Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The silence in the grand circular chamber stretched thin as drawn wire.

Shen Haoran watched the subtle shift in Shen Xun’er’s posture, his golden eyes narrowing with razor-sharp interest.

The frantic tremble in her fingers had ceased, the shallow, ragged pants that had previously betrayed her racing pulse settled into a low, rhythmic cadence that barely stirred the collar of her red robes.

’Good,’ Haoran thought, his lips twitching upward into a cold, expectant curve. ’The rust is finally peeling away.’

Without a word of warning, Shen Xun’er vanished.

BOOM!

The basalt floor beneath her back heel did not merely crack; it disintegrated into an implosive shockwave of pulverized stone.

She did not charge with wild, howling fury as she had done against her reflection, there was no theatrical roar, no wasted breath.

She crossed twenty paces of distance in a fraction of a millisecond, her silhouette blurring into a streak of pure, compressed crimson lightning.

Her right arm shot forward like an uncoiling ballista, her fingers locked into an ancient dragon claw bathed in silent, incandescent fire.

The target was not his shoulder, nor was it a broad strike against his chest to test his defense, instead, her claw aimed straight for the soft hollow of his throat—a strike born of cold, unadulterated intent to sever windpipe and spine in a single stroke.

SHING—!

The nameless steel sword hovering beside Haoran’s shoulder snapped into his right palm, slicing upward in a clean, vertical parry to take her forearm off at the wrist.

In that brief sliver of time, the old Xun’er would have panicked, she would have pulled her arm back out of terror of losing her limb, or raised her left hand to desperately block the incoming steel, trading momentum for fragile safety.

Instead, Shen Xun’er’s purple eyes did not even flicker.

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

Just as the razor edge of the steel blade was about to bite into her wrist, Shen Xun’er twisted her torso in mid-air with impossible, snake-like elasticity.

Her descending right claw shifted its trajectory by a fraction of an inch, not to retreat, but to violently slap the flat of Haoran’s sword blade.

CLANG!

Sparks of fiery crimson and flickering sword intent erupted between them.

The violent deflection knocked the path of the nameless sword aside, leaving Haoran’s central axis completely exposed.

”Better,” Haoran murmured, his voice sounding right above the ringing metallic chime of the parry.

Yet, even as his blade was guided off-course, Haoran’s left hand struck like a coiled viper, his palm thrusting straight toward her exposed solar plexus with enough concussive void force to collapse a mountain range.

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

Shen Xun’er did not brace for the impact, and she did not deploy a desperate, stationary turtle shell of dragon scales to weather the blow.

The instant her right hand deflected his steel, she kicked off the flat of his redirected sword with the tip of her left boot, using his own kinetic resistance to catapult herself backward through the air.

Haoran’s palm strike whistled through empty space, the crushing sonic boom tearing a thirty-foot crater through the floorboards where she had been suspended half a heartbeat prior.

Shen Xun’er landed thirty paces away, her boots skidding across the polished stone for barely a yard before she immediately bent her knees, coiling her muscles like a pair of compressed steel springs.

She hadn’t fled to survive, she had created distance to dictate the outcome of the next slaughter.

SWOOSH—!

Before the dust from Haoran’s palm strike could even touch the stones, Shen Xun’er was already rocketing back toward him.

”Sundering Talon Flurry!”

Her limbs became a tempest of lethal, blinding arcs as ten, twenty, fifty strikes detonated across his guard per second—spinning heel kicks aimed at his temple, inverted elbow drops targeting his collarbones, and piercing dragon claws stabbing toward his eyes and femoral arteries.

Every single strike was stripped of hesitation, executed with the terrifying, single-minded conviction that each blow was meant to end his existence.

Haoran wielded the nameless sword with effortless, sovereign grace, his dark robes fluttering gently against the hurricane of her crimson flames.

CLANG! BANG! CRACK! CLANG!

He parried a claw with the crossguard, deflected a spinning roundhouse with the flat of the blade, and sidestepped a thrust that obliterated the pillar behind him into microscopic pebbles.

”Still too rigid,” Haoran’s voice cut through the roaring thunder of their clash, calm and didactic as if he were merely lecturing an inner disciple in an ancestral courtyard. ”You are thinking about the sequence. You are anticipating my parry instead of letting your instincts dictate the kill. If you waste a single thought on what I might do, your strike has already lost its edge!”

SWISH!

Haoran’s nameless sword suddenly reversed its flow, slipping through the seam between her rapid claw strikes like water through fingers.

The cold steel sliced cleanly across her left shoulder, drawing a fine, stinging line of crimson blood.

Shen Xun’er did not flinch, and she did not even look at the wound.

The pain was merely sensory data; the blood was merely fluid.

That was her thoughts.

She stepped directly into the path of the following slash, sacrificing the flesh of her outer deltoid to clamp her left forearm against the back of his sword hand, pinning his weapon arm against her chest while driving her right fist—sheathed in a miniature, rotating supernova of pure burning qi—straight into his jaw.

BOOM!

Haoran raised his left forearm just in time to catch the strike!

The cataclysmic kinetic shockwave blew the roof tiles of the grand chamber into powder, the sheer concussive pressure gouging concentric rings of destruction across the entire floor.

The impact forced Haoran’s heels to slide back two inches across the obsidian basalt—the first time he had been moved by a mortal strike since entering this secret realm.

Haoran’s golden eyes flared with a sudden, brilliant spark of predatory amusement.

”Now... you are finally baring your fangs,” Haoran chuckled, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through her bones.

CRACK!

With a subtle flex of his wrist, Haoran unleashed a burst of pure, primordial spatial repulsion from his caught blade, violently blowing Shen Xun’er backward.

She flipped three times through the air, landing lightly on the tips of her feet fifty paces away.

Her breathing was heavy, her red robes torn at the shoulder, her blonde hair with green tips damp with sweat, but her purple eyes burned with an unyielding, incandescent fire that seemed to consume the ambient shadows.

She knew she had reached her limits, both physically and mentally, not to mention her qi was almost empty.

Her dantians were screaming, her meridians that had been revitalized by Astraeus’s healing grace were vibrating at their maximum, dangerous tolerance threshold.

She could not sustain an extended war of attrition against this monster; an ant could dance around an elephant’s foot for only so long before the earth itself gave way.

If she was to prove her worth, if she was to burn her name into his soul as an unstoppable spear rather than a fragile, discarded shield, it had to be settled here.

In this single, and unconditional strike.

Shen Xun’er closed her eyes for a second.

Within the deepest sanctum of her core, she gathered every single remaining drop of her awakened primordial dragon qi.

She burned her qi, poured the absolute entirety of her spiritual essence into her lower dantian, and locked her intent upon the young supreme standing fifty paces away.

When you attack... you kill.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

The atmosphere within the colossal circular chamber completely ruptured.

Columns of apocalyptic, golden-crimson dragon fire violently erupted from Shen Xun’er’s pores, tearing through the floorboards and shooting thousands of feet straight into the vaulted ceiling.

The sheer, monstrous heat vaporized the stone beneath her boots into bubbling, orange magma.

Then, Shen Xun’er lunged into the sky.

Her body rotated with dizzying, impossible momentum, transforming into a towering, vortex-like cyclone of pure, unbridled destruction.

”TWIN DRAGON HURRICANE!”

With a deafening roar that shook the very foundations of the secret realm, Shen Xun’er unleashed an all-out, cataclysmic spinning kick.

As her heel tore through the spatial fabric, the boundless crimson flames condensing around her rotation manifested into two colossal, thousand meter long phantoms of burning crimson eastern dragons!

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR—!!!!!

The burning dragon phantoms roared with the sound of a dying star.

Their scales were forged from hyper-compressed qi fire, their fangs sharp enough to tear through planar boundaries, and their glowing eyes burned with her absolute desire to annihilate everything in their path.

The twin dragons intertwined into a screaming, spiral drill of apocalyptic heat and kinetic devastation, descending straight toward Shen Haoran like a celestial extinction event, threatening to vaporize the ancient temple, the chamber, and the very bedrock of the continent into absolute non-existence.

Standing at the epicenter of the descending apocalypse, his dark robes whipping wildly in the scorching gale, Shen Haoran looked up.

The blinding crimson light reflected in his golden eyes, illuminating a face that held no fear, no panic, and no need to evade.

Instead, Haoran’s lips parted into a wide, profoundly satisfied smirk.

SWISH.

With a casual flick of his wrist, Haoran tossed the plain, nameless steel sword aside, letting the weapon clatter against the melting stone.

He planted his feet in a wide, immovable horse stance, his left hand traced a graceful, ancient arc through the boiling air, while his right palm drew back to his hip, condensing an ancient, primordial aura that completely silenced the raging storm around him.

Then, as the twin burning dragon phantoms descended within ten paces of his skull, Haoran smoothly thrust his right palm upward toward the heavens.

”Dragon Subduing Palm.”

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT—HUMMMMMMM!

There was no deafening explosion, there was no cataclysmic clash of elemental energies.

The moment Haoran’s pale, slender palm met the vortex, a colossal, translucent golden dragon claw, vast enough to blot out the sky and dense with the absolute laws of cosmic suppression, manifested out of nothingness!

The golden claw simply closed.

CRUNCH.

It was like an iron cage snapping shut around two fluttering moths.

The two towering, thousand-foot-tall burning crimson dragon phantoms, packed with every single ounce of Shen Xun’er’s lifelong cultivation and her life-or-death intent, were caught firmly in the center of Haoran’s palm!

With a subtle, effortless tightening of his fingers, the ancient, supreme law of the technique surged through the construct.

POP.

The roaring flames, the spiraling hurricane, the kinetic shockwaves, and the apocalyptic heat were instantly, completely, and utterly negated.

The twin crimson dragons shattered into harmless, fading embers, their primordial roar choked into silence, dissolving into the cool air without leaving behind a single scorch mark upon Haoran’s palm.

The raging tempest vanished in the span of a single heartbeat, leaving the grand chamber once again bathed in tranquil, undisturbed twilight.

In mid-air, having expended every single speck of qi, every shred of physical stamina, and every drop of spiritual energy in her body, Shen Xun’er was completely frozen.

Her body fell through the empty air like a bird with severed wings.

Looking down from above, seeing the colossal attack that she had poured her entire soul into getting extinguished as easily as a man pinching out a candle flame, Shen Xun’er’s vibrant purple eyes widened to their staggering limits.

Her jaw dropped, her mind completely short-circuiting under the sheer, unfathomable absurdity of the gap between them.

”Y-You’re... you’re joking...” she croaked out, her voice a cracked, breathless whisper of pure, stunned disbelief. ”That was... everything I had...”

THUD.

Before she could process another thought, her exhausted limbs gave out completely.

Shen Xun’er crashed face-first onto the cool, unblemished flagstones of the chamber floor, completely paralyzed by total physical and spiritual exhaustion.

She couldn’t lift a finger, she couldn’t summon a single spark of her qi.

Her vision swam with heavy, encroaching darkness, her chest heaving in faint, shallow gasps as she lay sprawled before his boots like a limp ragdoll.

She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the final, cold disdain—waiting for the chilling decree that she was still too weak, still too insignificant, and still unworthy of walking in his path.

However...

CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.

The slow, rhythmic, and clear sound of hands clapping echoed through the quiet chamber.

Shen Xun’er weakly forced her eyelids open, shifting her cheek against the smooth stone to look up.

Shen Haoran was standing barely three paces away, looking down at her battered, exhausted figure.

His handsome face was illuminated by a warm, radiant, and undeniably genuine smile—the very smile she had dreamed and was desperately chasing, stripped of all mockery and cruel detachment.

He clapped his hands once more, the sound reverberating with sovereign finality, before extending his pale hand down toward her.

”Well done, Xun’er,” Shen Haoran spoke, his deep, magnetic voice ringing with authentic, unshakeable pride that washed over her battered soul like a soothing balm. ”You cast aside your fear, you reclaimed your fangs, and you dared to strike with absolute intent to kill.”

His golden eyes met her wide, exhausted purple pupils, sealing her ascension with a single, magnificent decree.

”Congratulations. You have passed the final trial.”