Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The oppressive, blood-tinted haze hanging over the Demonic Lotus Sect had finally begun to clear, though the atmosphere remained heavy with the bitter stench of burning talismans and shattered spirit veins.

Across the vast, paved ceremonial square, thousands of figures knelt in humiliating subjugation.

Every single elders and disciples of the once arrogant demonic sect was forced to their knees, their bodies bound by ethereal chains of condensed spiritual qi.

Shen Xun’er, Su Xishi, and her two senior sisters, Ruo Lanlan and Mei Mei, had successfully captured and enslaved all the elders and disciples of the Demonic Lotus Sect.

The operation had been executed with ruthless, surgical precision.

The defensive grand array had been cracked wide open, Haoran had struck down the sect master, and the rest had crumbled under the overwhelming might arrayed against them.

Yet, contrary to Su Xishi’s expectations, her senior sisters didn’t immediately start picking men to play with.

As prominent disciples of a Blissful Immortal Coupling Palace, Ruo Lanlan and Mei Mei were notorious for their voracious appetites.

Typically, their first instinct would be to scour for the most handsome and yang rich male cultivators to use as cultivation cauldrons or disposable playthings for their amusement.

Su Xishi had already braced herself for the vulgar teasing and the chaotic clamor of them dragging off cowering men into the nearby pavilions or even just outright do it in the open.

But instead, neither of them spared a solitary glance at the sea of defeated, handsome youths trembling at their feet.

Before Su Xishi could even wipe the speck of enemy blood from the edge of her sword, both women closed the distance and with the span of a single breath, they flanked her.

They stared straight at her, their faces almost touching hers.

Su Xishi backed up, her boots catching slightly on the broken edge of an obsidian flagstone, her heart leaped into her throat at their unblinking expressions. ”Sister Mei, Sister Ruo, what are you two doing?”

Ruo Lanlan didn’t answer right away. Instead, she leaned in until the tip of her delicate nose was barely an inch from Su Xishi’s collarbone, her nostrils flared delicately as she took a deep, theatrical inhale.

A fraction of a second later, Mei Mei invaded the other side, leaning so close that her glossy lips practically brushed against Su Xishi’s ear, sniffing her neck with the meticulous focus of an imperial hound tracking down an escaped felon.

”You...why do you reek of a man’s essence?” Ruo Lanlan’s eyes narrowed into slits of deep suspicion. ”Junior sister, you wouldn’t happen to be bumping uglies behind our backs, do you?”

”Wait, it’s not just some man’s essence,” Mei Mei gasped, her eyes widening like full moons. ”This scent...it smells so much like young master Haoran!”

Su Xishi’s face instantly flushed crimson, heat radiating from her neck all the way to the tips of her ears as a bolt of raw panic struck her chest.

She violently raised her hands, trying to shove both of them backward by their shoulders.

”I-I don’t know what you are talking about!” Su Xishi denied, her voice cracking slightly under the strain of guilt.

”Oh, really?” Ruo Lanlan sneered playfully, refusing to be shaken off and reached out to grab Su Xishi’s wrist, her fingers instantly seeking her meridian pulse with seasoned expertise. ”Trying to deny it? Junior sister, the balance of Yin and Yang so deep within your dantian cannot be faked! Your primal Yin channel is completely breached!”

Ruo Lanlan immediately exclaimed at the top of her lungs, pointing an accusatory finger right between Su Xishi’s wide eyes. ”You lost your virginity to young master Haoran, right?!”

Mei Mei froze as if struck by divine lightning. ”What?! No! Impossible!”

Panicking, Mei Mei completely disregarded all boundaries of modesty, her hands darted out like lightning, tapping against Su Xishi’s abdomen, checking the flow of vital qi through her spiritual pathways.

With just a fleeting touch, Mei Mei’s divine sense confirmed the horrifying truth.

The maidenly aura that Su Xishi had carried for over two decades was completely displaced, substituted by the unmistakably potent masculine essence that belonged strictly to one man.

Mei Mei was thoroughly shocked. Her jaw hung slack for a full three breaths before her features contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated outrage.

”No fair! No fair! No fair!” Mei Mei shrieked, grabbing Su Xishi by the shoulders and immediately beginning to shake her back and forth like a ragdoll.

The delicate lace of their robes rustled wildly in the wind as Mei Mei threw a full-blown, petulant tantrum on the bloody battlefield.

”How could you sneak behind our backs?! I wanted to sleep with him too! Why did you get to jump ahead of the line?! You hypocrite! You always pretended to be so pure and untouchable, and then you devour him the very first chance you get?!”

”Sister Mei, stop! Let go of me!” Su Xishi protested, her head spinning as she was violently rattled back and forth.

Su Xishi wanted to explain. She opened her mouth to shout that it wasn’t what it looked like, that circumstances had spiraled entirely out of hand, that she had been under immense psychological pressure, that she hadn’t planned it.

But in the end, the words died in her throat, and she just shut up.

What could she possibly say? What defense could she construct that wouldn’t sound utterly pathetic and hypocritical?

Standing there amidst the ashes and the defeated groans of the Demonic Lotus Sect, she regretted it as well.

A heavy, suffocating wave of self-loathing and remorse crashed down upon her spirit.

How could she have been so impulsive? Her entire life, she had prided herself on cold rationality, pristine discipline, and supreme self-control.

She was the star disciple her master bragged about, the one who looked down on base carnal desires, the one who vowed to transcend the mundane world through uncorrupted cultivation.

Yet, under Shen Haoran’s sweet words, under the mere promise of his favor, she had collapsed like wet parchment.

She had thrown away decades of monastic purity in a single night of shameless passion.

Her master will probably disown her now.

If that stern, terrifying woman ever found out that her most prized disciple had willingly surrendered her primal Yin, she would be stripped of her title, expelled from the sect, or worse.

The sheer shame of it made Su Xishi wish the earth beneath her boots would split open and swallow her whole.

Meanwhile, a few yards away, Shen Xun’er just stared at them and sighed.

The slender Crown stood with her arms crossed within her flowing, embroidered sleeves, her expression dripping with cold disdain.

She watched Mei Mei shaking Su Xishi, watched Ruo Lanlan examining the girl’s flushed skin with envious curiosity, and watched Su Xishi standing there, and shook her head, thoroughly unimpressed by the spectacle.

Why did her young master even want to associate with these people?

What if he got a disease? The thought genuinely crossed Shen Xun’er’s mind, causing her brow to twitch in faint disgust.

These harlots traded fluids with countless strangers to sustain their cultivation.

Even if Su Xishi had indeed been a virgin until recently, the spiritual filth and karma carried by her sect were foul enough to taint a cultivator’s foundation(exaggeration).

When they have time, she would have to personally prepare three separate cauldrons of Cleansing Jade Water to scrub the young master’s thoroughly.

Just then, before the sisters’ bickering could escalate any further, the heavy sky above the sect suddenly tore open.

The dense sea of purple demonic clouds swirling across the heavens was abruptly parted by a beam of blinding, pristine golden radiance.

A pressure so immense that it forced the ambient spiritual qi to crystallize into shimmering motes descended like an invisible mountain.

The chaotic chatter, the wailing of the wounded, and the squabbling between the three sisters were snuffed out entirely in an instant.

Shen Haoran descended.

He did not ride a flying sword, nor did he use an ornate spirit carriage. He simply stepped out of the empty void as if walking down an invisible flight of marble stairs.

Then, with a soft, weightless tap, his embroidered boots touched the blood-stained earth of the square.

The air grew so cold and still that one could hear the faint sizzle of lingering embers.

Mei Mei instantly closed her mouth, freezing mid-shake, her face transforming from a jealous shrew into an image of sweet, demure subservience.

Ruo Lanlan lowered her gaze, respectfully pulling her robes straight and clasping her hands.

Shen Xun’er stepped forward gracefully, bowing her head in perfect aristocratic protocol.

Haoran completely ignored the women and turned towards the kneeling, enslaved disciples and elders.

There, burned deep into the flesh between their eyebrows was a glowing, faintly pulsing crimson sigil.

It took the shape of a twisted, blooming lotus entwined with jagged blood-runes.

The brand didn’t merely mar their skin; it burrowed straight into their spiritual sea, anchoring itself onto their nascent souls and golden cores like parasitic roots.

Whenever an elder blinked, the crimson light flared, sending a shudder of agonizing obedience through their limbs.

The Blood Spirit Enslavement Seal.

In the Tian Yuan Empire, such methods were regarded as barbaric and deeply taboo.

The imperial laws and orthodox immortal clans forbade the use of this because over decades of continuous exposure, the sigil would systematically erase the target’s original personality, rewriting their neural meridians until they became hollow, smiling automatons who genuinely believed they were born solely to serve their master.

It was considered an affront to the Heavenly Dao’s natural order.

Of course, openly, that’s the case. But behind the scenes? Who knows how many people use it.

But those who are branded with this basically cannot be seen, because the seal cannot disappear, so they can instantly be recognized.

And once people found out that you are using this, those annoying guys from the Three School of Thoughts would instantly slander you.

But down here, in this lawless, stagnant lower realm, there was no imperial censorate to record crimes, no righteous ancestral court to enforce moral restraint, and no grand tribunals to demand justice.

The strong carved their will onto the flesh of the weak, and the weak either bowed their heads or had their lineages erased from history.

A faint, barely perceptible smirk pulled at the corner of Haoran’s lips.

”It seems you succeeded,” said Haoran.

His voice was smooth, carrying a deep, resonant timbre that vibrated right through the spiritual bones of everyone present.

It was not loud, yet it carried an innate authority that made the kneeling disciples press their foreheads even harder against the cold stone, their trembling bodies praying that his eyes would pass over them without taking their lives.

Ruo Lanlan and Mei Mei immediately stepped forward to flatter him, offering honeyed reports of how smoothly the assault had concluded under his divine foresight.

Su Xishi, however, did not speak.

She just furrowed her brows and stared at him, her gaze complicated.

Her fingers unconsciously tightened, as a chaotic vortex of conflicting emotions churned violently within her chest, threatening to tear her composure apart.

Looking at his pristine, untouchable silhouette, completely unmarked by the dust and blood of the battle, she felt a profound, burning bitterness.

She wanted to blame him.

She wanted to scream at him.

She wanted to shatter his arrogant, god-like veneer and drag him down into the dirt where she was currently drowning in shame and dread.

But in the end, she remained silent.

She stood there, frozen beneath the sky, watching the faint breeze play with the hem of his pristine white robes.

She didn’t scream.

She didn’t draw her weapon.

She didn’t utter a single syllable of defiance.

Because at the end of the day, she willingly offered herself.

There had been no physical chains binding her wrists when he pinned her down.

There had been no poison forcing her knees to bend.

Shen Haoran had merely offered sweet words, and she, having been strung along, had completely offered herself.

She had stepped onto that bed with her own two feet.

She had lowered her eyes and bowed her head of her own accord.

There is nothing that she can do about that.

The bitter taste of reality settled deep in her throat, heavier than any physical poison.

Su Xishi slowly unclasped her tight grip, letting her fingers drop to her side.

As Shen Haoran’s gaze casually drifted from the kneeling captives and landed squarely upon her, she could only suppress the storm in her heart, lower her eyelashes, and swallow the humiliating truth that her fate was no longer her own.