Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

*ROOOAAARRR!*

A beast roared—a guttural, bone-chilling shriek that echoed off the towering sandstone walls of the subterranean maze.

The creature, a massive, stone-scaled desert panther standing over three meters tall, lunged through the dust with its claws raised, its red eyes glowing with feral fury.

*Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip!*

Before its massive paws could even touch the ground, a barrage of silver, highly condensed sword intent pierced through the air like invisible needles.

In less than a fraction of a second, its dense, armor-like scales were shredded into ribbons.

Its body was instantly turned into Swiss cheese and fell down, twitching violently against the red stone floor, before it stopped moving altogether.

A quiet sizzle echoed as residual sword qi slowly dissipated into the thick, dusty air.

Shen Xinye stood before it, lowering her hand smoothly back to her side.

Her robes rustled softly in the stagnant breeze, completely unblemished by blood or dust as she took a slow, steady breath, regulating her internal qi as her eyes drifted past the fallen beast.

Behind the beast lay a massive gate, the exit to this maze-like city.

The exit was an awe-inspiring, towering portal arch carved from dark, unyielding basalt stone.

Ancient runes etched along its frame flickered with a faint, rhythmic azure light, signalling the transition to the next layer of the trial grounds.

”Impressive. You can probably take down an ordinary 5th stage Nascent Soul realm expert, right?”

The smooth, melodious voice echoed from the shadowed alleyway to her left.

Shen Xinye’s eyes narrowed instantly, her posture tensing as she turned around, and saw Ling Yinchi and Su Meilin walking towards her.

Ling Yinchi walked with her usual leisurely, swaying stride, her orange cheongsam slightly smudged but her confident, playful smirk fully restored.

A few paces behind her, Su Meilin moved like a silent ghost, her white and blue robes pristine, her expression as cold and detached as ever.

Shen Xinye stood her ground, her body instinctively shifting into a defensive stance.

She was wary.

Especially of this girl, Ling Yinchi, after all, the Ling Clan was really infamous throughout the high realms.

Their innate mental arts and terrifying mind reading capabilities made standing near them feel as though one were stripped naked in the middle of a crowded square.

Ling Yinchi chuckled softly, raising her hands in a placating, casual gesture. ”No need to be so wary, I mean no harm. And please don’t insult my clan in your head like that; we are quite good compared to the others, you know?”

Shen Xinye felt her cheek twitch. These damn telepaths are honestly annoying to deal with.

She hadn’t even uttered a single word aloud, yet the orange haired maiden had picked up on her internal thoughts as effortlessly as listening to spoken prose.

Still, despite her irritation, Shen Xinye had to admit internally that there was some truth to the claim.

Unlike the other Immortal Clans, whose descendants were often sociopathic bloodthirsty tyrants or arrogant, ruthless megalomaniacs, the Ling Clan had the least number of outright psychopaths, primarily because their mental gifts forced them to constantly feel the unpleasant, chaotic weight of human emotion.

Because that, they are more known to be a bunch of mind reading, deppressed, emos.

”Why, thank you. I’ll take that as a genuine compliment,” said Ling Yinchi, smiling brightly as if she had just received glowing praise.

Shen Xinye’s cheek twitched again, a vein pulsing slightly near her temple.

Not wanting to deal with that exhausting woman for a single second longer, she decided to turn around and walk towards the gate.

”Hey, let’s go together!” Ling Yinchi laughed merrily as she jogged towards her, her footsteps light against the stone. ”It’s much safer, don’t you think?”

*Swish!*

However, she instantly tilted her head to the side, a fraction of an inch, just in time for a sharp, whistling bullet of compressed sword intent to almost graze her cheek, severing a single strand of her long orange hair that drifted down to the floor.

Shen Xinye had turned around swiftly and was already pointing a finger gun at her, her brows furrowed into a sharp, uncompromising line, her eyes burning with an intense, icy resolve.

”Don’t follow me,” she stated, her voice dropping to a flat, dangerous pitch.

Ling Yinchi’s playful posture froze. Her orange eyes darkened significantly, the cheerful luster vanishing in an instant as her smile turned eerie and sharp.

The air around them suddenly grew heavy, thick with a subtle, suffocating mental pressure that pressed against the walls of the sandstone maze.

”My, my... a mere Crown dares to attack me?” Ling Yinchi murmured, her voice carrying a soft, terrifying resonance. ”Do you honestly think that just because you are considered equal to the heirs of the Immortal Sects, you are equal to us, the absolute heirs of the Immortal Clans?”

The distinction between the two was rather monumental.

While Immortal Sects were vast institutions of learned cultivators, and had indeed produced Immortals before, their legacy were incomplete, and since they aren’t related to one another, they didn’t even received any special immortal bloodlines.

The Nine Immortal Clans however, were ancient, unbroken bloodlines of transcendent origin.

To a true daughter of an Immortal Clan like her, the top-tier disciples of Immortal Sects, or even the renowned ’Ten Crowns’ of the Shen Clan, were merely impressive talents playing in a sandbox.

Impressive, yes, but nothing special.

”I don’t know,” Shen Xinye replied, her expression entirely unbothered by the crushing aura, her posture remained rock solid, her finger gun still locked onto Ling Yinchi’s forehead. ”But I know Shen Tao is definitely superior to you.”

Ling Yinchi raised an eyebrow, a mocking sneer curling her lips. ”That cripple? I heard he created his own customized cultivation system to bypass his broken meridians. A cute little effort, truly. But at the end of the day, it’s just that. He’s still a cripple who can never reach the true apex.”

”Well, I guess that says a lot about you, being inferior to a cripple,” Shen Xinye retorted smoothly, her tone laced with absolute, icy confidence.

She didn’t bother talking with her any further. Without waiting for a response, she lowered her hand, turned her back on the two maidens of the Immortal Clans, and walked straight towards the grand basalt gate, stepping through the flickering blue barrier and vanishing into the light.

She wasn’t afraid of them, after all, although she isn’t an heir, she is at least still part of the strongest Immortal Clan.

Ling Yinchi just stared at her back as she disappeared, the heavy mental aura around her slowly receding as she crossed her arms, letting out a soft sigh as she shook her head.

”Very feisty,” Ling Yinchi muttered, a strange, thoughtful look passing through her eyes. ”Does Shen Haoran actually like women like her? I thought someone of his stature would prefer quiet, submissive beauties.”

”Why don’t you read his mind and find out?” asked Su Meilin, stepping up beside her with her arms tucked inside her wide, blue sleeves, her voice was cool, carrying a subtle, rare trace of dry sarcasm.

Ling Yinchi shuddered violently, her hands coming up to rub her arms as if a sudden arctic draft had blown through the warm subterranean ruins. ”Yeah, no. I like to court handsome men, but I don’t court immediate death.”

’Besides...’ she thought, her expression turning surprisingly serious and unusually grave. ’I can’t even feel his emotions, much less read his mind.’

She had secretly attempted to brush against Shen Haoran’s mental field earlier when they had met outside the temple entrance, but the attempt had failed catastrophically.

The moment her divine sense had tried to graze his soul, it was like trying to look through a impossibly thick, infinite golden fog that swallowed all perception.

And although she felt like she could potentially push her spiritual strength to force a hole through that barrier, her deep, instinctual survival arts had screamed at her to stop.

She had felt a bone-chilling premonition—a terrifying sense that if she dared to pry open that golden fog, something boundless, ancient, and entirely beyond her mortal comprehension would stare back at her and erase her soul from existence.

Su Meilin stared at her quiet, unusually subdued reaction for a brief second.

Without offering another word, she stepped past the orange-haired maiden and immediately entered the gate, her blue robes vanishing into the glowing portal.

Ling Yinchi stood there alone in the quiet, dusty alleyway for a few moments, lost deep in thought as she stared at her own hands.

Finally, shaking off the lingering chill in her spine, she let out a theatrical sigh, adjusted her cheongsam, and entered the gate as well, stepping into the unknown depths of the next trial layer.

*

*

*

At this moment...

Lin Che was breathing heavily, his chest heaving up and down like a blacksmith’s bellows as he finally arrived on the edge of a sheer, terrifying cliff.

His linen shirt was stained dark with sweat and dried blood, his boots worn thin from the agonizing trek through the subterranean sandstone city.

Suspended right before him, floating unsupported in the void, was a set of floating wooden stairs leading straight up into the pitch-black sky.

Beyond the cliff, there was no ground, no bottom, and no sky—it was completely pitch black, like the gaping, endless jaws of an ancient abyss waiting to swallow anything that fell.

The air above the void hummed with a subtle, crushing gravitas, making the simple wooden steps look like the only fragile lifeline bridging the mortal world to a divine domain.

”So this is the final test...” Lin Che muttered under his breath, wiping a smear of blood and dust from his cheek with the back of his sleeve.

He looked up at the endless, floating staircase stretching into the darkness and couldn’t help but feel a wave of profound annoyance.

”Seriously, why do these ancient experts always like to use stairs in their trial grounds? Is it compulsory in the Supreme Emperor handbook or something? Can’t anyone just design a normal door for once?”

He shook his head in exasperation, taking a deep breath to steady his qi and calm his mind.

Then, he extended his foot, about to take his very first step onto the initial wooden plank, when—

[HOST! DODGE!]

The system’s emergency alarm didn’t just flash; it screamed directly into his soul, echoing like a shattering bell inside his mind.

His enhanced instincts and trust over the system took over before his brain could even process the warning.

Without a single moment of hesitation, Lin Che threw himself violently to the side, rolling across the jagged, dusty rock of the cliffside.

*SWOOSH—!*

A split second later, a massive, terrifying slash of dense, silver sword intent tore through the exact space where his head had been standing.

The arc of absolute sharpness cut cleanly through the dense mountain air, slicing a deep, mirror-smooth groove into the cliff edge, before soaring out over the endless void and disappearing into the pitch-black abyss without making a single sound.

Lin Che scrambled back onto his knees, his heart hammering violently against his ribs.

He felt cold sweat running through his back, soaking his clothes as a wave of goosebumps broke out across his skin.

He turned his head around sharply to look toward the source of the strike.

There, emerging casually from the lingering shadows of the stone archway, he saw Shen Haoran.

The young master of the Shen Clan stood nonchalantly, his robes completely pristine, completely unblemished by a single speck of desert dust.

Floating lightly in his right hand was a long, luminous blade constructed entirely from pure, compressed sword intent—a weapon forged not from steel, but from the mastery of the sword itself, humming with a subtle, space distorting frequency.

”You...” Lin Che gulped hard, his throat dry as a desert bone.

He looked at the glowing sword, then at the completely relaxed, terrifyingly calm expression on the young master’s face.

Desperate to buy even a second of time for his system to scan for an escape route, he forced a strained, nervous smile onto his face.

”Uh... have you ever heard of diplomacy, Young Master Shen? Surely two rational cultivators can talk this out?”

Haoran simply smiled.