Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The sight that unfolded across the decimated plains of the Eastern Region was one that shattered every expectation held by the gathered masses, but for Xu Xiansu, it was a tectonic shift that threatened to derail her entire understanding of reality.

Her breath hitched, her throat tightening as she watched the gargantuan display of power from the safety of her shadowed corner.

”That’s... the Rainbow Scaled Divine Serpent!? It’s Medusa!?” Xu Xiansu stared at the massive snake that had dropped from the sky and wrestled against the giant.

The sheer scale of the creature was incomprehensible—a fifty-thousand-meter titan of iridescent scales that made the newly ascended Saint Korgar look like a struggling child.

Each coil of the serpent’s body was thick enough to crush mountain ranges, and its aura was a primal, suffocating weight that felt like the crushing depths of an ocean.

Then, a winged white tiger descended, its roar vibrating through the stone of the city walls, followed by a crimson-haired woman with flaming wings who moved with the lethal grace of a phoenix.

Xu Xiansu’s eyes widened, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. ”That’s.... Zhu Ziyan and Huo Yue!?”

Her mind raced, flipping through the pages of her previous life’s memories like a frantic scholar in a burning library. ”Why are they here!? This shouldn’t be happening yet!”

It was understandable for Medusa and Huo Yue to be together since they were known friends in the original timeline, and they will also be the one to stop this invasion.

Not to mention in that timeline, they were inseparable allies who had eventually married the same man—Shen Ming, Haoran’s cousin and the rising star of that era.

But the presence of the third woman threw everything into chaos.

”Why the hell is Zhu Ziyan here!?” Xu Xiansu’s inner voice screamed in confusion. ”She wasn’t supposed to awaken her eyes yet! She should still be a nameless mercenary, struggling for scraps in the Grand Order Mercenary Guild! She shouldn’t have a demonic beast accompanying her, let alone be standing on the frontlines of a war involving Saints!”

However, before she could think even further, the scene shifted from awe to personal shock when she saw Huo Yue suddenly rush towards Shen Haoran.

There was no hesitation, no formal greeting that someone should have when meeting their cousin-in-law.

Instead, the ”Flame Empress,” known for her icy detachment and melancholic silence, tackled the Young Master of the Shen Clan.

She saw Huo Yue hug him with a desperate, crushing intensity, and she also saw Haoran hugging her back, his hands were placed firmly on her waist, pulling her flush against him in a way that looked incredibly intimate and practiced.

”W-What!?” Xu Xiansu shook, her knees nearly giving out.

For some reason, she felt a tightness in her chest she couldn’t quite explain, like a sharp, stinging pang of jealousy that tasted like bile...but that should be impossible.

”Why are they...? Why is she touching him like that?”

She looked around frantically, her gaze sweeping over the survivors and the reinforcements. ”No, where is Shen Ming? Your wife is hugging your cousin! Break them off! Where is the righteous hero who is supposed to claim her heart?”

She looked around, waiting for Shen Ming to appear from the sky, waiting for the ”proper” husband of the previous timeline to reclaim his bride... but he didn’t.

There was no sign of the man who was supposed to be the one who will enjoy the love of the future world’s strongest woman.

”No... what happened? Where is he?” A cold realization began to dawn on her, one that made her blood run cold. ”This... this is... Could this world be where Shen Ming didn’t exist? And Haoran’s engagement to Huo Yue wasn’t broken by her fall from grace?”

The implications were catastrophic.

If Shen Ming was absent, then the balance of power in the world was entirely skewed.

In the future, it was him and Huo Yue who will eventually caused the massive Shen Clan to collapse, causing them to scatter, with Haoran forming his own sect in the Vast Wilderness by conquering various forces!

”No, no, no, no!” Xu Xiansu’s thoughts became a frantic mantra. ”Huo Yue cannot be with Haoran! That man is evil! The personification of selfishness and cruelty! He is a black hole that consumes everything around him! Huo Yue will suffer if she stays with him! She’s too pure, too noble for a monster like that!”

A dark, twisted thought began to sprout in the recesses of Xu Xiansu’s mind, born from her own trauma and the confusing tides of her reincarnation.

If Haoran were to marry someone, then it can only be her!

Xu Xiansu stared at the two, her eyes burning with a possessive, manic light.

After all, she has a divine physique, the Sun Moon Physique, and she can take all sorts of abuse that Haoran will put her through!

She is the only one strong enough to survive him, the only one who can endure his darkness without being extinguished!

She clenched her fists so hard they turned white, her nails drawing blood from her palms.

However, despite her inner turmoil, she simply stared at them, never taking her eyes off the couple.

She was angry, yet she was powerless, and can only watch the man she hated, and perhaps secretly coveted, hold another woman.

*

*

*

In the center of the charred battlefield, the world seemed to have gone quiet as the roars of the dying barbarians and the crackle of the flames were merely background noise to the two people standing together.

”It seems you’ve changed,” said Haoran.

He didn’t pull away, his golden eyes scanning Huo Yue’s face with a rare, genuine softness.

He could feel the tremors in her body, the raw emotion vibrating through her.

Huo Yue broke the hug just enough to look into his eyes, and she smiled at him. It was a smile that would have shocked anyone who had known her over the last few years.

”People change when they encounter hardships, don’t they?” she whispered.

She stared at him, and in that moment, she finally felt like there were only the two of them that existed in the world.

The millions of giants, the cowering nobles, and the shifting political tides of the Central Region were all irrelevant.

’Ah, I’m finally back.’ she thought sweetly.

Ever since her master, Liu Ruyan, was captured and taken by those people from the Shadow Hall, Huo Yue had always felt like she was being consumed by a creeping, cold darkness.

It was a void that made it hard for her to even sleep, a constant weight on her chest that felt like stone.

Although Medusa and Ziyan were always there supporting her, acting as her sisters and her shield, she still found it hard to even smile, as if her heart had long since turned into a fortress of ice.

The only thing that kept her going through the nights of agony was revenge, and her dreams of one day seeing Haoran again in the Imperial academy.

He has become her northern star, the only light she had left to follow so she wouldn’t lose her way in that darkness.

Every night, in the quiet of her tent or the dampness of a cave, she had imagined herself reuniting with Haoran.

And these weren’t just simple dreams of a maiden; they were the desperate, feverish visions of a woman pushed to the edge.

She had imagined sharing an incredibly passionate moment with him, one that would burn away the cold of her loneliness.

She wanted him to take her until she was swollen, until the pain and the pleasure erased her memories of the war.

She wanted him to claim her until she couldn’t walk, until her limbs were numb and her mind was a blank slate of ecstasy.

She wanted him to mark her so thoroughly that even her soul would bear his sigil.

She wanted him to drive her until her head hurt, until her cheeks were red with a permanent flush, until her neighbors knew his name from the sheer intensity of her cries.

She wanted to lose herself in him until her eyes rolled back and stayed there, until her throat memorized every vein on his skin, until her hears memorizes the heartbeat in his chest.

She wanted to be unified with him until the healers thought he had changed her red blood cells to white, until they made the next ocean with the depth of their union.

She wanted him to change her DNA to his, to make her an extension of his own being.

She was so obsessed that she felt like her very body was crying out for him, not wanting him to leave until her holes started speaking to him in morse code.

With every passing night, she had grown even more desperate and obsessive.

The isolation had twisted her love into something fierce, possessive, and nearly insane.

She felt like a parched traveler who had finally found the only oasis in an infinite desert.

And now, they were finally reunited.

The heat of his body was real, the gold of his eyes was real, that golden hair was real, that tall, masculine build was real.

Huo Yue tightened her grip on his robes, her breath hitching as she looked up at him.

At this moment, it was as if she didn’t care about the war anymore, as if she couldn’t care less about the region.

She only cared about the man who held her waist, and the fire that was finally, after so many years, beginning to melt the ice around her heart.