Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Inside the grand palace, the marble pillars shuddered, dust cascading from the vaulted rafters like heavy gray snow.

Chen Feng’s eyes blazed with incandescent light as the blood within his newly forged Saint physique roared like an ancient, untamed dragon breaking through its primordial shackles.

He looked at the trembling faces of his brothers-in-arms, at the pale expressions of the Four Sacred Masters, and felt the volcanic heat of his own unyielding pride surge straight into his throat.

He had spent eight agonizing years crawling his way out of the dimensional abyss; he had not ascended to the supreme realm of Sainthood merely to hide beneath the roof of an unfamiliar sect while a foreign devil cast a shadow over his world.

”Let’s go.”

Chen Feng’s voice was not loud, but it resonated like the strike of an ancient bronze bell directly within the spiritual seas of every living being in the compound.

With a monumental surge of bright silver that shattered the stained-glass dome of the grand hall into millions of glittering fragments, Chen Feng shot upward like a reverse meteor.

Behind him, the Sword Saint of the Sacred Sword Pavilion, the Wind Emperor of the Divine Wind Palace, the Xuan Yuan Saint of the Xuan Heavenly Sect, and the Nine Lives Demon King of the Murong Clan erupted into streaks of gray, azure, crimson, and black light.

Behind them, thousands of experts, and surviving elders of the fallen orthodox sects, all at Nirvana Rebirth Realm, rose into the air like a colossal, surging swarm of locusts, riding flying swords, spirit beasts, and glowing spatial artifacts to challenge the descending dark.

Down in the empty, dust-choked audience chamber, Sect Master Yun Ming remained seated motionless upon his carved dragon-wood throne.

His hands gripped the polished armrests with intensity such intensity his knuckles turned white, his sharp features cast in heavy shadow.

A translucent, blue system screen hovered inches from his face, projecting a barrage of chaotic, unreadable code and rapidly falling survival probabilities.

The synthetic voice in his mind buzzed with frantic static while Yun Ming’s breathing was shallow and uneven; unlike the fearless players who treated death as a temporary stat penalty, and unlike Chen Feng who was blinded by righteous confidence, Yun Ming possessed the cold, calculating cowardice of a modern corporate mind.

He knew that when two cosmic titans clashed, the ants standing beneath them were pulverized regardless of who claimed victory.

He would not step into that sky until he knew which way the butcher’s blade would fall.

*

*

*

Up in the frozen, colorless firmament, the apocalyptic tsunami of black sword intent was bearing down upon the city, threatening to swallow the entire sect into an unmoving, monochrome grave.

The wave was colossal, spanning hundreds of miles wide, eating the sunlight and turning the clouds into dead ash.

Yet Chen Feng did not retreat a single inch. He planted his boots firmly upon the invisible fabric of the atmosphere, his spine straight as a divine spear, his golden irises reflecting the endless void hurtling toward his face.

”Break!”

Chen Feng roared, thrusting both hands forward with fingers spread wide!

The authority of a true Saint detonated from his core as the space across a thousand miles violently buckled and folded in upon itself like crushed silk.

Chen Feng did not erect a barrier, but instead, he grasped the dimensional coordinates of the incoming strike and violently twisted the spatial fabric into an inverted mobius loop.

The sheer, crushing density of his spatial manipulation forced the horizontal wave of black severance to collide with an artificial dimensional horizon.

SKRRRRRRR!

An ear-piercing, cosmic screech tore through the upper atmosphere as the black sword intent was forcibly redirected into the fractured folds of the void, shearing through empty separate dimensions before dispersing into harmless, drifting motes of fading dark qi.

The washed-out gray of the sky fractured, and the natural, vibrant blue of the mortal heavens flooded back into the world like a returning tide.

Chen Feng lowered his arms, his hair whipping wildly around his chiseled face, and stared at Haoran.

Across the vast expanse of the northern firmament, thousands of Nirvana Rebirth Realm experts watched Chen Feng in awe.

It was truly an awe-inspiring, terrifying spectacle of military might.

Behind Chen Feng stood an army the likes of which this lower realm had never witnessed in its entire history.

Thousands of cultivators, each pulsating with the dense, turbulent spiritual foundation of the Nirvana Rebirth Realm, formed an unbroken wall of martial force that stretched across the horizon.

Flying banners snapped in the high-altitude winds; spirit weapons hummed with lethal enchantments, and the collective killing intent of thousands of battle-hardened masters pressed against the atmosphere like an iron continent.

At their level of supreme cultivation, a thousand miles was merely a courtyard’s breath.

Their divine senses interlocked across the distance, tethering their voices through the spiritual leylines so that every whisper, every heartbeat, and every subtle twitch of an eyebrow was transmitted with crystal-clear precision.

So even though they appear far, they can easily communicate.

On the other side of that thousand-mile gulf, hovering casually beneath the golden sun, stood Shen Haoran.

He remained untouched, immaculate, clad in his robes with the Black Imperial Sword resting loosely at his side, Shen Xun’er standing demurely behind his shoulder like an attendant at a garden tea party.

Chen Feng stepped forward on the air, his golden eyes burning with uncontainable, volcanic fury.

”Shen Haoran!” Chen Feng’s voice boomed across the thousand-mile gap, vibrating through the bones of every cultivator present like rolling thunder. ”Drop your pretenses! My father! My mother! And my wives! Speak, you otherworldly devil, were you the one responsible for their disappearance?!”

A soft, melodic sound rippled from the Haoran’s throat, carrying an easy, patronizing amusement that drifted effortlessly across the thousand miles.

Haoran lightly tilted his head, his golden eyes curving into faint crescents as he casually inspected the polished edge of his black blade, completely ignoring the weight of Chen Feng’s righteous interrogation as if a child had just asked him a meaningless riddle.

The vein on Chen Feng’s temple throbbed violently, his aura flaring with such suffocating intensity that the spatial fabric beneath his boots began to crack into spiderweb fissures.

The sheer, dismissive disrespect cut deeper than any physical blade.

”You arrogant mongrel!” Chen Feng snarled, his voice dropping into a guttural, murderous growl that rattled the heavens. ”You stand in my world, breathing the air of my home, and dare to mock me?! Open your ears and listen well! Release my parents and my wives immediately, hand over their whereabouts this very instant, and perhaps, just perhaps, I will grant you the mercy of leaving your corpse intact when I tear your soul from your flesh!”

Chen Feng swept his muscular arm wide, gesturing toward the colossal, terrifying legion of thousands of Nirvana Rebirth experts, the Four Sacred Masters, and the endless ranks of battle-ready players arrayed behind him.

”Open your blind eyes and look around you!” Chen Feng bellowed, his aura rising to an apocalyptic peak. ”The days of your imperial clan treating our realm like a private hunting ground are finished! Behind me stand the supreme pillars of heaven and earth! Thousands of Nirvana Rebirth masters! The unified might of every grand sect and hidden clan! And leading them is me—a Saint who has broken through the chains of mortality! You are isolated, thousands of miles from your upper realm, with nothing but a single maidservant at your back! Even if you possess divine imperial treasures, can your arms block ten thousand blades?! Can your soul withstand the wrath of an entire world united against you?!”

The thousands of cultivators behind him raised their weapons in unison, a deafening war roar echoing across the sky, their combined spiritual pressure rolling toward Haoran like a physical tidal wave capable of flattening mountain ranges.

Haoran kept quiet.

He stood entirely unbothered amidst the howling gale of their collective killing intent, his pristine white robes barely rustling.

The dark, ancient blade in his hand rested motionless against the empty air.

Then, he parted his lips, his voice calm, smooth, and laced with an eerie, philosophical cadence that cut straight through the deafening roar of the army.

And replied that his father taught him when to bend or break.

”You sure do like to talk,” Haoran murmured softly, his tone resembling a scholar reminiscing over an old scroll in a quiet library. ”It reminds me of a lesson from my youth. My father once told me that a wise man knows when to bend with the wind, and when to break the storm. He said that a true ruler understands his limits, bows before an insurmountable wall, and yields when the cost of pride outweighs the prize.”

A triumphant, vicious sneer pulled at the corner of Chen Feng’s lips. The tension in his shoulders eased ever so slightly as he looked across the thousand-mile gap.

’So this demon finally understands reality,’ Chen Feng thought, his heart swelling with arrogant vindication. ’Upper-realm scion or not, when faced with a living Saint and an army of thousands, even a god’s son must swallow his pride and beg for terms!’

”So you do possess a brain beneath that haughty skull,” Chen Feng mocked, crossing his arms over his broad chest. ”Then kneel, surrender your spatial ring, and tell me where my—”

But then...

Shing.

The pitch-black tip of the Black Imperial Sword lifted in a slow, precise line, pointing directly between Chen Feng’s arrogant golden eyes.

A low, mocking chuckle escaped Haoran’s chest, turning into a cold, derisive laugh that dripped with unadulterated venom.

Telling Chen Feng that he lied.

”Did you truly believe that?” Haoran smiled, his dark pupils shimmering with a terrifying, cosmic malice that made the hair on Chen Feng’s neck stand on end. ”Sorry, I lied.”

”I never grew up with a father,” Haoran continued smoothly, his voice pleasant and melodic, as if discussing the trimming of an overgrown branch in his courtyard. ”...and when we first met, I killed him.”

Chen Feng’s breath caught in his throat, a cold, greasy shock paralyzing his tongue for a microsecond.

To murder his own father in cold blood and speak of it with such casual, bored amusement—this man was not a proud cultivator; he was an irredeemable demon.

Haoran’s smile widened, razor-sharp and dripping with cruel, sadistic delight. ”You want your family? Come, I’ll show them to you.”

The words struck Chen Feng like a physical blow, igniting every drop of his golden Saint-blood into an uncontrollable, blinding firestorm!

”DIE, YOU MONSTER!”

Chen Feng roared, his right fist pulling back as the spatial fabric within a hundred miles violently shattered into jagged black fragments!

Golden celestial flames erupted from his pores, forming the colossal, roaring phantom of an ancestral white dragon that opened its jaws to swallow the heavens!

He locked his divine sense onto Haoran’s throat, preparing to step across the thousand miles in a single second and rip the youth’s skull from his spine—

But then...

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Boom!

The sky behind Haoran tore open in a dozen separate coordinates simultaneously!

Cataclysmic sonic booms detonated across the firmament as streaks of blinding, multicolored celestial light sliced through the clouds, arriving with an astronomical velocity that rivaled falling stars!

They were all Imperial Academy students.

Dozens of peerless, terrifying figures—scions, prodigies, and monsters of the Imperial Academy—flanked Shen Haoran on all sides, their collective auras locking together to form an impenetrable, suffocating canopy of absolute dominance.

”Hahahahaha! Look at this miserable, crawling rabble!” One student bellowed, his booming laughter shaking the clouds as he pointed his blood-stained ax directly at Chen Feng’s army. ”Thousands of fake, hollow Nirvana experts hiding behind a newly hatched Saint like frightened chicks clinging to an old hen! Is this the grand army of the lower world?! It smells like a pen of doomed sheep!”

”They gathered every stray dog from the four corners of their pathetic continent just to face us,” a female student sneered, her silver hair whipping in the wind as she looked down from the demon’s shoulder with unadulterated disgust. ”How utterly cowardly! If you wanted to commit mass suicide, you could have simply jumped into a volcano instead of wasting our time hauling ourselves across your filthy provinces!”

”Look at their shaking knees,” another female student giggled cruelly, her slender fingers tracing her bone hairpin. ”They brought numbers because they know they are too brittle. You know what they always say, a thousand sheep are still just food for the wolves.”

The players in the back ranks began to panic, their chat channels descending into incoherent screaming as they realized every single newcomer was an unmeasurable, named boss entity with completely opaque stat blocks.

The Four Sacred Masters drew their weapons, their faces pale and their knuckles white, realizing that the trap had not closed around Shen Haoran—it had closed around them.

Amidst the roaring laughter of his loyal prodigies and the trembling silence of the lower-realm army, Shen Haoran slowly lowered his Black Imperial Sword.

He didn’t look at the thousands of Nirvana experts, he didn’t look at the Four Sacred Masters, he just he kept his bright, golden eyes locked entirely on Chen Feng’s furious, trembling face.

His expression was as tranquil as a frozen lake, devoid of hatred, devoid of anger, bearing only the absolute, chilling verdict of an emperor who had already decided the fate of a world.

”Rejoice, Chen Feng,” Haoran spoke, his voice dropping into a quiet, bone-chilling whisper that echoed across the silent skies like a funeral bell. ”For your family will not be lonely in the dirt today.”