Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

At this moment, Haoran was sitting on the majestic, gilded throne of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, situated deep within the tranquil heart of his independent world, the Genesis Protocol.

The entire world had actually already undergone massive changes.

High above, artificial constellations spun in calculated, mesmerizing orbits, bathing the floating botanical wonder in a soothing, ethereal glow.

Exotic spirit plants, extinct everywhere else in the mortal realms, gently swayed in the synthetic breeze, exhaling dense, purified spirit qi.

Yet, despite the utter majesty of his surroundings, Haoran’s mind was far from at peace.

The weight of Ye Hongyan’s revelations pressed down on him like an insurmountable mountain, churning his thoughts into a storm of strategic anxiety.

”Not this one either...” Haoran threw a book, and it vanished into motes of light.

He rubbed his forehead, feeling stressed and annoyed. There was no records about these people.

Either they didn’t exists yet during the era of the Babylonian Empire, or their anti-intillegence Seers were too great that even writing down was prevented by them.

If it’s former, then fine, but if it’s the latter...

”...Qing’er, what do you think?” he asked softly, his voice echoing faintly through the vast, open marble pavilion.

At that moment, his shadow flickered like a candle flame caught in a sudden draft, then out from the pools of darkness behind him, Qing’er materialized, stepping out silently onto the polished stone floor.

Her movements were as effortless and ghost-like as ever, her presence a comforting constant beside him.

She stared at Haoran, her sharp eyes scanning the visible tension in his shoulders.

She hesitated for a quiet moment, processing the daunting implications of what they had just learned, before answering, ”Young master, I also knew nothing about them.”

”As expected. There were no records about them in the Clan nor in the Garden’s library either,” said Haoran, tapping his fingers rhythmically against the cool armrest of his throne.

His brow furrowed deeper as he racked his brain.

The Shen Clan boasted one of the grandest, most comprehensive archives in the entire Cultivation World, housing secrets that spanned countless eras and epoch-ending wars.

If even their deepest vaults contained virtually nothing on the true nature of the Heavenly Dao Pavilion, then, he really can only ask his mother.

”Could the Gu Clan have some information about them?” He wondered.

However, he just thought of it and didn’t really plan on getting involved with them.

The current patriarch of the Gu Clan still hated his guts for what he did to Gu Xunyi.

Haoran thought for a moment before deciding to call his mother via a direct voice transmission array, wanting to hear her immediate assessment.

But he paused mid-motion, his hand hovering over his waist as he recalled Ye Hongyan’s subtle, uneasy warnings about the true reach of the Heavenly Dao Pavilion, and he reevaluated the sheer absurdity of this concept.

’The Heavenly Dao can know if someone spoke their name and will immediately be monitored.’

Although this is his own world with his own rules, complete with his own sovereignty over its space and fundamental laws, he couldn’t take that risk.

Those protagonists were illogical and completely beyond reason. They were beings who routinely broke local world laws and exploited impossible luck anomalies.

Speaking a name of an organization formed by those people out loud—even inside a localized pocket universe—might trigger an ancient karma thread, drawing the lingering gaze of a thirty thousand year old entity straight to his location.

So he took out a special, highly encrypted communication artifact and carefully typed out a coded, strictly text-based message to his mother, relying entirely on isolated spatial pulses rather than vocal acoustic vibrations to deliver his query.

*

*

*

At this moment, in the boundless, majestic expanse of the Shen Clan Domain.

Chu Xueyu sat on her grand imperial throne, eyes closed in deep meditation.

Around her, the thick, concentrated primordial aura of the realm washed over her magnificent silhouette like an ocean tide.

She seemed like a divine sculpture carved from pristine jade, reigning supreme over a realm that had dominated the cosmos for countless ages.

Just then, the special communication artifact that she always had on her body without putting in her storage ring suddenly vibrated with a soft, distinct pulse.

This particular artifact bypassed all standard arrays, reserved strictly for a single, irreplaceable person.

Without a second of hesitation, she opened her eyes, reached down, took it out, and looked—it was a message from her son.

A warm, radiant smile naturally bloomed on her face, softening her usually cold, majestic countenance as she eagerly opened the message to read what her beloved son had sent.

But as her eyes scanned the lines of text... her smile was slowly fading until her face was now completely stern, cold, and solemn.

The warmth in her eyes turned into an icy vortex of pure, unrestricted killing intent.

The sheer force of her unconscious emotional shift caused the surrounding space to warp and crack like brittle glass.

Her hand holding onto the armrest of her throne clenched tightly, the terrifying pressure causing the ancient, near-indestructible material of the throne to crack with a sharp, agonizing snap.

Then, she opened her mouth, and her voice thundered forth, cutting through the space-time fabric of the domain.

”Leng Shuang! Feng Yuyan! Seven Enshrined! Come to me at once!”

Her voice traveled to every corner of the Shen Clan’s vast dimension, carrying an unquestionable imperial command that instantly halted all activity across the realm.

She leaned back on her throne, her face as cold as ice as she read the message repeatedly.

”Haoran...” She muttered, worry etching on her face.

She closed her eyes, and thought back to a hundred years ago, when her sister, Feng Yuyan, had sneaked into the territory of the Heavenly Dao Pavilion and unleashed an army of her monsters into their ancestral graves and dug up some corpses.

Not only did she fail, she was heavily injured and was chased like a dog and was almost captured if she and Leng Shuang didn’t appear and rescued her.

At that time, the Shen Clan and the Heavenly Dao Pavilion almost went to war once again.

It was only prevented because Shen Daiyu personally intervened and wrecked havoc in their territory, threatening to destroy their territory if they pursued the matter.

Although she couldn’t kill anyone from their side, they were afraid of actually having their territory destroyed, so they backed off.

After that incident, Shen Daiyu heavily reprimanded Feng Yuyan, and because of that, she became quite subdued, no longer unleashing monsters in the outside world.

Chu Xueyu sighed, rubbing her forehead. ”This is going to be quite difficult.”

It’s not like she was afraid of the Heavenly Dao Pavilion, but right now, they have more things to worry about.

The Heavenly Dao itself, for example, especially now that Haoran was almost discovered.

Not to mention all the Supremes of the Shen Clan were busy hiding the entire Clan from the Heavenly Dao.

”...do I have to ask them for help?”

*

*

*

Down below, far beneath the central palace in the subterranean depths of the domain, sat Feng Yuyan’s high-tech, array-augmented laboratory.

The room was a breathtaking fusion of ancient rune formations and complex, cutting-edge spiritual engineering, filled with glowing containment pods, crystal monitors, and flowing channels of liquid spiritual energy.

At the center of the research chamber suspended a massive, vacuum-sealed containment sphere constructed from refined cosmic iron and bound by thousands of interwoven seal formulas.

Inside it floated the volatile, shimmering remnant of the Immortal Soul they had recently captured and brought back.

”Adjust the spiritual resonance frequency to 440 megahertz equivalent,” Feng Yuyan instructed calmly, her eyes fixed on a hovering array panel displaying real-time soul-wave oscillations.

Her revealing robes were lined with defensive talismanic thread, and her hair was tied back neatly.

”The soul structure is showing signs of localized instability. If its spiritual consciousness attempts a divine self-detonation, the feedback loop could contaminate our spatial containment fields.”

Leng Shuang stood beside her, watching the trapped soul with cold, analytical eyes as she adjusted a complex spiritual-purity meter attached to the side of the pod.

”The soul core’s density is astonishingly high,” Leng Shuang noted, her voice steady and professional. ”Despite losing its physical vessel and eighty percent of its immortal qi reserves, the fundamental immortal origin marks remain intact. Standard soul-scrying arrays can’t penetrate its inner memory palace without triggering a logic collapse in the soul’s central memory threads.”

”Naturally,” Feng Yuyan replied, adjusting a set of glowing quartz lenses over her eyes to analyze the soul’s underlying elemental matrix. ”Immortal souls operate on higher-dimensional spatial logic. Standard soul searching relies on a fifth-dimensional spiritual pathways, but this target’s soul memories are folded in a hyper-dimensional matrix. We need to apply a localized spatial temporal lock first to stabilize its spiritual aura, then use a low-frequency psychic probe to isolate the specific memory fragments without causing a memory purge.”

”Understood,” Leng Shuang said, her hands moving with practiced precision over the control formation. ”I will modulate the dimensional pressure around the primary soul vessel. Keep the suppression arrays primed. If its subconscious instincts attempt to summon external luck or karma threads to escape, we sever them immediately with the anti-fate barrier.”

”Proceed with phase two of the extraction,” Feng Yuyan ordered, carefully calibrating a long, needle-like array probe that glowed with cold, bluish light. ”We need to extract the core technique formulas before the residual divine mark completely dissipates into entropy—”

Just then, Chu Xueyu’s voice sounded, booming directly into their minds and shattering the silence of the lab like a physical impact.

”Leng Shuang! Feng Yuyan! Seven Enshrined! Come to me at once!”

The ambient spiritual arrays flickered under the sheer pressure of her voice, and their research stopped instantly.

The glowing probe hovered in mid-air as Feng Yuyan frowned, turning her head toward the ceiling in pure surprise.

”Strange. Sister usually never uses such a crude method to relay a message directly through the main dimension’s core arrays unless an emergency has occurred.”

Leng Shuang immediately deactivated the active energy channels of the containment vessel, setting the soul pod into a secure, automated lockdown state, her expression turned dead serious.

”Maybe it’s something very important regarding the young master or the frontier movements.”

Feng Yuyan hummed softly in agreement, sweeping her hand across her workspace to clear the glowing array projections. ”Let’s go.”

Not only them, but throughout the entire infinite expanse of the Shen Clan dimension, the Seven Enshrined Elders were startled awake by the abrupt call.

Their long-closed eyes snapped open simultaneously, piercing through millions of miles of isolated space.

Without a moment of hesitation, their formidable figures turned into streaks of blinding light, tearing open the sky as they hurried toward Chu Xueyu’s grand throne room.

And within a few short seconds after Chu Xueyu’s shout, all of them had gathered in front of her.

The massive throne hall was steeped in an suffocating, terrifying atmosphere.

Leng Shuang and Feng Yuyan stood on the right, their professional research expressions replaced by razor-sharp vigilance.

On the left stood the Seven Enshrined Elders, wrapped in ancient, terrifying auric pressure that made the surrounding atmosphere feel as heavy as lead.

Every eyes in the room was fixed on Chu Xueyu, who sat upon her cracked throne, her hand still resting over the damaged armrest, her aura cold enough to freeze the concepts of life and death itself.

Chu Xueyu stared at them with eyes like twin abysses, her silence more terrifying than any storm.

She didn’t offer a lengthy greeting, nor did she waste time with minor details.

Without hesitation, she simply declared.

”Haoran found out about the dog house.”