Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The howling blizzard seemed to freeze in mid-descent, held motionless by the suffocating weight of four colossal avatars of absolute-zero energy towering over the mountain basin.

Behind Haoran, the seven young disciples of the Mystic Water Sect who had tumbled down scrambled backward on their hands and knees and run away, their sobs drowned out by the groaning bedrock as the fifty-meter glacial ape and the armored ice-serpent postured above them.

Haoran didn’t even spare the fleeing girls a glance.

”Xun’er, you deal with those remaining disciples,” said Haoran, his voice light and dismissive.

Shen Xun’er turned her head toward the surviving girls, her eyes carrying neither malice nor mercy—only the quiet, detached efficiency of someone tidying up stray pebbles.

”... understood, young master.”

Without a single chant or manual sign, her body suddenly phased out of existence until she disappeared.

It was not high-speed movement, nor was it a common shadow-cloak.

Her physical mass simply slipped between the structural seams of reality, her presence dissolving cleanly into the zero-dimensional threshold of the Formless Void Physique.

In the next breath, thirty paces down the slope, spatial fissures as sharp as a blade began to hum silently behind the fleeing disciples.

Haoran turned his gaze back to the four towering giants of ice and desperate fury and slowly pulled his right arm from the wide, midnight-black folds of his embroidered sleeve.

Then, he extended his hand forward.

His golden pupils accelerated into a pair of blinding, concentric suns, and from the depths of his chest, an ancient, primeval syllable rolled across his tongue.

”Genesis Protocol...”

HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM—!

Beneath Haoran’s boots, a single drop of pitch-black liquid darkness fell from his heel and touched the frosted slate.

The moment that drop merged with the stone, the natural laws governing the Ancient Heaven Star groaned in agony.

A horrifying, suffocating tide of black earth began to spread.

It did not coat the ground like paint—it became the ground.

A primordial, abyssal soil, heavy with the scent of unformed cosmic clay and oxidized meteorite dust, surged outward in a violent, expanding circle.

Where the black earth touched, the sheets of glacial ice instantly disintegrated into grey vapor.

The towering cliffs of the ridge dissolved like wet sand caught in a subterranean whirlpool.

The sky screamed.

The bruised indigo storm clouds overhead curdled, their snowy winds seized by an impossible, gravitational sinkhole.

The pale blue sunlight of the mortal realm fractured, bleeding outward as the boundaries of space and time were violently swallowed from the edges inward!

Bing Wuxian, locked within the diamond facet of her eighty meter tall spirit Avatar, immediately felt the change, her expression hardening.

The three elders beside her shrieked as their massive avatars began to sink knee-deep into the rising sea of black earth!

The horizon folded over their heads like an iron vault slammied shut.

The white snow was gone.

The mountains was gone.

The Ancient Heaven Star itself was wiped away, replaced entirely by a darkness so dense it pressed against their eyeballs.

Then, with the thunderous, concussive boom of a newborn star taking its first breath—

Light violently returned.

Instantly, Bing Wuxian and the others found themselves in a completely new world.

The transition was so sudden and quick that the three elders stumbled within their avatars, heaving violently.

The earth beneath them became a dead, heavy, pitch-black ground, stretching into an endless, desolate horizon of jagged, calcified plains.

Colossal mountain ranges carved from volcanic obsidian rose into the firmament like the shattered ribs of fallen titans, their crags barren and weeping faint trails of ash.

Across the jagged ridges stood forests of towering, petrified dead trees, their leafless, twisted branches frozen in agonized postures, reaching toward a sky that knew no sun.

The sky was a vast, unbroken dome of violent, bruised crimson as thick, sluggish clouds of blood-red nebula gas drifted across the upper atmosphere, casting an ominous, eternal twilight over the black plains.

And high above the petrified forests, drifting amidst the red clouds, there was a floating fortress.

It was a gargantuan, brutalist bastion constructed, seemingly anchored to the clouds by colossal, and hung down into the mountain peaks like the roots of an iron tree.

Miniature moons of pale, dead stone orbited its blackened spires, radiating an ancient, cold majesty that made the highest imperial palaces of the mortal world look like mounds of dry mud.

”W-Where is this...?”

That was the question in everyone’s mind.

At that moment, Haoran appeared, floating in the air.

”Welcome...,” said Haoran. ”To the world beyond Heaven.”

His voice did not travel through the air; it fell directly from the crimson firmament, echoing from the obsidian mountains and whispering through the petrified boughs of the dead trees.

He stood hovering a hundred paces before the four avatars, his midnight-black robes fluttering in an atmospheric draft that smelled of raw sulfur, primordial ozone, and newborn iron.

His Genesis Protocol had changed a lot compared to what it was in the past.

In the past year, he had been trying to form it into a perfect world where life could thrive, and he had spent countless hours weaving gravitational corridors, condensing planetary crusts from cosmic dust, and trying to ignite self-sustaining spiritual atmospheres.

He had raised mountain ranges to catch celestial winds and planted ancient seeds he harvested from the Heaven Piercing Saint’s trial realm into the soil.

And although he made progress, it wasn’t enough.

The crimson sky still lacked the warm, cycling vitality of a true sun; the black earth was too dense, too saturated with the unrefined, primordial violence of Azathoth to allow fragile mortal flora to sprout; and the petrified forests remained locked in their fossilized, lifeless slumber.

It was a domain of power, a military bastion, but it was still far from the thriving, self-contained universe he envisioned commanding at the summit of creation.

Bing Wuxian and the others were shocked.

The three elders’ jaws hung open, their eyes darting frantically across the blood-red clouds and the floating fortress.

”You... Is this a separate dimension?!” the elder commanding the glacial ape stammered, her voice shaking with hysterical terror through the avatar’s throat. ”Not a domain created by an array... not an artifact containing a separate dimension... But a true, independent realm?! According to the legends, only beings who have touched the Saint realm can create this! How... how can a youth like him create a plane?!”

Bing Wuxian’s fingers dug into the icy walls of her snow woman’s core until her nails bled.

Her mind screamed in chaos. She had believed this arrogant boy was merely an exceptionally vicious disciple from an ancient hidden sect.

But to drag an entire mountain plateau, four colossal spirit avatars, and the space they occupied straight into an isolated, independent reality with a wave of his hand—this was an authority that defied all mortal cultivation logic!

At that moment, Haoran grinned.

The smile was wide, cruel, and dripping with a tyrannical supremacy that sent an icy spike of dread straight into the marrow of their souls.

He raised his right index finger toward the bruised crimson clouds.

”I hereby declare...”

His golden eyes blazed with the horrifying authority of a creator looking down upon his personal canvas.

”...in this world, all cultivation base stronger than mine, is strictly forbidden.”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

The red sky roared in immediate, terrifying obedience.

The fundamental laws of the world, woven directly from Haoran’s soul and blood, violently clamped down upon the four women like the jaws of a cosmic leviathan!

It was not an external spiritual attack that could be blocked by techniques or deflected by artifacts.

It was an absolute, ontological decree carved into the very air they breathed, the gravity holding their boots, and the space pressing against their pores!

Bing Wuxian and the others immediately felt their cultivation drop!

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Inside their dantians, their vast, sea-like reserves of spiritual qi—refined over hundreds of years to the threshold of the peak Nirvana and peak Spirit Ascension tiers—were violently suppressed!

An invisible, iron fist slammed into their spiritual veins, compressing their meridians, choking their energy channels, and forcibly dragging their cultivation bases down through the realms like stones dropped into an abyss!

High-tier Spirit Ascension... mid-tier... low-tier...

Down, down, down!

Until their cultivation bases were violently locked at the early stages of Nascent Soul realm!

SHATTER!

The forty meter tall armored ice-serpent let out a pitiful, strangled hiss as its blue energy construct ran out of spiritual fuel, dissolving into a pathetic cloud of evaporating frost!

Beside it, the fifty meter glacial ape and the thirty five meter war-priestess crumbled like dry sand dunes caught in a tempest, their massive limbs breaking apart into blue motes that were instantly swallowed by the thirsty black earth!

The three elders tumbled violently from the air, crashing heavily onto the jagged obsidian stones, coughing up mouthfuls of black, suppressed blood as their bones cracked beneath the sudden loss of their defensive barriers.

Even Bing Wuxian’s spirit avatar could not withstand the decree.

The colossal blue construct fractured down its spine with an ear-splitting CRACK, the sapphire crown shattering into dust as the body unraveled, violently ejecting Bing Wuxian from its forehead!

THUD.

Bing Wuxian hit the black soil on one knee, her white robes torn along the hem, her snow white hair tangling in the ash-filled wind.

She looked at her trembling, pale hands, feeling the pathetic, fragile trickle of early Nascent Soul qi circulating through her meridians.

She was a peak Nirvana Rebirth realm! A sect master who had looked down upon the northern territories for centuries!

Now, she had been stripped of her strength, reduced to a fledgling who could barely summon a snow storm.

Haoran slowly descended from the air, his boots landing softly on the black soil ten paces before her.

As Haoran smirked, his golden pupils looked down upon her kneeling, shuddering figure with predatory amusement.

”Don’t despair yet, woman. Because I will take my time and show you... what it really feels like...”

He took a slow, leisurely step forward, the black earth rippling beneath his stride.

”To wait in the freezing cold for answers... only to find that the only thing waiting for you at the end of the road, is helpless torment.”

*

*

*

At this moment, in an isolated Dimension...

Far beyond the borders of the Ancient Heaven Star, hidden behind a tear in the primeval void that even high-tier divination masters could not trace, lay a secluded dimension.

In the center of this dimension, seated upon the petrified skull of an ancient nine-clawed white dragon, was Chen Feng.

At this moment, his torso was covered in thick, iridescent white dragon scales that pulsed with the rhythmic heartbeat of a dormant volcano.

His breathing was deep, rattling the spatial walls of the space with every cycle, drawing the liquid dragon qi from the pool into his meridians, pushing his cultivation base toward the absolute zenith of the Saintly boundary.

Suddenly—

PUUUUUUU!

Chen Feng’s eyes snapped open, and he suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.

A thick, dark gout of boiling blood sprayed across the white dragon skull beneath him, sizzling violently as it hit the stone.

His chest heaved violently, his brows furrowing in sudden, jarring bewilderment.

”...what happened?” He questioned.

He wasn’t worried about his injuries.

Physical internal injuries from cultivation backlashes were common.

With his peerless constitution and the boundless vitality granted to him by his Physique, a fractured meridian or a burnt vein could be fully regenerated within three breaths of focused circulation.

But the blood on the stone had nothing to do with a cultivation deviation.

For some reason, he felt strange, as if he lost something important.

The sensation was terrifyingly hollow, like a cold, invisible blade reaching deep into the metaphysical core of his soul and severing an ancient, vital thread of connection.

It was an emptiness that spread through his chest—a sudden, deafening silence where there had once been the faint, protective resonance of familial bloodlines and shared karmic bonds, had all flickered out in an instant, leaving behind an icy, echoing void.

Chen Feng slowly wiped the dark blood from his lips with the back of his hand.

His pupils dilated, hardening into two pools of unyielding, murderous frost.

He thought of Haoran.

The memory of that black-robed youth—that terrifying monster whose appearance had begun to cast a long, suffocating shadow over his dao heart—flashed across his mind like a dark omen.

Chen Feng’s knuckles cracked as he clenched his fist, digging his nails deep into his own palm until fresh blood welled between his fingers.

A terrible, suffocating premonition seized his throat.

Father... Mother... Xie’er...Wuxian...

His chest tightened with an agonizing, desperate plea hurled into the empty dark of the grotto.

Hold on. Just hold on a little longer!

He closed his eyes, taking a deep, ragged breath that pulled the boiling blood into his lungs like liquid fire.

No matter how worried he was, he couldn’t leave this dimension until he break through.

So for now, he can only pray that they are safe and hope that by the time he escape this dimension, everything was still salvageable.

So, abandoning all caution, casting aside the gentle, gradual tempering methods of the ancient manuals, Chen Feng forcibly opened his dantians, dragging the entire energy of this dimension into him.

He would burn his core, he would endure the agony of tearing flesh, and he would force his nascent soul to shatter and reform ahead of schedule—anything to tear open this dimension, descend upon the mortal realm, and bathe the world in the blood of anyone who had dared lay a finger on his clan.