Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Chapter 173: Chapter 173: Xu Xiansu

Imperial City.

It was a megalopolis of such staggering proportions that it spanned an entire solar system.

Its ”streets” were like celestial currents, and its ”neighborhoods” were more of a clusters of terraformed planets and moons, all revolving around the massive central star that is the Imperial Castle.

This was the unshakeable heart of the Central Region, the seat of the Xu lineage, and the ultimate symbol of human authority in the Tian Yuan Empire.

Yet, even in the center of the universe, there are shadows where the light of the sun never reaches.

Deep within the folds of the central planet’s mountain ranges sat the Cold Palace.

It was a fortress of isolation, a place of damp stone and eternal winter where the Emperor discarded neglected concubines who had lost his favor, or where the Empress imprisoned those she feared might one day usurp her authority through their beauty or their sons.

Within one of the most dilapidated chambers of this frozen prison, a young woman with long, midnight-black hair lay silently upon a bed of moth-eaten straw.

Her skin was a pale, sickly ivory, stretched thin over her bones from years of starvation, wearing only what can be describe as rags.

She was Xu Xiansu, a princess of the blood who possessed a title but no crown.

She was the daughter of a low-ranking concubine who had once had the misfortune of offending the Empress’s pride.

And for that sin, fhe mother and daughter had been cast into the Cold Palace, erased from the imperial records and the memory of the emperor...until a few years ago.

Back then, a tragedy had struck and Xu Xiansu’s mother, Li Xiyuan, had fallen deathly ill.

Desperate and seeing her mother’s life flickering like a candle in a gale, the young Xiansu had disregarded her own safety, her dignity, and her status to beg the Emperor for a drop of life-saving medicine.

The Emperor, a man whose heart was as cold as the palace he built, finally remembered that he had such a daughter, and at that moment, had seen a different use for the girl.

He had used her as a mere entertainment piece, a ”gift” to appease Shen Haoran when the young master of the Shen Clan had visited the Imperial Palace years ago.

After Haoran departed, the girl who had lost her chastity and her pride was tossed back into the Cold Palace like a piece of refuse.

The Emperor had kept his word, however, and he had granted her the medicine as a trivial compensation for her service.

Li Xiyuan’s life had been saved, but even so, the medicine couldn’t fully heal heal her she had remained a frail shadow of herself, barely able to walk across a room without collapsing.

All the while Xu Xiansu had lived with a burning, silent hatred that scorched her from the inside out—a hatred directed at the Emperor who sold her and the man, Shen Haoran, who had taken her.

At this moment, the sleeping Xu Xiansu suddenly jerked awake.

Her eyes snapped open, glowing with a terrifying, orange luminescence as she sat up with a violent start, her hands clawing at the air as if trying to reach a throat.

”SHEN HAORAN!” she shrieked, her voice cracking with a raw, agonizing fury.

But as the echoes of her scream died down, the rage in her face shifted into a profound, jarring confusion.

She didn’t feel the cold steel of a blade in her heart, nor did she feel the searing heat of the killing intent directed at her, instead, everything felt...calm.

She looked around, her breath hitching.

This room... it was familiar.

It was the same dilapidated chamber with the cracked ceiling and the drafty windows that had long since been buried deep in her memory.

She looked down at her hands—they were tiny, thin, and marred by the calluses of a servant, not the scars of a war veteran.

”W-What? Where am I?” she whispered, her voice trembling. ”This is...? But I swear... I swear I was stabbed by Shen Haoran’s sword... what happened?”

She stood up, her legs feeling weak and malnourished as she began checked her body—it was the body of her youth, before she had clawed her way out of this hell, before she had become an avenger that nearly toppled the empire.

”This... My old body? What happened?”

Just then, the rusted door of the room creaked open as a thin, sickly woman entered, her face etched with a worry so deep it seemed to age her by decades.

”Susu? What happened? Why did you scream? Are you hurt?”

Seeing the woman, Xu Xiansu’s entire body froze, her heart skipped several beats, and she felt a wave of vertigo so strong she had to lean against the wall.

It was a face she had seen only in her dreams and her nightmares for five centuries.

”M-Mother?”

Li Xiyuan smiled weakly at her daughter, her eyes filled with an unconditional love that felt like a physical warmth in the freezing room. ”Yes, yes, it’s your mother, you silly child. Who else would it be? Are you alright? Why did you scream like that? Are you hurt?”

”M-Mother...”

Hot and thick tears began to well in Xu Xiansu’s eyes as she walked toward her mother with a slow, hesitant step, as if afraid the woman would vanish into mist if she moved too fast.

She reached out, her trembling fingers cupping her mother’s sallow cheeks. ”Y-You’re alive... you’re really alive...”

Li Xiyuan looked confused, but she didn’t pull away and just gently held her daughter’s hands, her touch papery and thin. ”Of course I am. I wouldn’t die quite yet. Not until my Susu becomes the Empress she deserves to be. Did you have a nightmare, my love?”

Xu Xiansu nodded, the tears now falling freely, soaking into her mother’s tattered sleeves as she buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, inhaling the scent of herbs and old stone.

”Yes... yes, a very long, terrible nightmare. It lasted forever.”

”Is that so? Don’t worry, your mother is here. No matter what happens, no matter what the world says, I’ll always be there for you.”

Xu Xiansu cried even harder, her sobs racking her thin frame as Li Xiyuan gently caressed her back, humming a nursery rhyme from a forgotten era.

In that moment, the terrifying woman who had led armies and slaughtered kings disappeared, leaving only a broken girl who had been given a miracle she didn’t understand.

After a long while, Xu Xiansu calmed down and broke the hug, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand as the orange light in her pupils had returned, but it was no longer just rage—it was a cold, calculating resolve.

”Mother, you should be resting right now. Your body is still very weak from the winter cold.”

”Oh, shush. I’m not that weak, you silly girl. I can still make us some porridge,” Li Xiyuan teased.

Xu Xiansu smiled, a genuine expression that felt foreign to her face. ”Come on, Mother, you rest in my bed. It’s the warmest spot in the room. I’ll prepare our breakfast.”

She helped her mother sit down on the straw mattress, tucking the thin, ragged blanket around her.

Once she was sure her mother was comfortable, she turned and walked out of the room, stepping into the small, enclosed courtyard of the Cold Palace.

The moment she was outside, she looked up at the clear blue sky, her eyes narrowing against the brilliance of the sun.

The air was cold, but for her, it felt warm, and full of hope.

’I’ve been... reborn,’ she thought, her mind racing through the chronology of her past life. ’I am five hundred years in the past. Less than two years before the Imperial Academy opens, less than two years before everything began.’

In her past life, her mother had died shortly after this because she had pushed her weak, recovering body to work in the freezing gardens to earn a few extra scraps of food when Xu Xiansu had fallen sick with a fever.

Xiansu remembered the agony of that memory—her mother had gone to beg the Empress for a single pill of medicine, but the Empress had looked down at the kneeling woman and told her she could have the medicine, but only if she cleaned the entire Great Palace, the endless gardens, and the beast stables by herself in a single day.

Her mother had done it.

She had scrubbed the stones until her fingers bled and worked until her heart nearly stopped.

But when she was done, the Empress had simply laughed, given her nothing, and had her kicked back into the Cold Palace.

Li Xiyuan had died the next day from sheer exhaustion and a broken heart, alone in her room while the young Xu Xiansu was unconscious from her fever.

No one had known, and no one had cared.

It was only later that night, when Xu Xiansu realized her mother hadn’t come to check on her, that she forced herself to get up and found her mother’s body, already cold.

That death was what had fueled Xu Xiansu’s rise to power.

It was the foundation of her hatred.

’...Not this time,’ Xu Xiansu whispered, her fingers curling into a fist so tight her knuckles turned white. ’This time, the Empress will be the one cleaning the stables with her tongue. This time, the Emperor will know what it feels like to be sold. And Shen Haoran...’

She remembered the man who had looked at her with such indifference in her final moments.

’This time, I won’t be your entertainment. I will be your end.’

Of course, she knew that at her current condition, it is impossible to get revenge, but so what?

She had five hundred years of knowledge of the future inside her head!

Before, she cralwed her way from hell and became the Sun Moon Empress, with power that nearly toppled the entire empire in her revenge.

She fought and defeated three of Shen Haoran’s bodyguards; The Thousand Hand Asura Ling Luochen, The Devouring Demon Empress Shangguan Mu’er, and the Empress of the Bright Silver Ning Xueli, all at the same time!

She even fought the Emperor’s Shadow, Qing’er, to a standstill!

She was known as one of the strongest Empress of the current era, standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Flame Empress Huo Yue, and the Three Sisters of the Shen Clan!

Unfortunately, she still failed in her revenge and was killed by Shen Haoran.

But this time, it’s going to be different! With five hundred years of knowledge of the future, she will change her fate!

”Tian Yuan Emperor...Shen Haoran... Just you wait. This time, I will definitely kill you.”