Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

”Sister Yue,” Zhu Ziyan suddenly jumped down from the winged white tiger, her boots thudding softly against the cracked, heat blasted earth as she walked toward the couple.

Her expression was a mixture of relief and cautious urgency, her animalistic eyes scanning the horizon even as she approached.

Huo Yue frowned and turned toward her, her grip on Haoran’s robes tightening for a fleeting second before she regained her composure.

The intimate bubble that had surrounded them for a moment was pierced by the reality of the battlefield, a stark reminder that they stood in the center of an elemental meat grinder.

Zhu Ziyan was about to speak, perhaps to warn them of the shifting energy she sensed in the air, but at that moment, the world suddenly shook.

It wasn’t a mere tremor; it was a violent, tectonic displacement that nearly threw everyone to their knees.

Korgar, the giant chief whose aura was now a sharp, sickening violet after his forced ascension, had finally adjusted to the crushing weight of the Rainbow Scaled Divine Serpent.

Then with a roar that sounded like the sky itself was being torn in half, he broke free from Medusa’s coils.

Medusa roared and tried to fight back, but his massive hands, now glowing with the unstable power of a Saint, reached out with blinding speed, grabbing Medusa by her gargantuan tail.

”DIE! YOU OVERGROWN LOACH!”

With the strength of a dying sun, he began slamming her around the ground, with each impact causing a catastrophe.

The earth was completely pulverized, causing massive craters the size of continents to open up in the Eastern Region, with some Medusa’s scales getting blown off.

Mountain ranges were flattened in seconds, and the shockwaves sent plumes of dirt and magma high into the atmosphere.

”S-Shit! Retreat!”

”Run! Or we will all die here!”

”Forget the war! We must protect ourselves!”

And at that moment, Humans and giants alike, who had been locked in a bitter struggle moments ago, immediately started to flee.

The concepts of ”ally” and ”enemy” vanished, replaced by the primal instinct to survive.

They ran in every direction, desperate to avoid being caught up in a battle between two titans whose every movement was an act of planetary destruction.

”DIE!” Finally, Korgar slammed Medusa one last time, pinning her down.

Medusa struggled to move, her entire body screaming in pain as Korgar stood tall, his head literally brushing the upper atmosphere.

Then, he raised his hand toward the sky and pulled, his fingers hooking into the very fabric of space and gravity.

A second later, a sight of absolute horror manifested: an entire star that dwarfed thousands of planets was suddenly pulled down to his palm through a spatial rift.

The sky was instantly bleached white, as the temperature rose to a level that defied the laws of physics.

The entire place started to melt—the stones turned to liquid, the metal of fallen weapons evaporated into gas, and those weaker Cultivators who hadn’t escaped in time were suddenly turned to ashes, their bodies consumed before they could even utter a scream.

At that moment, the star in Korgar’s hand suddenly twitched, and at the very core of it, a Three Legged Golden Crow was looking confused.

Earlier, high above the skies, this Three-Legged Golden Crow, one of the countless divine beast responsible for the sun’s cycle, who was peacefully sleeping after a long day of work, was suddenly startled awake.

Who can understand its pain? Since its birth, it had started working twelve hours a day, and at night when it is sleeping, it also has to act like a star in the sky!

The night was supposed to be be the moment where it can let go of all its worries, but now, right when it was starting to doze off, its home was suddenly drag down to earth!

Even a good natured Golden Crow like it has a temper!

However, before it could even utter a single cry or unleash its solar flare to defend itself, Korgar used the star as a literal weapon.

With the momentum that completely causes the space to distort, he slammed the star down toward Medusa’s head.

But Medusa, the Queen of the Desert who had touched the edge of sainthood in her beast form, would not go quietly.

Her eyes turned into prismatic suns as she suddenly fired a beam of rainbow-colored light that pierced through the core of the star, disrupting its gravitational stability and causing it to stop glowing instantly.

And at that moment, the solar fire died, revealing the broken, scorched corpse of the Golden Crow that had been peacefully sleeping within the star’s heart.

Medusa, her instincts overriding her human mind in her Primal Reversion state, bit the corpse of the divine bird and threw it to the side as if it were a piece of unwanted carrion, her focus solely on the giant before her.

At this moment, in the far corner of the battlefield, Xu Xiansu, who was still standing in the distance and glaring at Huo Yue with a heart full of twisted jealousy and unresolved trauma, suddenly blinked.

She looked up, and saw the massive, golden-feathered corpse of the Golden Crow that was thrown with such velocity as it landed right next to her.

The impact was so powerful it sent her flying hundreds of meters through the air like a ragdoll!

”Cough! Cough!”

She coughed violently, her lungs burning from the heat and dust as she was buried under piles of melting rocks.

Struggling, she slowly moved the heavy melting debris and stone that had fallen on top of her and looked up.

In that instant, her eyes widened, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks as she saw the mangled, glowing corpse of the Three-Legged Golden Crow resting just feet away.

Holy crap! Is my luck that good!?

She had just been worrying herself into a frenzy about how to awaken her Sun Moon Physique in this timeline without the proper resources, and now, the ultimate catalyst, the essence of the sun itself, had landed right in her lap!

If she didn’t know any better, she’d think she’s a protagonist in those mortal Cultivation stories that were rather popular.

She looked around frantically and realised that no one seemed to pay any attention to the Golden Crow.

The giants were screaming, the Spirit Hall elders were trying to maintain the city’s crumbling barriers, and everyone else seemed to be busy escaping the catastrophic fight between two god like beings.

To them at this moment, this corpse was likely just more debris to escape from, but to her, it was the key to the heavens.

She grinned, a manic, desperate light dancing in her eyes. ”Oh well, I’ll treat myself to some Golden Crow essence blood then. It seems the heavens want me to surpass you after all, Haoran.”

With that, she ignored the pain in her ribs and immediately ran toward the corpse, her hands already forming the seals to extract the divine blood.

Back to Haoran.

The golden youth stood unfazed by the heat, his Gold Incinerating Supreme Flame acting as a sovereign shield that pushed back the solar radiation.

He watched the titanic struggle between the serpent and the giant with the detached eyes of a scholar.

”It seems even an incomplete Saint like him can’t be beaten that easily,” said Haoran.

His voice was steady, though his hand remained firmly on Huo Yue’s waist, feeling the heat of her own flames.

”It seems so,” Huo Yue nodded, having finally calmed down after her emotional outburst while her eyes were fixed on the prismatic serpent. ”In her Primal Reversion state, Sister Medusa is comparable to a peak Nirvana Rebirth realm expert. Her scales can withstand the heat of a star, but Korgar’s strength is currently being fueled by the souls of millions. It is a battle of endurance now.”

At that moment, the wind whipped around them as the rest of the group arrived.

The Five Crowns, Xu Jingshan, Qian Yunxi, Jin Ci, Su Xishi, Bei Nu, Hun Ming, Shangguan Mu’er, and Lu Xinglan all appeared beside them, forming a circle of the empire’s most talented youth.

The Five Crowns and Shangguan Mu’er looked at Huo Yue with blatant curiosity as they saw the way Shen Haoran was putting his hand on her waist intimately, a gesture he had never shown to any woman in the Central Region, and they couldn’t help but wonder who she was.

Shen Ying, the alchemist of the Crowns, even frowned deeply.

Her spiritual perception was exceptionally sharp, and she could sense something impossible: four different kinds of Heavenly Flames were swirling within that girl’s body, harmonizing like a dangerous quartet.

But how is that possible?

Even the highest ranking Alchemist would find their body burned inside out the moment they even tried to fuse two Heavenly Flames!

To house four... her meridians must be made of divine iron.

’Is she also an alchemist?’ Shen Ying wondered silently, her eyes narrowing as she sniffed the air. ’No, she definitely is. I can smell the scent of ancient herbs and spirit-cleansing dew coming off of her. It’s baked into her skin.’

”Boss, who’s she?” Asked Shen Xun’er, her arms crossed as she eyed Huo Yue with territorial wariness.

”My fiancée,” said Haoran.

The word was simple, delivered with an absolute finality that made the surrounding air feel still.

”Eh?” Shen Xun’er blinked, her jaw nearly dropping as she turned fully toward Huo Yue and took in the girl’s elegant crimson red robes and her sharp, melancholic beauty. ”A peak Golden Core realm... boss lady, how old are you? You look like we’re in the same age.”

Huo Yue raised an eyebrow, a flicker of her old, sharp pride returning to her gaze. ”23. Why? Is that a problem?”

”No way... four years younger than me!?” Shen Xun’er stared at her in genuine shock.

She remembered when she was twenty three years old, and she haven’t even reached the peak of Golden Core realm back then.

And yet here was a girl that was probably from the backwaters of the Eastern Region who was only a few steps behind them despite having no Central Region resources.

Even the others, Qian Yunxi, Bai Wenxin, and Jin Ci, stared at her in shock.

Such a genius... how come they had never heard of her before?

A twenty-three-year-old at the peak of the Golden Core realm, fiancée of the greatest genius of the Shen Clan, just one of them would have been a sensation that reached the ears of the Emperor himself.

’She’s so young...is she also from the Central Region?’ Lu Xinglan whispered, her eyes filled with a new respect. ’As expected, even my daughter, the greatest genius of the Spirit Hall, can only be considered average when compared to these monsters.’

But at that moment, the conversation was cut short as the world once again trembled with a force that threatened to shatter the very bedrock of the continent as Medusa and Korgar clashed once again.

The serpent’s tail lashed out, shattering the giant’s shoulder, while Korgar’s fist buried itself in the serpent’s side, releasing a spray of prismatic blood that rained down like liquid diamonds.

The true battle was just beginning, and the Eastern Region was the anvil upon which their fates were being hammered.