Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Within a thick, dense forest.

Xia Mengyao stood, her slender frame draped in red robes trimmed with pristine silver silk.

In her right hand rested a slender blade forged from thousand-year profound spirit iron.

Her breathing was imperceptible, as tranquil as an unmoving as a calm lake, her spiritual sea locked in harmony with the Dao of the sword.

Finally, she sheathed the sword.

The crisp, resonant clack of the crossguard meeting the mouth of the scabbard was no louder than a dry twig snapping beneath a boot.

Yet, the moment the blade vanished entirely into its dark sheath, the delayed consequence of her solitary strike detonated across the landscape.

SHIIIIING!

There was no sound of tearing wood, no splintering branches, and no gust of destructive wind, but across an unbroken radius of ten full miles, every ancient pine, ironwood trunk, and twisted mountain cedar was simultaneously severed at the exact same horizontal plane, precisely three feet above the forest floor.

The cuts were unimaginably smooth, glass-like surfaces sheared on a microscopic level by an omnidirectional wave of compressed sword intent that had permeated the atmosphere long before her blade returned to its sheath.

For a heartbeat, the colossal canopy hung motionless in the air, defying gravity.

Then, with a slow, sweeping groan of millions of tons of falling timber, hundreds of thousands of towering trees slid off their stumps and crashed into the underbrush, sending plumes of sawdust and pine needles billowing into the cold air.

High above the falling forest, the clouds parted with gentle, effortless majesty as Xu Xiansu, who was at the sky, descended.

In her hand, she loosely held her Academy Token.

Her expression was completely unruffled, radiating the serene, untouchable aura of a master who grasped the hidden cogs behind the flow of time and space.

Her embroidered slippers touched the bare stump of an ancient pine tree, leaving not a single crease upon the sawdust.

”Your sword heart has sharpened considerably, Mengyao,” Xu Xiansu remarked, her melodious voice carrying the cool, unhurried cadence of flowing spring water. ”The boundary of your intent now severs physical matter before the spiritual sense can even perceive the flash of steel.”

There was no pride on Xia Mengyao’s cold, sculpted countenance, nor was there any hesitation in the firm tilt of her chin.

”Well, are you ready?” Xu Xiansu asked.

Xia Mengyao smiled softly, ”Yes, thank you for the patience, sister Xiansu.”

”It’s no trouble at all. For now, let me fix this...” Xu Xiansu raised a hand, and snapped her fingers.

The crisp sound of flesh striking flesh rippled outward from her pale thumb and forefinger like a drop of ink falling into clear water.

In that instant, the colossal plumes of sawdust and dirt rising from the ground froze mid-air, then began drifting backward into the earth.

The hundreds of thousands of felled trees, lying broken in the underbrush, lifted into the air in reverse trajectories, moving smoothly and silently back toward their stumps.

The glass-smooth cuts across the ten-mile radius stitched themselves back together at an atomic level, the sap running upward, the bark fusing seamlessly, and the crushed branches rising back to the heights of the canopy without leaving behind a single scar or fracture.

In the span of two short breaths, the desolate, leveled forest was once again engulfed by a thriving, dense ancient trees, untouched by human presence, rustling peacefully in the northern mountain breeze as though the devastating sword strike had never occurred.

”Let’s go,” Xu Xiansu said softly. ”It seems Haoran had finally decided to end this trial.”

Xia Mengyao did not utter a word in response.

She simply stepped forward, her hand resting firmly upon the hilt of her sheathed blade, matching Xu Xiansu’s stride as the two women began their journey toward the final gathering point, leaving the silent, unbroken woods behind.

*

*

*

At this moment, in another dimension.

Within a pocket realm completely separated from the mortal plane by layers of dense, medicinal barriers, an ancient temple stood on top of a mountain.

Here, millions of stalks of legendary heavenly herbs, plants capable of granting immortality to mortals or resurrecting severed cores, grew wild along the mossy courtyards, nurtured by the continuous downpour of five-color spirit dew.

In the center of the grand temple’s altar, surrounded by cauldrons of boiling medicinal elixirs and floating scripture scrolls, Shen Ying opened her eyes and stood up straight.

Her tall, athletic silhouette emerged from a sea of fragrant medicinal steam, clad in thick, baggy robes that hides the lethal lines of her voluptuous frame, her sharp features were bathed in the cool light of the jade pillars.

Her golden hair hung in loose, messy waves down her back, and within her crimson irises, a chilling, venomous madness flickered—a dark obsession born of tearing through forbidden anatomical scriptures and subjecting her own meridians to gruesome alchemical modifications.

Near the grand alchemy cauldron, The God of Medicines, an ethereal old man hovering in a lotus position, draped in robes woven from morning mist and medicinal vines, let out a deep, exhausted breath.

His ancient, translucent face was lined with deep, phantom wrinkles of sheer mental agony.

For years, this terrifying girl had broken into his sacred inheritance grounds, completely disregarding the gentle, benevolent principles of healing and life preservation that his lineage had upheld for tens of thousands of years.

She had used his supreme cauldrons not to brew longevity pills, but to distill horrific, flesh-melting poisons and soul-corrosive miasmas, testing their volatile reactions on her own flesh and laughing like a lunatic whenever an organ ruptured from toxic shock.

”Finally, that lunatic is leaving,” the ancient spirit muttered under his breath, his beard trembling as he watched her step down from the stone dais.

If she had stayed for another month, the sacred herbs he had cultivated for thirty thousand years would have been completely depleted to fuel her bizarre, sadistic alchemical experiments.

Shen Ying ignored the groaning apparition entirely as she reached out, her pale fingers adjusting the imperial academy token humming against her hip.

Her heavy, iron-plated boots clicked against the smooth jade steps with an arrogant, unhurried cadence, echoing through the empty, misty courtyards.

And at that moment, stepping out from behind an ancient pavilion inscribed with ancient pill recipes, Tang Lin blocked her path.

”Sister Shen Ying,” Tang Lin spoke, trying to maintain an air of dignified scholar, despite wanting to puke at her face, ”Did you also receive a message from the Shen Haoran? If we travel together through, our combined strength will keep us safe. What do you think?”

Shen Ying just stared at him. Her boots came to a halt two paces away from him as she tilted her head slightly, her gaze sweeping over him.

Her eyes were dead, vacant, and utterly cold, devoid of the slightest shred of human emotion—the exact same hollow look she gave to the severed spirit beasts she pinned to her dissection tables before peeling back their skin with alchemical needles.

She did not utter a greeting. She did not sneer. She did not even blink. She treated him as nothing more than a pile of stagnant, uninteresting organic matter standing in the ambient light.

Then, without even as much as a twitch of an eyelid, she walked towards the exit, her shoulder brushed past his arm without the slightest effort to avoid him.

She continued forward down the jade walkway with steady, mechanical strides, her eyes fixed entirely on the spatial gateway shimmering at the edge of the realm.

Tang Lin gritted his teeth as he stared her, his knuckles turned chalk-white, his face flushed a dark, humiliating crimson as he stood there in the empty courtyard, ignored and dismissed like a stray dog on the street.

Yet, he can only swallow the furious curses rising in his throat, forced his pride down, and followed several paces behind her in bitter, resentful silence.

*

*

*

At this moment, in an underground cell.

Hundreds of thousands of miles away from the majestic mountain peaks and the celestial herb temples, deep within the subterranean bowels of a secluded unorthodox compound, the air was hot, stagnant, and thick with a suffocating, putrid miasma.

The moisture dripping from the jagged stone stalactites was mixed with black mold and stale grease.

The earthen floor was slick with layers of spilled body fluids, vomit, discarded medicinal dregs, and the foul, copper reek of dried blood that had soaked into the porous bedrock over years of unbridled torment.

Rusted iron instruments hung from the walls, coated in layers of grime and dried crust, while the suffocating, sour stench of unwashed bodies and biological waste hung so heavily in the unventilated air that any ordinary mortal would have choked to death within minutes.

In the center of this horrific dungeon, Qing Yan was chained on a stone bed.

His wrists and ankles were secured by massive, rusted shackle-plates of soul-suppressing cold iron that bit deeply into his raw, suppurating flesh, anchored to the stone slab by thick, blood-stained chains.

The once-proud, handsome system user was completely unrecognizable. His ribcage pressed violently against translucent, paper-thin skin covered in infected bite marks, jagged whip scars, and festering sores.

His cheeks were hollowed into deep, terrifying cavities; his collarbones protruded like sharp ridges of broken chalk, and his limbs were reduced to brittle sticks of bone and sinew.

His bare flesh was exposed to the biting cold of the damp stone and the crawling vermin that scurried across the floor.

His dantian was punctured by fine, blackened needles that steadily siphoned away every thread of spiritual qi his body managed to generate, leaving him in a perpetual state of agonizing spiritual starvation, his vital essence drained dry by days and nights of ceaseless, predatory exploitation.

Just then, the rusted iron gate at the end of the corridor shrieked on its hinges as several old hags entered the cell.

They shuffled in like deformed, hunchbacked ghouls, their hunched frames draped in tattered, stained rags that dragged through the filth on the floor.

Their faces were horrific monstrosities of failed dual-cultivation arts—skin sloughing off in rotting, gray patches, lips cracked and weeping yellow pus, their teeth blackened and jagged.

Across their withered necks, saggy breasts, and bare forearms, thick, flaky patches of dried, crusty biological residue were caked into their wrinkled skin, emitting a sickening, rancid odor that mingled with the reek of cheap aphrodisiac incense burning in their clay pots.

”Hehehe! Look at our little vessel, still breathing on his little slab!” an old hag with a milky, blind right eye cackled, her voice sounding like gravel grinding inside an iron pot. ”He lasted through the night! A youth with such a Pure Yang constitution truly has remarkable vitality!”

”The Yin-replenishing array needs another session to extract his marrow!” another withered crone giggled, licking her chapped, blackened lips with a long, coated tongue as she reached out with filthy, hooked fingernails to stroke his bruised inner thigh. ”My turn to take the prime seat today, sisters! Let us see if he can still scream when we drain the last drop of his core essence!”

Qing Yan didn’t even struggle.

He did not flinch when their filthy, rotting fingers touched his bruised skin, he did not pull against the rusted chains, nor did he beg for mercy or curse their ancestral graves.

The bitter, humiliating torment had continued for so long that his spirit had shattered into numb, unfeeling shards.

His dead eyes just staring at the ceiling, his pupils were glassy, gray, and unfocused, fixed entirely upon a patch of black moss growing on the subterranean stone rafters above him.

He was merely waiting for his heart to stop beating, waiting for the cold embrace of the Yellow Springs to extinguish the unending nightmare of his ruined flesh.

But, at that moment, an explosion occurred.

KABOOOOOM!

The subterranean foundations of the compound violently violently buckled!

A catastrophic blast of celestial thunder detonated from the corridor outside, tearing through the heavy ironwood doors and blowing the five-foot-thick stone archway into billions of jagged, flying projectiles!

The entrance to the cell was burst open as a shockwave of scorching, incandescent golden radiance swept through the filthy dungeon, instantly incinerating the black mold, the stale grease, and the putrid stench of biological waste into sterile, ozone-scented ash.

The two closest old hags shrieked in absolute terror as the concussive force hurled their deformed, rotting bodies violently against the far wall, their brittle spines snapping like dry twigs with a sickening crunch.

Through the swirling clouds of pulverized granite and celestial smoke, a tall, magnificent figure strode into the cell.

”Halt, evil doers!”

The voice rang out like the pure strike of a divine bell, vibrating with righteous, absolute fury that dispelled the subterranean darkness in an instant.

Hearing that familiar voice, Qing Yan finally regained a light in his eyes.

The dead, glassy grayness within his sunken pupils fractured as a violent tremor ran through his emaciated chest as the rhythmic, melodic resonance of those three words struck his shattered soul like a lightning bolt, pulling his fading consciousness back from the very threshold of death.

With immense, agonizing effort, his brittle neck muscles strained, turning his hollow face toward the shattered entrance.

Then, tears, scalding, pure, and clean tears, welled up from his bruised eye sockets, washing through the grime, dried sweat, and blood caked upon his sunken cheeks as a broken, breathless sob tore from his throat.

Through the parting golden mist, bathed in the radiant halo of an ancient divine goddess, she stood.

Draped in flowing, pristine white and gold battle robes that fluttered majestically without wind, holding an unsheathed sword that hummed with blinding heavenly light, her divine, peerless face was etched with fury and profound concern.

It was her.

After years of agonizing pain, he finally saw the goddess of his dreams, Qian Yunxi!