Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The cataclysmic tremor subsided into a low, guttural vibration that rumbled deep within the subterranean bedrock.

Clouds of pulverized slate and gray dust hung thick in the air, slowly drifting across the shoreline where ancient willows had been snapped like dried twigs.

”Is this it?” Tang Lin murmured, squinting through the grit, his heart hammering against his ribs as he stared at the stone gates that appeared.

The colossal gate was easily sixty meters in height, carved directly from a monolithic slab of pale, sea-green celadon jade that seemed entirely untouched by the rot of time.

The stonework radiated an unfathomable, primordial vitality—a breath of perpetual spring so dense that the shattered willow branches along the bank began to sprout tiny green buds within seconds of its emergence.

And as the gate locked into the bedrock with a deafening, resonant thud, Tang Lin noticed that the lake was also slowly draining until it was emptied out.

The gargantuan whirlpool in the center had swallowed the vast body of water whole, dragging millions of gallons of black water down into some bottomless abyssal reservoir.

The muddy lakebed was left completely exposed, glistening with slick river stones, calcified shells, and steaming vents of pure, rich spiritual mist that rose like incense into the overcast sky.

At the lowest depression of the dried basin, right before the threshold of the jade portal, a grand flight of moss-slick stone stairs descended into the earth, inviting the bold and the foolish into the sealed sanctum.

”This is it! This is it!” one of the disciples exclaimed, his voice cracking with hysterical, unhinged ecstasy!

Lu Feng fell to his knees in the wet silt, his trembling hands clutching his own head as his bloodshot eyes drank in the emerald glyphs glowing along the lintel.

”This is the definitely the inheritance site of the God of Medicines!”

Although none of them believe in gods, an inheritance site at least meant an expert had left it there.

In a single heartbeat, the fragile veneer of brotherhood, sect loyalty, and mutual camaraderie shattered into dust.

Without hesitation, as if they were strangers, the four disciples glared at each other.

Bared teeth, dilated pupils, and feral killing intent erupted across their faces.

The promises they had made to share discoveries, the sworn oaths of being brothers, and the polite courtesies they had maintained on the shore vanished as if they had never existed.

Their hands dropped to their sword hilts, their spiritual auras flaring violently in mutual hostility.

”Out of my way, junior brother! I found the ring first!”

”Die, you greedy bastard!”

”The inheritance belongs to me!”

Without a second of hesitation, their body blurred as they scrambled up the steps, their bodies crossing the threshold of the gate in flashes of distorted, water-like ripples, disappearing entirely into the pocket realm.

Tang Lin stood on the muddy shore, watching the gate with narrowed, calculating eyes.

He didn’t move an inch as he decided to let them test the dangers of the site first, using those four fools to spring whatever lethal arrays or slumbering guardian beasts lay within the threshold.

He exhaled slowly, adjusting his coarse sleeves, and turned towards Shen Ying, who was now slowly walking towards the gate.

Her oversized, baggy gray robes fluttered against the cool, medicinal breeze blowing from the chasm.

Her boots made no sound as they stepped over the jagged river stones, her posture relaxed yet carrying an intrinsic, razor-sharp edge.

”God of Medicines... huh,” Shen Ying whispered, her voice a low, gravelly murmur that barely reached Tang Lin’s ears.

Her piercing red eyes glinted with interest—not the frantic, breathless greed of the sect disciples, but a cold, sinister, and profoundly morbid curiosity that made the hair on the back of Tang Lin’s neck stand on end.

Without another word, she stepped through the emerald light of the gate without a single breath of hesitation, her tall, voluptuous silhouette melting seamlessly into the green dimensional fog.

Tang Lin watched her disappear and stood alone in the empty, drained lakebed for three heavy seconds.

He hesitated for a moment, but then, he immediately slapped his cheeks.

What was he hesitating for?! Didn’t he swore to change his life!?

This is his chance!

With that, he sprinted up the jade steps and plunged headfirst into the light.

*

*

*

The spatial transition was smooth, smelling faintly of camphor, damp loam, and sweet, fermented nectar.

Shen Ying opened her eyes and found herself standing in a vast herbal garden below a mountain.

The scale of the realm was staggering.

Towering terraced fields stretched for tens of thousands miles in every direction, irrigated by crystalline aqueducts flowing with milky-white spirit water.

The air was so dense with herbal scent that drawing a single breath felt like swallowing a mouthful of warm, invigorating elixir soup, making her pores open and her meridians hum with vitality.

And at the very top, crowning the jagged peak of the central mountain that pierced the emerald sky, sat a temple.

It was an ancient sanctuary constructed from white celestial marble and polished bronze, faint ribbons of purple and gold pill-smoke lazily drifted from the temple’s eaves, carrying the undeniable aura of a divine core slumbering at its heart.

Shen Ying cast her gaze toward the mountain path.

Halfway up the thousand-tiered white-jade stairway leading to the temple, violent flashes of blue qi and the clashing of iron echoed down the slopes.

The four disciples had already drawn their blades, locked in a bloody, fratricidal brawl—probably to decide who gets to keep the inheritance before they even reached the temple doors.

Shen Ying curled her lip in quiet contempt.

She wasn’t quite interested in it yet.

For now, what she was interested in was the herbs below her.

She instead stared at the herbs, her eyes widened slightly as she swept her gaze across the sprawling terraced garden surrounding her.

The variety was staggering, defying every standard encyclopedia of botany preserved in the Shen Clan libraries and Imperial Academy.

There were herbs that were rare, there were herbs that were already extinct in the mortal and spirit planes, and there were even herbs that she doesn’t know yet.

A cold, venomous light ignited within Shen Ying’s pupils.

Without hesitation, she began picking them up and throwing them into her storage ring.

Her movements were terrifyingly swift, practiced with the ruthless efficiency of a master executioner stripping a corpse.

Her long, pale fingers sliced through the stems with surgical precision, harvesting roots, leaves, and seed pods without bruising the delicate spiritual membranes, tossing them by the dozen into the glowing void of her spatial ring.

And as her hands worked through the soil, dark, twisted thoughts began to coil within her mind.

To standard alchemists, these legendary plants were sacred ingredients meant to brew various longevity or healing pill, and they would treat every leaf with reverent care, dreaming of healing the sick, purifying sick disciples, and extending the lives of dying sect patriarchs.

But Shen Ying sneered internally at the thought of such pathetic, wasted potential.

Medicine? Healing? What a dull, sanctimonious waste of nature’s malice.

She stared at the oozing, milky latex dripping from the bruised stem of an extinct Corpse-Rot Lotus, her fingers gently rubbing the sticky toxin.

Her mind raced with vile, brilliant alchemical formulas.

If she fermented the sap of these Corpse-Rot Lotus with the pulverized spores of those pulsating neon mushrooms, she could improve her signature Nine-Hells Ecstasy Powder.

The current formula was already devastating—a single pinch could turn a Golden Core into a drooling, weeping addict within three days.

But with these ancient, extinct variants?

The new version wouldn’t just hijack their dopamine pathways; it would actively fuse with the user’s nascent soul!

The first dose would grant the cultivator an illusion of omnipotence, an artificial high so profound that they would feel as though they were stepping into the Supreme Emperor realm, experiencing celestial pleasure that made physical intimacy feel like ash.

But the withdrawal?

The moment the drug faded, their meridians would feel as though ten thousand flesh-eating maggots were gnawing through their spiritual veins!

Their bones would itch with a maddening, burning frost that no medical talisman could soothe.

They would willingly sell their sects, butcher their own masters, crawl through sewage, and hand over every spirit stone they possessed just to buy another of her powder.

And then there was the Soul-Melting Aphrodisiac she had been developing for underground auction houses.

By distilling the oil of the Soul-Severing Poppy and binding it to the essence of the Scarlet Flame Ginseng, she could create a venom that completely eroded the rational consciousness while leaving the physical body in a state of permanent, agonizing heat.

Once consumed, the victim’s cultivation base would be transformed into raw, volatile fuel for the drug, burning away their lifespan while they remained trapped in a hallucinatory prison of desperate, insatiable lust until their heart burst from their chest.

Addictive. Irreversible. Absolutely lethal, Shen Ying mused, a cruel, breathless smirk pulling at the corners of her lips as her storage ring swallowed another batch of black lotus roots.

The market in the capital will pay fortunes for this.

The patriarchs will dance on my strings

Of course, she has to dilute the dosage. After all, they all went completely insane that they wouldn’t want to buy more, or because they are completely crazy that they couldn’t buy more, then her business empire would collapse.

SWOOSH.

Just then, Tang Lin appeared.

He stumbled through the emerald spatial rift fifty paces down the terrace, landing in a low, defensive crouch with his dagger drawn, his eyes darting frantically across the terrain.

He immediately saw the vast herb garden.

The boundless sea of incandescent, glowing flora took his breath away, but before he could marvel at the extinct species, a sudden, violent reaction detonated within his spiritual sea.

BUZZZZZZZZZT—!

Deep within the core of his soul rested the greatest secret of his rebirth—a desiccated, shriveled twig barely three inches long.

It was a remnant of the World Tree, given to him by the love of his life in his previous life.

It had remained dormant since his rebirth, but right now, that ancient twig was convulsing with desperate, ravenous hunger!

It pulsed with a scorching, green spiritual resonance that flooded Tang Lin’s veins, vibrating with an urgent, primal consciousness to feed and consume.

It wanted to absorb all the herbs here!

The sheer density of primordial, unpolluted herbs in this sealed divine valley was the exact nutritional catalyst the World Tree required to awaken from its slumber.

Excited to have the chance to revive the World Tree, Tang Lin’s breath hitched, pure adrenaline surging into his limbs.

”This is my destiny...” he breathed, his eyes blazing with the feverish ambition of a regressor claiming his rightful prize.

He dashed forward, falling to his knees before a pristine patch of Golden Tipped Celestial Spirit Grass, reaching out with both hands to rip the glowing plants from the loam so the branch within his chest could drink their essence.

But—

SHING—CRACK!

A razor-thin streak of cold, silver-black light screamed through the air like a descending thunderbolt!

THUD!

The earth violently ruptured as a sharp weapon embedded itself just beside his outstretched hand.

The blade of a heavy, curved sickle was buried three inches deep into the soil, barely a millimeter from his trembling index finger!

The heavy, black-iron chain attached to its pommel hissed through the air, vibrating with a high-pitched, lethal hum that sliced the surrounding blades of grass in half.

Tang Lin’s breath locked in his throat.

Cold sweat instantly drenched his spine, freezing his fingertips in mid-air.

If his hand had been half an inch to the left, his fingers would have been cleanly severed at the knuckles, pinned to the dirt like bloody sausages.

He gulped, the swallow dry and painful against his constricted throat.

Slowly, carefully, without making any sudden movements that might trigger an executioner’s reflex, he turned towards Shen Ying.

She was standing five paces away on a slight incline of the terrace, holding a chained sickle loosely in her right hand, the heavy iron links wrapped several times around her slender, jade-like forearm.

The loose slate-gray robes did nothing to soften the suffocating, predatory aura rolling off her frame.

She was staring at him with her ever-present stoic and emotionless look.

Her facial features were as still and frigid as a carved marble tombstone, her eyes looked down upon him not with anger, not with competitive rivalry, but with the flat, chilling indifference of a butcher looking at a stray dog that had dared sniff at the meat hook.

”These are mine,” Shen Ying said, her voice completely devoid of inflection, cold as midnight frost on iron.

She gave the chain a casual tug, and the sickle embedded beside his fingers tore free from the soil with a sickening shick, flipping backward through the air to land cleanly into her waiting palm.

She pointed the curved, black blade toward the barren, rocky foothills at the far edge of the valley, and finished flatly.

”Go find other spot for yourself.”

Tang Lin remained frozen on his knees, his outstretched hand trembling slightly in the cool draft.

Beneath his chest, the wilted branch of the World Tree was thrashing wildly, screaming in frustration as the rich, fragrant aroma of the spirit herbs drifted past his nose, tantalizingly close yet completely out of reach.

His knuckles dug into the wet dirt, grinding pebbles against his skin.

A boiling, humiliating fury surged through his chest, burning the back of his throat.

In his past life, even though he had cultivated to be a Supreme, he still haven’t forgotten how this woman ruined his life.

Now, in this second chance granted by the heavens, he was being forced to crawl in the dirt like a beggar, warned off like he was a piece of worthless roadside dog!

He wanted to draw his sword, he wanted to use all his techniques, burn his life force, and drive a blade straight through that haughty, unmoving face.

...but he didn’t do anything.

The murderous impulse was strangled in its crib by the cold, ruthless logic that had kept him alive across two lifetimes.

He took a slow, measured breath, forcing his heart rate to stabilize.

After all, he couldn’t beat her now.

The disparity in strength was an uncrossable chasm.

Shen Ying was a monster whose physical conditioning, martial comprehension, and lethal arts had been honed in the bloodiest training of the Prime Origin Realm.

She had nearly taken his hand with a casual flick of that weapon, and if he dared speak a word of defiance, that chained sickle wouldn’t land in the dirt next time—it would wrap around his neck and tear his head from his shoulders before his nascent soul could even escape.

To die here, over a patch of grass, before his World Tree could even recover, was the height of idiocy.

He can only swallow this humiliation.

Slowly, deliberately, Tang Lin pulled his hands back, brushing the dark loam from his palms.

He lowered his eyes, hiding the venomous, patient hatred burning in his pupils beneath the shadow of his bangs.

Without uttering a single word of protest, he pushed himself up from the soil, turned his back, and began trudging toward the rocky, desolate foothills on the opposite side of the valley.