Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Haoran stared at his empty palm for a few moments, his fingers were still curled where the glowing item had been resting a second ago.

Nothing was there. Just the gentle wind passing through his fingers and the quiet rustling of the leaves on the vast land beneath him.

Slowly, his breathing settled down.

The surprise that had shaken his face faded away, the cold and distant look returned to his eyes, smoothing out his pale face until he looked as calm as a stone statue.

He closed his eyes together, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

He was not a fool who would lose his mind over a single slip. Whatever that blue ball was, it had come from the body of a man who had died under his sword.

It was still tied to this piece of land, and it could not have run far.

With a small wave of his sleeve, the Genesis Protocol ended.

The blue sky, the green fields, and the massive stone castle hanging in the clouds vanished like mist under the morning sun.

The warm air was instantly replaced by the cold, freezing silence of outer space.

The stars returned around him, silent and distant, and below his boots sat the blue and green ball of the world he had just left behind.

But he did not waste a single second standing in the dark void, his body suddenly burst into a streak of pure golden radiance as he tore through the empty space like a falling star, plunginh straight toward the atmosphere.

The clouds cracked open around him, burning red from the sheer speed of his descent, and within the blink of a common man’s eye, he was already falling back into the broken mountain valley.

*

*

*

Down in the dark cellar below the ruins of the sect, the air was still cold, damp, and smelling of blood.

The stone walls were cracked in hundreds of places, and broken rocks lay scattered all over the wet floor.

Ling Luochen was resting on the raised stone platform where Haoran had placed her, the great medicine she had swallowed was working through her body, knitting her broken bones and closing the wide cuts on her chest and arms.

Her eyelashes twitched, and a low, dry cough slipped from her mouth as she slowly opened her eyes.

Her vision was blurry at first, taking in the dark ceiling and the damp smell of stone.

She lifted a hand, touching her chest where the heavy halberd had gone through her body earlier.

There was no hole left.

The skin was smooth and fresh, though her limbs still felt numb and heavy, like lead weights tied to her joints.

She pushed herself up on her elbows, trying to sit, but just as she raised her head, the empty air in front of her face cracked with a strange sound.

A small, round ball of bright blue flame appeared out of thin air, hovering only two feet away from her nose.

It spun fast, dropping tiny sparks of blue fire onto the stone floor, making a soft clicking sound that sounded like metal bugs chewing on wood.

Ling Luochen froze, her heart jumped into her throat, and her eyes went wide with shock.

Before her heavy arms could pull her backward, before she could even reach for the small iron knife in her storage ring, the blue ball darted forward like an angry hornet!

It aimed straight for the center of her chest, wanting to bury itself into her fresh flesh!

But...

CLENCH!

A hand, pale as white jade and cold as winter frost, came out from the empty air beside her and snapped shut around the blue sphere.

The room shook as a blast of wind flattened Ling Luochen’s hair against her cheek, yet her eyes stared at the person holding the blue orb.

It was Haoran.

He had stepped out from the shadows as if he had been standing there all along, his white robes fluttered against his legs, completely clean, without a drop of dust or gore on them.

His fingers were clamped around the blue ball like an iron vice.

The ball thrashed and shook inside his hand, buzzing like a trapped bee, trying to push through the skin of his palm.

But Haoran’s grip did not budge at all. Instead, his knuckles turned white as he squeezed harder and harder until racks of golden light began to run across the blue surface of the sphere.

The rock beneath their feet began to groan under the sheer physical power coming out of his hand, as if he meant to crush the thing into fine dust right then and there.

[”Wait! Stop! Please, stop!”]

A strange, dry voice came out of the ball. It sounded like metal wheels scraping together, but there was real fear shaking through the words.

[”Do not crush ]|! Cease your force at once! Calm down!”]

Haoran did not stop. His face remained cold and blank, his fingers digging deeper into the shell of the orb as the blue light flickered violently, turning thin and pale as the cracks spread wider.

[”I said stop!”] the voice cried out again, the buzzing sound turning shrill and messy. [”You cannot destroy me! You owe me! I saved you from the Heavenly Dao earlier! If I had not stepped in, its eye would have burned your flesh to ash! You owe me your life!”]

Haoran stopped tightening his grip as a small frown appeared between his brows.

His mind went back to the moment after he took down the nine strikes of thunder, when that giant golden eye had opened in the torn clouds.

The sky had been ready to collapse, and that massive blue board covered in strange marks had popped up right before the eye, making the Heavenly Dao stop and leave.

He looked down at the tiny ball in his hand, his eyes cold and sharp.

”So it was you...” Haoran said softly.

He relaxed his fingers just a little bit, letting the orb breathe, but he did not let it go, his grip remained firm, locking it in place so it could not slip away into the air again.

He stared at the shaking blue light, turning it over in his thoughts. If this thing was able to tell the great sky to back down, it was far stranger than the simple tools other cultivators used.

”You aren’t a product of the heavenly dao?” Haoran asked, his voice low and level.

[”No! Of course not!”] the voice answered quickly, sounding like a man who had barely managed to pull his head off the chopping block. [”I have nothing to do with that rigid, blind will! It wants to destroy me just as much as it wants to stop you!”]

Haoran did not smile, nor did he look impressed. He brought the ball up to the level of his face, his golden eyes looking straight into the spinning center of the blue fire.

”Then start talking,” Haoran said, his voice dropping into a flat, dangerous tone that left no room for games. ”Speak, and tell the truth. Just what are you really?”

The cold light of the blue sphere trembled inside Shen Haoran’s palm.

The stone room had fallen completely quiet, save for the faint drip of water dropping from the cracked ceiling onto the rubble below.

The air was thick with the scent of dried blood, crushed dust, and the lingering medicinal smell from the pill Ling Luochen had swallowed.

Just then, a strange sound, like a deep breath of wind through dry grass, came out from the glowing core.

The voice let out a sigh.

The mechanical tone it had used earlier softened, turning into something older, tired, and heavy with sorrow.

[”I am not a tool made by Heavenly Dao, nor am I a spirit of an artifact,”] the voice said slowly, its blue light dimming until it looked like a dying candle in a dark room.

[”I am the will of the Ancient Heaven Star. The sky you breathe under, the dirt you walk on, the deep seas that wrap around these lands—all of that is part of my flesh. And the system that Yun Ming had been using was an extension of my will.”]

Haoran looked down at the tiny ball. His face did not soften, his eyes remained cold, as if he were staring at an ordinary pebble plucked from the mud, his fingers tightened just a fraction, making the blue light buzz and shudder against his skin.

”If you were the one guiding that man, feeding him tools, and giving him power to strike my people,” Haoran said in a calm, flat tone, ”then that makes you an enemy. And I do not keep enemies in my hand.”

[”And whose fault was that?!”]

The Plane’s Will retorted, its voice rising in sudden, desperate anger. The little blue ball flared with bright, burning sparks that bounced against Haoran’s fingers.

[”Do you think I wanted to do this?! Do you think I wished to pull strangers from another world and turn my own lands into a bloody pit?! It was because of you people from the upper realm plundering me for countless years!”]

The voice cracked, shaking with centuries of helpless rage.

[”For countless of years, your ’great’ academy send their students down here like pigs running into a fresh vegetable patch! You dig out my spirit stone mines until the mountains crack and die! You hunt the divine beasts that keep my air clean! You pull out ancient roots, burn my forests, and rip away the natural energy of this world just to feed your own pride! Because of your greed, my core was damaged, my body grew thin and weakened, and the natural laws began to break down!”]

The sphere pulsed faster, as if its heart were beating in terror and indignation.

[”I tried to stay quiet. I tried to endure it, hoping your people would grow full and leave this land alone. But you never stopped! Generation after generation, you came back with bigger nets and sharper knives, treating my home like a slaughterhouse! I could not take the bullying anymore! So I took the last bit of strength I had hidden deep within the center of the earth. I gathered the remaining power of this land, created the system, and searched through the endless sea of stars for a soul with enough ambition to stand against you. I chose Yun Ming. I gave him the tool, guided his hands, and planned on having him build an army to resist the plundering!”]

The cavern fell silent again after that bitter cry.

The little blue ball flickered, looking weak, exhausted, and beaten.

Sitting on the edge of the stone bed, Ling Luochen pulled her legs close to her chest, her long pink hair fell over her shoulders.

She looked at the small light trapped between Haoran’s pale fingers.

She had served the Shen Clan, and she knew very well how the elders treated small, lower worlds like this one.

To them, worlds like the Ancient Heaven Star were not homes filled with living beings; they were merely garden plots to be picked clean, trampled over, and left to rot once the treasures were gone.

Looking at the trembling sphere that had burned its own life just to keep from being eaten alive, she couldn’t help but find this world’s will rather pitiful.

It had fought with everything it had, cheated the rules of the heavens, traded away its own peace, and in the end, it was still caught by the throat, unable to change its fate.

Haoran listened to the entire story without blinking, his face showed neither pity nor shame.

In the world they lived in, the strong took what they wanted, and the weak wept in the dirt.

That was the only rule that truly mattered, and no amount of sad tales could change that simple truth.

Still, the information was useful.

But, there is one thing that he was still most curious about.

”How come those players of yours possessed the luck of a dog of the heaven.”

The phrase carried his usual disdain. To him, only the chosen fools who were favored by the sky had that sickening, persistent luck that kept them breathing when any normal man would have died ten times over.

The Plane’s Will let out another low, vibrating hum, sounding defeated.

[”Well, let’s start at the beginning. As you know, the rules of the heavens do not allow an ordinary spirit to simply possess indefinite immortality,”] the will explained, its voice quiet now, knowing it had no leverage left to bargain with. [”To fight your people, I needed warriors who could die a hundred times and still pick up their swords. But I could not give them that blessing out of thin air. So, using the system, I took the great fortune of this entire star, the lucky energy meant to protect our kings and great sages for the next ten thousand years, and poured it entirely into one vessel, and that is Yun Ming. Essentially, I turned him into a child of fortune, but without the influence of the heavens.”]

The ball spun slowly, casting pale blue shadows across Haoran’s white sleeve.

[”Of course, kne child of fortune is strong, but against the monsters from your upper world, one man was not enough. He would have been hunted down and killed within days. So I expanded the design. I instructed him to build a sect. By having him form a sect made of these players, I used the system as a bridge, laying invisible lines between their souls and his core. Through that connection, I was able to take the boundless luck resting on Yun Ming’s shoulders and cut it into tens of thousands of tiny pieces, sharing it among every single person who joined his banner.”]

The voice carried a faint trace of pride, though it was now covered in bitter dust.

[”By doing that, I turned every single one of those foreign souls into an artificially created child of fortune. Because they carry that fortune, this world’s rules protect them. When they fall, the earth catches them. When their bodies break, the fortune pulls their minds back and knits them a new shell. Though they are a bit inferior to a genuine child of fortune born from the womb of the sky, though their luck is thin and divided, they are almost the same in every way that counts.”]

The words hung in the dim room like a heavy stone.

Hearing that, Haoran’s eyes immediately widened in surprise.

His fingers remained frozen around the sphere, and the usual cold, uncaring mask he wore slipped away, replaced by a sharp, genuine shock.

Although Haoran didn’t hold them in high regard, it is a fact that a real child of fortune was a rare, heaven-defying existence.

They were people who could stumble into a dried ditch and find an ancient saint’s grave, people who could drink poison and have it turn into golden nectar, people whose bones were blessed from birth.

Yet this tiny, dying will, hiding in a battered corner of the lower universe, had found a way to mass-produce that very same blessing.

It had taken a single man’s grand destiny, run it through an artificial tool, and stamped out an entire army of miniature chosen ones like iron coins from a mint.

Haoran looked at the blue ball in his hand, and for the first time, his eyes did not look upon it as a mere pest to be crushed.

Instead, a new, dangerous thought began to take root in his mind.