Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

From his crouched position behind the shattered balustrade, Tang Lin pressed his chest so hard against the cold, pulverized marble that he could barely draw breath, his heart battered against his ribs like a trapped beast in an iron cage.

Tang Lin stared at Shen Ying, eyes wide in shock.

What is that?!

Since when can Shen Ying do that?!

The sight before his eyes completely broke whatever knowledge he knew from his entire previous life.

In his past life, Tang Lin had witnessed the terrifying ascent of Shen Haoran’s inner circle from afar.

He knew every major powerhouse who marched beneath the banner of the Shen Clan and the ARC.

Even though Shen Ying was an undisputed demon on the battlefield, a heartless alchemist whose name made whole coalitions of sects weep in terror, that renown had been forged not from her combat prowess.

Instead, her entire infamy was built purely on her identity as the Queen of Underworld who commands a group of fiercely loyal drug addicted monsters, summoning armies of flame spirits through her Heavenly Flame, and unleashing endless, apocalyptic cauldron explosions that could carpet-bomb an entire battlefield into smoking craters of slag.

She was a backline siege engine, an untouchable commander who incinerated cities from miles away with cascades of green and crimson fire, not a fighter that can suppress heaven and earth.

She had never shown this form even once!

Not during the siege of the Nine Profound Pavilions.

Not when the Northern Alliance cornered her supply route in the northern wastes.

Not even when the ancient sects deployed their forbidden saint-killing formations to kill her.

Yet here she stood, draped in living, pulsing crimson magma.

Her slender, voluptuous silhouette had turned into an apex draconic form.

The incandescent flaming scales hugged her ribs and collarbones like impenetrable lamellar plate.

The spiked, sweeping flaming dragon leg armor bit three inches into the solid stone of the plaza, steadying her against shockwaves that could level a fortress.

Her hands were encased in monstrous, razor tipped flaming dragon gauntlets that clutched the chained sickle with primeval strength, while a pair of flame dragon wings beat against the air behind her back, shedding embers that dissolved the marble into glass.

Crowning her head, sweeping back through her wild, golden hair, the twin curved flame dragon horns burned with the untouchable arrogance of an ancient monarch.

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR—!

At that moment, the purple dragon lunged forward, the colossal weight of its scaled bulk shattering the sound barrier.

Its jaws snapped shut across the space where Shen Ying had stood half a heartbeat prior, the sonic boom obliterating the stone beneath its maw into fine white powder.

SWOOSH—!

Shen Ying vanished.

With a deafening crack of displaced air, her flaming dragon wings snapped inward, propelling her straight up into the sulfurous sky.

She rose forty paces into the air, somersaulted cleanly over the beast’s sweeping horns, and hung weightlessly upside down above its spine.

’This...’ Tang Lin’s spiritual sense screamed in frantic, disbelieving panic as he gauged the oppressive gravity crushing the plaza. ’The dragon is at least a Spirit Ascension realm... Can Shen Ying really fight it!?’

A Spirit Ascension dragon beast possessed physical scales capable of deflecting Rank 7 spiritual artifacts, with offensive powers comparable to a Nirvana Rebirth Realm!

Yet Shen Ying, a disciple who should have been bounded by the natural progression of the younger generation, met that terrifying pressure head-on without flinching.

Of course, this dragon was only driven by pure instincts, like a child throwing a tantrum, any Spirit Ascension realm expert can take it down.

But still...this is a beast that defeated Shen Tao!

”Choke on it, overgrown lizard,” Shen Ying’s voice dropped into a low, raspy growl that echoed with an unnatural, draconic double-tone.

Her right hand blurred.

CLANG-SHIIIIIIICK!

She unleashed the heavy, black-iron chain wrapped around her forearm.

The chained sickle whistled through the gale like an executioner’s pendulum, cutting a thin arc through the purple fire.

The serrated, cold iron sickle blade struck the joint between the dragon’s shoulder and neck, biting deep into the thick and hard amethyst scales with a bone grinding crunch.

SKRRRRRR!

Black, boiling dragon blood sprayed into the air.

Instead of pulling the blade free, Shen Ying violently twisted the black chain with her clawed gauntlet.

The heavy iron links slithered around the dragon’s colossal neck like a living, strangling viper, looping twice around its windpipe.

Then, with a brutal kick of her flaming dragon leg armor against the base of the beast’s skull, she pulled the chain taut with the raw, terrifying torque of an ancient titan.

SCREEECH!

The purple dragon let out a strangled, enraged shriek.

Its horns flared with blinding violet lightning as it thrashed violently, slamming its spine against the cliffside to dislodge the tick on its neck.

Hundreds of tons of rock shattered in an avalanche of debris, but Shen Ying remained clamped to its back, her spiked boots digging into the meat of its shoulder, her flaming wings spreading wide to stabilize her center of gravity.

While holding the beast pinned with the chain in her left hand, Shen Ying’s right gauntlet ignited with concentrated celestial fire.

She drove the sickle’s back-spike directly into the dragon’s wing joint.

CRACK!

The serrated teeth of the sickle tore through the dense connective cartilage, severing the primary motor tendon of the beast’s left wing.

The dragon roared in agony, vomiting a gout of purple flame that singed the surrounding clouds.

Yet, an ancient beast at the Spirit Ascension realm possessed astonishing regenerative vitality.

The moment the steel parted the flesh, dark violet marrow rushed to the wound, microscopic spirit threads weaving together to force the scales to close and the severed tendons to reconnect.

Shen Ying saw it and sneered, her pupils burning with ruthlessness.

”Regenerate? In front of an alchemist?”

BOOM!

From the jagged edge of the black sickle, her Heavenly Flame violently surged.

Incandescent, crimson fire poured directly into the open wound, flooding the dragon’s bloodstream like molten iron.

The sacred fire incinerated the regenerative cells on contact, searing the muscle fibers into charred, carbonized slag.

The wound remained a gaping, cauterized canyon of black ash, bleeding sluggish, blackened ichor that sizzled uselessly against the stone.

The dragon went wild with pain.

It spun in a frantic, uncoordinated circle, snapping its jaws backward to swallow her whole.

Shen Ying released the tension on the chain, vaulting off its brow just as the massive fangs snapped empty air.

In mid-descent, she whipped the chain outward, and the heavy links uncoiled, wrapping tightly around the dragon’s lower jaw, snapping its mouth violently shut with an audible clatter of teeth.

Plunging downward alongside the beast’s flank, she dragged the sickle’s curved blade along the length of its underbelly.

SHRRRRRRRRRRR.

A fifty-foot wound was ripped open across the soft, pale scales beneath its ribs.

Innards, boiling blood, and crushed fat spilled forth, instantly caught in the wake of her trailing flame dragon wings.

The crimson Heavenly Flame washed over the exposed viscera, instantly charring the edges, denying the beast’s vitality any opportunity to close the wound.

The dragon crashed into the center of the temple plaza with an earth-shattering BOOM, its tail sweeping wildly in a blind, convulsive frenzy, shattering the pillars of the ancestral colonnade into airborne shrapnel.

Tang Lin cowered behind his rock, shielding his face as a severed piece of marble the size of a carriage cartwheeled inches above his head.

’She’s killing... she’s really killing it...was she always this strong!?’

The grounded behemoth struggled to rise, its severed wing dragging uselessly in the dirt, its crushed jaw still bound by the black chain.

The violet flames licking its scales grew darker, more frantic, gathering into its chest core for a suicidal, self-destructive eruption.

Standing twenty meters away, her chest heaving slightly within her flaming dragon armor, Shen Ying narrowed her eyes.

”Still barking?”

She raised both arms to the heavens, her flame dragon horns pulsing with blinding, radiant light.

Her lips parted, chanting a soft, ancient syllable that carried the scent of cremated worlds.

”Wake up, pets. Dinner is served.”

HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM—!

From her heart, the true, terrifying authority of her Crimson Dragon Burning Flame was activated.

The ability to summon the spirits of anything it had burned!

Every demonic beast, every ancient monster, and every celestial creature that had ever been incinerated to ash by her and the flame itself had their souls permanently bound to the flame, turned into eternal, burning familiars!

ROOOOOOOAR!

SCREEEEEECH!

HOWWWWWWL!

The sky above the mountain peak turned into a sea of blood-red clouds as several flame spirits appeared.

First was a gargantuan flame spirit of a Dread Ape beast, forty meters tall, it’s body made entirely of roaring crimson fire and hardened lava rock!

It slammed down onto the dragon’s pinned tail with both hammer-like fist, the concussive force shattering the beast’s tailbone into fragments.

Next emerged a massive, double-headed flame spirit of a Ying Yang Serpent, its serpentine body woven from swirling, crimson flames.

It coiled tightly around the dragon’s thrashing torso, its blazing coils squeezing with hundreds of thousands of tons of crushing force, roasting the dragon’s ribs until the amethyst scales cracked like burnt porcelain.

And finally, with a deafening screech, a flame spirit of a six winged Dragon Faced Bird, appeared like a burning spear, directly flying into the dragon’s right shoulder, driving its flaming talons through the remaining wing joint and pinning the beast flat to the ground.

The three colossal flame spirits mauled the guardian beast with relentless, terrifying savagery.

The ape hammered its skull, the serpent crushed its spine, and the bird tore away its wings.

The purple dragon, an ancient terror that had once forced the peerless berserker Shen Tao to bleed and flee in Tang Lin’s past life, was now pinned to the blood soaked stone like an insect on an alchemist’s dissection board, unable to move a single limb.

Its crimson eyes rolled in desperate, suffocating terror as the heavy footsteps approached.

Shen Ying walked forward.

Her flaming dragon leg armor clanked against the bloody flagstones with slow, rhythmic finality.

The flames around her body had condensed until they were almost solid, a brilliant crimson that drowned out the dying violet light of the beast.

She stood before the pinned skull of the dragon.

The chained sickle rested in her gauntlet, the blade glowing from the continuous channeling of her heavenly fire.

The dragon let out a faint, pathetic whimper from behind its broken teeth, looking up at the cold, unfeeling red eyes staring down at it through the veil of fire.

Shen Ying raised the weapon.

”You had good bones,” she whispered coldly. ”You will make excellent ingredient for my pills.”

SWOOSH—!

Her flame dragon wings snapped open, generating a gale of blinding heat as her entire body pivoted into a single, flawless crescent.

The burning hot, serrated sickle drew a perfect arc across the midnight sky!

SHIIIIIIIIICK—CRACK!

And soon the dragon’s head was cut off!

The massive, horned skull separated cleanly from the neck, tumbling across the marble plaza like a boulder before coming to a halt at the foot of the ancient temple, black blood gushing in a massive, steaming fountain into the clouds.

The giant purple body twitched once, twice, the violet flames extinguishing across its amethyst scales, and died.

Its colossal corpse lay completely still in the center of the ruins.

With the demise of the guardian, the three flame beasts gave a final, victorious howl before dissolving back into streaks of red fire, slithering into the pores of Shen Ying’s gauntlets.

The suffocating pressure that had choked the mountain for hours vanished into thin air, leaving behind only the gentle, crackling sound of dying embers and the heavy, sweet scent of roasted dragon meat.

Shen Ying stood amidst the river of steaming blood, the sickle hanging at her side, her chest slowly rising and falling.

Fifty meters away, behind the ruined wall, Tang Lin sat frozen in the shadows, his fingernails dug so deep into his palms that his own blood dripped onto his knees, his jaw completely locked in petrified silence.

Shen Ying slowly tilted her horned head toward the temple doors, her flaming dragon tail giving a lazy, dismissive flick against the stone.

”What a nuisance,” she muttered, wiping a splash of dragon blood from her cheek with the back of her fiery claw. ”Now... let’s see what kind of treasures this so-called God of Medicines left behind.”