Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The opulent bedchamber was thick with the scent of sweat and lingering smell of a night’s passion between a man and a woman.

The silk sheets, once pristine and meticulously smoothed, were now hopelessly crumpled and tangled across the vast mattress.

Faint, luminous stains of spilled yin essence and dried yang essence glowed with a dying, iridescent silver light upon the blankets.

At this moment, Su Xishi, who was still completely naked, stared at the ceiling in a daze.

Her pale limbs lay limply across the ruined bedding, every muscle, bone, and tendon aching with an ungodly, hollow exhaustion.

Her white hair was scattered wild and tangled over the velvet pillows, sweat soaked strands sticking to her collarbones and the flushed contours of her heaving chest.

Across her milky-white thighs and flat stomach, faint red finger marks and the bruised, burning brand of a monarch’s possessive grip still pulsed with lingering heat.

Between her trembling legs, a sharp, tearing ache served as a cruel, physical reminder of what had transpired—a permanent, indelible tear in the fabric of her life.

Beneath the ribs of her lower dantian, the change was catastrophic.

For several decades, since the very moment she had stepped into the grand halls of the Blissful Immortal Coupling Palace in the central region and studied under her Master, Su Xishi had always swore to herself that she will not fall into temptation and that she will become an emperor like her master.

It had been her pride, her absolute foundation, and the holy chalice of her spiritual path.

Her primal yin had been an unbreached, crystalline lake, untainted by mortal lust, perfectly insulated against the burning, corrupting currents of worldly yang.

Now?

That sacred, frozen lake had been violently detonated.

Where there had once been serene, untouched moonlight, an untamed, roaring furnace of golden fire now coursed through her meridians.

It was powerful, undoubtedly—her qi channels were wider, her dantian was brimming with boundless, volatile energy—but the cold, solitary purity of her ancestral manual had been obliterated.

Her virginity was gone.

The realization crashed down upon her like the weight of ten thousand falling mountains, crushing the breath from her lungs.

What have I done?

A cold, sickening dread pooled in the pit of her stomach, rising into her throat until it tasted like bitter, metallic bile.

’What in the heavens was I thinking?!’

She stared blankly up at the dark, ribbed arches of the gothic ceiling, her purple eyes wide, trembling with a horrified, disbelieving panic that tore through her soul.

’I gave it up. Just like that. In a single night, on a bed in a backwater swamp, to a man who didn’t even try courting me!’

Wave after wave of suffocating regret washed over her, battering her pride until she felt completely hollow.

She wanted to scream; she wanted to tear her hair out; she wanted to turn back the hands of time and slap her own face until she was bloody!

’Idiot! Fool! Vain, arrogant, short-sighted little vixen!’

She cursed herself in the silent, screaming sanctuary of her mind, digging her fingernails into the ruined velvet sheets until her knuckles turned ghostly white.

’How could I be so impulsive?! How could I let myself be led by the nose like a brainless, rutting beast?!’

The memory of their conversation just hours earlier replayed in her head, every word burning her ears with humiliating clarity.

He had stood before her, looking down with those arrogant, glowing golden eyes, spouting sweet, poisoned poison wrapped in grand philosophical decrees.

’Make me your Dao. Chase after me. Blergh, blergh blergh~!’

She almost puked just thinking about it.

Normally, she would’ve just slapped the person who said that to her.

But what had she done?

Instead of laughing in his face and slapping him like the sharp, calculating Saintess she was supposed to be, instead of retreating into the cold, rational logic that had kept her alive in this den of demonic foxes for five long years, she had melted!

She had crawled across the mattress on all fours like a desperate, starved whore, swaying her tail, purring into his collarbones, and practically begging him to tear down her defenses!

’He played me!’she screamed internally, her chest burning with agonizing shame. ’...and I leapt at the hook without even checking the barb!’

Where was the proud disciple of the Blissful Immortal Coupling Palace now?

What would her real master say if she saw her lying naked, covered in another man’s essence, having discarded the virginity she had guarded and protected for decades just because of a handful of sweet words and a rush of lustful heat?

Her master had spent all her years warning her against the silver-tongued playboy young masters from great clans, drilling into her soul that a woman who surrenders her foundational purity becomes nothing more than a plaything, an accessory to a man’s glory!

’And I thought I was different,’ Su Xishi mourned, biting her lower lip so hard that a tiny bead of crimson blood welled upon her rose-petal skin. ’I thought I was the hunter. I genuinely believed I could ’conquer’ him, that I could bind my fate to his and turn him into my stepping stone!’

’What a joke! Look at me! I couldn’t even resist his sweet talk before I was weeping, clawing his back, and begging him not to stop!’

She had surrendered the absolute leverage she held over the entire mortal world for what?

A few hours of humping and grunting just for that one moment of pleasure?

For a vague promise of walking beside an emperor who treated the gods of the firmament like road dust?

’I threw away my life’s work in a single breath of feverish madness... Damn it!’

She turned her head, glaring at the man responsible for this mess.

There, Haoran was just lying down down beside her, his long, warm fingers gently reached into her sweat damp hair, lightly brushing against the velvety, sensitive base of her fox ears that had involuntarily twitched in pleasure.

His touch was slow, possessive, and dripping with that infuriating, leisurely dominance that made her soul quiver.

He was propped up on one elbow, his chiseled, bare chest gleaming with an unblemished luster in the dim moonlight, completely untired, looking like a sated beast resting in his personal den.

”You’re regretting it?” Haoran asked, his deep, resonant voice rumbling softly in the quiet room.

Su Xishi did not answer.

She turned her head back anf kept her eyes firmly glued to the carvings of the ceiling, her jaw clenched tight, refusing to grant him the satisfaction of seeing the humiliating turmoil tearing through her irises.

Her plush fox ears twitched away from his touch, flattening against her skull in cold, sullen resistance, but she couldn’t stop the slight, involuntary shiver that ran down her spine as his thumb traced the delicate curve of her ear-cartilage.

Haoran stared at her and chuckled.

The sound was low, amused, and completely devoid of guilt or apology.

He knew precisely what was raging behind her silent, stone faced glare, but to him, a maiden’s post-union regret was merely the predictable, harmless ripple of a river settling after a flood.

He did not coddle her, nor did he waste breath reaffirming his grand declarations, and instead, he changed the subject.

”Drop that childish little coup of yours,” Haoran stated casually, his hand moving down from her ear to rest heavily upon the soft, bare curve of her waist.

”About your plan. Truth be told, it is needlessly complicated, tedious, and a complete waste of time.”

Su Xishi’s eyelashes flickered, her gaze finally tearing away from the ceiling to look at his sharp, unmoving profile.

Waste of time? It is the most perfect plan to take over this sect without having to shes the blood of her senior sisters, and without having to damage the foundation of this sect that she was planning to occupy!

Haoran continued smoothly, ”If you want this sect, you can have it. The valley, the spiritual stone mines, their libraries, the thousands of disciples, all of it yours. I will hand the entire territory over to you on a silver platter. You will be the sole, undisputed master of this mountain before the dawn breaks.”

He paused, a terrifying, thin smirk curving his lips.

”But the current leadership dies tonight.”

The casual finality in his voice hung in the room like the blade of a guillotine.

”I have no interest in keeping that woman alive to negotiate terms, and I certainly have no patience for political compromises with old foxes,” Haoran said, his fingers lightly tapping against her hip. ”I must kill that sect master and her son.”

Su Xishi took a slow, shallow breath, the lingering haze of her personal regret momentarily pushed aside by the sharp, calculating instincts of a cultivator.

”Young Master... Da Xiaomi is a high-ranking Nether Spirit Fox with deep ties to the regional demon courts. And Chen Xu—”

”Chen Xu is nothing,” Haoran cut in coldly, his golden irises flashing with predatory calculation. ”He has with him the bloodline of that man, and I must make sure to take care of him. Just like how I butchered Chen Feng’s parents and flayed their faces, severed the head of his first wife, and stripped his second wife, Bing Wuxian, of all her limbs.”

Su Xishi’s pupils dilated in genuine, chilling shock. He... he did what to the White Dragon lineage?!

During her five years in this sect, Da Xiaomi had always bragged about the greatness of the White Dragon Emperor Chen Feng, and subconsciously, she began to also hold him in high regard.

But now...hearing Haoran’s words, she finally snapped out of that reverence.

Indeed. At the end of the day, no matter how great that man is, he’s still a lower realm native.

How could he compare to someone like Shen Haoran?

”I don’t know where that rat Chen Feng is hiding, but I can be sure that once he returned, he will probably have already broken through to Saint realm.” Haoran chuckled darkly, looking at her with a look of terrifying, unhinged amusement. ”He will return with glory, expecting the praises of the masses and the love of his family... aren’t you curious about his expression once he saw what I did to them?”

He’d definitely go man. Su Xishi thought.

Haoran leaned forward, his face coming within three inches of hers, his hot breath washing over her lips.

”Well, for now. Why don’t you wear your clothes and call the boy over.”

Su Xishi blinked, ”...Who?”

”Chen Xu... call him to your bedchamber right now,” Haoran instructed, his smirk widening, ”The boy is completely infatuated with you, is he not? He defied his own mother in the throne room just to protect your ’purity.’ So why don’t you send him a message and tell him you were touched by his nobility, tell him you feel troubled in the night, tell him whatever lie your sweet little fox mouth can spin to bring him running to this room.”

Haoran sat up slightly, stretching his broad shoulders, looking toward the door with an anticipatory gleam in his eyes.

”He will come without his guards, eager to play the knight to his untouchable Saintess. And when he steps across this threshold... I will break his spine, sever his dantians, and chain him alongside his mother.”

He turned back to look at Su Xishi, resting his hand firmly over her trembling throat, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying purr.

”I will deliver him and his mother as a gift to his father.”

He chuckled, his eyes burning with thrill, meanwhile, Su Xishi’s eyes seem to lit up with a ruthless light, as if eager to pay back all the hardships she endured in this past five years just to curry favor with that lowly fox demon.

”So, my clever little fox... send the message.”