Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The cavernous Gothic throne room was steeped in an unnatural, suffocating chill.

The tall, wrought iron candelabras sputtered violently, their sickly violet flames flattening against the wax as an invisible, reality distorting pressure seeped through the thick flagstones.

Sitting on her throne, Da Xiaomi suddenly opened her eyes.

Her plush purple fox ears twitched forward, the velvety fur bristling with alarm as her magnificent violet fox tail went completely stiff against the blackened bone of the armrests.

Her gaze instantly snapping toward the empty center of the hall, piercing through the gloomy shadows beneath the soaring ribbed arches.

”Show yourself.”

Her voice dropped into a low, guttural growl that carried the commanding, unyielding gravity of a sect master.

And, at her words, a sound of flesh falling down was heard.

THUD. SLAP.

Something heavy, wet, and sickeningly limp tumbled out from the folded seams of empty air, bouncing twice across the polished black-marble floor before rolling to a stop directly at the base of the elevated dais.

Da Xiaomi looked down, and her breath instantly locked violently in her windpipe, her lungs freezing as if she had swallowed a mouthful of glacial needles.

”You...”

There, on the floor, eyes still wide open and staring at her, was the severed head if her son, Chen Xu.

The hair she had lovingly combed since his childhood was matted with thick, clotted crimson, sticking in ugly clumps to his cold, pale forehead.

His refined, handsome jawline was slack, his lips parted in a silent, frozen gasp of absolute shock, his face completely devoid of the radiant, boyish warmth that had filled them only hours ago.

The clean, surgical cut at the base of his neck still wept sluggish, dark blood across the pristine marble.

BOOOOOOOM!

Her powers instantly flared up!

A terrifying eruption of dark, poisonous qi exploded from her voluptuous frame as the throne grovelled, hairline fractures ripping through the ancient petrified wood of the dais, while the surrounding candles violently detonated into purple fireballs.

The sheer, unbridled sorrow of a grieving mother screamed in her veins, threatening to tear the entire palace apart—

But she immediately calmed down.

She took a sharp, agonizing breath through her teeth, her nails digging into her palms until her own dark blood pooled beneath her lacquered black nails.

With a terrifying, unnatural discipline that defied mortal comprehension, she forcibly shoved the volcanic tide of grief back down into the deepest, coldest abyss of her dantian.

Her plush ears pinned back against her hair, her breathing steadying into a slow, terrifyingly rhythmic cadence, though the veins at her temples pulsed with suppressed, murderous pressure.

She looked away from the severed head, her gaze locking onto the empty void where the space continued to subtly distort.

”I see, I guess you killed Chen Feng’s parents and the other women, too.”

The conclusion was instant, calculated with the icy precision of a seasoned sect master.

”Impressive. Indeed, It’s me.”

At that moment, Haoran slowly appeared from the shadows, smiling, clapping his hands.

He lowered his hand, staring at Da Xiaomi’s face, and couldn’t help but shake his head.

”Well now, that’s disappointing,” Haoran chuckled softly, his deep, resonant voice echoing off the vaulted rafters. ”I expected more reaction from a mother who saw her son’s severed head.”

He had seen mortal women tear their hair out, claw at their own faces, and scream curses that cracked their vocal cords when presented with the heads of their kin.

Yet this demonic fox merely sat on her throne, looking at the bloody prize with the cold, measured detachment of a military commander surveying a lost soldier.

Da Xiaomi took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling beneath the sheer black lace of her low-cut robes, ”I have lived for a thousand years. Although I’m burning with rage, I can keep my composure just fine. It comes with experience.”

She had clawed her way up from a minor, hunted beast in the southern swamps, surviving the bloody purges of the righteous sects, the treacherous backstabbing of demonic warlords, and the endless cycles of clan warfare.

She knew better than anyone that tears were useless in the presence of an executioner; blind, howling grief only dulled the edge of one’s fangs.

If she wanted this smiling monster’s blood, her mind had to remain as sharp and unfeeling as an obsidian blade.

Haoran stared at her for a few moments and hummed, his golden pupils narrowing into two slivers of genuine, amused appreciation.

”Chen Feng is lucky to have you. You must’ve helped him a lot in his ascension.”

In his mind, he couldn’t help but think of those female supporting characters who are the greatest help to a protagonist’s rise to the top.

Throughout the infinite records of lower-plane chosen ones, there was always a woman like this: older, vastly experienced, holding the reins of an entrenched demonic or underworld faction.

When the young, reckless protagonist was weak, she shielded him with her sect’s resources; when he made enemies of ancient patriarchs, she cleaned up his messes in the dark; when he hungered for supreme techniques, she opened her ancestral vaults and would even offer her own dual-cultivation essence to temper his foundation.

Most of the time, those females will just end up being forgotten without ever getting recognized.

Once the protagonist broke through his mortal limitations and ascended to the grander, more luxurious heavens, these mature, sacrificial women were simply left behind to guard the decaying family nest.

They were never granted the official title of an imperial empress; their contributions were quietly brushed under the rug, overshadowed by the fresh celestial maidens and imperial princesses the protagonist picked up in the higher realms whose only contribution was to be a damsel in distress.

This Da Xiaomi was definitely like that as well. After all, from what he heard, she wasn’t even a legal wife and was just a lover.

The White Dragon Emperor had taken Bing Wuxian as his proud, celebrated second wife, while Da Xiaomi—despite bearing him a talented son and commanding the vital trade arteries of the southern marshlands—remained an unofficial concubine, tucked away in this gloomy gothic city like an open secret the noble clans pretended not to notice.

If this was a novel, that lover relationship was just an extra fan service for the loyal readers who like her.

A spicy, mature demoness added to the protagonist’s sprawling collection to satisfy a specific trope.

Da Xiaomi frowned at him, completely unbothered by his strange, condescending musings.

”So, are you here to kill me as well?”

”Yes.” Said Haoran.

The answer was short. There was no theatrical villain monologue, no hesitation, and no room for negotiation.

She was Chen Feng’s woman; her head was an essential piece of the psychological trap he had designed, and therefore, her life was forfeit.

”I see,” Da Xiaomi murmured, her eyes darkening with a profound, terrifying clarity. ”I take it you’re an otherworldly demon as well. A person from that academy who has always been plundering our world.”

”Indeed, I am,” Shen Haoran confirmed, his smile widening into an arrogant, breathtaking arch.

He slowly raised his right arm, extending his index finger toward her brow, with his thumb raised in a casual, mocking gesture.

”So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be taking your head.”

Swoosh! Swoosh!

Several sword intent bullets shot out from his fingers.

Bypassing the physical constraints of distance, they tore through the air at hyper-luminal speeds, leaving behind three hairline fractures in the fabric of space that whistled with high-pitched, apocalyptic annihilation!

But, at that moment, a shadow figure appeared before Da Xiaomi.

It was the shadow guard who had brought the report earlier, and has now prepared to sacrifice themselves and block the attack.

”Step back, you fool!”

But Da Xiaomi quickly reacted, pulled the figure back with a violent whip of her sleeve, and summoned her Spirit Avatar!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

The floor of the throne room violently pulverized into dust!

A blinding, towering pillar of ethereal purple energy detonated from her very soul, consuming the dais and shooting straight up through the vaulted ceiling!

It was an ethereal fox made from purple energy, standing at sixty meters tall!

Across its massive, lupine skull rested a third, vertical demonic eye that burned with hypnotic, soul-rending fire.

Its massive, muscular limbs possessed razor sharp claws of condensed purple energy, while nine colossal, semi-translucent tails whipped through the air behind its back, generating gales that stripped the murals from the stone walls!

It was crouched down, with Da Xiaomi and her guard standing inside the forehead, floating safely within a diamond-shaped sanctuary of hyper-dense spiritual dense of the avatar.

TING! TING! TING!

The sword intent bullets struck the ethereal fox’s brow—and shattered into formless gray sparks!

With the sword intent bullets dissipating upon contact, the localized shockwave merely caused the purple energy of the forehead to ripple like disturbed pond water.

”Impressive,” said Haoran, his brow arched with genuine, leisurely amusement. ”Although that was just a casual strike of mine, you actually managed to block it.”

Even a casual flick of his sword intent was enough to obliterate a Nascent Soul expert into bloody mist.

For a local beast-kin to cleanly disperse the force of the attack proved that her thousand years of cultivation had not been entirely wasted on mundane administration.

Da Xiaomi frowned deeply.

She did not answer him and just channeled her boundless spiritual reserves directly into the manifestation’s core, and controlled the Spirit Avatar to stand up!

CRACK! SHATTER! BOOM!

The avatar had completely destroyed half of the palace!

Its colossal, armored shoulders slammed directly into the ribbed obsidian vaults of the Gothic hall.

Millions of tons of ancient masonry, soaring arches, needle-thin spires, and gargoyle watchtowers were blasted outward like an erupting volcano.

The entire palace was torn open to the night sky, a rain of pulverized basalt and burning purple timber showering down across the canals of the city below.

Standing tall amidst the ruin, the sixty meter avatar swept its burning violet eyes across the sprawling gothic city.

Yet, as Da Xiaomi looked out over the vast metropolis, an icy, suffocating dread seized her heart.

The city was in absolute, chaotic lockdown.

A colossal, hexagonal barrier of shimmering black distortion had completely sealed the city in an inescapable birdcage.

Down in the avenues, the garrison outposts were dark, the watchtowers were silent, and the sounding horns of the high elders remained entirely muted.

”I see. No wonder the elders didn’t come to my aid.” she whispered, her voice trembling within the avatar’s forehead.

In a crisis of this magnitude, the nine Supreme Elders of the Demonic Lotus Sect should have mobilized their legions and summoned their own avatars within three breaths of the palace collapsing.

But they haven’t. And now she knew the reason why.

”They’re busy,” said Haoran.

SWOOSH.

The black-robed youth materialized directly in front of the Spirit Avatar and hovered weightlessly in empty air, fifty paces above the shattered ruins of the throne room, directly level with the giant fox’s eyes.

He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his black robes fluttering casually, looking upon the sixty meter spirit avatar with the bored, unimpressed gaze of a traveler looking at a wooden roadside carving.

”I see. So you planned this carefully.”

Da Xiaomi gritted her teeth, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the ethereal controls of her avatar, her sharp mind connecting the final, horrifying dots of the conspiracy. ”This would be impossible without an insider... Is Su Xishi with you?”

Only the Saintess had access to the master keys of the outer array.

Only the Saintess had known the exact rotation schedules of the border patrols.

And only the Saintess could have lured Chen Xu to his death without a single clash of steel alerting the central palace.

Haoran tilted his head slightly, his golden pupils burning with terrifying finality as he raised his hand.

”Correct. Now please, go die in peace.”