Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Xie Ji sat on the opposite side of a smooth, meticulously polished stone table in the center of the peach blossom courtyard, his bamboo broom leaning quietly against the stone bench.

Shen Haoran sat directly across from him, his posture exuding a pristine, effortless nobility that seemed to command the very air within the residential district.

Directly behind Haoran’s broad shoulders, Huo Yue, Zhu Ziyan, Ning Xueli, and the rest of the formidable vanguard stood in a silent, dense perimeter, their sharp eyes locked onto the senior cultivator.

The pink petals of the hundred-year-old peach trees drifted lazily through the atmosphere, landing softly upon the dark wood and stone, yet the ambient peace of the garden could not mask the intense, undercurrent friction of the meeting.

”You said you wanted to take my Falling Blossom Villa?” Xie Ji asked, his gentle brown eyes narrowing slightly as his spiritual perception ran a clinical sweep over the golden youth’s frame as a calm, slightly skeptical line pulled at his lips. ”Juniors, if you truly desire to possess this property, you can easily go and bid for it through the official auction channels. I can lead you there.”

”Senior, you must surely be joking with us,” Haoran chuckled smoothly, his voice a low, melodic drone that held absolutely zero panic or hesitation.

He lazily rested his forearm against the stone table, his golden pupils reflecting the amber sunlight filtering through the branches.

”We are merely newly arrived freshman students who only entered this place just earlier this day. Where would a group of newcomers like us suddenly obtain the massive volume of Dao Points required to outbid the wealthy senior factions in a public auction?”

Haoran paused, his eyes blinked as he suddenly thought of something.

Then, a slow, calculated smirk playing on his lips before he casually raised his right hand, making a brief, elegant motion with his fingers to beckon someone forward from the rear ranks.

”Besides, I should clarify the nature of our request, Senior Xie Ji. This grand villa is not actually meant to serve as a residence for myself, nor is it meant for the core members of my clan. It is actually meant for this young lady standing right here... Xu Xiansu.”

Xu Xiansu violently blinked her distinct orange eyes, her entire body freezing in place for a fraction of a second.

She pointed a slender finger directly at her own chest, her jaw almost dropping open in pure, unadulterated bewilderment as she stared dead at the back of Haoran’s head.

’What in the hell is this monster planning now?!’ her mind screamed in a frantic, silent confusion.

She doesn’t believe that he really wanted this villa to be hers. He’s not that kind, and if she’s wrong, she’d gladly strip and climb to his bed once again!

”Her?” Xie Ji turned his head, his brown eyes staring intently at Xu Xiansu’s simple, unadorned disguise, carefully measuring the volatile, but hidden purity of her qi and foundation.

”Yes,” Haoran nodded his head with an absolute, seamless gravity, his expression turning into a mask of deep concern. ”You see, Senior, the rest of us all originated from remarkably prominent, wealthy noble households within the upper provinces, so we naturally already possess ancestral residences and faction palaces established inside this pocket dimension by our lineage seniors.”

Hm? The Ten Crowns stared at him, confused.

Even the girls couldn’t help but looked at him in disbelief.

”But our dear companion, Xu Xiansu, happens to possess a remarkably fierce, unyielding pride. She absolutely refuses to live beneath our shadow or rely on our family wealth, and she doesn’t want to live within our residences.”

Xu Xiansu glared at him. What do you mean!? Believe it or not, if you really have a residence here and you invited, I would swallow my pride and live with you!

She doesn’t mind even he asked her for sexual favors in exchange! Anyways, it’s not like it’s her first time!

”Therefore, as her dedicated companions, we decided to step out into the city sectors to search for an independent, safe place where she can peacefully stay during her tenure here.”

Haoran motioned for Xu Xiansu to come to him once again, and after hesitating for a moment, she walked over to him.

At that moment, Haoran immediately pulled her down to sit beside him.

”A senior of mine, who is also a student here had told me about how you have successfully reached the graduation baseline, how you are preparing to leave the academy, and how you are currently auctioning off your beautiful villa. Hearing that, we decided to come here directly and give it a try.”

Of course, every single syllable that had just escaped Haoran’s mouth was an absolute, unadulterated, and beautifully woven lie.

What senior?

What ancestral campus residence?

The supreme Shen Clan was so thoroughly, colossally arrogant that their elders couldn’t even be bothered to send their elite disciples to study inside this institution for the past several generations, preferring to train their monsters within their own private realm and exclusively owned minor realms.

Where would Haoran have an older senior student sitting inside the city sectors to take him in?

Not to mention the other prominent members of their group—such as Luo Mingye and Xia Mengyao—their situations were even more barren.

They were literally the absolute first members of their respective clans and sects to successfully pass the enrollment trials in hundreds of years, meaning their factions possessed zero historical footprint or real estate connections inside this pocket dimension.

The remaining girls, like Huo Yue and the others, originated entirely from the lower realms or the Cardinal Regions, meaning they possessed absolutely zero ancestral backing within the capital academy.

Xie Ji stared deeply into Haoran’s liquid gold eyes, attempting to locate a single twitch of deception, but the youth’s mind was an absolute iron wall.

Slowly, the senior disciple shook his head from side to side, a firm, apologetic sigh escaping his lips. ”You are indeed a remarkably good and fiercely loyal friend to your companion, junior. However, like I have already stated before, the rules are the rules. If you truly want to secure the deeds to this villa, you must find a way to bid for it at the bank. I also desperately need a massive amount of portable resources and high-tier spirit items to sustain my path when I finally leave this dimension and return to the harsh realities of the outside world.”

Hmm, how persistent. Should I just take it by force?

Well, let’s give it another try, if it still doesn’t work, then...

”Senior, I completely understand your material needs,” Haoran spoke softly, his tone lowering into a deeply somber, emotionally charged register that would have made the finest actors of the capital weep with envy.

He leaned forward slightly across the stone table, his golden eyes locking straight into Xie Ji’s brown pupils.

”But I ask you to just consider the absolute, heartbreaking gravity of her situation before you close your doors on her fate. You see...”

What followed next was an absolutely legendary, incredibly long, and meticulously detailed tragic backstory that Haoran completely, flawlessly manufactured on the spot to make Xu Xiansu appear as the single most pitiful, star-crossed, and thoroughly miserable human being to ever walk the surface of the Prime Origin Realm.

”Xu Xiansu was born under an absolute, blood-soaked curse of tragedy,” Haoran began, his voice dropping into a low, mournful whisper that seemed to cause the peach blossoms to fall faster. ”When she was merely a three-year-old child sleeping in her cradle, her entire ancestral clan was brutally slaughtered by a rogue demonic sect in a single night of fire and ash, and she became the lone survivor, left to crawl through the burning ruins of her home.”

Xu Xiansu’s eyes widened. What do you mean? You want to make me an orphan?! Shen Haoran, you bastard!

You’re the orphan! You’re family was the one that was slaughtered?

”After that, she was taken in by a blind, impoverished grandfather who had to beg for common rice gruel just to keep her small body from starving to death in the winter ditches.”

Behind his back, everyone of them all simultaneously froze in absolute, paralyzed shock.

Their eyes widened into massive circles of pure, unadulterated dumbfoundment as they listened to his flawless delivery.

But Haoran didn’t stop for a single secondn as he layered the tragedy with a clinical, sociopathic precision.

”And just when she reached the age of ten, right as she finally managed to began cultivating,” Haoran continued, his face full of a deep, sorrowful solemnity, ”her beloved blind grandfather contracted a horrific, soul-rotting plague that slowly turned his bones to ash.”

Well, fuck you to! Xu Xiansu cursed. Even in your story you want to make me suffer huh!?

”Then, to buy a single spiritual herb to save his life, this young girl spent three uninterrupted years working as a common slave in a black iron mine, pulling heavy carts through the dark until her small hands were permanently covered in bloody scars.”

Xie Ji turned towards Xu Xiansu, whose head was lowered and trembling(with anger). He couldn’t help but think that she was probably remembering all those tragedies that she experienced.

He couldn’t help but shot Shen Haoran an annoyed look, as if chastising him for bringing up bad memories.

But Haoran acted as if he didn’t noticed and continued.

”Every single night, she would weep under the cold moon, praying to the heavens for a single sliver of mercy... but the heavens remained entirely silent. The day she finally saved enough coins to purchase the medicine and ran back to her village... her grandfather had already passed away three days prior, his body left to rot in the cold mud.”

Xu Xiansu remained perfectly frozen beside his shoulder, her orange eyes wide with an absolute, mind-shattering horror as she listened to Haoran describe her fabricated childhood of mine-slavery and rotting grandfathers.

Her cheeks flushed with a deep, burning embarrassment, her fingers trembling within her sleeves as she desperately resisted the psychological urge to violently summon her saber and stab him through the spine for destroying her dignity.

”She has survived on nothing but pure, unadulterated willpower,” Haoran concluded, his voice falling into a final, dramatic hush. ”She climbed the gravity steps of this academy with broken bones and bleeding feet, entirely driven by a single, desperate desire to find a quiet, peaceful sanctuary where she can finally rest her scarred soul without being hounded by the cruel winds of fate.”

Ning Xueli snorted in her mind, remembering the sufferings she endured to climb the stairs in Bright Silver Emperor inheritance realm.

She was literally crawling while bleeding back then.

”Senior Xie Ji... look upon these peach blossoms. Do they not remind you of the fragile peace she has spent her entire life bleeding to achieve? If you throw her back out into the savage, faction-ruled streets of this dimension without a roof over her head... her path will be completely destroyed by the beasts of the city.”

Haoran stared at Xie Ji, whose head was lowered.

He was about to say something when Xie Ji suddenly looked up, his eyes red and tears falling from his eyes.

He was literally bawling his eyes out!

The 150-year-old Nirvana Rebirth expert was sitting on his stone bench with his shoulders violently shaking, massive, crystalline tears pouring down his weathered cheeks like twin waterfalls.

He completely threw his dignity as a senior to the pavement, lifting his wide gray sleeves to his face as he let out a series of loud, heartbreaking sobs that echoed across the entire affluent district.

”Y-You... My god, you... You have suffered such an absolutely, unimaginably horrific amount of misery!” Xie Ji blubbered out loud, his voice cracking completely as he looked toward Xu Xiansu with an expression of profound, primitive pity. ”In my entire one hundred and fifty years of living and cultivating across this pocket dimension, this is truly, honestly the absolute first time I have ever heard of a young child experiencing a fate so thoroughly, devastatingly pitiful! And I am a commoner who grew up in the slums, I thought I knew what suffering looked like! Waaaah!”

He sobbed uncontrollably, his tears soaking the front of his gray robes.

Behind Haoran’s back, his entire circle stood completely, utterly dumbfounded, their expressions completely blank as they stared at the weeping senior master.

’Well, holy damn... he actually believed every single word of that absolute garbage story?’ every single one of them thought simultaneously, their minds experiencing a profound sense of cognitive dissonance.

Haoran, however, merely kept his expression perfectly steady and calm.

Within the deep, analytical sectors of his mind, he quickly realized that this absurd, logic-defying reaction wasn’t actually a testament to the quality of his improvised acting skills at all.

Rather, it was the absolute, physical manifestation of Xu Xiansu’s Protagonist Halo taking direct, active effect on the environment.

As the primary female protagonist chosen by the heavens themselves, the underlying laws of destiny would naturally, permanently warp the minds of nearby neutral NPCs, forcing them to experience an overwhelming surge of sympathy, luck, and generosity toward her path whenever a tragic narrative baseline was presented to their ears.

Haoran had simply weaponized her own narrative armor to secure the prize.

”Alright! Enough weeping!” Xie Ji suddenly stood up from his stone bench, wiping his tear-stained face with a heavy flick of his gray sleeves as his qi forcefully re-asserted its dominance.

He locked his brown eyes onto Xu Xiansu’s confused face, his expression turning into a line of absolute, unyielding determination.

”I have made my final decision! I will completely and willingly give out the absolute ownership deeds of this Falling Blossom Villa to your path for free, on one single, non-negotiable condition! You must step forward, engage in a clean martial spar against me, and definitively prove to my soul that you possess the strength required to protect this beautiful sanctuary from the bloodthirsty factions after I leave!”

”Eh? Oh. Um. Okay.”

Although Xu Xiansu was admittedly still a bit profoundly confused, embarrassed, and psychologically scarred by the horrific backstory Haoran had just gifted to her lineage, her sharp, analytical mind immediately realized the immense, absolute political importance of securing this high-tier villa as their official base of operations.

Without a single second of hesitation, she stood up and took a sharp step forward, her orange eyes clearing into a line of absolute, unbending focus as her qi stabilized around her ankles.

She cupped her hands firmly toward the senior master, her voice rising with a clear, resonant clarity.

”Very well then, Senior Xie Ji! I completely accept your condition! Let us fight!”