Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The air within the cave grew so dense that the falling droplets of moisture hanging from the stalactites turned into brittle shards of frost.

The gray temporal dilation, held at bay by the dual resonance of the two matching physiques, groaned along its invisible seams like ice under the keel of a warship.

Xu Xiansu did not turn her head. Her orange eyes remained pinned to the spectral woman whose face, posture, and aura that mirrored her own with unnatural fidelity.

The dagger in her right hand twitched once, the temporal law woven through its edge humming a silent, lethal note.

”Mengyao, you deal with that kid,” said Xu Xiansu, her voice cold, level, and utterly devoid of hesitation.

Xia Mengyao immediately nodded.

There was no need for explanations between them.

The moment the command left Xiansu’s lips, Xia Mengyao’s spiritual qi erupted beneath her boots as she dissolved into a dazzling streak of light, darting across the cave with breathtaking velocity!

WHOOSH!

Before Yan Xiao could even lift his hands, Xia Mengyao already appeared before him, her slender hand shooting through his clumsy guard like an iron talon.

Grabbing him by the collar, she hoisted him effortlessly off his feet, pivoting on her heel with seamless grace and rushed straight out of the cave.

”Master! Help me!” Yan Xiao tried to scream, his voice cracking into raw, frantic panic as the stone walls blurred past his vision, the howling wind of the outer gorge swallowing his desperate cries.

Yet, within the cavern, not a single wisp of the spectral woman’s robes stirred in response to the boy’s plea.

Spirit Xu Xiansu acted as if she didn’t hear him and just stared at Xu Xiansu.

Her translucent orange eyes that seemed as deep as the primordial sea, remained locked onto the younger girl.

”You’re ignoring your disciple?” Xu Xiansu asked, her lips curling into a dry, mocking sneer as the distant echoes of Yan Xiao’s protests faded down the ravine. ”A loyal dog calls for his shepherd, yet the shepherd doesn’t even spare him a glance. What a touching master-disciple bond.”

Spirit Xu Xiansu did not answer the petty barb.

Her spectral silhouette drifted forward an inch and spoke, her voice fell like an ancient decree carved upon a celestial monument.

”You cannot beat me. Even if you are at your prime, it’s impossible.”

Xu Xiansu frowned deeply, the silver and gold wheels within her pupils spinning with dangerous velocity.

”You seem to know a lot about me,” Xu Xiansu remarked, her chin lifting with pride that refused to bow even to her own reflection. ”As expected, you are also from an alternate future.”

Spirit Xu Xiansu stared at her, her expression unreadable, and asked with quiet detachment. ”How strong were you at your prime?”

”9th stage Supreme Emperor,” Xu Xiansu answered without hesitation, her voice ringing with the conviction of an empress who had carved her path across mountains of corpses.

Spirit Xu Xiansu nodded, her gaze carrying the faint, patronizing pity of an elder looking upon a child who had proudly conquered a dirt hill.

”Impressive. But, that’s it.”

She paused, her voice dropping into an octave that caused the very fabric of space to tremble in silent reverence.

”I have ascended to Immortal Emperor realm and am just half a step away from transcending the cultivation of the Immortal World.”

Xu Xiansu grinned at that.

Her youthful, delicate face lit up with a wild, breathtaking, and utterly insane arrogance.

There was no terror in her orange eyes, there was no awe, and not a single shred of reverence for the grand heights her alternate self had conquered.

Instead, her pupils dilated with pure, ravenous ambition.

”So what you’re saying is, if I absorb your soul, all that knowledge will become mine.”

Spirit Xu Xiansu slowly shook her head, her translucent brows knitting together in exhausted pity.

”Impossible. Your soul will break down if you do so. Just like how a porcelain teacup cannot hold the fury of the Eastern Sea. The sheer mass of my immortal memory would pulverize your sea of consciousness into formless ash in a single microsecond.”

But Xu Xiansu simply lunged towards her, dagger at hand!

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

She gave no verbal retort. She cared nothing for warnings!

The stones beneath her boots detonated into pulverized powder as she crossed the distance in zero seconds.

The Sun Moon Divine Physique flared to its absolute limit, the gray temporal domain compressing into a thin shroud around her dagger as she aimed straight at the spectral woman’s translucent throat!

CLINK!

The lethal blade did not taste blood.

It was stopped, the collision releasing a silent, reality-warping shockwave that fractured the cavern walls in spiderweb fissures!

Then, as the dust cleared, Spirit Xu Xiansu had not even moved from her spot, and just hovered weightlessly in the air, her left arm held behind her back, her right hand raised with effortless grace.

She had caught the flat of the speeding dagger cleanly between her fingers.

”Too slow,” the spirit woman murmured softly.

With a gentle twist of her fingers, the momentum of Xu Xiansu’s entire charge was violently redirected!

SWOOSH!

Xu Xiansu was spun across the stones, but her combat instincts were honed to perfection and she easily pivoted on her heel, executing the Sunshine Steps.

Her body dissolved into five overlapping, incandescent golden orange afterimages, circling the spirit from five blind spots simultaneously, her dagger thrusting from the darkness to pierce the heart, the lungs, and the glabella.

SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!

But Spirit Xu Xiansu did not even turn her shoulders.

With subtle, languid sweeps of her wide sleeves, every single strike was effortlessly parried.

A wave of her wrist dispersed the light-clones; a flick of her finger knocked the black dagger aside by a fraction of an inch; a casual step through the spatial fabric caused Xu Xiansu’s lethal thrusts to stab into empty, folded dimensions.

”You angle your wrist two degrees too high,” Spirit Xu Xiansu lectured with chilling, clinical detachment as she casually tapped the side of the dagger with the back of her fingernail. ”Your footwork burns three breaths of vital essence to cover ten paces, leaving a tear in your lower dantian’s third auxiliary node.”

CLANG!

Another strike was batted away into the stone ceiling.

”Everything you know, I perfected ten thousand years ago,” Spirit Xu Xiansu spoke, her voice echoing with sovereign supremacy. ”Every feint you plan, I have executed a million times. Every secret art you pride yourself on is merely a clumsy, unpolished sketch of the masterpieces carved into my mind.”

Gently, she raised her palm and pressed it on Xu Xiansu’s chest.

GASP! HUFF!

Xu Xiansu was immediately thrown backward, skidding ten paces across the pulverized rubble before coming to a halt on one knee.

Her hair hung wild and tangled over her shoulders, her pristine robes torn and coated in dust.

A thin line of crimson blood leaked from the corner of her lip, her chest heaving violently as her dantians burned with excruciating, hollow fatigue.

The disparity was suffocating.

Every move she made was predicted; every technique she used was gently, casually neutralized before it could even hit her.

”You cannot beat me,” Spirit Xu Xiansu said coldly.

The playful, didactic tone vanished from her demeanor, replaced by a terrifying, absolute chill.

She raised her right hand.

HUMMMMMMMMM—!

From the ambient void of the cavern, the primeval qi converged into her translucent palm, condensing into a slender, crystalline blade of pure, iridescent cosmic starlight.

Slowly, she walked towards Xu Xiansu, jer steps made no sound, her celestial robes trailing behind her like a mantle of falling stars.

”I had intended to let you walk your path,” the spirit woman murmured, her orange eyes darkening into an ancient, ruthless resolve. ”I had hoped to leave this realm without disturbing the fragile web of this epoch. But, I guess this is also a good chance to eliminate your kind...”

She halted two paces before the kneeling girl, looking down upon her battered reflection with the chilling finality of a monarch passing sentence upon a traitor.

”...You dog of Heavenly Dao.”

The hatred in her voice was ancient, carved from the ashes of a destroyed universe where the manufactured puppets of the sky had slaughtered everything she held dear!

She raised the blade!

The starlight edge rose above her shoulder, pointing straight toward Xu Xiansu’s exposed neck, ready to sever the girl’s soul from reality and permanently erase the anomaly from the timeline.

Xu Xiansu clenched her teeth, her knuckles digging into the shattered stone, her orange eyes blazing with unyielding, stubborn defiance—

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT—!!!!!

But, at that exact second!

Within the deepest, most heavily guarded sanctuary of Xu Xiansu’s sea of consciousness—

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A blinding, cataclysmic burst of primordial, star-crushing golden and silver light violently detonated!

Then, a gargantuan, octagonal pavilion floor, forged from primeval chaos stone and etched with millions of ancient solar and lunar divine scriptures, bursts out of her soul!

CRACK-SHATTER!

The sheer, unfathomable majesty of the relic tore open the physical space of the cavern!

The ceiling instantly disintegrated into fine powder, the shockwave blasting the mountain ridge open to the sky as a colossal, golden and silver projection of an ancient divine pagoda’s foundation slammed into the earth!

The sacred light drowned out the starlight, freezing the spirit woman’s descending blade mid-air!

Spirit Xu Xiansu frowned deeply, her translucent form pushed backward three paces by the suffocating, imperial pressure.

”That’s... the First Floor of the Sun Moon Refinement Tower...”

Her eyes narrowed in genuine, staggering shock.

She knew that artifact, after all, it is something that she had sought across all heavens.

Yet in her lifetime, that supreme imperial treasure had been lost in the deepest abyss of the primordial void, its pieces scattered beyond the reach of even the strongest of Immortal Emperors!

How could a mere lower-plane version of herself possess the foundation of that tower?!

Then, from the glowing heart of the pagoda’s first floor, an ancient, leisurely chuckle echoed across the heavens.

Xu Xiansu’s eyes widened seeing the pagoda appear, and her mouth opened in shock hearing that familiar voice.

”What’s this?”

The voice was light, casual, and dripping with an infuriating, relaxed amusement that mocked the very concepts of time, space, and cultivation realms.

It vibrated not through the air, but through the fundamental laws of reality, carrying a boundless, untouchable gravity that made the Immortal Emperor’s starlight blade crack like brittle glass.

”A great soul of an Immortal Emperor... actually bullying a Nascent Soul junior?”

A playful voice resounded, cutting through the silence of the shattered mountain with mockery.