Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The wind howled violently through the pierced sternum of the dying White Dragon Emperor, carrying with it the sickening hiss of ancient, draconic essence being forcibly unseated from its ancestral origin.

Shen Haoran’s pale fingers remained firmly planted upon Chen Feng’s forehead, the golden parasitic imperial runes flaring with hungry, blinding radiance that seeped like liquid fire into the marrow of the twitching cultivator.

And at that moment, Haoran felt the physique getting devoured as his power surged.

It was an overwhelming, primordial sensation of elevation.

The essence of the fragment of the Nine Headed Dragon God violently flooded his refined meridians like a torrent of molten gold, tearing open the conduits of his physical body and restructuring his cellular foundation.

Every bone in Haoran’s body vibrated with a deep, resonant metallic timbre, their density hardening exponentially as they absorbed the primeval draconic marrow.

His blood, already refined by the highest bloodline sacraments of the Shen Immortal Clan, roared with ecstatic vitality, the foreign draconic divinity merging seamlessly into his internal universe, fueling the nuclear fires of the newly birthed stars resting within his inner domain.

The physical pleasure of unbridled usurpation was intoxicating, a sensation that would have caused any lesser cultivator to lose their mind in reverie.

But, at that moment, as he marveled at this profound sensation, he suddenly found himself standing in an endless space.

The sensory reality of the freezing mountain firmament, the smell of Chen Feng’s smoking blood, and the distant, chaotic cries of the hovering academy vanguards suddenly vanished.

There was no sound of transition, no spatial tear, and no temporal distortion.

Haoran simply found himself standing barefoot upon a mirror of pristine void, stretching into a cosmic horizon that knew no beginning and no end.

Above, below, and surrounding him on all sides were countless swirling, vibrant galaxies—spiral arms of deep sapphire, burning amethysts of nebular dust, and millions of ancient stars rotating in silent, majestic harmony.

This was the spiritual sea of Chen Feng, a divine consciousness domain carved from the primeval origin of the cosmos itself where his physique resides.

”So you are the one who dared kill my host and devour me!?”

A voice, so ancient and vibrating with an authority that caused the surrounding star systems to tremble, shattered the cosmic silence!

The sound was not transmitted through air, but detonated directly within the fundamental fabric of the mental realm, carrying the suffocating pride of an entity that had witnessed the birth and death of myriad worlds.

Haoran turned around, and saw a massive eastern dragon with silver scales and golden pupils, its body seemed to extend into Infinity.

The sheer scale of the creature was breathtaking beyond the comprehension of mortal imagination.

It was colossal, its sinuous, serpentine form coiling through clusters of burning nebulae, each individual scale as vast as a continental tectonic plate, glistening with an immaculate, blinding silver luminescence that reflected the light of dying suns.

Titanic whiskers of liquid moonlight drifted through the stellar winds, brushing against drifting asteroids and grinding them to fine dust.

Atop its horned, mountainous skull rested two eyes—bottomless, burning lakes of incandescent golden divine fire that bore down upon Haoran’s solitary silhouette with cold, primordial fury.

The tail of the beast vanished into the deep, dark abyss of the far universe, giving the distinct, terrifying impression that the creature did not merely inhabit this space, but was the very backbone supporting the existence of this endless starry firmament.

Is this, the consciousness of the Heavenly Order Dragon Body? He thought.

Haoran stood with his hands resting casually inside the wide sleeves of his robes, his expression devoid of panic, looking up at the gargantuan silver beast as if examining a rare beast specimen in an imperial menagerie.

According to the legends from his clan’s library, the one thing that separates a Divine Physique from others is not just their superior powers, but also because they are believed to be a living, divine concepts.

When such a physique matured within a host, it would occasionally manifest an ancestral ego, a guardian will forged from the original beast or deity whose authority the physique represented.

One of the reason why people who steals Divine Physique do it only before the physique awakens is because once they developed an ego, the physique itself will fight back if they are forcefully torn apart from its host.

And this silver dragon before him was most likely the manifestation of Chen Feng’s Physique, fighting to preserve its sovereign autonomy.

...but, Chen Feng shouldn’t have developed enough for his Physique to manifest an ego.

Or maybe the Nine Dragon God Physiques are just different?

He wondered if his own Infinity Dragon God Physique has one too.

The thought crossed Haoran’s sharp mind with a flicker of genuine, quiet curiosity.

Since his early childhood, when he was proclaimed the sole divine scion of the Shen Immortal Clan, he had wielded the terrifying authority of the Infinity Dragon God Physique—a constitution so monstrously potent that its passive aura alone could suppress dragons and give him boundless strength.

Yet, throughout his entire life, through thousands of battles, breakthroughs, and dimensional migrations, his own physique had always remained entirely obedient, silent, and passive, functioning as a flawless, hollow instrument of war that answered his mind without the slightest friction, hesitation, or independent thought.

He had always assumed his constitution was simply an inanimate cosmic law woven into his flesh.

But now he started to wonder...could it really have a conciousness?

What he doesn’t know is that his Physique does indeed have a consciousness.

But because of how violently his parents tore apart the physique from its original owner, Shen Hao, the conciousness had awakened and attempted to self-detonate and incinerate the entire Shen Clan Domain rather than be grafted into another.

Yet, against the three terrifying women of the Shen Clan, the divine consciousness was nothing.

With chilling, sadistic efficiency, Haoran’s mother and aunts had summoned ninety-nine soul-crushing celestial arrays to suppress the dragon.

They did not reason with the ancient beast; they battered it.

They took celestial thunder-whips and mercilessly shredded the divine dragon’s pride, breaking its astral horns, tearing out its metaphysical teeth, and beating the screaming entity until its divine soul was fractured into shattered pieces.

Finally, using the primordial origin of three thousand world, the three sisters had forged nine eeverlasting soul-chains, sealing the mangled, terrified consciousness of the Infinity Dragon God into the deepest, lightless abyss of Haoran’s lower dantian so that Haoran would only ever experience the pure, uninhibited authority of the physique.

Ignorant of the truth about what happened in the past, Haoran merely kept his gaze fixed on the silver entity coiled among the stars.

The massive eastern dragon lowered its mountainous head, its breath washing over Haoran like a celestial storm of cosmic dust and pressurized spatial force.

”You already possess the Infinity Dragon God Physique, you have no need for me,” the ancient dragon rumbled, its golden irises narrowing into massive, vertical slits that radiated suppressed anxiety beneath its arrogant facade. ”The Heavenly Dao will never allow the Nine Dragon God Physique to gather together. Give up trying to devour me and let my host go! Release Chen Feng’s soul, allow him to reform his flesh, and depart this world! Or else, I will wreck havoc within your consciousness until your soul shatters!”

The threat rolled across the mental cosmos, shaking the swirling galaxies until several star systems fractured into burning debris.

The dragon’s silver claws extended, each talon glowing with the terrifying power—a power capable of unwinding an opponent’s spiritual sea from the inside out, burning their memories, and reducing their divine consciousness to mindless, drooling idiocy.

Haoran stared at the massive dragon as he stood perfectly straight, the vast cosmic turbulence blowing past his spotless white robes without disturbing a single thread.

The sight of a beast spanning millions of miles did not evoke a single trace of fear or reverence within his chest.

Slowly, the corners of his lips pulled back into a thin, razor-sharp line.

”One of the things I hate the most,” Haoran said, his voice quiet, calm, and utterly devoid of warmth, ”is being threatened.”

The silver dragon let out a booming, derisive roar that shattered a dozen adjacent star clusters into glowing dust.

”Hahahahaha! Arrogant mortal brat!” the dragon laughed, its massive maw parting to reveal rows of silver, mountain-sized fangs dripping with celestial plasma. ”You stand inside my Host’s own spiritual sea, faced with the primordial will of the Heavenly Order! So what if I am threatening you?! What can you do?! Without your external artifacts, without your shadow maidservant, you are merely a frail, naked soul standing in my domain! What power do you possess to oppose a primordial god?!”

Haoran did not answer, and merely closed his eyes.

The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating.

Then...

Thump.

A single, colossal heartbeat echoed through the endless space.

It did not originate from the surrounding stars, nor did it come from the gargantuan silver beast, but it resonated from the core of Haoran’s solitary soul.

Thump. Thump.

And then, following a few more beat, a three-colored aura—gold, silver, and purple—burst out of his body!

BOOOOOOOOM!

An apocalyptic explosion of divine light detonated outward from Haoran’s slender frame, tearing through the endless void like a triple-layered cosmic shockwave!

The brilliant, blinding gold aura signifying domination erupted to his front, radiating an domineering and tyrannical majesty that commanded all matter in the universe to bow its head!

The pure, incandescent silver aura signifying creation surged to his left, violently ripping the foundational laws of the mental realm away from the ancient dragon’s grasp!

And to his right, a deep, primordial, and abyssal purple, the terrifying authority of the path of destruction, roared like a devouring black hole, consuming light, sound, and reality itself!

The surrounding galaxies were swept away like dried leaves before a hurricane.

The three colored lights spiraled together, forming a colossal, rotating halo of tripartite divine authority behind Haoran’s shoulders that cast the entire mental universe into blinding, multicolored luminescence!

And when he opened his eyes, the universe seemed to hold its breath.

His left eye had completely transformed, turning into an unmoving mirror of brilliant, liquid silver that reflected the immutable, mathematical laws of cosmic order.

His right eye had shifted into a deep, swirling vortex of dark, abyssal purple that drank in the light of the stars with bottomless, terrifying malice.

And at the center of his forehead, the flesh slowly, seamlessly parted, and a third eye opened, revealing a vertical, incandescent golden pupil that burned with the absolute authority of an immortal emperor looking down upon creation!

The three divine eyes locked onto the massive silver dragon.

Under that horrific, three-way celestial gaze, the colossal silver dragon froze. Its silver scales began to hiss and shudder; the golden fire in its eyes flickered violently, shrinking in pure, instinctual, animalistic dread.

The entity realized, with cold, paralyzing clarity, that the soul standing before it was not a mortal cultivator—it was a monster whose spiritual depth surpassed the heavens themselves.

Haoran slowly stepped forward on the void, his hands remaining loosely held behind his back, his three eyes looking upon the trembling infinite sized beast as if it were nothing more than a speck of dust clinging to the hem of his garment.

”You sure do speak a lot,” Haoran spoke, his voice carrying the overlapping, chilling resonance of three distinct celestial realms, vibrating with cold, absolute arrogance that stripped the ancient entity of its dignity.

”But dragon, you must not forget, you are nothing but an ownerless, wandering fragment—a miserable, lingering ghost of an era that has long since rotted beneath the wheels of time.”

”You are a dog whose master has already been slaughtered has no right to bark within my presence.”

”Know your place, cease your pathetic struggle, and just dissipate into the soil of my soul.”