overnight!

He could set up an entire chain of Affection and Reputation Quests!

[Daily Quest: Mountain Snow Lotus Collection for Miss Ling (0/10)]

[S-Rank Faction Mission: Investigate the Strange Spatial Rifts on the Eastern Ridge (Reward: Ling Luochen’s Favor +5, Title: Frost Knight)]

The players would willingly break their own bones, grind twelve hours a day without sleep, and clear out every dangerous monster den within a fifty-mile radius just to hear her say a single line of cool dialogue or reward them with a fraction of her discarded martial insights.

Furthermore, having such a terrifyingly strong expert residing in the eastern courtyard meant his sect had just gained a free, walking nuclear deterrent.

If the rival Wolf Fang Sect or the local demonic blood cults decided to raid his valley, they wouldn’t just be fighting his respawning, low-level players—they would accidentally aggro a top-tier, hidden celestial NPC who could freeze their souls into ice statues with a flick of her wrist.

Keep your companions coming, Miss Ling!

Yun Ming chuckled internally, his heart practically bursting with capitalistic joy as he poured her another cup of steaming tea.

Stay as long as you want! Eat our spiritual rice, drink our tea, and let my lunatic players work themselves to death for your convenience!

Across the cedar table, Ling Luochen observed his warm, seemingly innocent smile, her cold eyes narrowing with reinforced suspicion.

’He smiles so freely, yet hides his cultivation so deeply...’ she thought to herself, taking a slow, cautious sip of her tea. ’A truly unfathomable monster. I must remain vigilant.’

And so, beneath the quiet whisper of the mountain pine, the cold companion of Shen Clan and the ecstatic, system-wielding modern administrator sat opposite each other, both convinced that they had just successfully manipulated the other into the palm of their hand.