Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Do gods really exist?

Huo Yue couldn’t help but wonder as she was crucified, staring at the group of tribal women dancing and praying.

The rough timber of the cross bit brutally into the skin of her back, the fibrous ropes soaked in some acrid, sticky botanical resin that burned against her wrists and ankles like creeping lye.

Above her, the sky hung bruised and purple, swollen with stagnant monsoon clouds that seemed to smother the very breath in her throat.

Around the sacrificial altar, the rhythmic, hypnotic pounding of hollow-log drums vibrated straight through the bedrock, matching the frantic, irregular hammering of her own heart.

The tribal women moved like living shadows beneath the flickering torchlight.

Their dark skin was painted with intricate, spiraling talismans traced in crushed luminescent bone-meal and ochre ash.

They swayed, their hips snapping in violent, syncopated time, their heads tossed back as they keened high-pitched, guttural chants in a dialect that predated the written chronicles from the mainland.

Shell ornaments clicked around their throats and ankles like chattering teeth.

In their hands, they shook dried rattles made of hollowed serpent skulls, invoking an ancient, faceless presence they believed dwelt beneath the dark waters of the southern archipelagos.

’...Damn it, how annoying.’

Right now, she was completely vulnerable, for some reason, she couldn’t muster even a drop of her qi, and even her flames couldn’t be called out.

The terrifying silence within her sea of consciousnes felt as though an impenetrable mountain of frigid, petrified lead had been dropped directly upon her.

No matter how violently she commanded her soul, the brilliant heavenly flames that had once defined her genius, the proud, untamed flames that had reduced countless enemies to ashes and countless mountains to turn into molten slag, remained as cold and dormant as winter ashes.

Even the microscopic sparks that normally crackled along her meridians refused to answer her call.

Her dantians were inert, coated in a paralyzing, numbing fog that had seeped into her system the moment she inhaled the strange, sweet-smelling incense burning in the jungle glade hours earlier.

Aside from her physical strength, which was still powerful enough to wrestle Nascent Soul demonic beasts, she was no better than a mortal.

She was confident in her strength. Her flesh and sinew had been tempered in the raging Heavenly flames; her bone marrow was infused with the crystallized essence of various flame type demonic beasts.

With raw muscle alone, she could tear the iron jaws of an abyssal swamp dragon apart with her bare hands, or split a charging three-eyed blood ape’s skull with an unarmored palm strike.

But having Nascent Soul level of physical strength means nothing when there are literal Spirit Ascension realm experts on the other side.

Even if she can beat them in the contest of physical strength, she had no way of beating a Spirit Avatar, not to mention she couldn’t even break free from these shackles.

Her sharp fiery red eyes darted toward the edge of the sacrificial clearing, where three towering figures stood as unyielding as iron statues.

They were the tribal matrons and the high priestess of the Tide Caller Tribe.

Unlike the frenzied dancers around the bonfire, these three women stood in utter, terrifying stillness.

Their hair hung down to their waists in dense, matted braids adorned with petrified coral and deep-sea monster teeth.

From their hunched shoulders emanated a suffocating, ambient pressure—a tyrannical gravitational field woven of pure Spirit Ascension authority that bent the tropical rain away from their bodies and crushed the local vegetation flat against the mud.

Indeed, against a power that commanded the very fabric of local laws, a mere mortal body, even one forged to the absolute pinnacle of the Nascent Soul realm, was as fragile and pathetic as a dried leaf in an oncoming typhoon.

The frenzied tempo of the bone-drums suddenly reached a sharp, ear-splitting crescendo.

With a low, guttural cry, the lead ritualist slammed the butt of her spear against the earth.

Instantly, four heavily muscled tribal women stepped forward, and without uttering a single word, they hoisted the thick, splintered base of the heavy wooden cross onto their shoulders.

The tribe carried her with her cross towards a cliff leading down to the sea, marching with measured, ceremonial strides through the suffocating humidity of the jungle canopy.

Huo Yue clenched her jaw, her fingernails digging into her palms until droplets of crimson blood welled up around her calloused knuckles.

She strained against the resinous ropes, the cords biting deep into the meat of her forearms, but the damp timber did not yield an inch.

The rhythmic chants swelled into a deafening roar behind her, a relentless hymn of appeasement meant to sate the boundless hunger of the tides.

Before long, the dense mangrove thicket broke away, revealing the precipitous edge of the world.

The sheer cliff dropped hundreds of feet straight down into a boiling, pitch-black ocean.

Jagged, black basalt pillars rose from the froth below like the broken teeth of a submerged leviathan.

The waves crashed on the cliff with apocalyptic ferocity, sending massive geysers of salty, white foam roaring into the midnight air, filling the atmosphere with the violent roar of shattering water.

The spray stung her eyes, dousing the sweat from her pale forehead.

The carriers reached the very precipice, their toes curled over the moss-slick basalt edge.

There was no final verdict, no reading of crimes, and no opportunity for defiance.

And without hesitation, they dropped her.

The hands left the timber, the solid earth vanished beneath the wooden beams.

WHOOSH—!

The sudden, sickening sensation of weightlessness gripped her chest.

Huo Yue plummeted through the cold, howling ocean gale, the cross whistling through the air as the black sea rushed up to consume her like the gaping maw of an ancient beast.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The impact was cataclysmic.

The flat plane of the ocean slammed into her like a falling iron fortress, knocking every cubic inch of air from her lungs in a breathless, burning gasp.

The heavy, water-logged timber dragged her downward with terrifying, unstoppable momentum.

Huo Yue was instantly pulled down to the abyss, plunging deep into the sunless depths where the roaring storm above was reduced to a muffled, suffocating hum.

The water was bitterly cold, pressing against her eardrums and temples with crushing hydraulic force.

Salt burned her nostrils and bit viciously into her raw, abraded wrists as she kicked with all the force her tempered legs could muster, the water churning violently around her ankles, but the immense ballast of the iron-bark cross acted like an anchor from the deepest purgatory, dragging her deeper, deeper, and deeper into the freezing dark.

Her lungs screamed for oxygen, her chest tightened as if bound by iron bands.

As the bubbles tumbled from her gritted lips, ascending toward the distant, shimmering surface she could no longer reach, Huo Yue struggled as she drowned, her vision beginning to blur with dark, dancing spots of hypoxia.

And in that freezing, dark silence beneath the waves, the memories of her life rushed through her mind in an overwhelming, agonizing cascade.

She thought of all the hardships she endured.

The endless nights spent bleeding upon the volcanic sands of a vast wasteland, practicing stances until the skin peeled from her soles and the flesh of her hands split to the bone.

She thought of the humiliation she suffered after she lost her talent for three years—the cold, sneering looks from sect elders who had once bowed their heads before her, the vicious whispers of former peers who openly mocked her as a ’burned-out spark’ and a ’useless cripple’ who had squandered heaven’s grace.

She remembered being hunted by enemies across the jagged ridges of the Crimson Mountains—running through thorny briars with grave wounds festering in her back, hiding beneath piles of rotting corpses to evade the search hounds of the Shadow Hall.

She remembered that rainy, ruinous night when the sky turned black with celestial thunder, and her beloved master—one of the only person who had believed in her during her darkest, most pathetic years, the only anchor of warmth in an ocean of cruelty—was ripped from her side, bound in soul-suppressing chains by shadowy figures from the Shadow Hall, dragged away into who knows where while she could only watch helplessly, screaming until her vocal cords tore to shreds.

She thought of the friends she made along the way, Medusa, Zhu Ziyan, even that annoying bitch, Xu Xiansu

And most importantly, she thought of Haoran...the man she love with all her being, the man she was willing to lay down her life to.

Is this how it ends? Bound to a piece of rotting wood, drowned like a stray dog by a nameless tribe in the middle of nowhere?

No.

A sudden, incandescent spark of pure, unadulterated fury ignited within the freezing marrow of her bones.

NO!

I will not die here!

Driven by a desperate, feral refusal to accept oblivion, Huo Yue violently clenched her teeth until blood seeped from her gums into the sea water.

She cast aside all care for the safety of her body as she completely ignored the poisonous, numbing fog choking her meridians.

With an act of sheer, suicidal madness, she instantly forcefully circulated her Imperial Flame Transformation cultivation technique, trying to break free from the cross.

BOOM!

Within her frozen sea of consciousness, the dormant golden core of the Imperial Flame Transformation technique violently convulsed.

KZZZZT—HUUUUUUM!

The agonizing backlash of forcefully driving qi through locked channels felt like molten bronze being injected directly into her veins.

Blood burst from the pores of her shoulders and arms, clouding the dark sea in a plume of crimson.

But beneath that blood, a faint, flickering golden ember sparked inside her chest, beginning to slowly, violently burn against the suppression.

At that exact, suspended moment...

Many hundreds of miles to the east, across the turbulent, storm-tossed expanse of the outer sea, lay another remote, mist-shrouded volcanic island.

High above the jagged coastline, situated upon the colossal, sulfur-choked rim of an active caldera, another group of tribal women were dancing and doing rituals at the mouth of the volcano.

Here, the air was not humid and wet, but dry, blistering, and choked with swirling flurries of black ash.

The molten rock bubbled hundreds of feet below in the belly of the crater, casting a violent, hellish crimson glow over the jagged basalt altar.

These women wore robes of woven golden flame-silk, their faces painted with stylized depictions of blazing suns, their rhythmic movements mimicking the slow, majestic rising of dawn.

They sang an ancient melody, calling upon the dormant Goddess of the Sun to bless their hearths and grant them strength against the dark beasts of the sea.

In the center of the basalt altar, seated cross-legged upon a pristine slab of volcanic spirit-jade, was a breathtakingly beautiful woman.

She possessed a face of exquisite, aristocratic elegance, her skin as radiant and smooth as carved alabaster, untouched by the soot and heat that clung to the surroundings.

Her long, silky orange hair cascaded down past her hips like a waterfall of liquid sunset, swaying gently in the rising thermal drafts.

Across her chest rested an ancient, palm-sized sun medallion forged from primordial star-gold, etched with nine interlocking concentric rings of solar law.

Up until this moment, she had been meditating in deep, absolute trance, her breath as slow and steady as the slumbering pulse of the island’s molten core.

Suddenly—

THUMP.

The beautiful woman with long orange hair snapped her eyes open.

The sun medallion resting against her sternum suddenly flared, glowing bright red with an incandescent, blinding intensity that rivaled the heart of the lava below.

HUMMMMMMMMM—!

A wave of terrifying, ancient solar heat detonated outward from her frame, instantly vaporizing the falling ash within fifty paces and parting the thick volcanic clouds above the caldera in a perfect, circular halo of pure light.

The woman suddenly stood up, her tall, magnificent figure silhouetted against the blinding scarlet glare of the medallion.

Her sharp, fiery eyes locked toward the western horizon—looking past the mist, past the stormy sea, piercing directly toward the distant ocean abyss where a dying spark of the Imperial Flame Transformation technique had just begun to violently scream for life.

The drums instantly faltered.

The chanting died mid-syllable.

Every single dancer, priestess, and elder around the crater mouth froze in place.

The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the bubbling hiss of the lava below, as everyone stopped and stared at her in utter, breathless awe, watching the long-slumbering sun of their lineage awaken.