Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The howling blizzard tearing across the jagged crags of the ridge was instantly smothered beneath an overwhelming wave of frantic frenzy.

Bing Wuxian’s maddened screech tore through the clouds like an executioner’s horn.

Across the wind-scoured plateau, three thousand elite female swordswomen of the Mystic Water Sect and the entire Water Dragon Legion moved as one monstrous tide.

Their ceremonial cerulean robes whipped violently in the gale as they surged forward, eyes wide with horror and unbridled fury at the sight of the flayed faces and the severed head of Xun Xie’er resting in the ground.

Thousands upon thousands of rapiers cleared their scabbards with a deafening metallic screech.

The twelve commanders of the Water Dragon Legion immediately used their control over the Nine-Fold Glacial Array, summoning thousands of jagged, three meter long icicles from the sky, raining a localized cataclysm of absolute-zero frost downward to turn the two youths into pulverized crimson frost.

Shen Haoran stared at them, and just laughed.

”Hahahaha!”

The laughter was low, melodic, and terrifyingly relaxed, echoing off the surrounding with amusement.

Then, he called out.

”Qing’er, deal with them!”

At his words, a shadow materialized behind him.

It was not a sudden burst of energy, nor a noisy rupture of spatial fabric.

The pitch black pool of darkness resting beneath Haoran’s heels simply pooled upward like liquid ink, defying the blinding white luminescence of the falling blizzard.

The shadow twisted, forming into a beautiful woman.

She was dressed in a skin-tight, black full body suit that accentuated a lithe, lethal silhouette.

Her long black hair cascaded past her waist like an endless wave of pure darkness, drifting weightlessly in an unfelt draft.

Her porcelain-like face was carved with chilling, untouchable perfection, completely devoid of mortal emotion, while her eyes, twin pools of incandescent, glowing crimson blood, held the fathomless, indifferent cruelty of a true Saint looking down upon a colony of blind termites.

She did not offer any words, she just stared at the enemies, and with a wave of her hand, the entire world turned dark.

SHUUUUUU—!

The blinding afternoon sun, the howling white snow, and the glowing blue walls of the Nine-Fold Glacial Array vanished in a fraction of a millisecond.

The entire mountain basin, spanning in every direction, was plunged into an abyssal, lightless eclipse.

The sky, the air, and the stone beneath their boots turned pitch-black, as though an ancient, cosmic leviathan had swallowed the plane whole.

The ambient temperature plummeted past freezing into an unnatural, soul-choking nihility where even the sound of screaming wind was strangled into silence.

Then—

SHIK-SHIK-SHIK-SHIK-SHIK-SHIK-SHIK—!!!!!

From every shadow cast by every pebble, every blade of grass, and from the very shadows stretching beneath the boots of the running disciples, millions of pitch-black, sharp spikes erupted upward with catastrophic, blinding velocity!

They impaled from below, piercing through enchanted leather soles, driving through shins, bursting upward through pelvic bones, chests, and skulls in an instantaneous, simultaneous forest of slaughter.

The defensive artifacts of the disciples did not even have the chance to activate; their spiritual barriers were punctured like wet paper!

Thousands upon thousands of disciples were impaled in that single, silent heartbeat!

Their bodies were hoisted five meters into the dark air, locked upon the black spears like gruesome, writhing statues of flesh, their blood not even having the time to pool before the shadow-spikes hungrily drained their lifeforce, turning their corpses into dry, blackened mummies!

Only a tiny fraction—with Bing Wuxian and three elders, and a few lucky disciples being able to escape!

Bing Wuxian had managed to save herself because she instinctively used the protective artifact given to her by her husband.

Beside her, the three strongest Elders of the sect had burned their essence to fuel their movement technique just so they can retreat, while seven young disciples who had lagged behind the main charge tumbled backward off a low ridge, barely avoiding the forest of spears by pure, accidental luck.

The darkness receded as quickly as it had fallen, leaving behind the pale, cold light of the mountain blizzard.

But Bing Wuxian and the others still stared in shock.

Bing Wuxian’s bloodshot eyes bulged until the veins threatened to burst, her chest heaving in shallow, choking gasps.

Her rapier trembled violently in her slick, numb hand while the three surviving elders collapsed to their knees in the snow behind her, vomiting bile from the sheer shock, their faces drained of every drop of color.

They could not comprehend what had just happened.

Thousands of elites! The core foundation of the Mystic Water Sect, built over thousands of years of arduous cultivation, accompanied by nine high-ranking elders—wiped out of existence in a single wave of an unknown woman’s hand!

But Haoran didn’t give them time to process this and walked towards them.

His hands were tucked comfortably inside his wide sleeves, his combat boots stepping over the pools of frozen blood with effortless, unhurried grace.

The nine-clawed golden dragons embroidered across his chest seemed to ripple with satisfaction.

He looked upon the trembling, weeping survivors with the flat, clinical indifference of an immortal looking at crushed beetles.

These people are just ordinary, with their luck having already been absorbed by Chen Feng.

Through his Karmic Light Observation technique, Haoran could clearly see the invisible colors of light symbolizing providence flowing through the world.

Every major sect, every clan, and every family possessed a pool of karmic luck granted by the heavens.

But Chen Feng, as a so-called chosen son of destiny, had practically devoured the destiny and karmic protection of his wives, his elders, and his subordinates.

It’s not strange. That is simply how the Heavenly Dao works.

So now, these women standing before him were karmically bankrupt. They possessed no heaven-defying fortunes, no hidden ancient bloodlines waiting to awaken, and zero value to the grand celestial chessboard.

For Haoran, they were useless.

He won’t spend time playing with them and would just crush them with absolute power.

After all, they weren’t protagonists.

They didn’t carry the lingering favor of the Heavenly Dao—annoying plot armor, sudden bursts of enlightenment during life-or-death crises, or ancient grandpas hiding in rings.

Characters like that required meticulous planning, careful baiting, and precise killing.

But these women? They were merely the disposable background dressing of a border conflict, destined to be discarded the moment their purpose was served.

Haoran stood before the terrified elders, and leaned forward, his handsome, sculpted face coming within three meters of their trembling visages, his golden eyes glowing with pure, mocking cruelty.

”What’s wrong? Scared?”

The sound of his voice caused the nearest elder to let out a pathetic, strangled whimper, her body shrinking backward into the snow like a cornered animal.

Shen Xun’er walked beside him, her robes drifting gracefully in the wind, her hands clasped behind her back.

She tilted her head, her eyes sweeping across the trembling remnants of the sect with mild, slightly disappointed curiosity.

”Young master, didn’t you say you wanted me to test my new powers on them?”

Haoran didn’t even turn his head, replying casually, ”Change of plans. They are rather useless. So I’ll just kill them and collect their heads, at least then I can use them to distract Chen Feng.”

He spoke of harvesting their heads with the same mundane, practical tone one might use when deciding to pick up a few dry logs for a campfire.

To him, the living matriarch of the Mystic Water Sect was a waste of time; but her severed head, delivered at the exact right moment, would surely ignite the White Dragon Emperor’s inner demons and tear his nascent soul apart from the inside out.

Shen Xun’er nodded at that, and said nothing more.

She stepped back half a pace, entirely obedient to his judgment. If her young master deemed them unworthy of her taking action, then she wouldn’t interfere.

But, hearing their plans, Bing Wuxian immediately snapped out of her fright!

’Distract Chen Feng?! Use our heads?!’

The sheer, unspeakable humiliation of those words struck her like a branding iron straight to her soul.

The paralyzing terror that had frozen her limbs was instantly incinerated by a blinding, unhinged fury that consumed every shred of her sanity.

She glared fiercely at them, her pupils turning completely crimson with hatred!

”BEASTS! I WILL NOT LET YOU HAVE YOUR WAY!”

Bing Wuxian roared, the sound tearing the lining of her throat, spraying blood over her own chin!

”SPIRIT AVATAR!”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

The sky above the ridge violently imploded!

A pillar of incandescent, azure energy shot straight through the bruised clouds, parting them!

CRACK-SHATTER!

Then, from the swirling pillar of divine frost, a majestic, eighty meter tall snow woman made out of blue energy manifested across the plateau!

For this realm, it was gargantuan, towering over the cliffs like a primordial mountain goddess.

Across its colossal brow rested a towering crown of glacial spires, its massive robes flowing like avalanches of crushed sapphire, while its face possessed an expression of terrible, divine wrath!

Meanwhile, Bing Wuxian stood inside the forehead of the Avatar, her face visible behind a translucent diamond-like facet between the giant’s eyes.

”DIE! YOU DEVILS!”

She roared, as the avatar summoned seventy-meter-long blade made of condensed, freezing ice, its edge humming with the power to freeze entire lakes into solid bedrock with a single strike!

With the weight of a collapsing mountain, the giant raised the colossal sword with both hands and swung it down to Haoran!

SHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

The sonic boom generated by the descending blade cleaved a five hundred meter chasm through the basalt bedrock before the blade even arrived, the absolute-zero frost threatening to turn Haoran’s very marrow into brittle ice dust.

Haoran didn’t even blink, nor did he make a move.

...Because Qing’er would never let anything harm him.

SWOOSH.

In a blur that mocked the physical concepts of acceleration, Qing’er’s slender silhouette appeared directly in the descending path of the seventy-meter energy sword, hovering fifty meters in the air right before Haoran.

She stared at the blade, and slowly raised her hand.

CLINK.

A sound, like a drop of water landing in an empty bronze basin, echoed across the mountain basin.

The seventy meter long, mountain cleaving blade of absolute-zero blue energy ground to a violent halt, pinned dead in mid-air against the delicate, porcelain tip of Qing’er’s pale index finger!

The kinetic force of thousands of tons of falling ice-energy washed around her in violent, screaming shockwaves, shattering the surrounding cliffs into gravel, yet the young woman’s long black hair barely drifted, her crimson eyes staring at the colossal avatar with cold, bored detachment.

”Im... impossible...” Bing Wuxian’s voice wavered from within the avatar’s forehead, her sanity crumbling at the sheer, physics-defying sight.

Qing’er stared at her, and...simply tapped the edge of the blade with her fingernail.

Instantly, a spiderweb of pitch-black hairline fractures ripped through the seventy meter length of the weapon!

In the next second, the entire colossal construct of blue energy violently detonated into millions of harmless, falling blue sparks.

BOOM!

The terrifying counter-shockwave traveled directly up the avatar’s arms!

The Spirit Avatar took a few steps back, its titanic heels slammed into the plateau, each backward stride causing a localized earthquake that shook the mountain ridge to its roots!

Then, across the avatar’s massive chest, shoulders, and brow, hundreds of jagged, glowing fractures tore open, leaking pressurized blue qi like a rupturing dam, threatening to destabilize the entire manifestation from within.

Bing Wuxian was stunned.

Blood poured freely from her nostrils and ears, her sea of consciousness heaving violently under the severe feedback of her shattered weapon.

She looked down at the three surviving elders cowering in the snow below, her voice cracking into a desperate, hysterical shriek.

”WHAT ARE YOU STANDING THERE FOR?! FIGHT!”

The three remaining elders finally snapped out of it. And, driven by the primal, cornered desperation of dying beasts, they immediately summoned their own Spirit Avatars!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Three more pillars of spiritual energy erupted from the snow!

To the left rose a forty meter tall armored ice-serpent, hissing with clouds of caustic, freezing venom.

To the right manifested a thirty five meter tall war priestess clad in frosted mail, brandishing a massive crystalline battle-flail.

And in the center stood a fifty meter tall glacial ape, beating its massive chest with fists of jagged blue stone, its subterranean roars rattling the loose shale along the cliffs.

Four colossal avatars of blue energy stood shoulder-to-shoulder amidst the blizzard, their combined spiritual presence warping the atmospheric pressure, casting massive, towering shadows over the two youths below.

Down in the snow, Haoran chuckled, looking up at the four towering constructs of ice and desperate fury, his golden eyes igniting with a sharp, vibrant spark of interest.

”Well, I guess I can play along for a bit.”