Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The swirling vortex of silver and deep-violet light swallowed Shen Xun’er, and she felt as though it dismantled her very soul layer by layer, casting her through an endless, disorienting abyss of silence and weightless freefall.

The sensation of falling lasted for what felt like an eternity, stripping away her sense of time, direction, and spatial orientation until the blinding colors of the ancient temple were entirely extinguished.

GASP!

A sharp, violent intake of air tore through her lungs.

The sudden return of physical sensation hit her like a physical blow.

The air she inhaled was thick, hot, and suffocating, reeking overpoweringly of scorched iron, burning flesh, pulverized mud, and fresh, coppery blood.

At first, there was silence, then, that silence was instantly obliterated by a deafening, earth shattering cacophony of sound.

War drums pounding like the frantic heartbeat of a dying giant, the shrill whistle of thousands of arrows raining through the heavens, the thunderous clatter of iron shields colliding, and the guttural shrieks of dying men echoing across the horizon.

Shen Xun’er opened her eyes and found herself in a massive, apocalyptic battlefield.

Beneath an ashen, blood red sky choked with billowing pillars of black smoke, the muddy, churned earth stretched endlessly in every direction, painted in thick, pooling crimson.

Countless mangled corpses lay piled in horrifying mounds across the trenches and shattered palisades.

Men cleaved in two at the waist, soldiers impaled by splintered siege spears, and warriors crushed beneath the carcasses of armored war beasts.

Broken weapons, snapped halberds, shattered broadswords, and burning siege engines lay strewn across the muck as far as the eye could see.

Everywhere around her, desperate soldiers clad in dented, mud-spattered steel were locked in brutal, visceral melee with an endless, advancing horde of towering, pitch black armored juggernauts whose eyes burned behind their iron visors with mindless, bloodthirsty slaughter.

Shen Xun’er blinked the stinging sweat and soot out of her eyes, instinctively circulating her qi to erect a defensive barrier—

Nothing.

Her breath caught in her throat as a cold, suffocating wave of pure panic instantly surged from her chest to the tips of her fingers.

She looked down at herself.

Her robe were completely gone, and in their place, she was wearing a heavy, battered suit of iron plate armor that pinched painfully against her shoulders and collarbone.

Her hands, calloused and smudged with black soot, were tightly clutching the worn leather hilt of a standard, notch-bladed iron arming sword.

More terrifyingly than the foreign armor, when she turned her consciousness inward to circulate her internal energy, she discovered that the vibrant, roaring sea of her dantians was completely dead silent.

Her spirit circuits felt inert, her physical body weakened, and her meridians were completely locked behind an impenetrable, cosmic shackle, and not a single speck of her qi or divine sense responded to her frantic commands.

Her cultivation was completely, utterly sealed.

At this exact moment, she was stripped of every supernatural advantage she had spent her entire life cultivating, and possessing only the fragile muscle, brittle bone, and finite stamina of an ordinary, mortal young woman standing in the middle of a meat grinding war.

Before her racing mind could even process the sheer nightmare of her vulnerability, the firmament above the blood-red battlefield violently rippled.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT—HUMMMMMMM!

The swirling clouds of black smoke parted, revealing the vast, silent silhouette of the boundless cosmos hovering just beyond the sky.

And there, echoing from the very fabric of the heavens with the cold majesty of an untouchable creator, the deep, resonant voice of the God of Space, Astraeus, descended like a divine decree that reverberated inside the skulls of every living soul.

”Welcome, mortals of the lower realm, to the threshold of the void. I am The God of Space, the owner of this inheritance.”

The voice was majestic, ancient, and completely devoid of warmth, rolling across the blood-soaked plains with the weight of collapsing stars.

”You, who stood here, must know that my inheritance is not a charity bestowed upon the weak, nor is it a treasure to be claimed by those who rely solely on the borrowed energy of their bloodlines. True mastery of the space requires a mind that can endure the collapse of hope, and a soul capable of commanding existence when all external power is stripped away.”

Astraeus paused, his celestial decree hardening into an unyielding, terrifying truth that sent an icy shiver down Shen Xun’er’s spine.

”This is the first trial of my inheritance. Your cultivation bases have been entirely sealed by the celestial laws of this plane, reducing your vessels to mere mortal flesh.”

”Let it be known that within the boundaries of this trial, there are no safety seals, no illusionary protections, and no benevolent elders to pull you from the brink. If you die here, you die for real, and your physical body will rot upon these plains, and your soul will dissolve into the void.”

The surrounding soldiers continued to roar, blades clashing violently against shields barely ten paces away from her, while the divine voice delivered the final, impossible objective of the trial.

”Your objective is simple, and you must take up your weapon, lead this battered army, and win this war against the boundless iron legion. Slay the enemy warlord, claim total victory, or be trampled into the mud as forgotten offal.”

”Survive... if your courage permits.”

BOOM!

The divine presence receded into the firmament, leaving Shen Xun’er standing frozen amidst the deafening chaos of the front lines.

If you die... you die for real...

And my qi is completely gone...

”INCOMING! RAISE THE SHIELDS! ARCHERS, DRAW!” a blood-stained captain beside her screamed, spit and blood flying from his cracked lips as he shoved an iron buckler into her chest. ”GIRL! WAKE UP OR YOU’RE DEAD MEAT! FORM THE LINE!”

Before Shen Xun’er could even reply, the muddy earth beneath her boots violently shuddered.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

A colossal, seven foot tall enemy berserker clad in jagged, spike-covered black armor burst through the burning palisade directly in front of her.

The hulking monster wielded a massive, two-handed iron war-cleaver dripping with fresh intestines, his bloodshot eyes locking onto her slender, armor-clad frame with feral, murderous intent.

SWISH—!

The massive cleaver swept down through the air with a terrifying, sonic whistle, aiming to split her from crown to groin!

Instinct took over.

Even without her Nascent Soul cultivation, the thousands of hours of grueling martial conditioning carved into Shen Xun’er’s muscle memory responded.

She twisted her hips, dropping her center of gravity into the mud as the heavy iron blade missed her nose by a fraction of an inch, biting deep into the earth beside her foot and showering her face in wet dirt.

CLANG!

Shen Xun’er gritted her teeth, driving her notched iron sword straight toward the gap in his armor at the neck.

However, without the explosive boost of her qi, the strike lacked the speed she was accustomed to.

The steel point struck the berserker’s thick iron collar, screeching violently against the metal and only biting half an inch into the tough muscle before the sheer brute mass of the giant shoved her backward.

The kinetic shock rattled through her mortal wrists and forearms, sending a sharp, sickening throb of pain through her elbows that nearly forced the sword from her numb fingers.

”GAH!”

Shen Xun’er was thrown into the mud, her boots sliding through slippery pools of gore.

The berserker roared in fury, wrenching his cleaver from the earth and raising his heavy, iron-shod boot to crush her skull against the rocks.

Looking up at the descending boot, seeing the raw, unrefined brutality of mortal combat without a single thread of protective qi barrier to save her, the suffocating specter of death loomed over her soul with horrifying, undeniable clarity.

I’m just a mortal girl right now...

If that foot lands, my skull will cave in. I will die. I will never be able to go back to the Shen Clan again. I will never see the young master again.

Young Master...

Haoran’s disappointed frown, his icy golden eyes, and his haunting, venomous words flashed through her mind like lightning.

’A dragon does not reign over the skies because it has learned how to avoid the storm, Xun’er. It reigns because it realizes that its own roar is the tempest that tears the sky apart.’

’Until you remember why you were given claws, you will remain nothing more than an overgrown lizard hiding from the rain.’

For some reason, those words appeared in her mind at the last.

She couldn’t understand it, she was never the smart one, and all her life all she knows was to rip and tear, never trying to use her brain at anything but to fight.

Is that the reason why she was lagging behind?

”DIE!”

Shen Xun’er snapped out of her daze and stared at that foot, and this time, she didn’t even try to calculate an escape, nor did she try to look for an opening to retreat.

Driven by the pure instincts that she had covered due to her fear and insecurities, Shen Xun’er rolled violently to the side across the bloody mud as the heavy boot smashed the ground where her head had rested.

Using the momentum of her roll, she lunged upward with both hands wrapped around her sword hilt, driving the entire length of the notched blade straight up through the underside of the berserker’s exposed jaw.

CRUNCH-SQUELCH!

The rusted steel pierced through the bone, brain, and iron helm.

Hot, foul-smelling blood gushed down the hilt, coating her face and hands in burning crimson.

The massive giant stiffened, his bloodshot eyes rolling back into his head, before his colossal iron-clad corpse collapsed heavily onto the mud with a dull, wet thud.

Panting in ragged, shallow gasps, Shen Xun’er wrenched her blade free with a wet squelch, her mortal heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped war drum.

Wiping the blood from her eyes with her armored forearm, she looked out across the boundless, horrifying expanse of the battlefield.

Tens of thousands of enemy ironclad soldiers were continuing to pour over the distant mountain ridges like an unstoppable, black ocean.

Fire rained from the skies, war horns blared in dissonant, nightmarish harmonies, and her side’s frontline was crumbling by the second under the sheer weight of numbers.

Her limbs ached, her palms were torn and bleeding inside her gauntlets, and she had neither techniques nor qi to light the darkness.

Yet, as she stood alone over the corpse of the berserker, clutching her battered iron sword amidst the screams of a dying world, a sharp, untamed spark began to ignite within the ashes of her shattered heart.

The trial was made to breed despair.

The battlefield was designed to crush the spirit.

Shen Xun’er raised her notched steel blade high into the soot-choked air, her eyes burning with a desperate, bloodthirsty defiance as she stepped forward into the slaughter.

*

*

*

Back with Haoran and Astraeus.

”What do you think of her now?” Asked Haoran, smiling.

Astraeus observed Shen Xun’er, but still shook his head, ”Although she did not fall into despair, but that was because of her desperate need to survive. Her dao heart remained fragile.”

Haoran remained silent, after all, even he can see that.

”But...” Astraeus continued, ”Her instincts seems to be engraved in her soul. Before her dao heart became what it is, she must’ve one fine woman.”

”She was.” Said Haoran, ”Fiery, determined, and can even stare at the face of death and still smile.”

The Shen Xun’er before can confidently laugh while attacking him, and doesn’t even hesitate to attack a Nirvana Rebirth Giant because he ordered her to.

She was feral, completely devoid of hesitation and doubt, brimming with confidence bordering on extreme arrogance.

Astraeus observed Shen Xun’er, sighed, and shook his head, ”There are still more trials ahead. If she can fix her dao heart and pass all my trials, then I will be honored to have her as my successor.”

Haoran didn’t say anything, his eyes fixed on Shen Xun’er.