Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Time passed within the artificial boundaries of the illusion world, while ten full days quickly passed by in the outside world.

At that monumental moment, the spatial friction across the central field violently multiplied as the peak heirs and legacy successors of the core Immortal Lineages began to break out of the Thousand Life Illusion, one after another.

Their eyes snapped open, their primary dantians humming with a sudden, renewed density as they forced their consciousness back into the material plane, shaking off the weight of a thousand fragmented dreams.

Every single one of them, the moment they stabilized their breathing, immediately turned their heads toward the center of the field to locate their greatest rival, Shen Haoran.

To their absolute, collective shock, they saw him already sitting in a perfectly relaxed posture of deep meditation, the sheer stillness of his golden aura indicating that he had gotten out of the formation long before them.

Gu Xunyi, her purple robes rustling softly against the polished stone, walked directly beside his position.

She slowly crouched down on her knees, her magnificent purple hair swaying as she said absolutely nothing, just silently, intently watching his flawless side profile with a look of pure, unhinged academic fascination.

Haoran let out a long, weary sigh through his nose, his golden eyes opening slightly as he cast a flat, unbothered look at her face. ”What exactly do you want from me now, you crazy woman?”

”How long precisely have you been out of the formation, Haoran?” she asked, her red eyes dancing with a deep, burning curiosity that she couldn’t care to mask.

”Since the first day,” he said, his voice entirely calm, as if he were merely stating the most trivial, mundane fact in the world.

”Seriously!?” Gu Xunyi exclaimed out loud, her usual detached composure completely shattering for a fraction of a second as her voice echoed across the stones in pure, unadulterated shock and awe.

The other heirs of the Immortal Lineages who were silently listening in on their conversation from a distance were all thoroughly, deeply shocked to their absolute core.

Within their own minds, they had subconsciously assumed that he had only managed to break out at least a few hours or perhaps a day before their own awakening, which would have already been an incredible, and unattainable achievement for them.

In fact, if it’s three days like his mother and aunts, they will also find it understandable, after all, he was meant to be more talented than them.

But to hear that he had actually been sitting out here, completely unbothered, since literally day one?!

The gap between their paths was as wide as heaven and earth.

At that exact, terminal second, a sudden, explosive wave of pure, condensed crimson fire violently erupted into the air as Huo Yue’s aura suddenly flared out in all directions.

She had officially broken out of the illusion, becoming the first one outside of the Immortal Lineages to have done so!

She blinked her wine-red eyes a few times in rapid succession, her fingers tightening on her ruler as she slowly, fluidly realized that she was finally back within the physical boundaries of the capital.

She immediately looked straight at Haoran, a beautiful, brilliant smile gracing her lips the moment she saw him already out and was meditating.

If she knew him as well as she thought, then she can be sure that he had already broken out since the first day.

Then, she slowly turned her head to look around the vast perimeter, and her eyes narrowed slightly as she noticed that almost every single notable heir from the Immortal Lineages had already broken out and was staring at their position.

”Sister Yue, you’re finally out of the dream!” Gu Xunyi smiled brightly, her dramatic shock completely vanishing as she lunged forward and tightly hugged her red dressed sister around the shoulders.

Huo Yue just chuckled softly, casually patting the purple-haired girl’s back with one hand while her gaze remained fixed entirely on Haoran.

The golden youth had already stood up from his block of jade, stepping forward to offer her a warm, proud smile.

”So? What do you think of the trial of this academy?” he asked, brushing a stray lock of red hair away from her temple.

Huo Yue shrugged her slender shoulders, a lazy, confident smile playing on her lips. ”It was fine, honestly. But I must admit, keeping my dao heart stable through those shifting variables was a bit harder than I initially expected. The formation tried to turn me into a water cultivator three times. Yuck.”

She’d die before she become one of them Liquiders.

Haoran nodded his head in an understanding affirmation, his golden eyes sweeping over the remaining statues on the field. ”It will probably take at least twenty more days before this specific trial officially concluded. Let’s just sit down and meditate as we wait for the rest of our entourage to awaken.”

Huo Yue nodded her head in absolute compliance.

And just like that, following their supreme example, everyone from the elite clans who had already woken up and consolidated their minds simply sat back down on the stone field, entering a state of deep, synchronous meditation to pass the remaining days.

Three more days later, a sudden flurry of spiritual energy rippled across the staging ground as Zhu Ziyan, Ning Xueli, and Ling Luochen simultaneously broke out of the illusion, their eyes clearing as their respective beast-taming, sword, and ice affinities stabilized within their dantians.

Almost at the exact same second, the Third Prince, Xu Jingshan, and several other high-born scions of the central military houses have also successfully broken out of the illusion, their expressions filled with a deep, lingering exhaustion.

Two days after that wave, another localized storm of light, fire, and blood-qi erupted all the way at the front of the line as Qian Yunxi, Xia Mengyao, and Luo Mingye successfully broke out one after another, their porcelain faces pale but entirely unbroken.

The protagonist, Chu Yan, also broke out almost at the same time as them.

Finally, a full, uninterrupted month had officially passed since the trial first started beneath the skies of the capital, and the massive, reality-warping arrays of the Thousand Life Illusion were systematically, violently lifted from the field.

*Gasp!*

Those few remaining disciples who had managed to forcefully break out of the dreaming worlds at the absolute, terminal last moment were all sighing in massive, breathless relief, their bodies collapsing onto the stones in sheer exhaustion.

Meanwhile, those unfortunate thousands of students who hadn’t managed to clear their mental impurities before the timer concluded were completely devastated, their eyes empty, their foundations permanently stained by the artificial memories as the academy guards stepped forward to drag them away.

Finally, the mountain-sized holographic projection of Venerable Sky Cloud appeared once again across the northern horizon, his deep blue eyes casting a cold, unyielding gaze over the remaining ranks.

”Greetings those of you who are currently standing tall upon these stones, having successfully maintained the pristine clarity of your Dao Heart through the shifting weight of a thousand lifetimes... I offer you the official congratulations of the Imperial Academy. You have proven to the ancestors that your bones carry the initial markers of immortality.”

Those students who barely passed immediately smiled proudly, feeling that they are chosens for having passed the trial.

And, in some ways, it was true.

”However, to those thousands of weeping weaklings who are still crawling on the pavement, whose minds were thoroughly broken, deceived, or consumed by the shallow luxury and petty despairs of an artificial dream... your journey within these walls ends right here, right now. You are entirely unworthy of our inheritance. Gather your tattered bags, step down from the mountain, and leave these grounds immediately before the enforcement arrays forcefully erase your names from the capital registries!”

The surrounding courtyard was instantly filled with the desperate cries, angry shouts, and heartbroken weeping of the thousands of disqualified nobles and regional geniuses who had failed the mental baseline.

Many proud young masters from wealthy central clans were seen desperately begging the assistant instructors for a second chance, while others simply collapsed in a state of absolute, comatose shock as their dreams of capital glory were brutally turned to ash.

Haoran watched the chaotic display with a look of absolute, detached clinical coldness.

He scanned the remaining numbers with a brief sweep of his liquid gold eyes, noting that out of the initial, overwhelming sea of tens of thousands of elite students who had arrived at the outer gate a month ago, only around a single, highly refined thousand now remained physically standing on the field.

The academy had cleanly, ruthlessly sorted the chaff from the true iron.

The Venerable Sky Cloud continued his speech, his booming voice cutting through the remaining weeps like a thunderclap.

”Now, for those of you who have survived... prepare your minds for the third official trial of the selection process. The Dao Debate!”

At that absolute, precise fraction of a second, before anyone could even form a single question or draw a weapon, everyone suddenly felt the physical space around their coordinates getting violently twisted, sheared, and compressed by an invisible, cosmic hand.

The white field, the holographic projections of the sages, and the presence of their companions were cleanly wiped away within an instant.

Before they even knew what was happening to their sensory perception, they found themselves completely isolated, sitting alone in the center of a quiet, ancient, and windowless empty room.

The stone walls were lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of dusty, ancient books, unrolled bamboo scrolls, and glowing jade manual slips that radiated a deep smell of ancient ink and historic parchment.

Sitting directly in front of them across a simple wooden table was a solitary figure wrapped in the formal robes of the faculty, an unreadable, silent examiner whose deep eyes seemed to look straight into their souls.

At that moment, the disembodied, resonant voice of the Venerable Sky Cloud echoed hollowly within the tight boundaries of the stone room, delivering the parameters of the test directly to their consciousness.

”The third trial of our institution has officially begun. Within this isolated chamber of the mind, you must aggressively and flawlessly defend your fundamental understanding of your own core Dao before the elite Master Teacher sitting directly in front of your face.”

”Let this words be recorded into your thoughts: the strongest and most absolute Dao is not always the one that produces the loudest explosion or the most physically destructive technique. However... a true, sovereign Immortal Dao must be thoroughly and conceptually capable of convincing the unyielding consciousness of the world itself. If your words cannot even move a teacher, your dao will never pierce the heavens. Begin your defense!”

Haoran slowly adjusted his gold silk robes, sitting perfectly straight before the silent examiner across the table.

A cold, razor-sharp smirk slowly formed on his lips as his golden pupils flared with the absolute suppressing power of his Dao of Supremacy.

This trial is for him, not even a trial.

His dao was firm, his heart was steady.

Nothing can shake his resolve.

”Greetings, examiner.” He smiled, ”Shall we begin?”