Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The early morning light of Leaf Green City filtered gently through the grand, lattice-carved jade windows of the Falling Blossom Villa, casting a warm, amber glow across the polished dark wood of the central dining hall.

Huo Yue let out a long, heavy yawn that seemed to reverberate from the very depths of her core, slowly walking out of her private residential suite.

Her long, magnificent crimson hair was completely messy and uncombed, splaying wildly across the shoulders of her loose crimson nightrobes as she groggily dragged her feet across the pristine floorboards, making her way toward the large wooden dining table situated in the center of the room.

There, she saw the man-stealing Xu Xiansu and Zhu Ziyan already thoroughly awake and present, sitting quietly side-by-side on the long benches.

They were slowly drinking some high-grade, steaming spiritual tea and casually, meticulously messing around with the golden identity tokens of the Imperial Academy, their fingers tracing across the glowing silver arrays to shift the interfaces.

”Morning...” Huo Yue muttered in a low, raspy drone, finally finding an empty wooden seat to collapse into, and immediately let out another massive, unbridled yawn, rubbing her sleepy eyes with the back of her wide sleeve.

Xu Xiansu stopped her fingers, staring fixedly at the thoroughly messy, unkempt, and completely loose figure of Huo Yue sitting across from her.

Looking at the girl’s sleepy, unbothered posture, the princess couldn’t help but feel a profound, complicated sense of... ”something” swelling within the quiet sectors of her chest.

In her own mind, she unconsciously thought back to the future of that alternate timeline from her other self’s memories.

That memory painted a picture of a future Huo Yue who reigned across the Prime Origin Realm as the magnificent, terrifying Flame Empress, a sovereign entity whose absolute majesty and noble, unbending authority forced entire Immortal Lineages to fall to their knees in fear.

With the sole exception of Shen Haoran of course.

And now... she looked across the table and directly compared that legendary, unyielding empress to this lazy, groggy... woman who couldn’t even be bothered to comb or tie her hair before entering the kitchen.

Xu Xiansu let out a long, slow sigh of deep psychological exhaustion as she shook her head from side to side in absolute, silent bewilderment.

It truly seemed that the legendary historical figures she had admired in that other life just turned out to be completely, hilariously ordinary and relaxed behind closed doors when no enemies were around to be incinerated.

She shook her head forcefully once again, this time to clear her thoughts, her orange eyes returning to focus on the large, translucent blue holographic screen actively floating outward from the center of her identity token.

Just then, moving with a fluid, graceful motion, Zhu Ziyan quietly pushed a freshly poured, steaming cup of herbal tea across the dark wood, placing it gently right before Huo Yue’s resting hands.

”Thank you...” Huo Yue muttered.

Ziyan just smiled and sat back down, scrolling through the holographic screen once again.

”What’s that... what are you two actually doing right now?” Asked Huo Yue, her eyes blinking open as she lazily raised a single finger, pointing directly at the holographic screen hovering over the table.

”Reading the official news of the academy,” Said Xu Xiansu, her tone flat and objective.

”From that tiny little thing?” Huo Yue pointed her finger directly at the golden academy token resting on the wood, her brow raising in a trace of genuine curiosity. ”Doesn’t that simple device just display your basic biological information, cultivation realm, and your current balance of Dao Points?”

Xu Xiansu rolled her eyes in an absolute, long-suffering aristocratic annoyance, tapping the edge of the metal to shift the tabs.

”No, you blind fire maniac. There is a specific communication page built into the arrays of this screen which the academy called the Academy Forum, where any student can basically upload data, share information, and find out exactly what is currently happening across the multiple cities of this entire dimension.”

”Oh.” Huo Yue nodded her head in a slow, dazed understanding, reaching her hands out to pick up the warm cup and taking a slow, appreciative sip of the herbal tea. ”So? Is there actually any good news floating around the boards this morning?”

”Yeah, there is actually a major administrative update posted by the marketplace elders,” Xu Xiansu answered, her eyes scanning the scrolling text files. ”Apparently, the grand commercial auction where Senior Xie Ji was originally about to sell off the deeds of this very villa is still officially happening later tonight at the central bank.”

Huo Yue’s eyes lit up. Auction? She’s good at that! With her luck and eye for treasures, she can find a teash item no one wants and it will happen to be a peerless item!

Zhu Ziyan stared at her sparkling eyes and knew exactly what she was thinking.

”Yesterday, before our group stepped into his courtyard, this villa was explicitly supposed to serve as the main, ultimate item of the entire event. But since he voluntarily pulled the deeds to give them to us, the auction house elders had to frantically change the primary auction item into a legendary herb known as the Heart-Shaped Immortal Rose.”

”What!?”

Huo Yue’s entire body instantly, violently perked up, her red eyes widening into massive circles of absolute, burning intensity as her soul roared to life, all signs of sleepine disappearing.

Xu Xiansu and Zhu Ziyan blinked, looking startled as they stared at her, confused.

Huo Yue slammed her hands onto the table, leaning forward across the wood. ”Wait, did you just say the Heart-Shaped Immortal Rose?! Isn’t that exceptionally rare plant universally known as one of the absolute primary, non-negotiable core ingredients required to successfully refine the legendary Sacred Dragon Vitality Pill?!”

Zhu Ziyan and Xu Xiansu both simultaneously stared at each other through the rising steam of their tea, and then slowly, blankly shook their heads from side to side in absolute ignorance.

”I honestly have zero clue,” Zhu Ziyan murmured.

”Me too,” Xu Xiansu added, her tone completely dry. ”I am entirely unaware of that thing.”

After all, regardless of their immense generational talent and high-tier cultivation bases, neither of them were trained alchemists; they possessed absolutely zero knowledge regarding the complex, volatile recipes of high-grade medicine.

Even Xu Xiansu, who has the knowledge of her future alternate self, only has knowledge of alchemy that stopped at Rank 5.

Huo Yue abruptly stood up from her seat, her knuckles turning white as her fists clenched tightly against her sides, a torrent of pure, unadulterated professional excitement rolling off her skin.

”You two don’t understand the scale of this! That specific pill is a legendary, absolute Rank 7 Alchemical Pill that, upon consumption, temporarily grants the user the absolute, world-shaking physical capabilities and elemental attributes of a true, ancient dragon! It blankets your flesh in impenetrable dragon scales, erupts your lungs with absolute dragon fire breath, and multiplies your kinetic density by a hundredfold! According to the primordial legends, if a common mortal practitioner were to successfully take that pill into their core... they could literally wrestle against a true, biological divine dragon with their bare hands!”

She took an aggressive step toward the residential archway, her eyes burning with an intense fire. ”Now that I know that rose is sitting in the city vaults, I absolutely need to get to that auction house tonight and secure that ingredient for myself!”

”Good for you. Unfortunately, we don’t possess a single single single Dao Point,” Said Xu Xiansu, her voice dropping into a cold, clinical reality check that instantly pierced through the fire maniac’s excitement. ”Our current collective balance across the board is a perfect, absolute zero.”

The exact second that mathematical truth cleared the air, Huo Yue’s majestic aura instantly, visibly deflated.

Her shoulders dropped heavily, her expression crumpling into a line of absolute, pathetic misery as she sank back down onto her seat.

That’s right... within the rules of this new dimensional economy, they were completely, thoroughly dirt poor!

Ten Thousand high-grade stones for a single point, and they didn’t have a crumb to their names.

However, before the despair could even fully settle within her chest, her wine-red eyes suddenly blinked, a sharp, brilliant spark of pure realization flaring within her pupils.

”No, wait a single damn second! I am a certified, Rank 7 alchemist!” Huo Yue shouted out loud, a massive, arrogant grin stretching across her face as she gestured wildly with her hands. ”I don’t need to have points to start! I can just use my left over herbs and ingredients to rapidly refine a few high-grade spiritual pills right now, march over to the marketplace, and auction them off to the senior students to accumulate thousands of points before the sun sets!”

”Well, that is a remarkably cute idea, but too bad... I am already actively doing that exact same thing.”

Just then, a remarkably lazy, completely flat, and entirely monotone voice sounded from the shadows of the main kitchen doorway.

The three girls turned their heads simultaneously and their eyes instantly locked onto the figure of Shen Ying.

The current Tenth Crown of the Shen Clan was dressed in her usual, remarkably loose, baggy white dress that completely hid that curvaceous body, which they found during their bath last night.

Although she wasn’t as big as Huo Yue and Xia Mengyao, she was at least comparable to Ning Xueli.

The ancients truly didn’t deceived them; it was always the quiet, gloomy ones.

Shen Ying stared at Huo Yue, her exceptionally long, golden hair was messy, her red eyes looking thoroughly tired and half-closed behind her bangs, and her ever-present, massive dark eyebags were prominently displayed on her pale skin.

”I am officially going out to the central marketplace right now to sell my stock, see ya.”

With that short, monotone announcement, Shen Ying turned her body around and began to lazily, quietly walk out toward the main outer gates of the villa.

”Oh no you don’t!” At that sudden sight of commercial competition, Huo Yue immediately, frantically grabbed her tea cup, chugged the entire boiling contents down her throat in a single second, and violently slammed the empty ceramic back down onto the stone table with a resounding *CLANG!*.

She then broke into a dead sprint, kicking the dust up as she aggressively chased after the small shadow of the 10th Crown.

”My high-grade fire pills are definitively a hundred times better than your weird dark potions, so mine will easily sell for a fortune at the bank!”

”As if,” Shen Ying’s flat voice drifted back through the courtyard, completely unbothered by the shouting. ”Just because you happen to be our Young Master Haoran’s primary official fiancée doesn’t mean I’d ever take a material loss lying down in the market. Business is business.”

Their overlapping bickering voices grew lower and lower across the outer stone pathways until they completely, thoroughly disappeared into the mists of the street, the two alchemical geniuses having completely left the villa grounds to wage an economic war.

Xu Xiansu slowly turned her head back around to face Zhu Ziyan, an amused, yet exhausted sigh escaping her lips.

”How about you, Ziyan? You look like you are preparing to head out somewhere specific as well.”

Indeed, at this current moment, Zhu Ziyan was not wearing her usual, tight-fitting black combat bodysuit that she usually wear in her daily life.

Instead, she was dressed in an exceptionally elegant, form-fitting black and purple silk qipao that beautifully highlighted the long, slender lines of her legs, her dark hair pinned back with a jade hairpin.

”Ah, yes, you caught me,” Ziyan smiled softly, her purple eyes flashing with a deep, quiet enthusiasm as she raised her academy token. ”I just saw an official notice posted on the deep sub-boards of the Academy Forum stating that there is a registered student faction here known as the Pocket-Beast League. It caught my eye, so I wanted to take the morning to walk over there and officially apply for a membership.”

”Pocket-Beast League?” Xu Xiansu blinked her orange eyes, her posture instantly turning straight as her analytical mind processed the words. ”Are they a group of Beast Tamers?”

Zhu Ziyan nodded, ”Yes. I feel like I will learn a lot from them. After all, Beast Tamers aren’t really a popular occupation, so it’s hard to find a master.”

Xu Xiansu stared fixedly at Ziyan, her orange pupils narrowing into tight, calculating slits.

She thought back to the memory of her other self and remembered with absolute, vivid clarity that at this precise current point in time across the empire, Beast Tamers were absolutely not considered part of the major, universally recognized professions, remaining nothing more than a minor, historical hobby practiced by a few eccentric hunters in the peripheral forests.

It was entirely Zhu Ziyan herself who, through her own future unmatched achievements, monstrous taming capabilities, and her abilities to subdue a Supreme Beast, would single-handedly push the parameters of the craft, forcing the entire continent to elevate the Beast Tamer profession into the absolute 7th Major Occupation of the global cultivation system.

Xu Xiansu now felt like she was looking at the very birth of a historical paradigm shift.

”Alright then,” Xu Xiansu nodded her head in a slow, respectful validation, her expression returning to its calm commoner disguise. ”I’ll just stay here.”

Zhu Ziyan offered a brilliant, incredibly warm smile, nodding her head in a gentle farewell before turning on her heel to walk gracefully out through the peach blossom courtyard.