Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Emptiness.

That was what Shen Haoran felt the very moment he opened his eyes to this world.

He understood, from the very moment he was born, that he was fundamentally different from everybody else.

While other infants cried for warmth and other children laughed at simple joys, his mind remained an unchanging, placid ocean.

He felt completely isolated, painfully lonely, as if no one in the world could truly understand the quiet void that stretched across his consciousness.

He saw the vivid colors of human attachment, the fiery spikes of anger, and the soft glows of affection, but none of it ever took root inside him.

Because of that, he became... entirely apathetic.

He donned the mask of the perfect young master, learning the exact angles of a polite smile and the precise tone of voice required to mimic genuine warmth, all while remaining an empty shell on the inside.

He lived as a ghost among the living, a brilliant prodigy who excelled at everything yet cared for nothing.

Until that one faithful day.

The prestigious Gu Clan visited the Shen Clan for a grand, week-long academic exchange, bringing with them their finest young talents to test their wits and martial prowess against the legendary heirs of the Shen Lineage.

Gu Xunyi, who was just a small child then, was traveling with them; after all, she was the daughter of the current patriarch of the Gu Clan, a treasured jewel whose bloodline purity was highly celebrated.

Back then, she wasn’t the unhinged psychopath like she is today.

Instead, she was a completely bright and cheerful girl, someone who was all sunshine and rainbows.

She wore bright dresses, laughed with an infectious, crystal-clear melody, and saw the absolute best in every single person she encountered.

Her heart was a radiant hearth, entirely untainted by the cruelties of the cultivation world.

Chu Xueyu had noticed the bright young lady and had asked him then to take care of the girl and bring her to look around the busy, vibrant streets of the town.

She had hoped that the cheerful girl might spark a bit of life into her detached son.

After all, although she love him with every fiber of her being, she also accepted the fact that he was, ultimately, an artificially create being.

Although she and her sisters made his physical body perfectly, they couldn’t do the same thing to his soul.

She hoped that Gu Xunyi would be able to perfect that otherwise, incomplete soul.

Shen Haoran had agreed to accompany Gu Xunyi without a single protest.

After all, he himself was very curious about this girl who was the exact, absolute opposite of himself.

He stared at her bright, expressive eyes and wondered what it felt like to be so consumed by the sheer joy of living.

And so, the quiet tragedy began.

Haoran did not treat her with cruelty; instead, he treated her with a calculated, terrifyingly perfect devotion.

He began to systematically use her, turning the innocent girl into a psychological experiment so he could finally observe and understand this strange, elusive thing called human emotions.

Yes. He was using her to understand the complexity of human emotion.

He watched her carefully, learning what made her laugh, what made her blush, and what made her heart race.

He became her shadow, her protector, and her absolute confidant.

He orchestrated beautiful moments under the falling starlight, spoke words of profound vulnerability that he had meticulously crafted in his mind, and made himself the center of her entire universe.

He made her completely fall in love with him, drawing her deeper and deeper into a carefully spun web of absolute emotional dependency.

But Haoran didn’t just want her love; he wanted to see the absolute limits of human feeling.

He pushed her boundaries, subtly teaching her that the world outside of their bond was cold and meaningless.

He fostered a deep, toxic reliance within her young mind, to the point that she became terrifyingly obsessed with him, believing that her very breath belonged to him alone.

And then, years later, once he got exactly what he wanted—once he had thoroughly analyzed the mechanics of her love, her devotion, and her joy, realizing that observing them still left him entirely empty—he simply walked away.

He discarded her like a fully read book.

The sudden, brutal abandonment completely shattered her fragile, overly dependent psyche.

The sunshine vanished, swallowed whole by a roaring abyss of confusion, grief, and betrayal.

Left alone in the dark with her burning obsession, her mind fractured, twisting the pure love she had felt into a violent, chaotic madness.

It transformed the once bright and cheerful girl into a terrifying, psychotic freak who could only find validation in pain, blood, and the dark, possessive shadows of her past.

As for the ruthless elders of the Gu Clan, they didn’t really care about her mental decline.

In fact, unlike the soft, overly compassionate Gu Xunyi of before, the current Gu Xunyi, who was incredibly ruthless, calculating, and entirely unbothered by human empathy, was a far more suitable, iron-fisted heir for a great ancient family.

They even openly wanted to thank Haoran for making her like this, viewing his psychological destruction of their daughter as the ultimate catalyst that awakened her true, predatory potential.

Gu Xunyi’s father, however, was enraged.

He couldn’t bear to see her daughter lose herself like this.

So, he used whatever means necessary to try and stabilize her mind.

And...it, kind of worked.

He managed to steer her obsession from Haoran to other things, which made her completely obsessed with books and research.

Because of that, she completely went around the world, awakening ancient entities, releasing ancient plagues, and causing various disasters, all for the sake of research and curiosity.

Although it was incredibly immoral, her research findings was indeed the real deal.

This caused the other disciples and elders of their clans to also start digging up ancient ruins and releasing whatever is sealed there.

The once highly praised academic clan suddenly became infamous.

But, such a deep obsession, can it really disappeared just like that?

The answer is, no.

Gu Xunyi now was just as equally obsessive as she was in the past, she just learned how to mask it.

Back in the quiet bedroom, Haoran stared into the manic, blood-red eyes of the woman sitting upon his waist.

He let out a long, quiet sigh, slowly lowering his hands from her throat.

In the end, despite his profound annoyance at this wiman, he couldn’t really bring himself to hurt her any further than he already had.

He knew, better than anyone else, that he was the source of her current madness.

However... business was business, and boundaries had to be maintained.

”Gu Xunyi,” Haoran spoke, his voice dropping into a low, icy tone that carried an absolute, unyielding weight. ”I can tolerate whatever madness you direct toward me. I can handle your games. However, if you hurt even a single one of my people, I will not be able to forgive you. Remember that.”

Gu Xunyi stared at him for a few moments, as if searching for something in his gaze, and eventually, she just chuckled, the sound melodic yet deeply unhinged as she leaned down closer, entirely unfazed by the lethal threat.

”What do you mean, silly? I quite like Ziyan and Yue, you know? They are very entertaining. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to harm them. I only want you.”

She wrapped her slender, pale arms tightly around his neck, bringing her face incredibly close to his, her damp hair brushing against his cheeks.

”Aside from that, since we are all alone now... why don’t we have some very sweet alone time like the good old days? Just you and me.”

She shifted her weight, bringing her lips directly to his ear, her voice dropping into a dark, scandalous whisper that would have scandalized the purest of sages.

”You know, Haoran... I had modified my body’s internal structure that allows me to take you incredibly deep inside my uterus, right straight into the depths of my womb. Do you want to try it right now?”

Haoran paused at that, his golden eyes widening by a fraction.

The sheer, bizarre audacity of her statement caught him completely off guard.

However, at the same time, he was genuinely curious.

As someone who provided himself to have tasted all the world’s pleasure, he couldn’t help but wondered how that would actually feel?

What kind of sensory feedback would a modified womb provide?

However, before his curiosity could translate into action, the sudden vibration of spiritual energy shattered the intimate tension.

At that moment, Gu Xunyi’s academy identity token suddenly flew out of her storage ring on her finger, floating in the air as it started beeping with an aggressive, high-priority emergency signal.

Gu Xunyi blinked, the manic light in her eyes dimming into irritation as she reached out and snatched the token out of the air.

A wide holographic screen snapped into existence, displaying an encrypted, urgent message flashing with the crimson crest of the Gu Clan.

She read the text rapidly, her lips twitching in annoyance, before closing the screen with a sharp flick and storing the token back into her spatial ring.

She looked down at Haoran, offering a deeply regretful, pouty smile. ”Well, what a shame. Maybe next time, my love. My clan seniors are calling for me immediately regarding the upcoming academy trials, so I’ll be taking my leave for tonight.”

With that, she smoothly stood up, stepping off his waist.

However, because of the wild, erratic movements she had made during their struggle earlier, the knots holding her single white towel had completely loosened.

The moment she stood up, the towel slipped away entirely, falling to the floor and leaving her completely naked in the middle of the room.

However, she acted completely unconcerned by her full exposure, showing absolutely no shame or modesty in front of him.

She merely reached into her storage ring with a casual hum, taking out a set of fresh, dark academy robes and slowly putting them on, piece by piece.

Once she was finally done adjusting her collar and smoothing down the fabric, she turned around, her crimson eyes softening as she was about to say her goodbyes.

*Thud!*

Before she could even utter a single syllable, the air in the room warped.

Haoran suddenly appeared directly in front of her like a ghost, his hand slamming into the wooden wall right beside her head, forcefully pushing her back and pinning her securely against the wall.

Gu Xunyi’s breath hitched, her eyes widening in sudden, genuine surprise as she looked at his dominant posture.

Then, before she could speak a single word, he leaned down and fiercely kissed her.

She reciprocated, however, because it has been so many years since she and Haoran had last kissed, she was easily overwhelmed.

After awhile, they broke the kiss, and a trail of saliva stretched like a string between them for a moment.

Haoran stared at Gu Xunyi with incredibly hungry eyes, ”You said all those things to me, and now you want to leave? Who do you take me for?”

Gu Xunyi shivered. Her body, which had been thoroughly trained by Haoran all those years trembled in anticipation.

It seems even after several years, it had not forgotten its master.

”Strip.”

Without hesitation, Gu Xunyi’s body obeyed before her mind could even think.

And she completely took off her clothes.