Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The hollow crater where the White Dragon Sect’s ancestral peak once stood remained draped in unnatural silence.

The wind had ceased to blow, choked out by the lingering devastation of the collapsed void.

High above the barren basin of pulverized bedrock, Shen Haoran stood perched upon the forehead of his spirit avatar, his pristine sleeves hanging motionless against his sides.

His golden eyes, typically as calm and impenetrable as an ancient well, were narrowed into sharp, scrutinizing slits.

How did they revive?

His mind worked with the chilling speed of a divine calculating engine, systematically reviewing every supreme scripture, forbidden manual, and esoteric chronicle preserved within the ancestral archives of the Shen Clan.

In the grand cosmos, miraculous survivals were not entirely unheard of.

There were ancient bloodline techniques that allowed a cultivator to reform their flesh from a single droplet of vital marrow.

There were supreme Rebirth Pills capable of pulling a scattered nascent soul back from the gates of the Netherworld.

There were even parasitic puppet arts and substitute straw figures that could shoulder a single lethal blow on behalf of their master.

Yet, none of those phenomena aligned with what had just transpired before his very eyes.

When his spirit avatar cleaved the flying vessel with its blade of concentrated sword intent, every single soul, core, and fragment of physical matter had been erased down to the fundamental laws of existence.

There had been no blood left behind to initiate flesh-regeneration.

There had been no lingering soul fragments drifting into the cycle of reincarnation.

More importantly, when these several hundred individuals rematerialized upon the scorched earth below, there was no distortion of heavenly yin and yang, no influx of vitality from the surroundings, and not the faintest trace of medicinal qi or talismanic residue.

They had not healed, nor did thet get resurrected.

They had simply... appeared.

It was as if the fabric of the Heavenly Dao itself had suffered a sudden hiccup, spitting them back into the physical plane in pristine condition, completely indifferent to the supreme sword intent that had obliterated them a breath ago.

Down in the basin, the resurrected cultivators scrambled to their feet, brushing nonexistent dust off their mismatched leather tunics and gaudy iron armor plates.

Completely ignoring the terrifying golden giant towering above them, they turned their sights toward the battered figures huddled among the rocks.

A burly man wielding a jagged, oversized cleaver cupped his hands haphazardly toward the floating, bloodied patriarch.

”Old man! Hey, Grand Elder Zhao Ming!” the man shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing across the smoking crater with total disregard for sect decorum. ”Don’t sweat it, bro! We’re from the Rising Dragon Sect! We took the urgent faction dispatch, and we’re here to help!”

”Yeah, grand elder! We’re the reinforcements!” a woman clad in bright pink cloth robes yelled, waving an unadorned wooden staff that barely possessed a single trace of spiritual carving. ”Hold on, we’re securing the perimeter!”

Hovering unsteadily in the sky, his robes shredded and his chest stained with visceral crimson, Grand Elder Zhao Ming stared down at them in absolute bewilderment.

Rising Dragon Sect?

In his thousand years of cultivating, he had committed every grand sect, ancient clan, minor lineage, and rogue cultivation hall to memory.

There was no such thing as a ’Rising Dragon Sect’ of any renown.

Moreover, their garments were completely mismatched, lacking any unified clan insignia or sacred embroidery, and their cultivation levels were laughably meager—merely fluctuating between late Core Formation and early Golden Core.

Yet, in this hour of ruin, when his ancestral mountain had been ground into dust and his fellow elders lay slaughtered, a group of complete strangers had rushed into the jaws of death to stand by his side.

A wave of bitter, sorrowful gratitude surged into the old man’s chest.

As for how they knew his name, he wasn’t surprised, after all, he was pretty famous.

”Fools!” Elder Zhao coughed violently, spitting a mouthful of clotted blood against his singed beard as he waved his arm frantically toward the distant horizon. ”I know not which sect gave birth to righteous youngsters such as you, but this old man is deeply grateful! Yet you cannot stay here! Grab the surviving disciples! Pick up whoever can still breathe and leave! Run toward the southern mountains! This opponent is not something you can handle! Do not throw away your young lives in vain!”

The players gathered around the edge of the crater paused, exchanging glances as translucent windows invisible to native cultivators flickered across their vision.

”Wait, is this alright?” a swordsman with spiky hair whispered, checking his interface. ”The old guy is literally begging us to bail. If we run, do we lose reputation points with the White Dragon faction?”

”Bro, did you not see that golden monstrosity just one-shot our entire ship?!” another player hissed back, anxiously eyeing the golden avatar. ”His nameplate is literally question marks! We probably can’t even deal chip damage to that thing! Fighting him is suicide!”

”He’s right,” the burly leader grunted, sheathing his cleaver with a sharp clatter. ”The primary objective on the event quest clearly says to save the White Dragon Sect. It doesn’t say anything about slaying the elite boss! This is clearly a scripted escape phase! Grab the injured NPCs and hit the road before that monster winds up another cleave!”

”Hurry, drag the ones on the ground! Someone pick up that crying female NPC over there!”

The players immediately began swarming forward, treating the dying, venerable elders of the sacred ground like precious cargo to be packed and hauled away to cash in a reward.

High in the sky, Shen Haoran watched their frantic, highly organized scurry with cold, detached fascination.

But, how could Haoran let them leave?

The corners of his lips curved upward, parting to reveal a glint of genuine, predatory intrigue.

The arrogant elders of the White Dragon Sect, their heritage, their treasured secret realms, and their desperate last stands—all of it had instantly become utterly mundane.

He had lost all interest in playing with these dying old fogies. In his eyes, the ancient lineage of this lower realm was merely dry kindling, predictable and hollow.

These strange, crude, fear-deprived anomalies scurrying across the dirt, however, were an entirely different matter.

He stared at the people below and activated his Karmic Light Observation technique.

Instantly, his pupils underwent a profound transformation.

His golden eyes was replaced by a radiant, rotating mandala of seven-colored brilliance that flashed through the hues of the rainbow for a single moment, piercing through the superficial layers of flesh, bone, and spiritual qi to gaze directly into the grand river of fate and karmic destiny.

A breath later, the blinding chromatic refraction receded, and his pupils returned to their normal, tranquil gold.

What he saw left him profoundly stunned.

Weird. Very weird.

These people are not protagonists. Their individual souls were shallow, their foundations were paper-thin, and their karmic weight was as light as dried chaff.

Yet, draped around their bodies and tethered to the crowns of their heads, there hovered a vibrant, pulsating layer of seven color light, astonishingly similar to that of a true protagonist!

It was fragmented, collective, and artificially dense, like the destiny of an entire world had been ground into a fine powder and scattered over hundreds of ordinary ants.

Are they perhaps clones of a protagonist? Or maybe....

Haoran’s mind raced through every possibilities he can think of.

But regardless of the truth, he was not going to let a single one of these fascinating specimens slip through his fingers.

”Qing’er...” Haoran called out softly.

His voice was barely a whisper, yet the moment the syllables left his lips, the shadow cast by his robes upon the avatar’s golden forehead began to ripple like agitated water.

From his shadows, a beautiful black-haired woman with red eyes wearing a sleeveless black full-body suit appeared.

She rose silently from the darkness, her movements possessing the fluid, boneless grace of a viper slipping through silk.

”Young master, your orders?” asked Qing’er, her head bowing low, her voice cold, husky, and devoid of the slightest tremor.

”Deal with these old fogies,” Haoran commanded indifferently.

Without waiting for a response, Haoran deactivated his Spirit Avatar, and the phantom vanished into thin air.

Then, he jumped down, his body folding through the air, dropping with the smooth, terrifying speed of a falling meteor toward the crater below.

Shen Xun’er immediately followed after him, a streak of shimmering azure light descending in tight formation at his side.

High above, Grand Elder Zhao Ming saw the devil diving straight toward the young reinforcements who had come to save his people, and his eyes flared with maddened, suicidal desperation.

”You bastard! As if I’d let you!” Elder Zhao Ming roared.

Channelling the very last drop of his qi, Zhao Ming intended to thrust himself forward and self-detonate his cultivation base to drag Haoran into the void with him.

He reached out with clawed, bloodied hands, his spiritual aura erupting into a dying, silver blaze.

Puchi!

But, at that very moment, a shadow spike suddenly stabbed him from behind.

”Cough!”

Zhao Ming’s body froze rigidly in midair. A thick fountain of hot, black blood erupted from his mouth, splattering across the cold sky.

Slowly, agonizingly, he looked down at his own chest. Bursting through his sternum was a three-foot-long spike forged from pitch-black, solidified shadow energy.

It hissed as it effortlessly corroded his meridians, freezing the violent expansion of his core before it could even begin to detonate.

He turned behind with trembling, fading vision.

Standing quietly on the air behind him, her slender arm extended, Qing’er was looking at him coldly.

Her crimson eyes reflected the old man’s dying agony without a flicker of pity, as if she had simply driven a pin through the thorax of a beetle.

With a subtle flick of her fingers, three more shadow spikes erupted from the darkness beneath the other surviving elders, silencing their screams before they could even draw their swords.

*

*

*

Down below, the sudden shift in wind heralded a catastrophic arrival.

Boom!

With a heavy, suffocating thud of compressed spatial pressure, Haoran and Xun’er dropped in front of the players who were about to rescue people.

The shockwave blew back the dust and shattered rocks, forcing the players to stagger backward, their arms raised to shield their faces.

When the air cleared, Haoran stood barely ten paces away from them, his immaculate garments fluttering softly, while the cute petite Crown stood poised at his shoulder.

”Holy shit!” a player shrieked, stumbling over a rock in sheer panic. ”Damn, why did this elite boss chase after us? Did someone aggro him?!”

”I didn’t touch him! I was just interacting with the wounded elder NPC!” the group’s healer cried out, hastily casting a faint green light over her trembling allies.

”Who pulled threat?! Did the tank’s passive aura tick on him?!”

”Wipe! It’s a wipe! Fall back, pop your movement speed scrolls—”

Haoran smirked.

His golden eyes slowly swept across their frantic, disjointed expressions, noting how their eyes darted around empty air as if reading invisible text, and how their mouths formed strange, incomprehensible foreign jargon with casual ease.

His lips parted, and in a tone that was quiet, smooth, and laced with chilling certainty.

”You... You’re all from another world, right?”

The chaotic clamor of the crater died instantly.

The wind did not dare to howl, and the dust hung suspended in the air as that single sentence seemed to shake the players down to their very souls.

A suffocating wave of pure, primal dread crashed over every single player present, far heavier and infinitely more horrifying than any physical damage mechanic they had ever encountered.

Their eyes widened, their jaws slacking, their bodies freezing in petrified paralysis.

In every virtual reality game they had ever logged into, non-player characters were bound by rigid dialogue trees, behavioral scripts, and the internal lore of their simulated universe.

NPCs referred to them as wandering cultivators, righteous heroes, or eccentric mercenaries.

They reacted to factions, to reputation points, and to quest triggers.

They were digital actors confined within the digital theater of their artificial world.

They were never supposed to look directly past the screen.

Yet, looking into Shen Haoran’s golden, mocking gaze, the players did not see an artificial intelligence reciting programmed script lines.

The sheer depth of intelligence in his eyes, the calculating, amused arrogance curling at the edges of his mouth, and the profound, piercing awareness behind his words shattered the boundary of the game entirely.

It was deeply, overwhelmingly uncanny.

The hairs on the backs of their necks stood stiff as an icy chill crawled straight down their real-world spines.

It felt as though a wax figure inside an ancient museum had suddenly turned its head, locked eyes with them through the glass, and calmly addressed them by their real-world social security numbers.

It was the violation of fundamental reality—a digital ghost reaching its pale, cold hands out of the monitor to grasp their living throats.

”What... what did he just say...?” the spiky-haired swordsman whispered, his voice trembling violently as he took an involuntary step back, his knuckles turning chalk-white around his sword hilt. ”That’s not... that’s not a normal dialogue, is it...?”

Haoran took a single, leisurely step forward, his smile widening as he watched the colorful light around their terrified souls violently fluctuate.

”It seems I guessed correctly.”