Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Chapter 146: Chapter 146: Sealed

”—All roads lead back to me.”

”Arrogant!” Shen Fei roared, his voice thick with a mixture of indignation and predatory excitement.

To him, Haoran’s calm was not a sign of strength, but a delusion that needed to be shattered.

”You stand before the greatest of geniuses the clan has to offer and you still speak as if you’re the center of the world!?”

At that moment, the coordinated efforts of the Eight Crowns swung into high gear.

Shen Ying, the 9th Crown, moved with the clinical precision of a master alchemist, her hands blurring as she flicked blood-red Qi-Bursting Pills to each of her comrades.

The air was immediately filled with the bitter, metallic scent of the medicine.

Simultaneously, Shen Cai, the 7th Crown, let out a guttural shout as he slammed his palms together, and from his massive spatial storage, an entire armory of Rank 5 artifacts erupted.

Dozens of swords, spears, halberds, and suits of heavy plate armor hovered in the air, glowing with the burning hot intensity of the forge.

”Everyone! Pick a weapon of your choosing! Do not hold back! I have way more where that came from!” Shen Cai shouted, his voice booming across the white sands.

However, before the others could even reach for the floating weapons, a streak of golden and green light bypassed them all and a short, petite woman with short golden hair that ended in vibrant green tips rushed toward Shen Haoran.

She didn’t wait for pills, she didn’t care for artifacts, but she simply moved with a feral, raw kinetic energy that made the air whistle in her wake.

She grinned wildly, her eyes wide with a manic bloodlust, and launched a straight, explosive punch aimed directly at Haoran’s face.

The force of the blow was enough to create a vacuum in its path, but Haoran didn’t even flinch and simply raised his left hand, his fingers unfolding with leisurely grace, and caught her fist mid-air.

The impact created a shockwave that kicked up a wall of dust, but Haoran’s feet remained anchored to the floor as if he were part of the planet’s bedrock.

Haoran stared at her, his golden eyes cold and inquisitive. ”And you are?”

”Shen Xun’er,” the woman grinned, her teeth bared in a sharp, lupine smile. ”6th Crown! The one who’s going to knock that look off your face!”

”Mn.” Haoran nodded slightly, his grip on her fist tightening until the bones began to creak. ”Are you sure you don’t want those things offered to you by the others? The pills? The armor? You seem... ill-equipped.”

Haoran didn’t wait for an answer as he tightened his grip further, slowly forcing her fist downward, physically overpowering her with a terrifying display of raw muscular strength.

He leaned forward, bringing his face inches from hers, his voice dropping to a chilling whisper. ”Without those crutches, you can’t even dream of beating me. You are merely a fly buzzing against a mountain.”

Shen Xun’er chuckled, ”I’m not a coward. I’ll beat you with my own strength.”

At that exact moment, the air behind Haoran shivered as a gust of wind, silent and cold, passed by as a young man wearing a pristine white robe appeared out of thin air.

He held a pair of black daggers etched with soul-eroding runes, their tips aimed precisely at the gaps in Haoran’s spinal column.

But Haoran’s reflexes were beyond the realm of mortal comprehension, and without letting go of Shen Xun’er, he spun his body with a fluid, dance-like motion, swinging the petite woman behind him and using her small frame as a living shield against the daggers.

The assassin, the 8th Crown, Shen Hei, reacted with the frantic speed of a professional, twisting his daggers away just millimeters before they pierced his own comrade’s throat.

But in that split second of hesitation, Haoran’s free hand shot out like a striking viper, his fingers clamping firmly around Shen Hei’s neck.

His eyes widened, grabbing the hand that was on his neck as he struggled.

”Ah, I remember you,” Haoran mused, lifting the 8th Crown off the ground with a single hand. ”Shen Hei. You were one of the branch-line servants I used as amusement back in the day. It seems the dog has learned to bite, though his teeth are still quite dull.”

Shen Hei gritted his teeth as he raised his weapon once again and tried to slash Haoran’s hand.

*Ding!*

*Crack!*

His eyes widened as he felt as if he hit a diamond, and even the dagger shattered into pieces!

That was a Rank 5 Artifact!

Haoran simply smiled. Rank 5 Artifacts simply aren’t enough to break the Unbreakable Diamond Sacred Technique that he had cultivated to 5th Stage.

Just then...

”Rising Dragon Talons!” Shen Xun’er roared, finding her opening.

She ignored the fact that she had almost been stabbed and focused entirely on the attack.

Her hands began to transform, her skin erupting into iridescent green scales and her fingernails lengthening into obsidian claws as she swiped upward from a crouched position with a ferocity that tore the air apart.

A deafening roar of a dragon resounded through the Divine Arena as a phantom image of a gargantuan Eastern Dragon emerged from her strike, its ethereal scales glowing with a sickly emerald light as it surged toward the sky.

Haoran let go of Shen Hei, tossing him aside like a piece of trash, and took a single, precise step back, the dragon’s claws missing his chest by a hair’s breadth.

The phantom dragon rose into the high atmosphere of the arena and exploded in a cataclysmic burst of green energy.

The shockwave was so powerful it would have vaporized an entire mountain, and the heat from it momentarily turned the sand below into molten glass.

Shen Xun’er didn’t stop to admire the explosion, and when she landed on her hands and feet, she lunged again, her body spinning like a top as she unleashed a barrage of continuous spinning kicks, each one accompanied by the whistle of displaced air.

”Twin Dragon Hurricane!” she declared.

Two phantom images of dragons began to spin around her, their bodies forming a protective and offensive vortex of jade-colored flame.

Every time her foot neared Haoran, the dragons struck simultaneously, their illusory fangs snapping at his throat.

Haoran kept retreating, his movements calm and rhythmic.

He looked as though he were walking backward through a gentle rain, dodging the ”hurricane” with minimal effort.

To the hundreds of millions in the stands, it looked like he was being pressured, but to the experts in the VIP booths, it was clear: he was simply observing.

Then, his golden eyes caught a microscopic opening in her rotation.

”I’ve seen enough,” he whispered.

He didn’t dodge the next kick. Instead, he lunged forward, his palm flat and glowing with a concentrated, solar light.

”Dragon-Subduing Palm.”

The twin dragons were in the middle of their strike, their mouths open to devour him, when his palm met them head-on.

At the moment of contact, the expected explosion didn’t happen. Instead, the dragon phantoms suddenly shattered into a million glowing fragments, as if they were made of brittle glass.

Shen Xun’er’s eyes widened in absolute shock, but before she could recover her balance, those broken fragments didn’t dissipate; they condensed and formed into a massive, golden palm made of pure, recycled energy.

The palm struck her squarely in the chest.

She didn’t have time to scream as she was instantly thrown backward across the arena, her body skipping across the sand like a stone on a pond before slamming into the reinforced stone walls with a sickening thud.

She slumped to the ground, coughing up a mouthful of dark, clotted blood.

Haoran ignored her, turning his gaze toward his own fist.

The Dragon-Subduing Palm... one of the hidden scrolls in the Hanging Garden’s Library.

An ancient technique created by a Saint specifically to humiliate the Dragon Tribe.

It uses the opponent’s own momentum and strength against them.

The moment the technique is activated, it shatters the structure of the opponent’s Qi, rendering their attacks ineffective, and then gathers those shattered fragments to form an equal and opposite force.

He nodded in quiet satisfaction. ”Mn. This is my first time using it on a living target. It’s not bad. Quite efficient.”

Just as he finished his self-assessment, the ground beneath his feet began to thrum with a violent, rhythmic vibration as two more massive formation circles—even larger and more complex than the first—glowed with a sickly violet light.

Haoran suddenly felt a cold, numbing sensation wash over his body.

It was as if a curtain had been drawn between his soul and the heavens, and his connection to the world’s Qi was severed, his internal energy pathways were locked, and even the passive, overwhelming power of his Infinity Dragon God Physique felt as though it were being suppressed by an invisible, crushing weight.

He turned his gaze toward Shen Bai, the 10th Crown.

The young formation master was as pale as a corpse, his hands trembling as he maintained the mudra to keep the arrays active.

Blood trickled from his nose, a sign of the immense spiritual strain he was under, but he was grinning like a madman.

”Qi Disruption Array, plus the Heaven Binding Array,” Shen Bai wheezed, his voice laced with a desperate triumph. ”Combined with the Ghost Parade, you are now effectively a mortal! You cannot use your techniques, you cannot access your divine physique, and you cannot draw Qi from the world! Let’s see how you get out of this one, ’Young Master’!”

At that moment, the remaining Eight Crowns closed in, their weapons gleaming and their eyes filled with the hunger of wolves who had finally cornered a lion.

Haoran stood at the center of the dark arrays, his black robes fluttering in the artificial wind.

He looked down at his hands, which no longer glowed with golden light, and then back at his opponents, but instead of fear or anger, a slow, dark chuckle escaped his lips.

”So,” Haoran said, his voice remaining perfectly audible in the silence. ”You’ve turned me into a mortal.”

He looked up, and for the first time, his killing intent manifested as a physical weight that made the formation master stumble.

”But tell me... did you really think it was only my Qi and my Physique that made me a monster?”