Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Snowdrifts swirled across the frozen plateau, burying the shattered shards of the colossal Nine-Fold Glacial Array and frosting the pale, desiccated corpses of the thousands of impaled disciples and elders hanging limp from Qing’er’s receding shadow spikes.

Down in the lower gully, the seven young disciples of the Mystic Water Sect who had tumbled off the ridge were trapped against a wall of sheer blue ice.

Their daoist robes were torn and stained with soot, their hands shaking so violently that their rapiers clattered against their scabbards.

Behind them lay a bottomless chasm; ahead of them stood a singular, horrifying executioner.

It was Shen Xun’er.

She had materialized in front of them out of thin air, hovering three inches above the snow.

Her robes drifted weightlessly, completely undisturbed by the freezing gale, her purple eyes carrying the unfeeling, clinical detachment of a butcher examining sheep in an abattoir.

”So... Are you going to run?” Shen Xun’er chuckled at that.

”...”

Cornered, without the help of their elders, and driven into the hysteria like a dying beasts, the seven girls chose to fight over waiting for the butcher’s knife.

They took out their weapons and charged at her.

”DIE!”

They burned their dantians to the last drop, vomiting mouthfuls of scarlet blood to force their nascent souls past their natural thresholds!

Seven rapiers thrust forward simultaneously, trailing jagged arcs of condensed qi!

Blades aimed for her throat, her heart, her temples, and her abdomen, the kinetic force of their desperate charge enough to level an ancient fortress!

But Xun’er just smirked.

She did not blink, she did not raise a guard, nor did she channel a defensive shield, completely ignoring the attacks.

SHUUUUU—!

The seven spirit rapiers struck her silhouette—and met with nothingness!

The enchanted cold-iron blades passed cleanly through her robes, through her throat, and through her ribs as if her physical form were nothing more than a dancing reflection upon an autumn pond!

The disciples stumbled forward, their frantic momentum carrying them straight through her body, their eyes bulging in paralyzed, disbelieving horror as they felt zero resistance, zero friction, and zero substance.

”Useless.”

And right in the middle of their overextended plunge, Shen Xun’er’s right arm snapped into physical reality.

BANG—CRACK!

Her slender, pale fist, glowing with an incandescent, translucent halo of compressed space, drove straight into the jaw of the leading disciple!

With that strike, the girl’s skull did not merely fracture; it violently detonated like an over-pressurized porcelain urn.

A blinding spray of pulverized bone, gray matter, and crimson mist exploded across the snowdrifts as the headless torso cartwheeled five paces backward into the rocks!

Before the remaining six could even scream, Shen Xun’er’s boots lightly kissed the frozen stone, her silhouette shifting like a flickering shutter.

BOOM! BOOM!

Her left palm thrust cleanly through the sternum of a second girl, the twisted spatial pressure tearing a gaping, foot-wide cavity through her chest, vaporizing heart and lungs into a bloody aerosol before bursting out her shoulder blades.

Turning on her heel with breathtaking, rhythmic grace, she drove an elbow backward, crushing another disciple’s spine into powder, while her right fist slammed into a third girl’s midsection, the localized spatial implosion inverting her torso entirely!

This wasn’t even a battle, it was a massacre.

It was an effortless massacre that lasted less than four breaths.

The cries of defiance died before they could clear the wind; the blood froze as it splashed across the rocks.

And when Shen Xun’er finally lowered her arms, the gully was silent once more, save for the wet, heavy thud of seven mutilated corpses sliding limp into the snow.

”Haaa~,” Shen Xun’er exhaled, and clenched her fist.

She then raised her small, pale hand to eye level, watching the tiny, gravitational vortices dancing along the contours of her knuckles, bending the light around her fingertips into hypnotic, crystalline prisms.

”The Formless Void Physique is truly phenomenal. No attacks can even hit me.” she murmured softly, her eyes glowing with profound, childish delight. ”And with the inheritance I received from Astraeus, I can twist space around my fist to increase my destructive power.”

In ordinary combat, physical strikes relied on muscle density and the projection of spiritual qi.

But with the ancient laws carved into her by the God of Space, her fists did not merely strike, they compressed the three-dimensional space between her knuckles and the target down to a singular, infinitesimal point.

The target’s flesh and defensive wards were forced to occupy zero volume in a fraction of a millisecond, resulting in an irreversible physical collapse that bypassed armor entirely.

Satisfied with the test, she turned her back on the gore and vaulted lightly back up to the main plateau and looked at the spot where Haoran and the others disappeared.

The basalt ground where the black earth had previously swallowed the world remained completely barren, a circular scar of lifeless, dead stone.

And at that moment, the space around that area twisted and turned.

HUUUUUUUM—CRACK!

The fabric of reality tore open like wet paper as a violent rift of bruised crimson nebula gas and sulfuric air vented outward into the freezing blizzard.

And through the bleeding spatial threshold, Haoran walked out.

His midnight-black robes were pristine, completely untouched by blood or ash, the nine-clawed golden dragons embroidered across his chest rippling with triumphant majesty.

His chiseled countenance carried that same relaxed, casual smirk, looking as though he had merely returned from a brief stroll through an imperial garden.

Behind him, he was dragging along a bloodied, unconscious, and limbless Bing Wuxian by her hair.

The sight was horrific beyond words.

The once proud, peerless Sect Master of the Mystic Water Sect, the Nirvana Rebirth expert who had looked down upon the world for four hundred years, was reduced to a mutilated, breathing stump of meat.

Her two arms had been cleanly torn from their shoulder sockets, leaving behind jagged, mangled tears of exposed muscle and white bone marrow that dripped sluggish, frozen crimson into the snow.

Her legs were completely gone, severed cleanly at the upper thighs.

Her snow white hair, once pristine as a glacial peak, was matted with blackened dirt, dried vomit, and coagulated blood, clutched casually in Haoran’s right hand as he dragged her across the jagged basalt flagstones like a discarded sack of refuse.

Her head lolled limply against the stone, her porcelain face covered in deep bruises and bloody scratches, her breathing coming in faint, wet, and shallow rattles.

The three elders who had summoned their avatars were nowhere to be seen, their flesh long since dissolved into the hungry black earth of his internal world.

”Young master!” Shen Xun’er immediately ran towards him, her bright purple eyes lighting up with eager affection as she arrived at his side. ”I’ve killed the survivors.”

Haoran nodded at her, offering a faint, approving tilt of his chin. ”Good work, Xun’er.”

He then turned and looked for the severed head of Xun Xie’er and faces of Chen Feng’s parents.

He cast his golden pupils toward the edge of the plateau where Bing Wuxian had initially cried her hearts out.

Resting upon the crimson stained ice were the two meticulously peeled human faces of Chen Feng’s parents, alongside the matted, severed head of Xun Xie’er.

Haoran raised his left hand, and with a wave of his hand activating his storage ring to pull them back to store.

SWOOSH.

An invisible vortex of spiritual gravity swept across the snow, lifting the bloody relics from the dirt.

The dimensional ring on his finger pulsed with a dull, black sheen as it swallowed the grisly trophies whole, storing them.

Shen Xun’er glanced down at the ruined, armless woman lying motionless at Haoran’s boots, tilting her head curiously.

”Young master, are you going to kill her?” She asked, pointing at Bing Wuxian.

Shen Haoran shook his head, his lips curling into a sharp, predatory grin, ”No, I think she can serve a far better purpose.”

With that, he reached into his sleeve, took out an elixir, and poured it to her severed and bleeding body.

TZZZZZZT—!

The alchemical essence hissed violently against her torn flesh!

Under the miraculous, forced potency of the high tier elixir, the severed arteries violently clamped shut, the exposed bone marrow was sealed beneath thick, pale scar tissue, and the endless bleeding stopped in an instant—closing the wounds and ensuring that the mutilated woman would not bleed to death in the cold.

Then, he snapped his fingers.

WHOOSH.

In that instant, a small, circular tear of crimson space opened beneath the unconscious woman’s back, swallowing her limbless frame straight down into the cold, desolate plains beneath the floating black fortress, sealing her away in the dark.

”I want to see Chen Feng’s reaction when he sees her.” He smirked, his golden pupils glowing with cold, malicious amusement, ”I can even use her as a shield, letting him kill her wife with his own hands.”

To a proud, arrogant chosen one like Chen Feng, seeing his beloved second wife turned into a limbless cripple, and held hostage as a meat-shield to absorb his own strikes, would ignite an unhinged, self-destructive rage that would shatter whatever progress he had made in his secluded cultivation!

”That’s evil, young master.” Though she said that, Shen Xun’er still gave a thumbs up, her bright eyes twinkling with cheerful, unconditional approval.

To her, whatever cruel, sadistic methods her young master chose to employ were naturally the most brilliant, flawless strategies under the heavens.

Shen Haoran chuckled at her and said, ”I completely shattered her consciousness, so she’s practically a brainless idiot at this point.”

While inside the internal realm, after stripping her of her limbs, Haoran had deployed his soul-scouring arts without a shred of restraint.

He had driven his spiritual sense directly through her sea of consciousness like a flaming iron wedge, pulverizing her ego, her memories, and her sanity into formless ash.

She could no longer speak, she could no longer weave arts, and she could no longer feel pride; she was merely a breathing, hollow shell of flesh.

”But I did look into her soul and read her memories,” Haoran continued, his tone turning thoughtful, ”and found out that Chen Feng still has a lover and a son.”

Shen Xun’er grinned, her eyes flaring with sharp, predatory excitement, ”So we’re hunting them next, right?”

Haoran nodded, the wind whipping his dark robes as he looked toward the southern horizon.

”Yes.” He tapped his chin, a dark, calculating chuckle slipping past his lips, ”From what I’ve seen, she’s a Nether Spirit Fox, and the Sect Master of the Demonic Lotus Sect.”

Shen Xun’er clenched her fist in excitement, ”Let’s go right away, young master!”

Shen Haoran nodded, ”Let’s go.”

With that, the two of them began to descend the mountain, heading towards the territory of the Demonic Lotus Sect.

*

*

*

At this moment, in a dark, dead land, where the sky was as red as blood and the earth as dark as the abyss, a gothic themed city stood.

Surrounded by towering dark walls, it looks like a city that a demon king from a novel lives in.

At the center of this city stood a massive gothic palace, and inside, on the throne room, an incredibly beautiful woman with long dark purple hair, with a pair of mesmerizing purple eyes, sat on a dark throne.

On her head, a pair of purple fox ears twitched, and behind her, a purple fox tail was swinging slowly.

This woman is Da Xiaomi, a Nether Spirit Fox, the Sect Master of Demon Lotus Sect, and the lover of the White Dragon Emperor, Chen Feng.

She smiled seductively, her eyes narrowing into slits as she looked at the woman standing before her, ”So, have you considered my offer...Su Xishi?”

That’s right.

The one standing before this woman, is none other than the Young Lady of the Blissful Immortal Coupling Palace, a Nine Tailed Demon Fox.

Su Xishi.