Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The dim, twilight-soaked air of the grand circular chamber turned heavy, dense, and suffocating, thick with the cold metallic tang of lingering slash of the sword intent.

Shen Xun’er stood frozen twenty paces away, her vibrant purple eyes fixed on the tall, dark-robed young man whose plain, nameless steel sword hovered in the air beside his right shoulder.

’Prove your worth before the man in front of you... Survive his blade or die upon this floor.’

The words sounded ridiculous, no, they sounded absurd.

Fight him?

Shen Xun’er’s newly reassembled Dao heart, which had just roared with berserker fury against her dark reflection, skipped a frantic, nervous beat.

She blinked, forcing a crooked, awkward grin across her porcelain face, raising her hands with palms out in a placating, casual gesture as she tried to joke.

”Ah... haha... Young Master, this... this ancient god surely has a terrible sense of humor, right? Setting up this kind of trial? I mean, who would let you into the final exam? As if I would ever raise a hand against—”

SWOOSH—!

Shen Haoran didn’t offer a single syllable in reply.

He just smiled.

It was that same faint, razor-sharp, and profoundly terrifying smirk—a cold, amused parting of his lips that signaled the casual erasure of a life.

BZZZZT!

Shen Xun’er couldn’t even react.

The concept of physical speed, muscle movement, and spiritual displacement was entirely rendered moot.

Before her retinas could process the flicker of his silhouette, before her breath could catch in her throat, a razor-thin arc of pure sword intent tore through the air!

SWISH!

The lethal slash went swoosh right beside her face, missing her skull by less than a hair’s breadth.

The razor-sharp wind pressure trailing the edge grazed her cheek, cleanly slicing through the skin and drawing a thin, burning line of crimson blood that dripped slowly down her jaw.

The cutting wave continued behind her, detonating against the far obsidian wall in a deafening sonic boom that gouged a three hundred foot canyon into the ancient masonry.

Shen Xun’er was completely stunned for a petrified second.

Her purple eyes dilated to their limit, her left cheek throbbing with hot, stinging blood.

He wasn’t holding back.

’That wasn’t an attack used for sparring match nor a test. If I had tilted my head an inch to the left, my skull would have been split in two like a melon!’

The realization that her young master had ruthlessly intended to decapitate her right where she stood shattered her stupor.

Without a single second of hesitation, all thoughts of heroic confrontation evaporated into thin air as she wheeled around, kicked off the flagstones with all the strength in her calves, and immediately ran away.

BOOM!

Her boots broke through the floorboards as she sprinted toward the perimeter of the colossal, circular chamber, her red robes trailing behind her like a streak of panicked fire!

Behind her, Shen Haoran’s unhurried footsteps clicked against the stone.

He didn’t sprint, yet, with every casual stride, the space beneath his soles warped, effortlessly closing the gap as he leisurely chased after her.

SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH!

With flickers of his fingers, Shen Haoran casually sent dozens of sword intent slashes flying towards her fleeing figure.

The lethal, crescent-shaped blades rained across the corridor like a descending executioner’s storm.

They screeched through the air with malice, barely missing her by inches—one slicing through the trailing hem of her red robe, another cleanly severing the green-tipped edge of her short blonde hair, a third grazing the sole of her boot as she leaped over a cracked sacrificial altar.

Every miss was so close she could feel the icy cold peeling away her body’s natural heat!

”Young Master, wait! Are you insane?! I’m your most loyal follower!” she shrieked over her shoulder, scrambling over fallen meteor blocks as another three slashes pulverized a massive pillar beside her ear into powdery gravel.

RIPPLE.

The space directly beside her left ear shifted without warning.

Before she could vault over a collapsed basalt column, a pale, slender hand shot out like an iron shackle.

GRAB!

Haoran had caught up!

His fingers clamped down ruthlessly onto Shen Xun’er’s right shoulder, halting her forward momentum so violently that her heels dug deep, smoking furrows into the obsidian floor.

The crushing grip locked her in place, his aura pressing down upon her like a descending star.

Shen Haoran leaned in, looking down at her wide, frantic purple eyes with cold, quiet amusement.

”Why are you running away, Xun’er?” Haoran asked, his voice smooth, relaxed, and chillingly intimate. ”Did you not shout to the heavens that you wanted everything?”

Before the words had even finished leaving his lips, Haoran’s right arm blurred.

SHING—!

Without the slightest hint of hesitation or mercy, he slashed his nameless steel sword straight down toward her unprotected neck, aiming to sever her head from her shoulders!

CLANG-CRACK!

Shen Xun’er’s reflexes detonated on instinct.

Faced with immediate, brutal decapitation, she forcefully raised both forearms, condensing the qi within her dantians into thick, diamond-hard, overlapping crimson dragon scales that coated her hands and wrists.

The steel blade slammed violently against the dragon scales!

A deafening metallic screech erupted as sparks of blinding red and gold fire showered the stones.

The sheer, monstrous force behind Haoran’s casual downward swing forced Shen Xun’er down to one knee, the stone beneath her boots shattering into a web of deep craters.

The heavy impact sent a violent, bone-rattling shockwave through her forearms, cracking three of the hardened scales and threatening to fracture her radius.

Before she could even stabilize her footing—

THUD!

Haoran’s boot shot forward like a battering ram, kicking her dead in the center of her chest.

The blunt impact knocked all the air from her lungs as she was sent rocketing backward across the chamber floor, tumbling and rolling violently across thirty paces before she caught her balance on her palms and knees.

Cough!

She spat out a mouthful of bile and dust, looked up to see Haoran stepping smoothly through the air toward her, and without even taking a second breath—she immediately scrambled to her feet and began to run away again.

”Damn it, damn it, damn it!” she gasped under her breath, her boots kicking up showers of gravel as she sprinted in zig-zags through the crumbling colonnades.

Behind her, Shen Haoran started chasing her once more, his pace leisurely, with hands loosely at his sides, his nameless sword floating obediently beside his shoulder.

His deep, magnetic voice echoed effortlessly through the vast, vaulted hall, laced with an infuriating, didactic mockery.

”It seems your legs only know how to flee,” Haoran spoke, his voice sounding as clear as if he were whispering directly into her ear. ”Look at this vast ruined chamber, Xun’er. There is only one opponent standing before you, and there is only one of you. So... why are you running away?”

Running for her very life, dodging another pair of whistling sword slashes that sheared the stone walls into ribbons, Shen Xun’er silently cursed every ancestor of the heavens in her mind.

One opponent and one of you?!

What kind of twisted, rotten, lunatic logic is that, young master?!

She gritted her teeth so hard her gums bled, her mind screaming in furious outrage.

That logic is fundamentally flawed!

There’s one ant, and there’s one elephant—is the ant supposed to turn around and throw a punch just because the numbers are one-to-one?!

You’re a monster who can kill Saint-tier experts with a wave of your sleeve, and I’m just a Nascent Soul little girl who just pieced her soul back together!

This isn’t fair!

She didn’t dare say a single word of it aloud, pouring every ounce of her stamina into her sprint, weaving behind massive obsidian statues to break his line of sight.

SWOOSH.

The air behind her nape suddenly lost all warmth.

The ambient draft died, replaced by a freezing vacuum that made the blood in her veins run cold.

After a short while of frantic, desperate evasion, the space directly behind her back twisted into a ripple of starlight.

Shen Haoran once again appeared behind her, standing barely a foot away, his dark robes unruffled, his golden eyes gazing down at the back of her head like a shadow that could never be shaken.

His cold, quiet whisper brushed against her ear, ”Are you afraid of me, Xun’er?”

The icy cold whisper curled around the shell of her ear like a creeping frost, freezing the sweat along her nape.

Afraid? Of course she was.

The admission surged through her with the raw, undeniable force of an oceanic tide, rattling the marrow of her bones.

How could she not be afraid? She was afraid of fighting him as much as she respected him—no, her terror was born directly from the towering, monolithic height of that reverence!

To every disciple, every retainer, and every crowned prodigy within the boundless domains of the Shen Clan, Shen Haoran was not merely a peerless genius or an exceptional heir, but an untouchable young supreme!

He is a transcendent anomaly carved from ancient starlight and ruthless ambition, a divine existence whose very glance dictated whether an entire star system would flourish or be ground into ash.

She had spent her earliest days looking up at the hem of his robes from the training courtyards of the ancestral mountain, mesmerized by the cold, effortless perfection with which he dismantled ancient elders, rival young masters, and celestial beasts alike.

Her respect for him was an all-consuming devotion, an unshakeable faith that bordered on religious veneration.

She had allowed his expectations to become the architecture of her self-worth.

To stand opposite that supreme will, to raise a clenched, treasonous fist against the very sun that illuminated her small, insignificant existence, felt like an act of cosmic profanity that caused every instinct in her soul to seize in paralytic dread.

CRACK-SLAM!

Before she could react, Haoran immediately grabbed her by the back of her neck and pinned her down to the ground, face first.

The impact detonated through the ancient floorboards with brutal violence as the hard stone pulverized into sharp gravel beneath her cheek, cutting through her skin and painting the dust in fresh streaks of crimson.

Her nose screamed in blinding pain as Haoran’s pale, slender hand clamped over the base of her skull like a vice forged from celestial iron, pressing her head into the cold ground with such immense, effortless gravitational weight that her spine bowed and creaked under the strain.

”That’s no good,” Haoran’s voice fell over her from above, perfectly measured, thoroughly detached, and entirely devoid of the slightest tremor of exertion. ”It seems right now, you are overcome with fear.”

The coldness of the stone against her bleeding face, the humiliating sensation of having her skull ground into the dirt beneath the palm of the one person whose praise she craved above all else—it ignited a sudden, scorching flare within the embers of her awakened pride.

No... not again!

I am not a worm to be trodden into the earth! I swore I would never cower!

Shen Xun’er gritted her teeth so hard that blood seeped between her molars, and with a guttural, feral snarl ripping from her throat, she forced her arms beneath her chest.

Her qi flared, roaring through her meridians like a localized volcanic eruption.

BOOM!

Channeling the entirety of her physical might into her shoulders, Shen Xun’er forcefully stood up, heaving her upper body upward and pushing Haoran away.

The explosive burst of force broke his casual grip, allowing her to spin on her heels with wild, desperate momentum.

Her right hand instantly hardened, thick layers of incandescent, diamond-dense crimson dragon scales encasing her fingers and forearm as she condensed a miniature sun around her fingers.

”Sky Cleaving Fist!”

She thrust her scaled fist straight toward his chest with everything she had, the strike screaming through the air with enough concussive force to shatter a fortress gate.

Yet... Haoran did not even shift his feet.

With terrifying, preternatural elegance, Haoran tilted his torso back by barely an inch, allowing the blazing, scale-clad fist to whistle harmlessly past his chest, the violent wind of the punch failing to disturb even the dark lapels of his robe.

He effortlessly dodged the strike as if he had read its exact trajectory three lifetimes before it was thrown.

Before Shen Xun’er could even begin to pull her arm back to recover her guard, Haoran’s left hand blurred through the slipstream like a striking viper.

SNAP.

His fingers clamped shut with mathematical precision, catching her wrist in a vice-like iron shackle, completely neutralizing the lingering momentum of her attack.

In the very same fluid motion, before she could channel her off-hand or sweep her leg, Haoran’s right boot snapped forward with ruthless efficiency.

BANG!

The kick caught her dead in the center of her stomach!

The blunt shockwave bypassed all her defenses, driving straight through her abdominal wall and violently concussing her internal organs.

The air exploded from her lungs in a breathless, strangled wheeze as the force of the strike wrenched her trapped wrist free, sending her flying a few meters backward through the air.

THUD-ROLL-CRACK.

Shen Xun’er crashed heavily onto the fractured basalt floor, tumbling across several paces of sharp stone before coming to a halt on her knees and forearms.

She clutched her throbbing abdomen, coughing violently as droplets of pink, frothy saliva and blood splattered across the dark floorboards.

Her limbs trembled, her breath ragged, her short blonde hair falling loose across her bruised face.

Standing several paces away, his nameless steel sword hovering quietly at his side, Haoran stared at her with calm, unblinking golden eyes.

A heavy, profound silence hung between them, broken only by the whistling draft of the vast temple chamber.

Then, Haoran spoke, his deep, magnetic voice cutting through the quiet like a chilling winter gale.

”I’m so disappointed, Xun’er,” Haoran said slowly, shaking his head with an expression of quiet, piercing disdain. ”So very disappointed.”

Every syllable fell upon her bruised shoulders like a thousand-ton slab of glacial ice, threatening to suffocate her breath far more effectively than his physical strikes ever could.

”Sadly, your fist exhibits only fear,” Haoran continued, taking a slow, measured step forward, the click of his dark boots echoing against the stone like the tolling of a funeral bell. ”When you counter, it’s because you fear being killed. When you attack, you fear killing, and when you run, it’s because you fear getting hurt. At this point, the only thing your fist speaks is senseless fright, and that’s not good.”

He stopped five paces away, his piercing golden pupils looking down into her trembling purple eyes, stripping away every defensive illusion she had built around her martial heart.

”What you don’t need in battle is fear. Nothing will come of it.” He paused, pressing the tip of his sword a millimeter away from her face, ”When you counter, you don’t let them cut you. When you run, it’s to prepare for an attack. And when you attack, you kill.”

The words did not merely enter her ears, they crashed into the innermost sanctum of Shen Xun’er’s sea of consciousness like a primordial lightning bolt shattering an ancient, fog-shrouded mountain.

She remained frozen on her knees, her hands still pressed against the cold stone, her ragged breaths gradually hitching in her throat as her mind fell into a profound, breathless stillness.

The words dismantled her entire understanding of martial intent with the terrifying precision of an executioner’s blade.

For the past year, she had believed that her struggle was a battle against her own inadequacy.

She had believed she was fighting to rebuild her pride, fighting to prove her loyalty, fighting to earn the right to stand beneath his gaze once more.

But it was all a lie.

Every single movement she had made was fundamentally poisoned at its very root.

When she raised her arms to parry a blade, her mind wasn’t focused on dictating the outcome of the battlefield or creating an opening—it was screaming in panic, desperately trying to shield the fragile clay of her mortal flesh from the horror of death.

Her counters were not assertions of dominance; they were the panicked flailing of a prey animal trying to keep the wolf’s jaws away from its throat.

And her attacks...

Shen Xun’er looked down at her knuckles, trembling against the dust.

Even against her dark reflection, even against the phantom that had sought to erase her very existence... what had held her back in the initial moments of that battle? Why had she hesitated? Why had she allowed herself to be impaled, pinned, and dismantled before she finally snapped?

Because deep in the darkest, most cowardly corner of her heart, she was terrified of the finality of death.

She feared the weight of taking a life, feared the catastrophic consequences of unleashing an irreversible destruction, feared the terrifying abyss of her own monstrous nature.

She pulled her punches, softened her stances, and second-guessed her trajectories because she treated combat like a performance to be judged rather than an act of slaughter.

Back in the battle against the Botanist Faction, she can act ruthlessly and kill because she knew that as long as their nascent souls weren’t destroyed, they can be resurrected.

But, she had actually, personally never taken a human life.

And when she ran...

She hadn’t been retreating to consolidate her qi, she hadn’t been maneuvering to manipulate spatial distances or draw her opponent into a lethal killing zone.

She had simply been fleeing! She had been running like a frightened child running from a thunderstorm, desperately hoping that distance alone would save her from the pain of bruised skin and broken bones.

What a pathetic, miserable excuse for a martial artist.

”What you don’t need in battle is fear. Nothing will come of it.”

The truth of it blossomed within her thoughts with crystalline, blinding clarity.

Fear was an entirely useless, parasitic emotion.

It did not sharpen the blade; it only dulled the edge. It did not quicken the step; it only made the feet heavy with hesitation. It did not preserve life; it merely prolonged the agonizing prelude to execution.

In the grand trial of life and death, where the wills of the cosmos collided, fear offered zero tactical advantage, zero martial insight, and zero salvation.

To bring fear into a fight was to willingly hand your throat to the enemy’s sword before the first blow was even struck.

When you counter, you don’t let them cut you.

It was not about cowering behind a shield or desperately swatting away a blade out of dread.

A counter was a statement of denial! It was the cold, clinical decree that the enemy’s will had no right to cross your boundary, that their steel had no authority to touch your skin, and that their momentum belonged entirely to you.

When you run, it’s to prepare for an attack.

Retreat was not flight. Movement across the battlefield was merely the winding of a lethal spring, the calculated drawing back of a bowstring, the deliberate positioning of the predator before the fatal pounce.

You do not run to hide from the storm, you move to become the lightning that strikes from the blind spot.

And when you attack... you kill.

The realization sent a searing chill through the very core of her soul.

An attack was not an inquiry. It was not an exchange of pleasantries, nor was it an audition to seek approval from the heavens or the man standing before her.

An attack was an irreversible eradication!

When the fist was launched, it carried only one singular, uncompromising objective: to extinguish the spark of the target, to tear through flesh, bone, and soul until nothing remained of the threat!

If you strike with anything less than the intent to annihilate, you are merely committing suicide in slow motion.

All the noise, all the lingering neurosis, all the desperate, pathetic begging for validation—it all evaporated from Shen Xun’er’s mind like morning dew beneath a blazing sun.

Her heart, which had been beating in frantic, uneven thumps against her ribs, suddenly slowed.

THUMP.

THUMP.

THUMP.

A serene, terrifying stillness descended upon her sea of consciousness.

The pain in her bruised stomach vanished from her perception.

The blood trickling down her cheek became nothing more than warm water.

The vast, vaulted stone chamber ceased to be a tomb of judgment, transforming in her eyes into a pure, absolute canvas of life and death.

Slowly, smoothly, Shen Xun’er rose from the ground.

Her red robes fell into pristine, motionless folds around her slender frame.

Her short blonde hair settled neatly around her neck, unruffled by the draft.

And when she raised her head, looking across the short distance toward Shen Haoran...

The frantic, desperate light in her vibrant purple eyes was gone.

In its place was a fathomless, tranquil, and utterly terrifying abyss of pure, unadulterated intent.

There was no hesitation, no pleading, and not a single shred of fear left in her gaze.

She lowered her center of gravity, stepping forward into a deep, balanced stance, her right hand curling into a relaxed, open claw bathed in silent, incandescent fire, her eyes locked onto his throat.

She was no longer fighting to be saved.

She was ready to kill.