Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

As Haoran moved through the crowds like a fluid, golden shadow, the trail of the grey-hooded woman led him further away from the vibrant, noisy central avenues.

He bypassed the guard perimeters and the shifting spiritual arrays effortlessly, his movement technique rendering him entirely invisible to the celebrating populace.

It didn’t take long for him to arrive at the rooftop of an exceptionally tall, monolithic building located at the northern edge of the inner ring, a vantage point that overlooked the entire illuminated city.

There, he saw the woman standing silently on the very edge of the stone parapet, her posture relaxed as she watched everything below—the exploding fireworks, the laughing commoners, and the shifting tides of mortal life.

”Who are you?” Asked Haoran, his voice low, flat, and filled with a dangerous, icy clarity that resonated across the empty rooftop.

The woman turned around slowly and smiled, a gesture that held an ancient, maddening weight.

At that exact moment, her tattered grey cloak started to dissolve into thin air, dissipating like smoke to reveal her true form beneath.

She was wearing a classical black chiton that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it.

She was incredibly, breathtakingly beautiful, possessing a countenance that completely caused the entire mortal world around them to dim and lose its luster.

Her long, flowing black hair resembled a living fragment of the deepest starry sky, with nebulas and cosmic dust shifting within the dark tresses.

Her eyes were two bottomless voids that seemed to contain the birth and death of an entire universe, and perched upon her brow was a golden laurel wreath that pulsed with a quiet, terrifying authority.

She chuckled softly at his tense posture, a sound like distant celestial bells. ”No one important, though, I guess technically speaking, within the ancient lineage of the primordial outer forces, I can be considered your daughter.”

Haoran’s brow furrowed into a sharp, cold line, his golden eyes scanning her presence for any recognizable intent. ”What are you talking about?”

She didn’t answer his question with words. Instead, she just casually waved her slender hand, and at that exact instant, a violent vibration shook Haoran’s spatial ring.

Before he could even react, the Black Imperial Sword, Azathoth, suddenly broke completely free from his ring, tearing through the spatial fabric and flying directly into her outstretched hand.

But at that terrifying instant, Haoran didn’t hesitate for a single microsecond.

”Give it back.” His eyes immediately turned cold as he reached into his storage ring, pulled out one of his prized Supreme Sword Intent Knives, and violently slashed at the woman in a fluid, continuous motion.

The entire world seemed to instantly lose its color, plunging into a stark, monochrome reality.

The full-blown attack of a Supreme Emperor’s concentrated sword intent was so dense, so unimaginably destructive, that it began distorting and tearing the very fabric of time and space on the rooftop, creating a localized vacuum of pure lethality.

However, the woman didn’t even blink. With an expression of casual amusement, she just casually swatted the incoming trajectory of the slash upwards with the back of her hand.

The catastrophic sword intent was effortlessly redirected; it traveled straight up into the high atmosphere, tearing through the clouds and launching into the deep void of space, where the shockwave caused countless distant stars to blink out of existence and disappear from the night sky!

But Haoran had already used the brief distraction to his advantage.

Moving with a velocity that defied the conceptual limits of speed, he had already appeared directly in front of her face.

His hand was already firmly grabbing the hilt of Azathoth, ripping it back toward his possession, while his other hand took out another Supreme Sword Intent Knife and slashed at her neck in absolute point-blank range.

But much to his profound shock, the woman didn’t move an inch. She simply raised her hand and cleanly grabbed the edge of the Supreme-tier knife with just two delicate fingers, stopping the planet-shattering momentum instantly, still with that serene, unchanging smile on her beautiful face.

”There is absolutely no need to be so violent, little one,” the woman chuckled softly, her cosmic eyes locking onto his golden pupils. ”For now, just relax your mind.”

Haoran frowned deeply, his muscles tensing as he prepared to detonate his core, but he suddenly found himself completely and utterly unable to move a single finger.

It wasn’t a restriction of strength; it felt as if space itself, along with the very concept of motion within this square mile, had been thoroughly locked down by an absolute authority.

The woman completely ignored his glare and turned her attention to the black steel of the weapon she had briefly held. ”So it really is.... How thoroughly fascinating. Whoever originally crafted this physical vessel was a certified genius of his era. Unfortunately, his mortal mind probably was entirely unable to handle the massive, recursive conceptual weight of Azathoth’s fragmented memories, forcing him to commit suicide to escape the madness... am I right, young master of the Shen Clan?”

Haoran didn’t bother to answer her speculation, his voice remaining a cold, dangerous drone as he repeated his initial question through his locked jaws. ”Just who the hell are you?”

”Well, I guess I should be Yog-Sothoth,” the woman smiled at him, her tone light and conversational. ”However, I personally don’t like the name, and since I’m just a second generation anyway, you may call me Nyx. Don’t worry yourself so much. I merely sensed the brief, violent awakening of Azathoth’s primordial fragment during your battle with that giant, and I decided to descend and check it out for myself. I’m not your enemy.”

She turned her attention back to the blade, her fingers tracing the smooth, light-absorbing steel. ”It has been tens of millions of years since that event. I truly can’t believe a clean, functional fragment of It still exists within a lower mortal dimension like this.”

She turned her head back towards Haoran, her gaze lingering on his golden hair and his hidden physiques. ”I wonder... if I were to simply devour you right now, like I previously did with the core of Yog-Sothoth, would my own primordial strength increase even further?”

However, just as those terrifying words left her lips, the Black Imperial Sword suddenly reacted on its own.

The blade vibrated violently, releasing a massive wave of sick, oily black liquid that erupted from the hilt.

Countless weeping eyes and toothy mouths tore open across the dark fluid, snapping and lunging forward as they tried to savagely gnaw at Nyx’s fingers, acting as if the weapon were instinctively protecting its chosen user from an external predator.

Nyx looked down at the snapping, eldritch mouths and chuckled softly, completely unbothered by the corruption creeping near her skin. ”My, my, how remarkably protective it has become.”

She completely ignored the spreading black liquid and turned her deep, universe-filled gaze back onto Haoran’s face, her eyes shifting with a sudden look of genuine intrigue. ”...Now that I’ve taken a proper, close look at the structure of your soul, you are indeed quite special, aren’t you? No, rather, you’re a complete, walking anomaly to the natural order. Just like Him back then during the dawn of the first creation.”

Him? Haoran thought, his mind noting the specific pronoun, but he kept his face expressionless and didn’t say anything aloud.

”Here. Take it back,” she said, casually handing the hilt of the sword back into his full possession.

The moment his fingers wrapped around the leather grip, the suffocating pressure vanished, and Haoran instantly felt that he was fully able to move his body again.

”That is a very, very good sword you have there. If you truly want to actually break through beyond the artificial restrictions and laws of this local world one day, this specific sword will be your absolute greatest asset—much more useful than your current Trinity Path or your Divine Physique.”

Haoran grabbed the sword firmly, stepping back a single pace as he stared at her with an intensely wary, calculating gaze.

He knew that an entity of this caliber didn’t move without a grand design. ”What exactly do you want from me? I don’t believe for a second that you’re only here to inspect a rusty sword. You wouldn’t bother wasting your breath talking and introducing yourself to a mortal otherwise.”

Nyx nodded in agreement, her golden laurel wreath shimmering under the starlight. ”True enough. At first, when my senses picked up the brief awakening of Azathoth’s fragment, my sole intention was to find it and immediately kill It before the chaos could spread and cause any real trouble for the outer sectors. But it seems the fragment has completely lost its ancient ego and primeval identity; it only houses its raw, basic will now, which has become completely and permanently bound to the parameters of your soul. So, I decided to just let it be. It’s harmless to all reality in this state.”

She then looked up, her gaze piercing past the atmosphere and staring into the invisible flows of energy that governed the continent. ”However, I am remarkably glad that I actually decided to descend and check it out, as I found this completely interesting, twisted reality. Something massive seems to be actively controlling, scripting, and manipulating this entire world from behind the curtain. Tell me, do you know what that specific entity is?”

”...The Heavenly Dao.” Haoran replied, his voice flat.

”Heavenly Dao... so that’s what it is called,” Nyx muttered, her fingers tapping against her chin as her eyes traced the invisible, golden threads of destiny that ran through the streets below. ”What an incredibly interesting, sick little place. Was it because He decided to completely stop interfering in the natural development of all physical reality that some minor, upstart consciousness wanted to seize the vacuum, gain artificial power, and play at being a god?”

He again, Haoran wondered, his analytical mind recording every single detail of her cosmic lore.

She then shook her head dismissively, breaking her line of thought before turning her full attention back towards Haoran’s figure. ”Well, looking at the structural lines of your future, it seems your chosen path won’t be smooth or easy, little anomaly. That Heavenly Dao seems to be a very troublesome, persistent thing to deal with. It has its eyes fixed on your extinction. So, keep that black sword always by your side, within arm’s reach; it will be your absolute greatest help if you one day choose to openly confront and butcher that thing.”

”This sword?” Haoran downcast his gaze, staring at the quiet, dark steel of Azathoth.

How can a fragment of a dead god threaten the consciousness of a world? It seems he had greatly underestimated this sword’s origin.

”Yes,” Nyx said, her voice turning sharp and serious for the first time. ”What the Heavenly Dao is currently doing in this sector is something that has been explicitly forbidden by the ancient laws of the Empyrean—that is, actively controlling, scripting, and manipulating the individual fates and choices of the world’s population through ’chosen ones’ instead of letting the species develop naturally on their own merits. It is a parasite pretending to be a law.”

”So, are you going to use your primordial power to fight the Heavenly Dao and punish it for breaking your Empyrean laws?” Asked Haoran, his eyes narrowing as he tested her boundaries.

Nyx shook her head, a cold, elegant laugh escaping her lips as she stepped back toward the edge of the roof. ”No. I have no interest in cleaning up the backyard of this sector. Not to mention that thing seems to have already completely integrated itself into the very core framework of this physical world, binding its survival to the local karma, fate, and destiny of the living populations. If I were to simply unleash my true form and destroy it from above, this entire reality, along with every single soul resting upon it, would get completely and thoroughly wrecked in the crossfire. So, for now, continue to do exactly what you have always done, little anomaly. Take the luck of the heavens directly from its chosen protagonists, shatter their pre-written scripts, and systematically weaken the core connection of the Heavenly Dao to the mortal plane. Only when its anchors are thoroughly severed can this world truly be free to walk its own path.”

Haoran remained silent. That’s what he planned to do anyway.

”Well, it seems I have overstayed my welcome.” Nyx hummed, ”Boy, your journey will be full of danger. So, take this as a little gift.”

She opened her palm and a glowing orb appeared before shooting towards Haoran’s forehead.

”That is a technique that allows you strike at someone, bypassing karma, fate, luck, or destiny.” She smiled at him, ”In other words, if you use that technique, you don’t have to worry about the retaliation of the Heavenly Dao, and you can directly kill those pests. Good luck, I’m watching you.”

With those final words echoing across the silent rooftop, the space around her form suddenly began to fracture into thousands of glittering, starlit pieces, her silhouette dissolving back into the infinite void before Haoran could even utter another word.