Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

”Hahaha! Man, I can’t believe we’re this lucky!”

”I heard another Nine Tailed Celestial Fox was already a peak Heavenly Saint. We may not be able to touch her, but this one will do.”

Scar-Faced Wu’s filthy fingers were barely two inches away from the soft silk of the blanket.

His breath came out in hot, wet puffs, his yellow eyes wide with animal greed, his scarred lips pulled back over broken teeth.

Behind him, the other three men were already fumbling with their belts, chuckling like hyenas ready to tear into fresh meat.

On the mattress, Wei Zhingyi’s eyes squeezed shut, her teeth digging into her tongue, her spirit gathering that last tiny spark of life to shatter her own heart and escape the mud forever.

But, at that moment...

BANG!

The splintered wooden doorframe groaned as a body hit the stone, and just as the men were about to pounce on her, Ye Fan threw himself across the room with a wild, desperate leap!

His boots slid over the floor, and he planted his feet squarely between the edge of the cot and the reaching claws of the four butchers.

His arms spread wide like the wings of a protective bird, his chest heaving, his dark travel cloak flying back to show his plain grey tunic.

His eyes blazed with fury, his face twisted into a mask of pure, righteous anger that looked as though it could burn the heavens.

”Scoundrels!” Ye Fan roared, his voice cracking with thunderous emotion that rattled the loose rafters. ”Beasts! Despicable vermin! While the clan bleeds in the front courtyards, you sneak into the dark to lay your filthy hands upon a helpless maiden! As long as a single breath remains in my chest, you will not touch a single hair upon her head!”

Scar-Faced Wu’s hand froze mid-air.

The three men behind him stopped their coarse laughter, their mouths hanging half-open, blinking their bloodshot eyes in total disbelief.

Huh? Brother, what are you doing? Weren’t you the one who lead us here, saying that we can have her? Why the hell are you stopping us now?

”What the hell are you screaming about?!” Scar-Faced Wu barked, his face flushing dark purple with sudden rage.

The jagged scar across his cheek twitched violently as he pointed his heavy cleaver straight at Ye Fan’s nose.

”You little bastard! You were the one who—”

”Silence, evil hound!” Ye Fan bellowed, cutting the man off before he could spit out another syllable!

Ye Fan did not allow them to speak, raising his voice to a deafening pitch that shook the dust from the window frame.

He leaned forward, spitting blood from his lip, his neck veins bulging as he made himself look heroic trying to stop them.

”I do not listen to filthy rapists like you!” Ye Fan shouted, his chest puffing out, every line of his face radiating the tragic, burning courage of a lone defender facing certain death. ”You, who disregarded the kindness of my adopted father and rebelled for the sake of profit, you have no right to speak!”

Scar-Faced Wu was speechless. What the hell? Weren’t you part of the rebellion as well? You’re even more of a beast for agreeing to kill the man who adopted you!

At least we were oppressed and have reasons to rebel other than greed.

”You bastard, you think—

”You think you could just come here and ruin this innocent lady while no one was watching, didn’t you? But heaven has eyes! The Ye family may treat me like dirt, my stepmother may despise me, but my blood will never bend to cowardly brigands who prey upon the weak! If you want her, you will have to step over my cold, broken corpse first!”

Behind his back, Wei Zhingyi’s eyelashes fluttered open.

The tiny spark of self-destruction inside her shattered core hesitated.

Through the thick, dizzying fog that clouded her mind, she saw the broad, trembling back of the grey-robed youth.

She recognized his voice. It was the same boy who had carried her through the river mud, the boy who had washed her bloodied tails with warm water and placed the green jade bangle upon her wrist.

And now, facing four terrifying killers armed with jagged steel, this mortal youth with no backing had thrown himself into the gap without a single thought for his own survival.

’He... he came back for me?’ her cloudy thoughts drifted, a strange, unfamiliar ache stirring deep within her frozen chest.

”You rotten little rat!” Scar-Faced Wu screamed, his patience snapping completely.

He didn’t care about the boy’s strange ravings anymore. All he knew was that a piece of meat with two legs was standing between him and a heavenly prize that came once in ten lifetimes.

”Hack him into dog food!”

”Chop his arms off!”

The four cutthroats surged forward as one, and the small room erupted into a whirlwind of cold, murderous wind!

Scar-Faced Wu swung his massive, notched cleaver in a vicious horizontal sweep aimed straight at Ye Fan’s neck, intending to take his head off in a single stroke!

From the left, a spiked iron club whistled down toward his shoulder with enough weight to crush stone!

From the right, two curved sabers thrust forward like venomous vipers, their poisoned tips aimed straight at his belly and heart!

There was no room to dodge, and there was nowhere to run. Against four hardened killers at the Foundation and Core realms, an above-average mortal boy will definitely be shredded into mincemeat in less than a second!

But Ye Fan didn’t even flinch.

Beneath the furious, desperate scowl on his face, a cold, mocking smirk flashed deep within his pupils.

Ye Fan immediately called out, ’System! Equip Focus Belt right now!’

Ding!

A crisp, mechanical chime rang out inside his sea of consciousness.

[Focus Belt Activated!]

Focus Belt is an item he received from the system that works similar to a certain item from a certain franchise.

It was a piece of bizarre, rule-breaking item forged from pure system logic.

Basically, what it does is that, no matter how powerful the attack was, no matter if an ancient dragon dropped a mountain on his head or a supreme elder split the sky above his scalp, it would leave him with a single sliver of life.

Although, it wouldn’t spare him the injuries.

Splash!

The weapons hit him all at once, and blood immediately gushed like fountains as Ye Fan’s body was slashed down.

He made sure to pose in a way that Wei Zhingyi would see his determination to protect her.

Then, he knelt down, before falling to the side, gasping for breath.

”Tsk, you should’ve just stayed out of our way, kid.”

”Hahaha! Now you’re going die, and we’re going to rape this woman beside your corpse!”

The men kicked him to the side and walked towards Wei Zhingyi, but Ye Fan once again called out to his system.

’System, activate Invincible Body.’

[Ding!]

[Skill: Invincible Body, has been activated]

[Duration, 1 minute]

Invincible Body, as the name implies, is a skill that allows him to be immune to any damage for a certain amount of time.

It coated his flesh in an unseen, paper-thin film of spatial armor that simply canceled out all physical and spiritual force for five precious heartbeats.

With that, he stood once again and rushed towards the men, standing in front of Wei Zhingyi.

”I told you... You can forget...about taking her...”

Scar-Faced Wu’s face shifted into annoyance, ”Damn it, are you a fucking cockroach!? Kill him! Make sure to chop his body into pieces!”

”Die!”

”I’ll turn you into mince meat!”

Scar-Face Wu raised his heavy cleaver and slammed straight into the side of Ye Fan’s throat, but this time, instead of slicing through meat, it sounded as if it had struck a thousand-year-old anvil of divine iron!

A shower of bright orange sparks erupted across the dark room, the kinetic rebound traveling back up the blade so violently that Wu’s palm split open, blood spraying from his torn webbing!

Then, a spiked mace slammed by one of the men hit his shoulder, bouncing off with a dull ringing sound that made the attacker stumble backward!

The two curved sabers of other attackers also bent into steep arches against his chest before snapping in half with sharp, metallic pings!

”What the hell?!”

”What kind of demon technique is this?!”

The four msn shrieked in horror, their boots scrambling backward in the floor, staring at the unarmed boy as if he were an ancient ghost rising from an unquiet grave!

Ye Fan didn’t let the moment go to waste as he deliberately bit the inside of his cheek until blood filled his mouth, letting a dark, dramatic stream of crimson spill over his chin and drip onto his grey collar, making it look as though he had burned his very soul to withstand the blows.

Then, feeling that he did enough, he turned towards Wei Zhingyi.

”Senior... hold on to me!” he gasped out, his voice choked with blood and tragic bravery.

He immediately scooped his arms beneath her knees and around her fragile shoulders, lifting her limp, trembling form off the straw cot.

Her silver hair spilled over his arm, her nine heavy tails wrapping weakly around his waist as she rested against his battered chest.

He then pulled out a teleportation talisman, and with his right hand, he slapped a thick, dark golden paper talisman straight against his own chest!

WHOOSH!

A blinding dome of golden light burst from the paper, wrapping around Ye Fan and the fox woman in a tight sphere of light!

Then, before the men could blink, Ye Fan and Wei Zhingyi had disappeared!

The wooden bed sat bare, the paper window rattled in the cold draft, and only the four terrified men stood frozen in the dark, staring at the empty floorboards where their prize had vanished into thin air.

”Where... where did they go?!” Scar-Faced Wu roared, his voice cracking with pure disbelief as he ran his bloody hands over the empty mattress. ”A talisman?! Inside the city walls?! That’s impossible!”

High above the clouds, suspended in the cold night air, Haoran’s eyes narrowed.

His black and gold robes fluttered lightly in the wind as his gaze lingered on the empty wooden shack below.

His expression, usually an unmoving wall of ice, carried a rare trace of genuine surprise.

This whole city is sealed, disabling spatial manipulation.

He had checked the perimeter himself when they arrived.

The Ye Clan’s was completely enveloped by sealing array, locking the local Space with heavy earthen anchors, preventing anyone from leaving or entering using space.

Even Ye Hongyan, a living Heavenly Saint who could manipulate space to her will, had been prevented from directly entering the city and forced to fly down on her own two feet!

How could he use a teleportation talisman?

Under the natural laws of this world, any low tier, no, even a high tier spatial slip should have shattered into useless sparks the second it was ignited against the array’s suppression.

It defied every fundamental rule of spiritual formations.

However, he didn’t dwell on it.

A cold, mocking chuckle slipped from Haoran’s lips, shaking his head in amusement.

Those protagonists cannot be measured by common sense anyway.

He knew their kind all too well. They were creatures born outside the normal flow of the world, carrying ridiculous luck and tools that pulled items from other realms and broke universal laws whenever their pathetic lives were in danger.

If a common mortal jumped off a cliff, he would smash into meat paste; if one of these chosen fools jumped, an ancient cave with a dead sage’s bones would conveniently catch his fall.

Trying to apply logic to a walking bug was a waste of breath.

He didn’t need to understand how he teleported, he only needed to know where the rat was running.

Haoran spoke through his mental link, his voice calm.

”Qing’er, track them down.”