Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The cold mountain wind howled across the devastated square of the Demonic Lotus Sect, stirring the pungent scent of scorched earth and drying blood.

Shen Haoran stood tall amidst the kneeling, newly branded elders, his robes completely untainted by the carnage around him.

He showed no further interest in the groveling captives, nor did he spare a second glance at the ruins of the grand pavilion.

He just simply turned his gaze towards Shen Xun’er, ”Let’s go, we still have work to do.”

Shen Xun’er stepped into place immediately behind his shoulder, her hands gathered gracefully inside her embroidered sleeves.

”Understood, Young Master.”

He then faced Su Xishi and the others, ”I will leave the aftermath to you, I’m sure you can handle it, right?”

He spoke with total nonchalance, casually handing over the administrative control of thousands of enslaved elders and the vast resource treasuries of an entire sect as if he were tossing scrap copper to stray dogs.

”Leave it to us, young master!” Mei Mei gave a salute.

”No mistakes shall be made!” Said Ruo Lanlan.

Haoran nodded at them before turning towards Su Xishi, and smirked, his golden eyes carrying a glint of amusement that acknowledged their secret night and the fresh essence lingering within her meridians.

Seeing that knowing, mocking curvature of his lips, Su Xishi felt a scorching surge of blood rush up to her face, and she couldn’t help but turn her gaze away.

She clenched her teeth so hard they ached, her gaze dropping to the scorched flagstones beneath her boots.

She felt exposed, stripped down to her bare core under his careless appraisal, yet powerless to protest.

Then, with a sweeping flick of his wide sleeves, Shen Haoran stepped onto the air as if ascending an invisible staircase, lifting off the ground with an effortless surge of energy.

Shen Xun’er followed closely behind, the space rippling beneath her feet.

Then under the reluctant gaze of Mei Mei and Ruo Lanlan, Shen Haoran and Shen Xun’er flew away.

”Ah ...Young Master, why do you have to leave so soon!” Mei Mei whined under her breath, stomping her dainty foot against the bloody pavement, her eyes trailing his departing silhouette with desperate longing.

Ruo Lanlan could only sigh, her eyes glued to the retreating white figure until he turned into a tiny speck of light against the overcast horizon. ”Ah, what a waste... Not even a single compliment for our hard work. And to think Little Sister Su got to taste him first...”

Su Xishi did not say a word. She simply watched the sky until the clouds closed back up, her chest hollow and tight with unspoken turmoil.

*

*

*

At this moment, tens of thousands of miles away, an entirely different kind of storm was brewing.

Across the jagged expanse of the Black Cloud Mountain Range, a streak of desperate, jagged crimson light sliced violently through the upper atmosphere.

The air wailed as shockwaves tore the surrounding mist into shredded ribbons.

Xiao Mei, Da Xiaomi’s shadow guard, was burning through her soul to increase her speed.

Her skin had turned a sickening, paper-white hue, while the veins along her neck and temples bulged with fierce, pulsating violet fire.

Right now, she was burning her qi, no, not just that, she was sacrificing her vitality and soul, throwing away her life just to squeeze out three times her ordinary flight speed.

Every beat of her heart felt like hot glass scraping against her lungs, blood leaked from her nostrils, her ears, and the corners of her lips, which were all instantly whipped away by the supersonic gale.

She had to get there. She had to!

Her sole purpose was to warn the White Dragon Sect to flee.

The White Dragon Sect sat cradled in the snow-capped peaks four hundred thousand miles to the north.

They had no idea what kind of calamity was descending upon them, they had no idea that the demon from the upper realm, was sweeping through the world like a divine scythe, hunting down every lineage, branch, and loyalist connected to her mistress’ man.

If she didn’t reach the sect gates within the hour, the sect would be slaughtered down to the last mortal servant, caught completely unaware in their defensive slumber.

”Faster... move faster...!” Xiao Mei cursed internally, her fingernails digging so deep into her palms that blood ran down her wrists.

Her movement was eating her lifespan second by second, dissolving centuries of cultivation into pure kinetic propulsion, but she did not care.

Even if she died the moment she delivered the information, as long as the elders and disciples of the White Dragon Sect dispersed into the vast wilderness to preserve their ancestral bloodline, her life was worth sacrificing.

But at that moment, a silver light shot down from the sky.

It was neither accompanied by thunder nor heralded by a sound barrier cracking.

It simply materialized—a beam of pristine silver radiance descending from the highest strata of the heavens, carrying with it the cold, unyielding weight of imperial judgment.

Before her nervous system could even register the reflection of the light, the beam struck...

...and pierced her chest.

A sickening ”shhk” resonated through her bones, the sheer shockwave blew away Xiao Mei’s qi barrier as if it were a dry autumn leaf.

Her forward momentum was violently arrested in midair, her spine snapping backward with a brutal crack.

”Cough!”

She coughed up blood, and the thick, dark mouthful of visceral fluid splattered across the empty sky.

Her vision blurred into a swirl of violent gray and crimson, and looking down with trembling, paralyzed eyes, she saw it: a gaping hole on her chest, right where her heart’s main meridian branch had once been.

The edges of the wound were clean, cauterized instantly by an overbearing sword intent so pure and overwhelming that not even her flesh could regenerate.

White steam rose from the cavity, carrying the scent of burned spiritual marrow.

”Impossible...” she wheezed, her vocal cords struggling to produce sound through the froth of blood rising in her throat.

She slowly turned her head.

There, hovering casually above the mountain winds, hands resting behind his back, stood a figure in black robes.

His golden swayed gently, completely undisturbed by the violent atmospheric currents, his golden eyes cold and stern.

Xiao Mei’s pupils shrank to needlepoints. Her soul trembled so violently that the lingering fire within her dantian nearly flickered out on the spot.

Just like that, a suffocating, bottomless grief surged straight into her chest, drowning out the physical agony of the hole torn through her flesh.

Shen Haoran was here. Untouched, clean, without a single scratch or tear on his robes, his qi was still as smooth and calm as an unmoving lake.

The only reason that he could be here is because he probably already killed her mistress.

Da Xiaomi. The proud, brilliant, radiant woman who had rescued Xiao Mei from the gutter as a child, who had given her a name, who had personally taught her cultivation, and whom Xiao Mei had sworn to serve for ten lifetimes.

Her mistress, who had stood like an unshakeable pillar in this lower world... was gone.

Dead. Slain by this emotionless butcher from the higher realm.

A volcanic roar of hatred ignited within Xiao Mei’s shattered breast.

She wanted to rage and fight. She wanted to turn around, throw what remained of her ruined body at him, bite out his throat with her teeth, and detonate her soul directly in his face to drag him into the yellow springs with her!

Every instinct of a guard, every drop of blood in her veins screamed for vengeance.

But remembering her mistress’ final orders, she gritted her teeth.

Her mistress’ final, desperate voice echoed in her ears, sharper and more painful than the wound in her chest.

She could not fight. A suicidal strike would grant her vengeance in thought, but it would sentence the entire White Dragon Sect to certain annihilation.

Her death here would be entirely meaningless if the message was never delivered!

Ignoring her injuries, Xiao Mei spun her broken body back toward the north.

She forced the blood pooling in her mouth down her throat, locked her burning soul into an even deeper overdrive, and continued to run.

Torn flesh flapped violently against the gale, a trail of scarlet droplets painted the clouds behind her as she lurched forward, dragging her half-dead body through the air by sheer, unadulterated willpower.

High above her, Shen Haoran watched her frantic, staggering retreat.

There was no anger in his expression, no hurry, only the cold, detached curiosity of an immortal watching an ant drag its severed legs across a leaf.

”What a loyal retainer,” said Haoran.

His voice was gentle, carrying an indifferent, melodic lilt that easily cut through the roaring winds.

It was a compliment, yet devoid of any warmth or mercy.

Slowly, deliberately, Shen Haoran raised his right arm and pointed a single, slender finger at her back.

Around the tip of his pale finger, the surrounding space violently twisted.

The sky darkened as the natural spiritual qi within fifty miles was violently sucked into a swirling vortex of condensed sword intemt.

In less than a millisecond, the air hummed with an ear-piercing, metallic vibration that shattered the surrounding mountain crags below into powder.

Then, he fired thousands of Sword Intent bullets.

They did not fly as broad, majestic slashes; they were compressed into miniature, thumb-sized beads of crystalline silver light—each one packed with enough condensed sword intent to level a mortal citadel.

They surged forth like a torrential, inescapable storm, tearing the sound barrier into thousands of overlapping sonic booms as they bore down on Xiao Mei’s fleeing figure.

Swwosh! Swooosh! Swoosh!

Despair, absolute and crushing despair, swallowed Xiao Mei whole.

As the apocalyptic shriek of the incoming barrage drowned out the howling wind, her divine sense perceived every single silver bullet hurtling toward her back.

There were too many and moved too fast. They sealed off every spatial angle, every evasive trajectory, every conceivable shadow she could have slipped into.

In that split second, the world seemed to slow to a terrifying crawl.

She looked forward and in her hazy eyes, she seem to see the distant, faint silhouette of the snowy northern mountain ranges where the White Dragon Sect stood peacefully, unaware of the impending doom.

It was right there. If she only had another hour... just thirty minutes...

But...

She wasn’t going to make it.

The realization struck her with the weight of a falling star.

The sheer helplessness was suffocating. She had given everything—her lifespan, her cultivation, her blood, her very soul—and yet, against the monstrous gulf of strength separating a monster from the upper realm from a lower-realm shadow guard, all her devotion, all her sweat, and all her tears amounted to absolutely nothing.

Then, the storm arrived.

Puchi! Puchi! Puchi! Bang!

The sword intent bullets struck her back in a merciless, rhythmic cascade.

The sheer agony that followed tore through Xiao Mei’s consciousness like burning hot lightning.

The bullets did not merely pierce her flesh; upon impact, the compressed sword intent within each projectile exploded, unfurling thousands of microscopic, razor-sharp blades that shredded her muscle, splintered her bones into dust, and liquefied her internal organs.

Her legs were severed at the thighs in a burst of red mist.

Her left shoulder and arm were blown clean off her torso, vanishing into fine crimson spray.

Bullet after bullet tore through her spine, completely demolishing the central channels of her cultivation.

The physical pain was beyond anything mortal language could articulate; it felt as if her living flesh was being fed through a giant, spinning millstone made of frozen steel.

Her dantian was punctured, her spiritual core fractured into countless glowing dust particles, and the soul she had been burning was violently ripped apart by the merciless cutting force.

I failed...

The thought screamed inside her disintegrating mind.

The despair was not from the physical mutilation, nor was it from the icy embrace of death reaching for her throat.

It was the crushing, agonizing regret of failing her mistress’ final command.

’Mistress entrusted this to me. She gave her life so that I could carry this message. And I couldn’t even make it past the border.’

Images of Da Xiaomi flashed before Xiao Mei’s fading vision—her mistress smiling gently as she handed Xiao Mei her first shadow dagger, her mistress standing proudly atop the mountain pavilion, her mistress looking back with blood on her lips, screaming at her to flee.

’The White Dragon Sect... the elders, the young ones... they will all die because of my weakness. They will be slaughtered in their beds, and no one will even know why.’

Tears of profound grief and helplessness finally spilled from her eyes, mixing with the blood pouring down her cheeks before being blown apart by the relentless hail of silver swords.

As the final volley of sword bullets shredded her chest and neck, completely erasing her physical form into an unrecognizable rain of bloody mist and scattered spiritual essence, her consciousness dissolved into the cold, empty sky.

In the final second before her soul was thoroughly extinguished from the world, Xiao Mei’s broken voice formed one last, silent, desperate plea that was carried away by the uncaring wind.

’Mistress... I am sorry... I am... such a failure...’

The storm of silver light ceased.

The sky above the Black Cloud Mountains fell deathly quiet once more.

Not a single trace of Xiao Mei remained—no corpse, no bones, only a faint, dispersing mist of crimson that the cold wind quickly swept away into the northern peaks.

Tens of thousands of feet in the air, Shen Haoran slowly lowered his finger.

His expression remained utterly tranquil, as if he had merely swatted a fly that had drifted into his path.

With a faint flutter of his white sleeves, he turned his gaze toward the distant, mountains of the north, and stepped into the void.