Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The boundless, starry expanse of the inheritance realm began to fold upon itself as the gate leading to the outside world slowly opened.

Shen Xun’er stretched her slender arms over her head, her robes draped over her frame billowing gently as she felt the pull of the mortal world’s atmospheric currents through the threshold.

”We’re finally going back!” Shen Xun’er grinned, her bright purple eyes sparkling with youthful, unrestrained vigor. ”Man, it has been so long since I last breathed fresh air.”

Five years inside an isolated, airless void governed entirely by the gravitational folds and cosmic silence was enough to test the sanity of any young cultivator.

To her, the prospect of feeling dirt beneath her boots, tasting sweet mountain water, and hearing the rustling of ordinary tree leaves was a luxury sweeter than any imperial pills.

Shen Haoran just smiled at that, his warm. He was also looking forward to going back, after all, he still has people to hunt.

But, in that very moment—

RIPPLE.

Within the deep, impenetrable pool of pitch-black shadow stretching beneath Shen Haoran’s boots, an icy, imperceptible shudder ran through the darkness.

It was Qing’er.

Her voice was as cold and sharp as a frosted needle, vibrating exclusively against the walls of his sea of consciousness with disciplined clarity.

’Young master, there are people from the other side. They seem to be ready for a battle.’

As a Saint, her divine sense can already perceive something even if they exist on a different dimension.

A Saint’s soul was an elevated existence that had broken through the mortal cocoon, bathed in the foundational laws of heaven and earth.

Even through the chaotic, churning spatial tides separating the Celestial Dragon Vault from the Prime Origin Realm, her perception pierced through the membrane like an invisible phantom, mapping the frozen plateau, and the people on it.

”Oh?” Shen Haoran smirked.

The corners of his lips curved into an amused arch, his golden pupils narrowing into two slivers of terrifying, radiant light.

’If i’m not wrong, then those people should be related to Chen Feng, either his other wife or friends.’

They definitely came here specifically to investigate the disappearance of Chen Feng’s parents and the others.

”Young master?” Shen Xun’er looked up, confused, noticing the sudden shift in his demeanor. ”Is something the matter?”

Shen Haoran chuckled, turning his gaze toward the swirling vortex of the gateway.

”Xun’er, it seems we can test your new powers soon.”

”Hm?” Shen Xun’er blinked her large, curious purple eyes, tilting her head with a look of innocent bewilderment.

”...Let’s go,” Shen Haoran said as the two of them stepped towards the gate.

With measured, unhurried strides, their figures crossed the threshold of the collapsing sanctum, stepping into the violent spatial conduit that led back to the mortal sky.

*

*

*

Outside...

The howling blizzard tearing through the jagged crags of the ridge had reached a deafening, hysterical pitch.

Sheets of jagged blue ice rattled against the frozen basalt, while the colossal, sky-spanning walls of the Nine-Fold Glacial Array hummed with blinding, suffocating power.

Bing Wuxian stood like an ancient glacier goddess, her hair whipping wildly, her robes snapping in the draft, her eyes locked onto the gate.

Her rapier hummed with intent, ready to cleave whatever enemy to stepped across the threshold.

And, at that moment—

CRACK-SHATTER!

The violent vortex in the gate parted in a sweeping, outward burst of cold pressure, and through the roaring blizzard, two figures walked out of the gate.

STEP. STEP.

The light clicking of boots against the frozen slate echoed clearly across the silent, barricaded plateau.

The entire Mystic Water Sect host held its collective breath, swords lifting three inches in unison, spiritual qi surging to the threshold of detonation.

And then, Bing Wuxian froze.

Her sharp brows furrowed in sheer, jarring bewilderment.

The enemies she had envisioned across two agonizing years of sleepless vigilance were ancient, blood-soaked monsters—perhaps a shadowy cabal of old demon patriarchs cloaked in rotting mist, or an supreme assassin wielding forbidden artifacts.

Instead, stepping casually through the falling snow were two youths.

The young man walked in the lead. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and draped in sweeping, black robes embroidered with magnificent nine-clawed golden dragons that seemed to ripple with life.

His handsome, sculpted face was completely relaxed, possessing an untouchable, chilling elegance.

He kept his hands tucked leisurely into his wide sleeves, walking with the slow, careless stride of an emperor inspecting his own imperial garden.

Beside him walked a young maiden of similar age, her eyes looked around at them with bright, unbothered curiosity, as if she were merely browsing a lively marketplace.

Neither of them carried a weapon.

Neither of them had their defensive artifacts drawn.

Neither of them showed a single shred of fear, shock, or panic at walking directly into an inescapable death trap.

Bing Wuxian stared at them, her pupils contracting as she struggled to comprehend the visual disconnect.

They looked young—far too young to possess the catastrophic might required to silence an entire generation of the White Dragon Sect.

Yet, as the Sect Master of an ancient lineage, she did not let her guard down.

The terrifying calm rolling off the black-robed youth made the frost-qi in her own meridians shudder with an inexplicable, instinctual alarm.

Taking a slow, deliberate step forward, the crescent cold-marrow jade circlet on her brow glowing with freezing authority, Bing Wuxian pointed the tip of her rapier toward Haoran’s throat, her voice ringing out across the ridge like cracking ice.

”Halt! Who are you?! Where are the elders of the White Dragon Sect?! Where are Lord Chen Shan, Lady Lin Rou, and the disciples who entered this gate five years ago?!”

Shen Haoran stopped ten paces before her blade.

He looked down at the gleaming, frost-covered steel pointing at his collar, then slowly raised his golden dragon eyes to meet her icy glare.

A lazy, mocking smirk pulled at the corner of his lips.

”Where are they?” Haoran chuckled softly, his voice carrying an infuriating, casual arrogance that echoed off the frozen cliffs. ”You ask such funny questions. This is the Celestial Dragon Vault—an ancient trial ground where the weak are weeded out and turned into fertilizer. Did you honestly expect a gaggle of senile old lizards and their pampered hatchlings to walk out holding hands with bouquets of flowers?”

Bing Wuxian’s eyes flared with sharp, insulted fury.

”Watch your tongue, insolent junior!” she roared, her voice laced with the crushing spiritual gravity of a seasoned grandmaster. ”You stand surrounded by the Nine-Fold Glacial Array of the Mystic Water Sect! A single word from me, and your flesh will be frozen into brittle glass, shattered into ten thousand pieces across this stone! So answer me properly, what happened inside that vault?! Did you encounter them?!”

Haoran tilted his head slightly, unbothered by the crushing pressure bearing down upon his shoulders.

He didn’t even shift his footing, answering mockingly with effortless, dismissive condescension.

”I may, or may not have encountered them.”

Bing Wuxian’s heart clenched violently in her chest, a cold, terrifying dread creeping into her veins.

”So you did...what did you do to them!?”

”What does one usually do with barking strays that block the doorway?” Haoran replied smoothly, his tone as light and pleasant as if he were discussing the afternoon weather. ”I quieted them. Permanently, of course”

”Lies!” an elder from the ice pillars shrieked, her voice trembling with rage. ”The Lord Chen was a Nirvana expert! How could a pair of arrogant fledglings like you lay a finger on him?!”

Bing Wuxian raised her hand, silencing her elder, though her own knuckles were white as bone around her hilt.

Her eyes bored into Haoran, desperate for a shred of hope, desperate for any answer that did not lead to the unthinkable conclusion.

”Who are you? Do you know that what you have done have made the entire world your enemy?”

Shen Haoran chuckled again, shaking his head with an expression of profound, theatrical pity, not taking her seriously at all.

”Oh, you squawk almost as much as that old hag of a woman did right before she died. Do you truly believe you are in a position to even threaten me?”

He took his hands out of his sleeves, letting his dark robes billow in the howling mountain draft as he raised his left hand, the ring on his finger glowing.

”But since you waited so faithfully in the cold over the years... it would be rude of me not to return them to you.”

With a casual, flicking motion of his wrist, Haoran took out something from his storage ring and threw it towards Bing Wuxian.

THUD. SLAP. ROOOLL.

Several heavy, wet objects tumbled through the air, landing in the snow barely two paces before Bing Wuxian’s pristine white boots.

Bing Wuxian looked down.

And the breath was violently, entirely torn from her lungs.

Her pupils violently contracted until they were microscopic pinpricks, the color drained from her face, turning her skin more ghostly and lifeless than the snow beneath her feet.

Resting on the crimson-stained ground were two meticulously flayed pieces of human flesh—the peeled, preserved faces of her in-laws!

There was the wrinkled, leathery visage of Chen Shan, frozen in an expression of sheer terror and the twisted, weeping face of the Lin Rou, her mouth torn open in an eternal scream.

Then, rolling past the skins, stopping against the toe of her boot with a wet, sickening thud...

Was the severed head of her closest friend, Xun Xie’er.

The woman who had shared wine with her on the frozen lakes, the peerless swordswoman of the southern peaks who had accompanied the expedition as a sister and fellow wife—her head was gray, her once vibrant hair matted with dried, blackened brain matter and dirt, her lips bruised and frozen in a grotesque, mangled grimace of agony.

The wind died down.

The disciples and elders of the Mystic Water Sect stared at the bloody pile in petrified, suffocating horror.

A profound, nauseating stench of old death and desecrated ancestry rose from the snow, choking the entire mountain basin into a living nightmare.

Bing Wuxian froze.

Every single thought in her mind ceased.

The centuries of sect leadership, the cold calculation of a leader, the pride of the White Dragon Emperor’s wife—all of it disintegrated into an endless, blinding void of pure, cataclysmic shock.

Her heart beat once, twice, three times, each pulse feeling like a drop of boiling acid poured straight into her soul.

Her in-laws. Her elders. Her dearest friend.

They hadn’t just died in an honorable clash of armies. They had been butchered like cattle, skinned like wild beasts, and carried around in this monster’s storage ring like cheap hunting trophies to be tossed in the mud at her feet!

Crack.

She snapped!

A sound—not human, but the strangled, agonizing shriek of an ancient, wounded leviathan, tore from the deepest sanctuary of Bing Wuxian’s throat!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

Her aura exploded!

The frost qi she had cultivated for four hundred years detonated with apocalyptic, continent shattering fury!

The basalt bedrock beneath the plateau instantly shattered into millions of flying ice shards.

Her snow white hair flared wildly into the heavens like a tempest of frozen blades, her eyes turning completely bloodshot, weeping tears of pure, crimson blood down her porcelain cheeks.

She raised her rapier to the firmament, her face contorting into a horrifying, unhinged mask of pure, murderous madness.

”KILL THEM! TEAR THEIR FLESH! STRIP THEIR BONES! LEAVE NOT A SINGLE DROP OF THEIR BLOOR UPON THIS EARTH! SLAY THEM ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL—!!!!!”