Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

”... I’m back.”

Zhu Ziyan stood there, whispering, turning towards the long hall she knew would lead her to the outside.

She wanted to live, so she will escape.

It was the rational choice. It was the only choice a coward like her who had crawled out of the gutter with all four limbs intact was supposed to make.

Yet her legs felt as though they were cast from lead.

She sent her divine sense outside the temple, where frail men with trembling hands were stacking dried mud-bricks against gates that could not even turn aside a charging rhino, let alone the apocalyptic strike of twenty-six Spirit Ascension elders.

She sighed, taking a deep breath, and stared at the ceiling, ’I wonder...what would sister Yue do in this situation?’

The image of that fierce, red-robed girl materialized in her mind with searing, unquestionable clarity.

Huo Yue, with her fiery eyes and stubborn will—a girl who had tasted three years of bitter, crippling humiliation and returned from the ashes with an inferno burning in her soul.

If Huo Yue were the one who had awakened here in her place, if it had been Huo Yue who ate their bread and drank their wine...

Ziyan knew immediately that with her personality, once she accepted help, she will definitely help these people in return.

Huo Yue possessed that fiery, incandescent pride that refused to bow to numbers or common sense.

She was the kind of fool who would stand alone at the mouth of the gorge, spit a mouthful of blood into the sand, ignite her flames until the desert turned into a sea of glass, and scream at a Nirvana Rebirth expert to come and take her head.

To Huo Yue, an exchange of grace was an iron oath carved into the soul.

If you gave her a dry crust of bread when she was starving, she would tear down the gates of an empire to repay the kindness.

She would have called this entire army a gathering of barking mongrels, bared her fangs, and fought until her meridians cracked and her heart burst from her chest.

But...

’I’m not like her.’

Ziyan shook her head, and this time, her thoughts wondered what Haoran would do in this situation.

Immediately, a wry, crooked smirk tugged at the corner of her lips, despite the cold sweat prickling her collarbones.

The image of the black-robed youth, standing with his hands loosely clasped behind his back, golden pupils colder than ancient cosmic ice, flickered through her thoughts.

She knew that he probably wouldn’t care about these people.

Haoran was not a protector of the meek.

He was not a righteous hero wandering the earth with a sword to right the wrongs of the weak.

To him, the rise and fall of an isolated desert tribe was no more consequential than an anthill being washed away by a summer downpour.

If this tribe died, they died because they lacked the strength to defend their hearth; if the Jackal-Fang Clan butchered them, it was merely the natural, indifferent will of the heavens.

He would have walked past their weeping elders without turning his head, stepping over their corpses without disturbing the pristine hem of his robes.

After all, he was incredibly selfish and self-centered.

He viewed the entire cosmos through the singular, uncompromising lens of his own ascent.

The stars existed to fuel his steps; the ancient legacies of the gods were merely tools to be plundered, reshaped, or discarded; and the lives of those around him mattered only to the extent that they served his grand design.

He gave nothing for free, demanded absolute obedience, and measured the universe with chilling, ruthless calculation.

’But,’ Ziyan couldn’t help the soft, helpless warmth that blossomed behind her ribs. ’...But that’s definitely parts of his charm.’

It was precisely that unapologetic, majestic arrogance that made him so breathtaking.

In a world full of sanctimonious sect patriarchs who hid their filthy greed behind grand sermons of righteousness, Haoran was honest.

He never lied about his hunger, he never pretended to be a saint, and his selfishness was radiant, and carved from diamond—a terrifying, untouchable gravity that made everyone who walked in his orbit want to burn brighter just to earn a single glance of his approval.

Her knees suddenly felt hollow as the adrenaline that had carried her through the confrontation with the Goddess Bastet ebbed away, leaving behind a cold, sickening exhaustion.

She sat down, leaning on the wall, and pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on her forearms, her dark hair pooling around her like a puddle of ink on the stones.

The voice of the goddess still echoed in her mind like a phantom bell.

Coward.

Hypocrite.

You hold your own worth in such utter, pathetic contempt that you would rather die for a man you admire than bear the terrifying, agonizing burden of becoming a supreme yourself.

The words scraped against the raw, unhealed scars she had spent years burying beneath casual smirks, playful teases, and cold, professional detachment.

Was she truly a pragmatist? Or was she merely terrified?

She stared down at her hands. Her fingers were long, pale, and with a single thought, could sprout a razor-sharp black claws that could shred dragon leather.

For years, she had told herself that stealth, misdirection, and survival were the true marks of a true cultivator.

She had prided herself on knowing when to run, knowing when to fold her hands, knowing how to stay small so the great storms of the world passed over her head without noticing her breath.

She had lived in alleys where drawing attention meant ending up in a butcher’s pot or chained to a bed in an underground pleasure house.

To be invisible was to live.

To be cautious was to survive.

That was the rule she abide by since the destruction of her academy and her life during her mercenary days.

Yet beneath that layer of clever, streetwise wisdom lay a dark, festering pit of self-loathing.

She had always felt like an intruder among monsters.

After all, just look at the companions who walked beside her!

Shen Haoran, he was definitely destined to tread upon the heads of supreme emperors.

Medusa, queen of the Lamia, the one who carried her and Huo Yue during their adventure days, possessing the bloodline of a Heavenly beast.

Huo Yue, the woman who burned brighter than the sun, who can swallow heavenly flames like they are snacks.

And what was Zhu Ziyan?

A stray cat.

A common mercenary from the dust of the Eastern Region.

A girl whose bloodline held no divine mandate, whose cultivation was built on scraps, stolen sutras, and the sheer, desperate hunger to see tomorrow’s dawn.

Whenever she stood behind Haoran, whenever she sparred playfully with Huo Yue, a poisonous whisper coiled in her chest: You don’t belong here. You are just a stray that was allowed to follow the carriage. If they run, you will be left behind in the mud.

Her fear of death was real, but it wasn’t the simple, animalistic dread of the executioner’s blade.

It was the crushing terror of insignificance.

She was terrified of dying here, in this nameless tribe, because it would prove that she had never truly escaped the gutter.

It would mean that all her struggles, all her nights shivering in the cold, all her proud posturing had culminated in nothing more than a stray dog dying in a ditch for strangers who didn’t even know her real name.

And so, she used Haoran and Huo Yue as shields.

She cloaked herself in their magnificence.

When danger arrived, she looked toward Haoran for protection.

When despair threatened to swallow her, she warmed her hands against the lingering heat of Huo Yue’s blazing pride.

She had told Bastet that she would lay down her life for them, and it was true—she would have charged into the mouth of a celestial dragon if Haoran commanded it.

But the goddess had stripped away the romantic lie: she was willing to die for them not because she was brave, but because she believed her own life was only valuable as a sacrifice at their altar!

She had turned her devotion into an excuse to never stand tall on her own feet.

She was content to remain a shadow, a loyal hound barking from the periphery, because being a follower was safe.

A follower didn’t have to carry the weight of the sky.

A follower didn’t have to face the terrifying, lonely void of choosing who lives and who dies by her own will.

’Is this who I am?’ she asked herself, her teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her lower lip until the metallic taste of blood brought a sharp sting to her senses. ’Just a coward dressed in leather? A parasite feeding on the fire of greater souls?’

She closed her eyes.

In the darkness of her sea of consciousness, she saw them.

She saw Huo Yue sitting cross-legged across from her around a campfire in the northern wastes, tossing a charred skewer of spirit meat into her lap, scowling with that stubborn, fiery glare.

She saw Shen Haoran standing at the edge of the sky-dock in the Imperial Capital, the golden light of the setting sun casting his shadow long and proud across the marble tiles.

He had looked down at her, not with disgust, not with pity, but with that cold, fathomless gaze that saw through every layer of her mortal clay.

The memories crashed through the cold fog of her self-doubt like a hammer striking an iron bell.

Would they want her to remain like this?

Would Huo Yue want to see her scuttling through the rocks like a frightened lizard, abandoning a village to the fire just so she could preserve her fragile breath for another week?

Would Haoran respect a follower who turned her back on a challenge simply because the numbers were stacked against her, fleeing like a beaten dog because an enemy possessed an extra layer of cultivation?

The answer is no.

Huo Yue wanted her to be better.

Huo Yue wanted to see her stand as an equal, a proud sister-in-arms who looked into the abyss of the world and laughed in its face.

Haoran would want her to improve.

He demanded growth, demanded evolution, demanded that every single soul walking beneath his banner forge their spirit into a weapon that refused to shatter under the weight of heaven itself.

They had never seen her as a stray.

They had brought her with them because they believed she had the teeth of a wolf, even while she insisted on behaving like a cornered mouse.

They don’t want a coward.

’And by the heavens... I am sick of being one!’

The realization ignited within her marrow like a spark dropped into a dry prairie.

The cold trembling in her hands ceased.

The suffocating dread that had locked her knees to the stone melted away, incinerated by a sudden, brilliant wave of pure fury—not at the Jackal-Fang Clan, not at the old priest, and not at the ancient goddess who had mocked her, but at herself!

At the small, weeping girl who had hidden in the corners for too long, measuring her worth by the crumbs dropped from the tables of giants!

If she ran today, she would run tomorrow.

If she fled from this challenge, she would flee from the next one, and the next, until she was finally caught in an open field with nowhere left to hide.

She didn’t need to be Shen Haoran.

She didn’t need to be Huo Yue.

She was Zhu Ziyan.

She was the shadow that crawled where the light could not reach.

She was the needle that slipped between the heavy plates of dragon armor.

She was the whispered death that opened the throat of the sleeping king!

And with that, she opened her eyes.

The purple irises were no longer clouded with hesitation or calculating self-pity.

They burned with a fierce, feral, and utterly terrifying predatory luster that matched the nebula.

She rose to her feet in a single, her lips pulled back, baring two sharp, white canine fangs in a vicious, breathtaking smirk.

”First Stage Nirvana... more than two dozen Spirit Ascension experts...” she whispered, her voice dropping into a dangerous, velvet purr that was lost in the roar of the wind. ”A truly magnificent pack of dogs.”

She took a step forward.

She will save these people.

Not because they believed she was their goddess.

Not because she owed them a debt.

And not because a divine voice had commanded her from a golden throne.

She would save them simply because she, Zhu Ziyan, had decided that their blood belonged to her watch—and anyone who dared reach for their throats would have to pay for it with their own severed heads.

SWOOSH—!

Her silhouette dissolved into a streak of pure, pitch-black shadow, diving off outside straight into the jaws of the oncoming war!