Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Imperial Academy.

Clock Tower.

The colossal structure pierced the clouds of the academy dimension, its massive bronze gears turning with heavy, rhythmic clicks that had measured the flow of time for tens of thousands of years.

Inside the highest chamber, the air was cool and smelled of aged paper, dried incense, and ancient tea leaves.

Venerable Sky Cloud sat at the head of a long, dark wooden table, his white beard resting against his chest, his hands folded loosely inside his gray sleeves.

Around him, the other nine sages sat on carved stone chairs, reviewing reports and tallying the expected merit points of the students who had plunged into the hunting grounds below.

”It won’t be long, and our students would be returning to the academy soon, right?” Said one of the sages.

”Indeed,” another sage agreed with a calm nod. ”The disciples will harvest their fill of luck and resources and return with their foundations tempered. It has been a standard expedition.”

Ye Hongyan, sitting at the side, remained silent. She rested her chin in her pale hand, her fingers tapping lazily against the wooden armrest.

Her long, white and pink robes draped gracefully over her chair, pooling onto the clean stone floor.

While the old men around her debated point distributions and resource allocations, her mind was leagues away, fixed entirely on the youth who had descended to the lower plane.

A faint, amused smile tugged at the corner of her lips at the thought.

At that moment....

BOOOOOOM!

The massive Clock Tower groaned as if struck by a falling mountain!

The giant bronze gears skipped three teeth at once, screeching with deafening metallic friction.

The floating islands surrounding the central plaza tilted wildly, their waterfalls splashing across empty air, while the sky above the academy dimension fractured into jagged lines of pale white light!

The ten sages leaped to their feet in unison, their spiritual fields flaring in frantic defense, their faces pale with shock.

Across the entire dimension, tens of thousands of master teachers dropped their lecture scrolls, their hearts seizing as the very air grew heavy enough to crush bone!

Then, a cool, domineering female voice resounded, calling to Venerable Sky Cloud to show himself.

”Sky Cloud. Step out and present yourself.”

The voice was neither loud nor strained, yet it bypassed the defensive boundaries of the academy as if they were made of thin gauze.

It echoed inside the skull of every living being in the dimension, carrying a weight so cold and unyielding that several younger teachers fell straight to their knees, gasping for air.

The Ten Sages all looked at each other and flew out.

Streaks of green, gold, and azure light burst through the arched windows of the Clock Tower, shooting straight into the open sky.

Behind them, a vast sea of teachers, grand elders, and senior hall masters rose from the floating palaces, their weapons drawn, their eyes searching the shaking clouds with nervous dread.

In the center of the open firmament, standing on empty air without riding a flying sword or a mount, stood a solitary figure.

She stood tall and straight, her sun-kissed skin glowing with healthy, primeval vitality that contrasted sharply with her flowing, fiery red robes.

Her thick, golden hair fell past her waist, rippling like liquid sunlight against the wind.

Her face was striking, sharp, and carved with an aloof, untouchable beauty, but her bright golden eyes held no warmth at all.

She looked at the thousands of assembled elders as if she were merely looking at a patch of weeds growing along the roadside.

”Leng Shuang,” Venerable Sky Cloud called out, forcing his voice to remain steady as he bowed his head slightly in greeting. ”Does the Shen Clan need something from us?”

As one of the peerless women guarding the inner courts of the Shen Clan, and one of the Three Calamities known as the Three Shen Sisters, her sudden presence at their doorstep was a bad omen.

Leng Shuang’s expression did not shift by a single hair, her tanned hands stayed tucked inside the wide sleeves of her crimson robes.

”The lower world known as the Ancient Heaven Star,” Leng Shuang stated, her tone flat and matter-of-fact. ”From this moment forth, it belongs to the Shen Clan. Pack your academy’s banners, call back your overseers, and hand over the world core’s spatial markers. We are taking it.”

The old headmaster’s brow furrowed deep, his hands gripping his long sleeves.

The Ancient Heaven Star was one of the academy’s prime trial grounds, a reliable nursery that had fed resources to their students for thousands of years.

To surrender an entire world with a single sentence was something no leader could accept without losing all dignity.

”Lady Leng Shuang, that lower realm is an established foundation of our academy’s curriculum,” Sky Cloud said, trying to maintain a firm tone. ”Our elders bled to set down the trial arrays there. If the Shen Clan wishes to harvest its resources, we can negotiate a trade share, or perhaps allow your younger generation free entry for the next three terms. But to hand over the entire world... that is impossible. We cannot simply give away our ancestral trial grounds.”

Silence.

The instant those words left his mouth, the world suddenly turned silent.

Then, a pale, golden gleam ignited within Leng Shuang’s pupils, and before they could react...

The world simply... shifted.

The blue sky of the academy dimension, the floating islands, the grand libraries, and the massive Clock Tower vanished instantly!

Reality was violently wiped away, replaced by an endless, suffocating black void that stretched beyond the boundaries of comprehension!

Then, before their very eyes, from Leng Shuang’s body, a massive Spirit Avatar with the form of a bipedal dragon slowly emerged.

It was a nightmare made of primordial flesh and cosmic iron.

The avatar stood on two colossal, clawed hind legs, its body covered in dark, jagged scales that each carried the weight of a dying sun.

Its horned, draconic head pierced through clusters of burning nebulae, while its chest glowed with a furnace of creation fire.

Surrounding galaxies circled its waist like tiny, insignificant pebbles, crushed to dust whenever the colossal beast shifted its weight!

The creature looked down upon the tiny souls of the sages with cold, prehistoric hunger, its mere presence bending the rules of existence until the fabric of space wept crimson tears!

Then, Leng Shuang’s voice echoed.

”There is no negotiation. I am merely informing you.”

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Every single master teacher in the sky was slammed downward, their bodies pinned flat against the invisible floor of the void!

The bones in their chests groaned in agony; their golden cores and nascent souls shrunk down in terror, freezing within their dantians!

Even the Ten Sages—men who had lived for thousands of winters and stood at the peak of their cultivation realms—felt their knees buckle, blood seeping from their lips as the astronomical, suffocating weight bore down upon their skulls!

They could not breathe.

They could not circulate their spiritual qi.

They were insects trapped beneath the descending boot of an ancient titan, realizing with cold, sickening clarity that if that bipedal dragon took a single step forward, their entire dimension would be erased from history like ink washed away by rain!

Veins bulged along the old headmaster’s temples, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he forced his jaw open against the crushing gravity.

”We... we agree!” Sky Cloud choked out, his voice hoarse and trembling with total, desperate submission. ”The Ancient Heaven Star... belongs to the Shen Clan! We yield it completely!”

SNAP.

The terrifying bipedal dragon, the crushed galaxies, and the suffocating void vanished in the fraction of a second.

The pale blue sky, the floating islands, and the steady ticking of the Clock Tower returned as if nothing had happened.

The Master Teachers collapsed onto the floating plazas, panting heavily, clutching their bruised chests and vomiting bile, while the Ten Sages stood shivering in the breeze, their robes soaked in cold sweat.

Leng Shuang stared at them. Her face remained completely blank, devoid of pride, anger, or triumph.

To her, crushing the pride of an ancient academy was no more impressive than sweeping dried leaves off a garden path.

She produced an empty, dark iron scroll from her sleeve, tossing it casually onto the stone table in front of Sky Cloud.

”Pull out your elders immediately.” She said to Venerable Sky Cloud

Leng Shuang’s golden eyes then shifted slightly, locking onto the pink haired woman besides the old sages.

While the other nine sages were still trembling, leaning on their staffs to keep from falling, Ye Hongyan stood completely upright.

Her posture was relaxed, her breathing steady, and her eyes met Leng Shuang’s gaze with calm, unfazed familiarity.

Leng Shuang held her gaze for a brief second, giving a tiny, almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment.

Then, she turned around and disappeared.

Without a ripple in the air, without a trace of lingering light, the golden-haired woman was gone, leaving the entire Imperial Academy drowning in heavy, terrified silence.

*

*

*

Ancient Heaven Star.

{”Everything’s done.”}

”Thank you, mother.”

Haoran replied and pocketed the communication artifact.

He then walked up the broken stone steps, leaving the dark cellar behind him, and stepped out onto the open plateau above.

The wind was blowing hard, and it carried the heavy, sickening stench of a finished slaughter.

The entire mountain basin of the Rising Dragon Sect was silent.

The grand buildings that had stood tall for centuries were gone, reduced to broken bricks, splintered wood, and black ash.

Rivers of cooling magma ran through deep cracks in the ground, hissing as they met the pools of thick, sticky red that covered the flagstones.

The elders who had spent hundreds of years sitting in caves, refining their energy and guarding their ancestral halls, were now lying face down in the dirt.

Their fine clothes were torn to shreds, their rings had been pulled from their fingers, and their wooden staffs lay snapped in half beside their cold hands.

The proud men who had thought their word was law in this small world had been butchered like stray dogs.

Not a single one of the strange players remained breathing either.

The hundreds of thousands of foreign souls who had run around with big smiles, thinking they were playing a game, were gone.

Their gray, dried-up bodies lay in heaps across the courtyards, looking like piles of old firewood.

The strange luck that had kept them safe had failed them completely when their master squeezed them dry.

Their weapons were scattered in the mud, broken and useless, and the cold wind blew their gray ashes into the sky like dirty snow.

At the center of the outer courtyard, where the fighting had been the thickest, the four greatest figures of this land were laid out on the stone.

The Sword Saint lay on his back near a broken fountain.

His wooden sword was split in two, and his chest had been pierced straight through by Augusta’s heavy brass blade.

His old eyes stared blankly up at the gray clouds, empty of the sharp sword-light that had once scared kings.

Beside him, the Xuan Yuan Saint was crushed beneath a pile of heavy rocks, his earthen shields shattered into fine sand, his gray beard soaked in his own gore.

Further back, the Nine Lives Demon King was pinned to a scorched pillar.

His armor was burned to coal, and his chest was pierced by nine bone needles that had pinned his nine lives to the dark earth, leaving him as a limp, empty skin.

And near the edge of the cliff, the Wind Emperor lay motionless.

His body was frozen solid inside a block of blue ice left behind by Ning Xueli and Gu Xunyi, his face frozen in a final, terrified scream before his core had stopped beating.

The four pillars that held up the sky of this world were broken.

The ancient sects that had ruled the continents were finished.

Around the edge of the wide, ruined plaza, the students of the Imperial Academy, the warriors of the Sun Tribe, and the fighters of the hidden clans stood in neat, quiet lines.

The Ten Crowns stood amongst the crowd, and behind them, thousands of students were resting, their weapons lowered, their breathing steady.

They had wiped out an entire world’s defense in a single afternoon, and their eyes were bright with the pride of victory.

Haoran stepped to the edge of the high stone terrace, looking down at the quiet army.

His white robes were clean, smooth, and neat, as if he had just walked out of a garden tea house.

The crowd went dead still the moment he stopped walking.

Even the giant magma beast resting in the valley behind them lowered its huge head, not daring to let out a single puff of hot air.

Haoran looked at them for a few seconds before he began to speak.

”You fought well today,” Haoran said. His voice was not loud, but it rolled across the wide valley like a clear bronze bell, reaching every ear without shaking.

”These people believed that because they hid in a quiet corner of the sky, they could keep their gates shut forever. They thought that a few old men with wooden swords and a flock of strange puppets could stand in front of the Imperial Academy and talk back to the upper world. They were wrong.”

He pointed a pale hand toward the dead bodies of the four sacred leaders lying in the mud.

”Look at them,” Haoran continued, his tone calm and steady. ”The men who called themselves the masters of this land. They spent thousands of years gathering stones and telling their disciples that they stood at the peak of the earth. Yet, when our blades touched their flesh, they broke just as easily as dried branches in winter. Their pride could not save their halls, their techniques could not stop our spears, and their lives belong to us now.”

The students stood a little taller, their chests swelling with pride as they listened to his words.

”This battle is finished,” Haoran said, looking at the assembled crowd. ”The blood has been paid, and the land has been cleaned. Gather your spoils. Take the rings from their fingers, open their medicine vaults, and empty their treasure rooms. Every herb, every piece of iron, and every manual hidden in these mountains belongs to you. You earned it with your blades, and no one will take it from your hands.”

A low, deep cheer began to rise from the ranks of the students, spreading through the Sun Tribe warriors and the Ascalon clan swordsmen like rolling thunder.

Haoran raised his hand slightly, and the noise died down instantly, returning the valley to dead silence.

”There are still two years left of this trial,” Haoran said, his eyes cold and firm as he looked toward the horizon, ”take that time to relax and do your own thing.”

With those words, Haoran turned his back on the crowd and began to walk toward the center of the terrace, leaving the cheering students to strip the dead ruins beneath the gray sky.