Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The violent blast of the explosion ripped the center of the bustling merchant avenue into a smoldering, pulverized wasteland.

Shattered timber beams, blackened brick fragments, and shredded market canopies rained down like burning hail.

The deafening roar of falling multi-tiered pavilions shook the earth, smothered immediately beneath a choking, greasy fog of sweet-scented rose and sulfur.

Across the street, the cheerful laughter and haggling of moments prior had transformed into an apocalyptic cacophony of agony.

Entire rows of tea shops and elixir parlors were reduced to burning splinters, while the cobblestones were stained in dark, boiling smears of gore as hundreds of mortal merchants and low-tier rogue cultivators were flung through the air like broken marionettes.

Down in the burning crater, where the vendor’s stall had been wiped out of existence down to the bedrock, Qing Yan was thrown violently against the shattered remains of a stone pillar.

CRASH!

The concussive shockwave knocked the breath from his chest in a ragged gasp.

Before he could recover his balance, multiple sinister, sickening silhouettes lunged from the churning smoke like a pack of starving ghouls.

SLAM!

Qing Yan panicked as he found himself pinned to the ground by a group of scantily clad women.

His back hit the scorching, soot-covered stone, his arms forced outward and clamped flat against the rubble by filthy, claw-like hands.

He strained against them, his physique surging with resistance, but his sea of consciousness was suddenly struck by an insidious, cloying miasma that turned his limbs unnaturally heavy, draining the explosive spring from his sinews.

And as he looked up at his captors, his face shattered into a stomach-churning horror.

They were scantily clad, draped in sheer, tattered rags of soiled crimson and soiled yellow silk that barely hung over their withered, leathery frames, yet there was not a single speck of allure or beauty to be found.

They were hideous, horrifying hags whose bodies had long been hollowed out and corrupted by foul, demonic dual-cultivation arts.

Their skin was dry, peeling, and jaundiced, pulled taut over jutting ribcages and sharp collarbones like parchment over dry kindling.

Their faces were grotesque caricatures of lust—their cheeks completely hollowed out, their cheekbones protruding like jagged knives from excessive sexual indulgence, their eyes bloodshot, milky, and rolling with animalistic, frantic depravity.

Worst of all was the smell.

They reeked. A foul, nauseating stench of rotten swamp water, curdled sweat, rancid fat, dried semen and festering, open sores rolled off their bodies in waves, so suffocating that Qing Yan gagged, bile rising hot into his throat.

”Let me see the chosen one,” One woman raised his head and stared at him.

Her filthy, calloused fingers dug deep into his jawline, forcing his chin upward, her breath, smelling of decomposing meat and stale wine, washed directly over his nostrils.

Her sunken, bloodshot eyes bulged with unbridled ecstasy as she took in his pristine, unblemished skin, the refined elegance of his features, and the pure, intoxicating masculine vitality pulsing within his veins.

SLUUUURP.

With a wet, repulsive motion, she dragged her long, gray, coated tongue across his left cheek, from his jaw all the way to his cheekbone, leaving behind a slick, shimmering trail of thick, foul-smelling saliva.

”Keeeeeheeheee! Perfect! He can definitely serve as our chosen one! There is no one more suitable!”

Qing Yan trembled, his pupils contracting into pinpricks, much to his horror.

’System! System! Help me please!’

But there was no response.

As this happens, all around them, the destruction continued to spread unchecked.

The entire city was engulfed into flames—leaping columns of vile fire that did not merely burn wood and stone, but hungrily consumed qi, spreading through the commercial district like a runaway viral plague, melting iron gates into slag and reducing fleeing mortals to screaming, blistered skeletons.

High above the flaming hellscape, hovering fifty feet in the air, Qian Yunxi remained suspended beneath the afternoon sky.

Her wings beat slowly, generating powerful, localized gusts of sacred wind that forced the greasy smog away from her pristine figure.

Below her, standing at the center of the wreckage, was the leader of this group.

It was the veiled, pink-eyed woman who had been observing Qing Yan from the high tea pavilion earlier.

Her gaze was no longer locked on the pinned youth in the dirt, instead, they were locked onto Qian Yunxi.

Slowly, the woman raised her slender, pale hand, decorated with sharp nails, and pinched the corner of her crimson veil.

Finally, she took it off.

Qian Yunxi’s golden brows drew together in sharp disgust.

Beneath the alluring, gossamer silk lay a horrifying nightmare.

The lower half of the woman’s face was not the smooth, jade-like flesh of a fairy maiden, but a patchwork of stolen, decomposing female skins stiched together.

Her cheeks, her chin, and her upper lip were a mosaic of rotting, graying skin stitched together with coarse, blackened copper wire.

The seams were swollen, weeping thin lines of yellowish ichor, and the mouth was skewed at an unnatural, macabre angle, half of it belonging to a youthful maiden and the other half borrowed from a withered, decaying crone.

The flesh around her jawline had begun to necrotize, giving off the sharp, putrid stench of an unsealed crypt that defied her otherwise youthful, voluptuous physique.

She tilted her stitched head, her serpentine, pink eyes drinking in Qian Yunxi’s peerless beauty—the porcelain skin, the high, regal cheekbones, the flawless golden brows, and the radiant aura of divine grace.

She smiled at Qian Yunxi, the movement tearing slightly at the copper sutures near her lip, oozing a bead of dark, stagnant fluid.

”Such a beautiful face...” the woman purred, her voice a jarring mixture of a maiden’s melodious giggle and a dry, raspy wheeze from the grave. ”So pure and vibrant. Untouched by the rot of the flesh, bathed in the blinding light of the heavens. It makes my skin crawl with such delicious, burning envy... Tell me, little fairy... you don’t mind me killing you and taking your face for my use, do you? It would look so magnificent sewn over my cheekbones. The acolytes would weep with adoration.”

Qian Yunxi just frowned, her voice ringing out across the burning avenue with crystalline, unshakeable clarity.

”Sorry. This body already belonged to someone. If you want to take a piece of me, you will have to ask him.”

Every syllable was laced with unyielding conviction.

Her life, her beauty, her sword, and every drop of blood in her veins had long been pledged to that youth whose shadow she chose to follow.

To let a filthy, bottom-feeding ghoul desecrate her skin was an insult to the master she swore to serve.

The stitched woman threw her head back and laughed.

”Ahahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHA!”

The laughter was shrill, manic, and echoed off the crumbling walls of the city like shattered glass.

”I like you, girl!” the woman gasped, wiping a drop of pus from her sutured chin with the back of her hand, her pink eyes flaring with rabid, murderous desire. ”A fiery little sparrow who chirps of ownership! How delightful! How utterly precious!”

Her posture straightened, her voluptuous frame expanding as an ancient, suffocating aura began to leak from her pores.

”Remember the name of the woman who will wear your appearance, child. My name is Rou Ting, the third elder of the Ishtar Divine Cult... and I have come, to take your face!”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

The earth beneath the city violently imploded.

Rou Ting’s aura at the fourth stage of Nirvana Rebirth Realm exploded.

The sheer, unfathomable scale of that power was beyond mortal comprehension.

A Fourth Stage Nirvana Rebirth expert was a walking natural disaster—a monster whose physical form, nascent soul, and dantian had undergone four cycles of total heavenly immolation and cosmic reconstruction.

CRACK-SHATTER!

The atmosphere turned dense as solid lead.

The flames consuming the city froze in place, their tongues of fire locking into static, glass-like statues.

The falling debris suspended itself mid-air, the sound of collapsing walls was choked into non-existence, and the fabric of the local space turned deep, bruised purple.

The tyrannical authority of a Fourth Stage Nirvana Rebirth fell like a collapsing mountain range, causing the entire world to stall!

Down on the ground, the air was entirely forced out of the lungs of the surviving mortals; their bones cracked, their eardrums burst, and they were pinned flat into the dirt by the raw, atmospheric gravity.

And that tidal wave of aura surged straight up into the firmament, aiming to crush Qian Yunxi’s wings, shatter her spine, and drag her helpless, broken body down to the butcher’s block.

However—

Just as that horrific, soul-crushing pressure was about to reach into Qian Yunxi—

HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM—!

The golden necklace resting against her collarbone suddenly blazed!

The Teardrop of The Divine Messenger ignited with an incandescent, blinding corona of divinity.

A translucent, golden phantom of a colossal, six-winged empress materialized for a fraction of a second behind Qian Yunxi’s back.

The ancient, crystallized blood of the Six Winged Divine Emperor pulsed, projecting a spherical barrier of warm, untouchable dawn light that completely enveloped Qian Yunxi’s frame.

BZZZZT!

The Fourth Stage Nirvana Rebirth aura—a power that could have leveled a province, slammed violently into that thin veil of golden light... and shattered.

The crushing gravity washed around the golden sphere like water breaking against an immovable diamond reef, leaving Qian Yunxi completely unhindered, her hair and robes fluttering peacefully within the protective sanctuary of her ancestor’s blood.

Rou Ting’s pink eyes widened in genuine, staggering shock. ”What?! A barrier?! Shit. I don’t believe I can’t break it!”

Down in the crater, seeing the monstrous elder preparing to unleash a second, lethal divine strike against the woman who he consider his goddess, Qing Yan couldn’t help but roar.

”LET HER GO!”

The desperate, furious shout tore from his throat, veins bulging along his neck as he fought violently against the four diseased hags pinning him to the stones.

He locked eyes with the terrifying, stitched elder standing ten paces away.

”You want me as your chosen, right?!” Qing Yan roared, his voice raw, pouring every ounce of his soul into the bargain. ”Take me! I will go with you! I won’t resist! Just don’t touch her! Don’t you dare lay your rotten hands on Qian Yunxi!”

Rou Ting paused, her raised, claw-like hand freezing in mid-air.

Her pink, serpentine pupils flicked from the impenetrable golden barrier shielding Qian Yunxi, down to the pale, panting youth pinned beneath her disciples.

She thought for a moment.

The girl’s defensive artifact was terrifying; even at the Fourth Stage of Nirvana Rebirth, cracking this level of protective ward would take time, burning her energy and creating a massive, uncontrollable spectacle.

And her primary mission, the sole reason she had traveled across the world, was to secure a male vessel!

A divine host of his caliber was an opportunity that appeared once in ten thousand years.

If she lingered to try and destroy an ancestral relic, she risked losing the true prize entirely.

”A generous offer, little lamb,” Rou Ting purred with a twisted, stitched grin. ”Very well.”

!

SWOOSH!

In a blur of wine-red silk, Rou Ting vanished from the center of the crater, reappearing directly above Qing Yan.

With a casual, brutal flick of her wrist, she shoved her disciples aside and caught Qing Yan by the scruff of his collar, hoisting his body effortlessly into the air with one hand.

Her long nails dug into his shoulder blades, injecting a strand of pink, soul-numbing poison that paralyzed his meridians instantly.

Qian Yunxi frowned, but decided not to interfere. If a fight broke out, she knew that she will absolutely not be able to win.

She is not Shen Haoran, after all.

However, at that very moment—

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

From the eastern horizon, above the sprawling stone bastions of the inner city, a terrifying aura of a peak Spirit Ascension realm exploded into the clouds.

SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH!

Immediately, it was followed by several more Spirit Ascension auras, eleven towering pillars of azure and white qi shot into the sky, tearing through the smoke and rushing towards them with blinding, furious speed.

The city’s high-tier enforcers had finally mobilized!

”DEMONIC CULTISTS! CEASE YOUR SLAUGHTER AND SUBMIT TO THE SOUTHERN COURT!” a thunderous roar boomed from the leading commander, a hundred-foot blade of condensed sword intent already cleaving through the clouds toward the burning crater.

”Tsk! The city guards!”

Rou Ting’s face twisted into an ugly, furious scowl, her stitches pulling tight as she clicked her tongue in annoyance.

She had no fear of a few peak Spirit Ascension brats, but being bogged down by an entire garrison while carrying their precious chosen was an unnecessary complication.

”Let’s go!” Rou Ting ordered her disciples with a sharp, piercing hiss.

With her free left hand, she instantly crushed a black, blood-inscribed teleportation talisman between her fingers.

HUMMMMMMMMM—FLASH!

A violent, circular vortex of chaotic spatial tears erupted around Rou Ting, Qing Yan, and the screeching, diseased crones!

CRACK!

The instant they disappeared, the spatial vortex snapped shut.

It was at that moment that the eleven Spirit Ascension city guards materialized in a flurry of azure light, weapons drawn, war-banners waving—only to find an empty, burning ruin.

They had missed them completely.

High above the smoking ashes, Qian Yunxi remained silent, her wings flared with a blinding brilliance, her blue eyes staring into the empty spatial void where Qing Yan had been taken.