Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The red rift folded shut behind their heels with a sharp snap.

Cold, smoke-filled mountain wind rushed up against their clothes instead of the polished floorboards of an inner chamber, open sky stretched out beneath their boots.

Ye Hongyan and Haoran appeared above the Ye Heavenly City.

Ye Hongyan furrowed her brows, ”What the— why did we get out of here? I’m pretty sure I opened the portal directly at the banquet hall.”

Her white and pink robes flapped wildly in the draft, her pink eyes widened as she looked down through the drifting ash at the grey tiled roofs hundreds of feet below.

Haoran hummed, ”It’s probably an array.”

He stood beside her upon the empty air, his hands folded loosely inside his dark sleeves, his golden eyes swept across the faint, octagonal shimmer of dull purple light wrapping over the stone towers below.

”You should be able to sense it, right?,” Haoran remarked, his tone completely steady. ”The array that they laid down had completely sealed off the space in the city, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the place using spatial manipulation. Whoever planned this wanted to make sure neither messages nor fleeing bodies could jump through the void.”

Ye Hongyan froze, and she indeed felt the array surrounding the city, and that just made her more and more nervous, fearing for her mother’s safety.

”... sorry, Haoran. I’m going in. Watch the sky!” she threw the words over her shoulder, her face set like stone.

She did not wait for his answer. Her figure plummeted from the clouds like a burning spear, trailing a long streak of scarlet fire as she broke the sound barrier, diving straight down toward the central roofs where black smoke and screaming were thickest.

Haoran did not follow her. He hovered quietly above the burning town, looking around.

The city was a pit of noise. Fire crackled through the eastern wooden warehouses, guards shouted along the outer walkways, and the smell of blood drifted high into the evening air.

Yet none of that drew his interest.

Haoran activated his Karmic Light Observation technique

Earlier, he felt the same feeling of uncomfortableness he felt when he met his transmigrator cousin.

He believed that this city has a protagonist or two, but whether they can be recruited or eliminated remains to be seen.

He narrowed his eyes slightly as his pupils glowed into rainbow colored light.

His vision shifted, peeling away the roofs, the brick walls, and the dirt streets, laying bare the unseen threads that bound life and destiny across the territory.

”Where could you be...ah, found you.” He quickly deactivated the technique, smiling lightly.

There, far off to the northeast, tucked away behind the horse paddocks in a dirty, neglected alley, a strange cluster of lights moved through the dark.

Several muddy, one or two colored beams of luck—thick with cruelty, murder, and greed—were creeping along the stone footpaths.

But right in their midst, guiding them through the shadows, was a brilliant, shifting flame that flickered through seven radiant colors like a rainbow trapped in mud.

Haoran’s lip curled into a cold, amused smirk.

A seven colored light was the mark of a child of fortune, an anomaly favored by odd luck, someone whose path was paved with bizarre windfalls and unearned treasures.

Just then, Qing’er suddenly sent a message telepathically.

’Young Master,’ her soft voice chimed in his mind, clear and cool. ’That group of people, or rather, that man in front is guiding those butchers straight toward the room where I sensed that injured Heavenly Saint expert.”

Haoran nodded and decided to observe them.

He remained suspended high in the sky, his black and gold robes still as ice, his golden eyes gleaming with a pale, knowing light as he watched the little rat scurry through the dirt below.

*

*

*

Below, Ye Fan led several people and stopped outside the door where Wei Zhingyi was resting.

His breathing came in fast, nervous gasps, but beneath the hood of his dark cloak, his teeth were bared in a tight, ugly grin.

He raised his hand, halting the four men following close at his heels.

The men behind him were beasts in human skin.

They were the most vicious killers hired by the Zhao and Qian families, men pulled from the northern border pits who had spent their entire lives butchering caravan guards, looting farming hamlets, and taking whatever they fancied from the dirt.

Their leather coats were stiff with dried brown gore, their fingernails crusted with black grime, and their breath smelled of cheap sour mash and rotten teeth.

At the front of the pack stood Scar-Faced Wu, a hulking cutthroat with a jagged red gash splitting his left cheek from ear to jaw, his eyes small, yellowed, and twitching with mindless cruelty. In his calloused hands, he held a heavy curved cleaver, notched from hacking through ribs.

Beside him, three other men grinned, their tongues running over chapped lips as they fondled the iron chains and spiked clubs hanging from their dirty belts.

”Is this the spot, little cousin?” Scar-Faced Wu growled in a low, grating whisper, leaning down until his foul breath brushed Ye Fan’s cheek. ”You swore on your mother’s grave that the Ye family kept an untouched treasure hidden in this dump. If we kick this wood down and find only rotten straw, I’ll carve the skin right off your thighs to make a tobacco pouch.”

”I swear it, Brother Wu!” Ye Fan whispered back, his voice shivering with fake, cowardly terror while his eyes danced with hidden malice. ”Inside... she is inside! A real jade beauty, resting on the bed! Take what you want, just remember our deal—spare my life when you are done!”

”Heh, good dog,” Wu sneered, raising his heavy iron-toed boot.

BANG!

The rickety wooden door exploded inward, its iron latch tearing clean out of the rotted frame and clattering across the stone floorboards.

The four men shoved their way inside, their weapons raised, ready to cut down anyone guarding the room.

But they were all immediately stunned seeing Wei Zhingyi’s beauty.

The rough words died instantly in Scar-Faced Wu’s throat.

The iron cleaver in his grip dipped by several inches, his mouth falling open, a long string of yellow spit gathering at the corner of his cracked lips.

The three men behind him froze mid-stride, their yellowed eyes nearly popping out of their greasy sockets.

On the narrow wooden cot pushed against the window, the woman had actually managed to pull herself up.

And right now, Wei Zhingyi is sitting on the bed, feeling weak and helpless.

She was propped up against the cold lime wall, her back trembling violently from the sheer effort of keeping her spine upright.

Her long silver hair was tangled, falling across her pale shoulders like strands of moonlight.

Her lilac cotton gown had slipped slightly at the collar, revealing the fragile line of her throat and the curve of her collarbones, white as polished bone.

Resting behind her back, her nine magnificent silver fox tails spilled across the blankets, weak, shivering, and unable to lift themselves.

Even with her face drained of color, even with her silver eyelashes wet with pain, her beauty was something that did not belong in this mortal world.

She looked like an immortal moon goddess cast down into a pig sty, so stunning, so delicate, that the dirty room seemed to fade into nothing around her.

”Mother of heaven...” one of the cutthroats behind Wu muttered, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his throat bobbing up and down as he swallowed hard. ”A... a fox spirit... Look at the number of those tails... look at that skin...”

”A nine-tailed celestial fox,” Scar-Faced Wu breathed out, his stunned shock rotting into a thick, putrid wave of raw lust that made his hands tremble.

A cruel, hideous laugh rumbled out from his throat, his yellow teeth bared in an animal grin.

”The old patriarchs are fighting over gold and trade papers, while we hit the true jackpot! Brothers, look at this! We’re going to taste an immortal tonight!”

The four men took a step forward, their boots tracking wet, filthy mud onto the clean floorboards, their dirty hands already reaching for the buckles of their leather belts.

Wei Zhingyi pressed herself as hard as she could against the rough stone wall behind the cot.

Cold, suffocating terror clamped down around her throat, choking the breath from her chest.

Her silver ears twitched back against her skull, flattening in pure horror. In her prime, these four vermin were lower than gnats; a single flick of her tail would have burned their bones to ash.

Now, her meridians were dry, cracked ditches.

The green bangle on her wrist hummed, but it was useless.

That foul, dark smoke she had breathed in had dragged her out of her coma, but left her limbs as heavy and numb as soaked logs.

When she tried to move her legs, she couldn’t even twitch her toes under the blanket.

When she reached for her divine sense to crush their brains, only a dull, blinding throb pounded behind her temples, making her vision swim with sickening black spots.

She was completely helpless.

Trapped on a wooden cot, paralyzed, unable to scream, unable to run, watching four crude, stinking beasts advance toward her with clawed fingers and hungry, mocking eyes.

The memories of a thousand years rushed through her groggy mind.

She was the Palace Mistress of the Immortal Coupling Palace.

She had walked the path of the Seven Deadly Sins, had seen kings weep at her feet, had watched whole armies tear each other apart just to glimpse the hem of her gown.

Yet through all those centuries, through all that filth, she had guarded her purity with fierce, unyielding pride.

She had kept her body untouched, clean as the first snow on the highest peaks, using her cold heart as an armor that no man could ever pierce.

And now... to be pinned down in a drafty stable?

To have these coarse, filthy hands tear away her robes?

To feel their rotten breath against her neck, their grime-crusted fingers violating her skin, their heavy, stinking bodies crushing her against the straw while they laughed and passed her around like a piece of cheap pork?

The mere thought made her entire soul shiver with sickening revulsion as bile rose in her throat.

She would rather have her flesh torn apart by wild mountain hounds, would rather have her soul ground into grease under a thousand falling blades, than suffer even one second of that hideous defilement!

’No... no, please...’ she pleaded silently, her cracked lips trembling as hot, bitter tears leaked from her silver eyelashes.

Despair swallowed her whole.

There was no one coming to save her.

She was in an enemy city, locked in a dark shack, stripped of her strength, her teeth clenched tightly together, drawing a thin line of red from her lower lip.

She contemplated just ending herself to save herself from suffering.

If she could not fight them, she could still choose how to die.

Deep inside her sea of consciousness, buried beneath the fog of that foul incense, her shattered golden core still held one final, tiny spark of life essence.

It was the last thread that kept her breathing.

If she forcefully detonated that spark—if she bit down hard on her own tongue and reversed the tiny trickle of remaining blood—she could shatter her own heart.

It would be agonizing.

Her soul would be mangled, and she would lose any chance of reincarnating into the upper realms.

Yet as Scar-Faced Wu reached the edge of the mattress, his greasy, scarred hand reaching out to grab the hem of her blanket with an eager, filthy grin, Wei Zhingyi closed her eyes.

She gathered that last spark of life, ready to snuff out her own light forever.