Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The subterranean chamber was suffocatingly vast, a vaulted sepulcher carved straight out of the petrified abyssal mantle miles beneath the crust of the secret realm.

Colossal stalactites hung from the high ceiling like the fangs of a slumbering cosmic titan, while down along the perimeter of the cavern, rivers of stagnant, iridescent mercury flowed through deeply grooved channels, casting an unnatural, pale-indigo luminescence across the gloom.

The air was frigid, thick with the sharp tang of ancient ozone, sulfur, and the suffocating, necrotic pressure of a dead epoch.

At this moment, in this underground ruins, Gu Xunyi and Ning Xueli stood before a massive golden skeleton with horns and wings.

The remains were titanic, towering over a hundred meters tall, pinned against the sheer face of a cliff by nine gargantuan spikes carved from primordial soul-suppressing jade.

The skeleton was forged from pure, lustrous gold—not the soft, malleable metal mined by mortal kingdoms, but celestial astral gold, dense, indestructible, and pulsing with a faint, malevolent heartbeat that vibrated straight through the marrow of their bones.

Two sweeping, serrated horns curved from its draconic skull, piercing high into the stalactites, and from its broad ribcage sprouted six massive, skeletal wings whose hollow joints were locked in eternal, agonized extension.

Even in death, after millions of years of subterranean isolation, the surrounding spatial fabric warped and shuddered around the golden bones, weeping black dimensional tears where the skeleton’s lingering aura touched the stone.

Ning Xueli took out a stone slab and stared at it, brushing her delicate, trembling fingers across the weathered pictographs, then back to the skeleton.

Her breath misted in the freezing air, her pale brows furrowed with mounting dread.

Her clothes fluttered against her slender frame as she checked the ancient celestial inscriptions against the towering horror before them.

”I guess this is it,” Ning Xueli murmured, her voice carrying a fragile, hollow resonance in the dead quiet of the sepulcher. ”The remains of the Evil Demigod, Ivaraune. It is said that the ancient people have united to seal this being and slowly corrode it, but the moment the seal is lifted, it will return.”

She traced the final broken glyph on the slab, her throat bobbing as she swallowed the bitter dryness in her mouth.

”The texts say that twelve divine sects of that era sacrificed three entire generations of high elders just to lure him into this abyssal trench. They then forged nine Soul-Piercing Pillars from the core of a fallen moon, poured the subterranean mercury to slowly dissolve his immortal divinity, and bound the array to the tectonic plates.”

”But his soul cannot be extinguished by mortal means. If the nine pillars are dislodged, the necrotic marrow inside those golden bones will call back his scattered essence from the void. In three breaths, his flesh will regrow. In ten breaths, his domain will reopen, and he will return as an unkillable calamity.”

Gu Xunyi hummed and observed the being.

Unlike Ning Xueli, who stood three paces back, Gu Xunyi was standing directly beneath the shadow of the colossal skull, completely unfazed.

Her robes was slightly rumpled, and a pair of crystalline magnifying monocles hovered silently before her left eye, held aloft by fine threads of her qi.

Where did she get it? Ning Xueli couldn’t be bothered to ask.

Gu Xunyi tapped her chin with the edge of a bronze measuring rod, leaning so close to the golden femur that her breath stirred the microscopic layer of ancient dust clinging to the marrow pores.

”Judging by the lingering energy, this being should be equal to a Supreme Emperor.”

Gu Xunyi delivered the assessment with the breezy, casual indifference of an appraiser evaluating a sack of dried turnip seeds in a local village market.

”That strong?!” Ning Xueli was shocked, ber eyes widened, her fingers tightening around the stone slab so hard the edges bit into her soft palms.

”Yeah.” Gu Xunyi merely tilted her head, pushing her floating monocle up her nose with a slender fingertip, completely unbothered by her companion’s panicked shriek.

”Then we should just leave. We don’t want to disturb this senior.” Said Ning Xueli.

”No, it’s precisely because of that fact that the sample is so fascinating,” Gu Xunyi muttered, ignoring Ning Xueli entirely as she reached out with a delicate jade brush, carefully scraping a minute fleck of dried golden marrow into a small crystal vial. ”Look at the cellular density along the spinal column, sister Xueli. This isn’t calcium-based; it has undergone total cosmic transmutation. The marrow has crystallized into miniature law-conductors. It’s magnificent. It’s practically a walking divine scripture wrapped in bone.”

Gu Xunyi then went to study the runes carved into the nine jade spikes, walking along the edge of the mercury pool, her fingers tracing the ancient spatial wards, deciphering the interlocking seals with obsessive, scholarly fervor.

Just then—

HUMMMMMMMMM—!

The stagnant mercury in the trenches suddenly began to ripple.

A deep, suffocating vibration tore through the cavern bedrock as the two colossal, hollow eye sockets of the golden skull suddenly ignited, twin spheres of sickening, baleful crimson flame springing into existence within the darkness.

The malevolent will was so heavy, so ancient, and so utterly foul that the air within fifty paces turned freezing cold, smelling of rotting blood and decomposed stars.

”... W-What!?” Ning Xueli was completely startled by the sudden change.

But Gu Xunyi just looked up, deep in thought.

From the empty cavern of the golden ribcage, an ethereal, booming voice spoked to them, echoing off the basalt walls with hypnotic, honeyed malice.

”Mortal children... wandering lambs of the lower dirt...”

The voice was vast, layered with ten thousand whispering ghosts, vibrating directly against their sea of consciousness.

”You stand before the eternal monarch of the void, Ivaraune the Unconquered. For three million years, the cowards of your world have kept me bound beneath this rotting stone... yet you, clever maidens, have found the threshold of my palace. Hear my decree, and rejoice!”

The crimson flames in the eye sockets flared, casting long, monstrous shadows across the cavern.

”Break the seals. Dislodge the nine jade spikes that pierce my ribs. Shatter the mercury channels and release the seal that binds my celestial marrow! Do this, and I swear upon the primeval chaos that I will grant you power beyond your mortal comprehension! I shall bestow upon you the blood of gods! I will crown you the empresses of this world, grant you eternal youth, and lay the severed heads of your enemies at your feet! Power, sovereignty, immortality... ALL SHALL BE YOURS!”

The demonic temptation carries an insidious soul-coercion that would have brought ninety-nine percent of all cultivation geniuses crawling on their knees to worship the altar.

Gu Xunyi didn’t even pause as she just stood before the central jade spike, looked at the panicked Ning Xueli, then looked back up at the flaming eye sockets, and just shrugged.

”Sure. Sounds good,” Gu Xunyi said flatly.

She turned back to the base of the jade pillar, rolled up both of her sleeves, and immediately started working, channeling her spiritual sense into her bronze measuring rod to probe the primary release glyphs, actively trying to find a way to unseal the ancient terror.

Ning Xueli nearly choked on her own tongue, her face drained of all color, turning as white as a fresh sheet of paper.

”WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Ning Xueli panicked and threw herself forward, wrapping both arms around Xunyi’s waist, digging her heels into the dirt, and desperately dragging her back from the array! ”STOP! ARE YOU INSANE?! Sister Xunyi, let go of the spike! Let go of it right now! Are you completely mad?!”

”Sister Xueli, unhand me,” Gu Xunyi grumbled, swatting at Xueli’s hands like an annoyed cat whose tail had been stepped on. ”If my chisel slips, the feedback will scorch the third diagnostic layer of the runes.”

”That’s the point!” Ning Xueli screamed, her voice cracking into pure hysteria as she held on for dear life. ”YOU ARE LITERALLY ATTEMPTING TO UNLEASH AN ANCIENT EVIL DEMIGOD! Did you not hear a single word that stone slab said?! Did you not hear the voice just now?! He is a Supreme Emperor level entity! He is called the ’Evil Demigod’ for a reason! The moment those nine spikes come out, he will rip our flesh from our skeletons, chew our nascent souls like sugar candies, and turn this entire continent into a sea of blood!”

Gu Xunyi stopped pulling, sighing deeply with an expression of profound, exhausted condescension, as if she were a grandmaster scholar forced to explain basic addition to a particularly stubborn toddler.

She turned around, crossing her arms under her chest, looking down at Ning Xueli with academic seriousness.

”Xueli, you are being narrow-minded. Think logically for a single second. Look at that specimen! Look at it!” She dramatically gestured toward the golden abomination, ”What am I supposed to study right now? A pile of dry bones! Yes, it’s celestial gold. Yes, the marrow has crystallized. But do you know how limiting a skeletal sample is for research?! I can’t measure his blood flow! I can’t analyze how his divine meridians metabolize astral qi! I don’t know the cellular composition of his internal organs, the contraction rate of his cardiac tissue, or the hormonal triggers that govern his wings! I won’t be able to study this being properly if he doesn’t have blood or flesh!”

Ning Xueli stared at her, her jaw hanging slack, her eyes twitching with uncomprehending horror.

”Are you... are you listening to yourself?!” Xueli shrieked, clutching her own temples. ”You want to resurrect an ancient calamity that can definitely destroy the world... just so you can conduct an autopsy while he’s alive?!”

”It’s not an autopsy if he’s alive, Xueli, it’s a comprehensive vivisection and metabolic observation! Use the correct terminology!” Gu Xunyi corrected sharply, wagging a finger. ”Do you realize the sheer, unprecedented academic value of a living demigod biological specimen?! This is a once-in-a-million-years opportunity! All I need to do now is crack the third and fifth release glyphs, allow his flesh to regenerate by roughly forty percent, just enough to form the liver, the heart, and the primary muscle tissue, and then I can run my diagnostic tests!”

”HE WON’T STOP AT FORTY PERCENT, YOU LUNATIC!” Ning Xueli yelled back, shaking her friend by the shoulders. ”He has an active consciousness! He is a malevolent demigod! Do you think he will just sit there drinking tea, while you pull out your little measuring rods and ask him to cough so you can examine him?! The second his vocal cords regenerate, his domain will crush us into powder! He will slaughter us both before you even take the cap off your little crystal vials!”

”You lack confidence in my spatial suppression formations,” Xunyi countered smoothly, adjusting her monocle. ”I have already calculated his estimated metabolic recovery rate.”

”His soul has been starved of qi for three million years. Even if the seal is lifted, his initial fleshly reconstruction will require an immense, catastrophic expenditure of energy.”

”For the first sixty seconds of his awakening, his neural synapses will be operating at a severe deficit—a state commonly known in lower biological life forms as ’post-hibernation disorientation.’”

”During those sixty seconds, his physical vessel will be soft, his divine defenses uncalibrated. That is more than enough time for me to harvest three pints of liver bile, sever a primary nerve cluster from his left wing for microscopic analysis, and document the flow of his demonic core!”

”And what happens at second sixty-one, Xunyi?!” Xueli demanded, her face turning crimson with rage and terror. ”What happens when his ’post-hibernation disorientation’ wears off and he realizes a Nascent Soul brat has just stolen a chunk of his liver?!”

”Then we apply the paralyzing toxin I distilled from the abyssal corpse-centipedes,” Xunyi answered without a second of hesitation.

”IT’S A SUPREME EMPEROR! A CORPSE-CENTIPEDE TOXIN WILL TASTE LIKE SWEET WINE TO HIM!”

”Then we negotiate! We appeal to his reason!”

”HE IS AN EVIL DEMIGOD!’

”Labels given by the victors are notoriously biased and scientifically unreliable, Xueli! Ancient historical texts routinely exaggerate the destructive temperament of entities simply because mortal infrastructure is fragile! Just because he accidentally stepped on a few cities three million years ago does not mean he is fundamentally opposed to polite scholarly discourse.”

”You’re a lost cause! No wonder Haoran calls you crazy!”

High above them, still pinned against the obsidian cliff, the glowing red eye sockets of Ivaraune flickered.

The booming, ancient voice of the Evil Demigod paused, its cosmic majesty suddenly tinged with an unmistakable undercurrent of profound, bewildered hesitation.

”...Mortals? Did... did you just say ’harvest my liver bile’?”

”Be quiet, specimen! The researchers are discussing the protocol!” Gu Xunyi snapped over her shoulder, waving her chisel dismissively at the god without even turning her head.

Ning Xueli felt her knees turn entirely to water, her soul practically ascending to the heavens from sheer, unadulterated stress.

She looked at the ancient, towering demonic skeleton, then at her best friend who was currently adjusting a pair of bronze surgical calipers with a terrifying, predatory glint in her eyes.

”Xunyi... I swear on my ancestors,” Ning Xueli whimpered, ”If you touch that seal, I will knock you unconscious, tie you to a boulder, and drag you out of this cave myself. We are not resurrecting a god just so you can write a thesis!”