Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Chapter 117: Chapter 117: Shangguan Mu’er(1)

The atmospheric pressure around the Northern Branch of the Conferred Pagoda had reached a point of absolute physical displacement.

The air vibrated and groaned under the weight of the celestial judgment descending from the churning, violet-gold vortex above.

In the center of this localized apocalypse, Shangguan Mu’er stood atop the highest balcony of her secluded residence, looking ecstatic.

Her breakthrough was complete. The bottleneck that had held her at the peak of the Nascent Soul realm for years had been shattered like glass under a hammer.

Now, she felt the surge of a new, terrifying vitality—a density of spirit that transcended the mortal coil.

She had finally broken through to the Spirit Ascension Realm!

But the heavens were not offering a congratulatory embrace.

High above, the sky let out a guttural, sentient roar as the golden lightning dancing in the clouds began to hiss with a concentrated, divine hatred.

The Heavenly Dao had recognized a foreign, parasitic essence within her—the evil, hungry resonance of a Demonic Art that had no business existing under the sun of the Saint Burial Realm.

To the heavens, she was a cancer that needed to be cauterized.

Shangguan Mu’er looked up, and for the first time in more than eighty years of her cold, stoic existence, she smirked.

It was a terrifying, predatory expression that finally broke her mask of marble perfection.

The demonic arts she had inherited from that forgotten demon king in the lightless depths of a secret realm decades ago had finally reached their fruition, allowing her to ascend to this legendary realm, and now, the heavens actually wanted to erase her?

As if!

With a thought that rippled with the scent of ozone and rot, she summoned her sword.

It was not a blade of light or refined steel, but a sliver of absolute, pitch-black void.

It radiated a thick, suffocating demonic aura that seemed to swallow the ambient Qi of the world.

This was the Blade of the Abyssal Maw, one of the primary artifacts she had retrieved from the demon’s tomb.

”You want to kill me?!” she screamed at the clouds, her voice amplified by the roar of her new cultivation. ”Come! I, Shangguan Mu’er, have crawled my way from the very filth of the gutters to this level! For over eighty years, I have bled and starved to stand in this light! I will not bend—not for a king, not for a god, and certainly not for a sky that tries to suppress me!”

As if personally offended by her blasphemy, the heavens answered with a thunderclap that shattered every window within ten miles.

A single, massive bolt of Sacred Light lightning struck down, a pillar of white-gold fire capable of incinerating a mountain range.

Without a shred of hesitation, Mu’er swung her black blade, meeting the lightning head-on.

The collision produced a shockwave that leveled the surrounding ornamental trees and cracked the stone foundation of the pagoda.

The golden fire crawled down her sword, scorching her hands, but she held firm.

She gritted her teeth, her jaw muscles bulging. ”I! WILL! NOT! YIELD!”

With one final, explosive roar of demonic Qi, she cleaved the lightning strike in two, the golden energy dissipating into harmless sparks against her black aura.

She grinned, the blood from her split lips staining her teeth as she raised a trembling finger, pointing it directly at the eye of the storm in a gesture of ultimate defiance.

According to the ancient legends of the North, the heavenly tribulation for the Spirit Ascension Realm would strike the cultivator nine times—the ”Nine Trials of the Ascendant.”

So there should be eight more to go.

”Come!” she challenged. ”Is that all you have to offer?”

The heavens roared again, like a sound of frustrated divinity.

This time, the clouds didn’t wait, and two bolts of lightning, twin dragons of gold, struck down in unison.

Mu’er pivoted, her black sword carving a crescent of darkness through the air as she blocked them both, the force of the impact driving her knees inches into the reinforced jade flooring, but she hold on.

And ignoring the pain coursing through her veins, she resisted and shattered the lightning sent by the heavens.

”Hahaha!” she laughed, a wild, manic sound that echoed through the storm after she successfully cleared the second strike. ”Is that the best you can do?!”

Once again, the heavens responded, and the third tribulation arrived as a trio of bolts.

Then four.

Then five.

Each wave was exponentially more powerful than the last, the heat of the strikes beginning to melt the very air around her.

And by the time the sixth tribulation arrived, the world had become a kaleidoscope of agony as all six lightnings struck her simultaneously, forming a cage of golden fire that sought to unmake her molecules.

This was the moment she truly began to struggle, as the sheer weight of the celestial punishment was crushing her internal organs, her meridians screaming under the strain of holding back the divine wrath.

She spat out a mouthful of thick, dark blood that vaporized before it could hit the ground.

Her exquisite white robes—symbols of her high status in the Pagoda—were burnt to grey ash, leaving behind only tattered, charred fragments that barely covered her privates.

Her skin, once as fair as moonlight, was now seared and blackened, covered in angry red welts that hissed with steam and heat.

However, she did not fall. Through the smoke and the smell of her own burning flesh, she stood, and with a roar of defiance, cleaved through the six lightnings intending to annihilate her.

She passed the sixth tribulation, her breathing came in ragged, wet gasps, but her knees and her back refused to bend even a single centimeter.

The pride in her soul was a weight that kept her upright when her muscles should have failed.

Ever since she had inherited the legacy of that demon, she had made an oath: never again would she lower her head to those who sought to dominate or exploit her.

Eighty years ago, she had been nothing.

She was an ordinary, nameless peasant girl living in the filth of a coastal city’s streets, scavenging through the trash of the wealthy just to find a crust of moldy bread.

She had known the cold and the hunger that makes a human forget their own name.

Then, one day, hope had appeared in the form of a wealthy nobleman who opened a grand orphanage.

He promised the street urchins clothes, warm beds, and three meals a day, and the young her back then had naively followed, believing she had finally found a sanctuary.

At first, it was as they promised. She was fed, she was clean, and she slept behind stone walls.

But the ”sanctuary” held a rot at its core.

One night, she had stayed awake and watched as one of the older girls was dressed in fine, silk garments in the middle of the night and led away by the ”caretakers.”

She had waited by the window, counting the hours until the girl returned.

When she did, she was like a broken husk—her eyes were blank pools of trauma, her hair was matted, and by the morning light, her pale skin was covered in the purple, mottled marks of a monster’s amusement.

This cycle continued for seven days until the girl simply vanished, and the ”protectors” came for a new one.

And the one they chose was Mu’er.

She had known what was coming, so without hesitation, she had leaped from a second-story window and fled into the night.

She had been hunted like an animal through the forest, the hounds of the nobleman nipping at her heels.

Thankfully, she had escaped, but the cost was too much as she had been left half-dead, her bones broken and her lungs burning, in the heart of a forbidden forest.

But, she knew that if she stayed there, she would surely become a food for the beasts.

So she gritted her teeth, dragging her broken body to escap through the mud and dirt.

But, perhaps through sheer luck or coincidence, she had actually stumbled into a crack in a cliffside and unknowingly entered a secret realm containing the tomb of a demon known as Beelzebub, the Demon King of Gluttony.

There, she received the Abyssal Maw, the pitch black sword she was using, and the Heaven Devouring Demonic Art, a Cultivation Technique that can only be practiced by devouring the soul, blood, and qi of all living things.

She had used that dark power to devour the life-essence of the beasts in the forest to heal herself and increase her power, and then she had returned to that city to take revenge.

Those noblemen weren’t worth mentioning, just a family of Body Refining cultivators, so they couldn’t even put up any ounce of struggle, allowing Shangguan Mu’er to easily devour their souls until there was nothing left but empty, hollow shells.

Ever since that day, she had sworn to devour anything that tried to place a leash on her.

Even if that ”anything” was the heavens themselves!

At this moment, as the seventh tribulation gathered in the sky, Mu’er let out a roar of absolute, unbridled defiance.

Then, her body began to undergo a massive, sickening transformation as she fully merged with the Demon King’s essence.

A pair of pitch-black, obsidian horns erupted from above her ears, curving upward like the crescent of a dark moon.

Her eyes changed—the white sclera turned into an absolute, abyssal black, while her pupils glowed with an evil, and sickening yellow light.

Her skin paled beyond death, turning into an ash-white color that seemed to smoke with demonic Qi.

From her shoulder blades, a pair of leathery, bat-like wings erupted, spanning ten meters across and buffeting the golden lightning away.

Then, most terrifyingly, a fist-sized hole appeared in the center of her stomach—a physical manifestation of the Gluttony she represented.

It was a void that hummed with a hunger that could never be filled, a mouth that sought to eat the very laws of the world.

She looked up at the sky, her black sword held high, her demonic form wreathed in the smoke of her own ascension.

”You have no right to judge me!” she screamed, her voice now layered with the growl of a beast. ”I alone gets to decide my fate! If you think you can control me, then try it! I will devour you as well!”

The seventh tribulation descended—seven bolts of concentrated golden wrath—and Shangguan Mu’er opened her wings, flying upward to meet them, no longer a victim, but a predator of the heavens.