Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Just then, the towering, mountain sized holographic projection of Venerable Sky Cloud raised his wrinkled right hand towards the high heavens.

The movement was slow, deliberate, and carried the absolute, unyielding authority of a respected rank 10 Master Teacher, and 8th Stage Heavenly Saint realm expert.

The moment his fingers uncurled, the brilliant golden radiance of the array suddenly vanished, and the entire world turned pitch-black in a single, terrifying instant.

This was not a mere absence of light, instead, it was a total, absolute erasure of sensory input.

The continent-sized white field, the surrounding mountain peaks, and the physical presence of the other cultivators were completely swallowed by an unnatural, suffocating twilight.

”The second trial of the Imperial Academy: the Thousand Life Illusion! All of you, regardless of your bloodline or your ancestral backing, will now instantly fall beneath the weight of this ancient formation and undergo thousands of recursive reincarnations within a fraction of a mortal breath.”

”Remember, your ultimate goal is not to ’win’ or conquer any specific life within the dreaming worlds. You only have to keep your Dao Heart completely steady, pristine, and unwavering across all the illusion worlds.”

”Whether the shifting wheels of fate dictate that you become a supreme sovereign dominating an empire, a broken beggar dying in a frozen alley, a peerless heavenly genius praised by the masses, or a miserable cripple with shattered meridians... whether you are deeply loved by a thousand sects or brutally betrayed by your closest blood relations... whether you wallow in limitless wealth or find yourself utterly powerless against the storms of reality... you must absolutely not lose your true self, nor can you ever abandon your core convictions.”

”To succeed in this trial, you must be able to instantly, flawlessly distinguish the flickering illusions of the dream from your own true self. Your fundamental beliefs and your relentless pursuit of the Dao must never depend on your temporary social status or your physical comfort. You do not become arrogant in times of prosperity, nor do you ever fall into a state of hopeless despair during times of suffering. You must maintain an absolute, ironclad determination, pristine clarity, and unbreakable willpower through countless lifetimes of joy and sorrow.”

”The trial will be considered successfully complete when your soul explicitly proves that your heart remains entirely unwavering beneath the weight of time. The fundamental point of this selection is to show the academy that external circumstances cannot shake your Dao Heart, because becoming an Immortal requires a sovereign mind that remains perfectly stable, aloof, and anchored no matter what twisted fate presents to your path.”

”Now... prepare your souls!”

The old sage’s final warning reverberated through the empty void like a crashing thunderclap.

Right before the darkness completely consumed his sensory perception, Shen Haoran turned his head slightly, casting a deep, unhurried look toward Huo Yue.

The crimson-haired young woman returned his gaze with an intense, absolute understanding, and the two of them gave each other a slow, synchronized nod of mutual trust.

They didn’t need words, that simple gesture is enough for them to know what the other is thinking.

At last, in that exact moment, the last thread of reality snapped, and everything turned completely, utterly black.

*

*

*

The scent of damp parchment and cheap ink filled his senses.

He opened his eyes to see a small, cramped room lit by a single, sputtering tallow candle.

His hands were thin, pale, and calloused from years of gripping a bamboo brush, and in this life, his name was not Shen Haoran.

He had absolutely no memory of an immortal clan, a golden-haired mother, or a peerless black sword named Azathoth.

He was merely a nameless, impoverished scholar living in a backwater imperial prefecture, preparing for the grand civil examinations for the seventh consecutive year.

Outside his paper window, the wealthy young masters of the city rode past on fine horses, wrapped in luxurious furs, their laughter mocking the silent squalor of his district.

Yet, as he looked down at his inkstone, a profound, unexplainable feeling, something deeply, inextricably buried within the absolute marrow of his soul, began to call out to him.

It was a silent, unyielding demand for total supremacy.

He did not know why, but as he stared at the words written on the page, he felt an innate, cold disdain for the luxury of the nobles.

He did not envy their wealth, nor did he despair over his own hunger, instead, his mind remained completely, impeccably calm.

He dipped his brush into the dark ink and began to write, his strokes was so sharp, so focused and absolute that the paper itself seemed to tremble with a silent, conceptual weight.

He did not seek a comfortable government post to escape his poverty, but what he sought was to master the absolute essence of knowledge itself.

When the examinations came, his essays did not flatter the court; they dictated a perfect, unyielding order that forced the imperial examiners to bow their heads in awe.

He had conquered the system not through a desire for comfort, but because his heart demanded absolute perfection in all things.

Then, the candle flickered out, and his consciousness dissolved into thin air.

*

*

*

The world reset, and all memories of the scholar vanished into the void.

He awakened to the roaring, blistering heat of a smelting furnace, the metallic tang of molten iron filling his lungs.

He was a blind blacksmith, his eyes completely scarred by a freak explosion of forge-fire during his youth.

He lived in a lawless border town where mercenaries and bandit lords ruled through raw, chaotic violence.

His body was covered in thick scars, and his hands were heavy and rough from decades of swinging a massive iron hammer against the anvil.

Every day, arrogant warlords would stride into his smoky forge, throwing bags of stolen spirit stones onto his table and demanding he forge weapons of slaughter for their campaigns.

They threatened his life, mocked his blindness, and treated him like a common tool of their ambitions.

But the blind blacksmith merely stood behind his forge, his expression completely flat, aloof, and unbothered by their weapons or their threats.

He could not see the light of the sun, yet deep within the absolute core of his darkness, that same ancient, familiar voice was calling out to him.

It was a silent, primordial mandate for absolute supremacy over the metal.

He did not forge for the gold, nor did he forge out of fear for his life.

Whenever his hammer struck the hot steel, he was pouring his entire willpower, his determination, and his pursuit of an absolute, perfect form into the iron.

He could feel even the tiniest of flaws within the crystalline structure of the metal through the vibrations of his tongs, and his hammer corrected them with a flawless, space-cutting precision.

The weapons he birthed were so structurally perfect that they could slice through the spiritual armor of the sect masters like wet parchment.

When a rogue general tried to force him into slavery at the edge of a blade, the blind blacksmith simply raised his common forge hammer.

Without a single thread of panic or hesitation, he swung it in a clean, casual downward arc, the sheer, unadulterated velocity of his strike shattering the general’s sword and his chest into fine powder.

He did not become a warlord himself after that feat; he simply went right back to his anvil, his mind perfectly stable, calm, and detached from the chaos of the outer world.

The forge fire violently exploded into a blinding white light, and his mind plunged back into the dark.

*

*

*

Every trace of the smith was wiped clean from his soul.

He opened his eyes to find himself lying on a cold, filthy straw mat inside a damp, stone dungeon.

His legs were completely useless, his knees shattered, and his primary meridians were thoroughly, brutally severed by a jagged iron blade.

In this life, he had been born as the first prince of a grand kingdom, a peerless military genius who had won a hundred campaigns, only to be completely betrayed by his closest ministers and his own blood brother during a palace coup.

They had stripped him of his titles, crippled his cultivation, and thrown him into the deepest dark of the earth to rot in obscurity.

Through the iron grates of his cell, he could hear the distant, joyous music of his brother’s coronation feast playing in the upper courtyard.

The guards would regularly walk past his cell, spitting on his tattered clothes, tossing him rotting scraps of bread, and mocking his fallen state.

”Look at the great general prince now,” a guard laughed, kicking the iron bars. ”A useless worm who can’t even stand up to greet his superiors.”

Any ordinary man, any standard genius of the sects, would have completely surrendered to a toxic, consuming despair, their minds breaking under the sheer psychological weight of such a rapid, brutal fall from grace.

They would have wept for their lost luxury, or allowed hatred to warp their souls into something pathetic.

But the crippled prince merely sat against the stone wall, his breathing slow, rhythmic, and incredibly steady.

He did not weep, he did not even curse the heavens, and as always, his face remained an unreadable mask of absolute calmness.

Even though his physical memories were entirely gone, something deeply, inextricably buried within the fundamental essence of his soul, something far older and more absolute than the kingdom itself, was actively humming with a terrifying intensity.

It was a silent, unyielding call for supremacy that did not care about the broken state of his bone structure or the severing of his channels.

He closed his eyes and began to breathe, his mind entirely ignoring the rotting bread and the insults of the guards.

If his physical meridians were destroyed, he would use his sheer, unadulterated willpower to command the ambient spiritual energy of the earth to circulate directly through his bones and his flesh, bypassing the traditional pathways entirely.

Day after day, month after month, he sat in the dark, his determination remaining as sharp and absolute as a sovereign’s blade.

He did not seek revenge out of a petty, emotional hatred; he sought to reforge his existence simply because his soul refused to occupy a lower tier of reality.

By the time his brother finally came down to the dungeons to personally mock his corpse, the crippled prince simply looked up.

His gold-tinted eyes flare with a sudden, conceptual pressure that violently caused the spatial fabric of the dungeon to buckle.

Without a single word, the sheer density of his concentrated willpower alone caused the iron bars to disintegrate into dust and his brother’s heart to instantly stop beating from sheer, instinctual terror.

The dungeon walls collapsed into a grey, formless ash, and his consciousness was violently pulled back into the infinite wheel of Samsara.

*

*

*

Lifetime after lifetime, the illusion had turned the wheels of destiny for him.

He became a traveling merchant swindled of his last coin, a nameless monk meditating on a silent mountain peak for eighty years, a pampered young master who lost his entire clan to a sudden demonic raid, and a common soldier dying on a nameless battlefield.

In every single descent, his active memories were completely wiped clean, forcing him to face the world entirely naked, stripped of his titles, his techniques, and his weapons.

Yet, no matter how brutal the suffering, no matter how seductive the prosperity, and no matter how completely the external circumstances tried to warp his mind, the result was always exactly the same.

The external world could not grasp or alter the absolute core of his identity, because deep within the hidden sanctuary of his soul, a silent, sovereign flame was permanently burning, a conceptual anchor that naturally rejected the illusions of status, comfort, or despair.

He did not become arrogant when he ruled from a jade throne, nor did he ever surrender to fear when he was cast into the mud.

His Dao Heart remained a flawless, mirror-like canvas that reflected the world without ever being stained by its dirt.

*FLASH!*

Suddenly, a massive, recursive fracture rippled across the black sky of the illusion.

The thousands of dreaming worlds began to violently stutter, shake, and crack open like fragile glass panels under an immense, internal pressure.

Within the deep void of his consciousness, the thousands of scattered fragments of his lifetimes began to rapidly, fluidly merge back into a single, magnificent tapestry of absolute gold light.

His gold-tinted eyes snapped open, the deep golden luminescence of his pupils instantly fracturing the illusionary darkness into millions of glowing particles as his true, unvarnished memories came rushing back into his mind like a roaring river of stars.

He was not a scholar, a smith, or a broken prince.

He was Shen Haoran, the sole heir of the strongest Immortal Clan, the master of the Law of Absolute Severance, and the man who stood at the precipice of the final throne.

The Thousand Life Illusion had failed to leave a single scratch upon his soul; his heart was as unyielding and stable as the eternal heavens themselves.