Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The carriage cut smoothly through the high sea of white clouds, pulled by the steady beat of the four-winged pegasi.

Inside the cabin, the faint smell of dried tea leaves and purple sandalwood hung in the still air.

Ye Hongyan and Haoran were sitting on the carriage, already on on their way back to the Imperial Academy.

Haoran leaned back against the deep silk cushions, his hands were clasped over his stomach, his brows furrowed, deep in thought.

His golden eyes were fixed on the wooden grain of the opposite wall, unblinking and cold.

For some reason, he had a very bad feeling.

It was not the simple worry of an ordinary cultivator fearing a sudden mountain storm.

It was a cold, sharp twitch deep within his spirit, like a fine needle scraping against his inner marrow.

It was an unmistakable chill, an oily, crawling sensation along his neck.

The same feeling he had felt when he found out that his cousin was a transmigrator many years ago.

It was the presence of something out of place, an unnatural gear jamming inside the clockwork of the world.

It was the scent of a foreign soul playing games behind a stolen face, an anomaly trying to bend the rules to steal fortune from the world.

He had not felt that specific disgust in a very long time. Yet now, miles away from the city they had just left, that cold prickling on his skin had returned, quiet and persistent.

He looked to the side. Sitting beside him on the cushioned bench, Ye Hongyan was quiet as well, her red lips pressed into a thin, thoughtful line.

She was holding a jade talisman, flipping it to the air with her thumb, and catching it, while looking at the window, silent, and just like Haoran, was deep in thought.

Tink. Flap. Slap.

She flicked her slender thumb upward, sending the jade talisman tumbling end over end through the dim light of the cabin, catching it cleanly between two fingers before tossing it up again.

Tink. Flap. Slap.

Her pink eyes were distant, staring out the open window at the passing grey mist, watching the small shapes of mountain trees blur by underneath.

She didn’t look at the talisman in her hands; she simply threw it and caught it, over and over, lost in her own thoughts.

”You seen to like that thing in your hands,” Haoran said, his voice low and smooth, cutting through the rhythmic flipping of the paper. ”You have been playing with it since we crossed the city boundary.”

Ye Hongyan paused for a moment, her fingers caught the jade talisman and held it still against her palm.

She looked down at the faded red marks, her thumb lightly tracing the worn edges, before sighing.

”An old keepsake,” she murmured, a tired, wry look touching her face as she leaned her head back against the wooden frame. ”My father had an artisan carve the matching seals when I was still small, barely tall enough to reach the hilt of a practice sword. He pressed it into my hand the night before I left for my first long adventure in the cold hills.”

She held up the talisman, her face melancholic.

”There’s a total of three of them, one for me, one for my mother, and one for my father.”

She turned the talisman over, showing the three small interlocking circles carved beautifully at the bottom.

”They were forged from the core of a three-faced spirit stone pulled from the deep earth,” she continued softly, her voice carrying a quiet, distant weight. ”The three talisman share a single source, and once one of the talisman is destroyed, it will alert the other two.”

She held it loosely between her index and middle fingers, watching the paper sway in the draft from the window.

”Given how much you dislike his face, I would have expected you to toss it into the river centuries ago,” Haoran noted, his brow relaxing slightly as he watched her hands.

Ye Hongyan chuckled at that.

The sound was soft and self-deprecating, lacking any of the haughty arrogance she showed to the elders in the academy.

”I tried to burn it once,” she admitted, looking down at the talisman with a slow, wry smile. ”Back when the marriage papers were signed with the Shi Clan, when I broke the courtyard gate and swore I would never return. I held it over a volcano until the corner turned black. But in the end... I pulled it back. I guess even if he was selfish, even if his greed made my youth miserable, that doesn’t change the blood in my veins. A daughter can hate the man who raised her, but erasing the root entirely is not so simple. So it stayed tucked in the bottom of my travel pouch for a thousand years, collecting dust.”

She shook her head, letting out a small breath through her nose, and moved her fingers to slip the old talisman back inside her crimson sleeve.

Just then, the talisman suddenly glowed red.

HUUUUM.

A harsh, bloody crimson light burst from the three interlocking circles, turning the talisman into a blazing piece of raw, burning light that lit up every corner of the dark carriage cabin.

Ye Hongyan’s eyes widened. Her breath froze in her throat, the casual, relaxed posture vanished in the fraction of a heartbeat, her fingers clamped down around the blazing paper, feeling the burning heat seep straight through the fibers into her flesh.

She remembered the words said to her by her father back then.

The memory of a much younger Ye Liuman, with black hair and clean robes, kneeling before her small bed, rushed through her mind.

’Keep this close to your skin, Hongyan. The seal is tied to our life-lamps. Once one is broken, the others will immediately sensed it. So, only break this talisman if you are truly in mortal danger, and by then, we will appear beside you.’

Mortal danger.

The words echoed in her ears like thunder clanging inside an iron pot.

Her father was a Heavenly Saint, while her mother was resting in the heart of the most heavily fortified compound in the city and was also a powerful cultivator herself!

For one of them to shatter their talisman meant they are in danger!

She turned towards Haoran. Her face was dead pale, her jaw clenched tight, her dark eyes blazing with an urgent, unspoken question.

Haoran stared straight at her eyes, and nodded without much words.

Haoran didn’t ask questions. He didn’t tell her to calm down, and he didn’t waste a single breath discussing the risks.

He simply met her gaze with that cold, unshakeable calm that had anchored her through dozens of storms, his hand resting lightly against the hilt of his inner sword.

”Thank you.” Ye Hongyan smiled gently.

Then, without hesitation, she snapped her fingers.

CRACK!

A violent wave of scarlet Heavenly Saint power erupted from her fingertips!

The air in the center of the wooden carriage tore open like rotten silk, and a portal opened before her.

It was a jagged, spinning rift of dark red and silver light spun into existence right between their seats, howling with the cold, chaotic wind of the spatial void.

Through the swirling edges of the tear, the distant, unmistakable smell of burning cedar, copper blood, and thick black smoke rushed into the cabin, confirming the worst fears in her chest.

Then, without hesitation, she and Haoran jumped towards it.

Their robes whipped wildly in the draft as their boots pushed off the carriage floorboards simultaneously, plunging headfirst into the spinning rift, leaving the empty carriage flying through the clouds behind them.

*

*

*

At this moment...

Far across the mountains, in the forgotten eastern corner of the Ye Family estate.

Inside the dilapidated room, the air was cold, damp, and suffocatingly thick with the heavy stench of sour plum skins and burning copper powder.

On the small wooden table beside the cot, the stick of had burned down to its final red nub, dropping a pile of grey ash into the bronze bowl.

On the narrow mattress, Wei Zhingyi slowly opened her eyes.

Her long, pale silver eyelashes fluttered once, twice, trembling against the cold air before lifting with agonizing slowness.

Her vision was not clear.

The room swam before her gaze in dark, muddy circles of grey and sickly yellow.

Her eyelids felt as though lead weights had been sewn into the skin, dragging them down, forcing her to strain just to keep the cracks open.

Then, a terrible, suffocating weakness pinned her to the straw mattress.

Her limbs felt like they were completely dead, and when she tried to twitch the fingers of her left hand, nothing responded; her arm lay limp against the rough cotton blanket like a severed branch dropped in the mud.

Her chest felt as if a colossal stone slab had been placed upon her ribs, each breath shallow, rattling, and burning like hot ash in her throat.

Her head throbbed violently.

It was as if someone had poured thick, lukewarm oil straight into her sea of consciousness.

The brilliant, razor sharp mind of a thousand year old Nine Tailed Celestial Fox was sluggish, tangled in a heavy, unnatural fog that made simple thoughts slip through her grasp like sand.

What... what is this place? she tried to ask herself, but the words were slow, broken, and echoed hollowly in her mind.

She remembered the dark void. She remembered the endless rain of iron blades whistling toward her flesh, the terrifying laugh of the Sword Emperor, and the agony of spitting her core essence onto the silver mirror to tear open the sky.

She remembered falling through the cold clouds, the smell of river water, and the mud pulling at her knees before darkness took her.

She also remembered observing that man who picked up her body and was nursing her.

Was she already healed? That’s impossible, right? She estimated at least a year before she can return to her body and unleash 1st stage of Heavenly Saint power.

She tried to circulate her spiritual energy to clear the fog from her brain, but the moment her thoughts touched her dantian, a sharp, nauseating cramp seized her stomach.

Her meridians were dry, cracked, and cold as frozen ditches.

The faint green bangle resting on her limp wrist hummed with a tiny trickle of warmth, but it was like pouring a thimble of spring water into a dried-out ocean.

’...as expected, I’m not healed yet. But how did I wake up?’

Then, through the cloudy haze that gripped her skull, a sound reached her twitching silver ears.

Her soft animal ears twitched weakly atop her silver hair, one of them still torn and tender.

She sensed the commotion outside.

It was faint at first, muffled by the thick stone walls and the heavy wooden door, but to the refined senses of an ancient saint, the vibration carried through the floorboards with horrifying clarity.

Clang! Clang! Boom!

The sharp, metallic shriek of iron meeting iron echoed across the distant courtyards.

She heard the terrified screams of women, the wet, sickening thud of blades biting into meat, and the crackle of dry wood catching fire.

The smell of thick black smoke and burning grease drifted through the thin cracks of the paper window, cutting through the sour odor of the incense burner beside her bed.

Footsteps were coming.

Not the quiet, careful steps of that strange boy who had spent days wiping her hands with warm water.

These were heavy, hurried, and sloppy boots, sloshing through the mud of the stable alley with crude, unbridled malice.

’Men...’ her foggy mind registered, a cold dread prickling against her skin despite the heavy numbness in her limbs. ’Killers, perhaps... they are coming this way...’

She tried to push her elbows against the bed, tried to summon even a single strand of her nine spiritual tails to shield her chest, but her body remained utterly motionless, trapped in the cold, groggy dark of the room while the boots drew closer to her door.