Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The vast, endless expanse of stars and swirling galaxies trembled as the tripartite halo of gold, silver, and deep abyssal purple rotated slowly behind Shen Haoran’s shoulders.

The mental realm, which the ancient silver entity had claimed as its host’s territory, was now weeping cracks of fractured reality.

The ambient stellar winds, once dancing to the rhythm of the dragon’s respiration, had completely stilled, choked out by an overwhelming, despotic spiritual gravity that made the cosmic dust fall like lead.

”You... Just who are you?”

The dragon stared at Haoran.

The booming, tectonic arrogance that had once shaken clusters of stars was gone, and in its place was a hoarse, vibrating tremor of disbelief.

The massive silver beast’s golden pupils, each as colossal as an entire galaxy, contracted violently as it gazed upon the tiny silhouette.

The creature had witnessed emperors rise from mortal dust and fall back into the dirt; it had watched primordial gods wage wars that extinguished entire star systems; it had seen the birth of ancient celestial dynasties.

Yet never, in all its epochs of existence across the boundless cosmos, had it looked upon a soul that bore such a horrifying, unnatural synthesis of divine authorities.

The silver eye reflected an order of creation far colder than its own; the purple eye devoured light with an insatiable, destructiveness; and the third golden eye on his forehead looked upon the beast not with hatred, not with caution, but with the hollow, dismissive appraisal of a butcher staring at raw gristle.

Haoran just smirked.

The curve of his lips was faint, sharp, and dripping with an untouchable, aristocratic disdain that pierced deeper than any divine blade.

His robes fluttered weightlessly in the stagnant cosmic expanse, completely unaffected by the lingering draconic tempest.

”I am the pinnacle of all existence,” Haoran spoke, his voice carrying the overlapping, chilled cadence of three distinct cosmic realms that echoed like a death knell through the firmament. ”And the sole god whose shadow you are not worthy to inhabit.”

He raised his hand.

It was a slow, effortless elevation of his right arm, his pale, slender fingers uncurled in the void, pointing casually toward the gargantuan, coiled mountain of silver scales.

His eyes flashed.

The liquid silver of his left eye spun like a tightening celestial gear.

The abyssal purple of his right eye exploded into a roaring vortex of anti-matter.

And the golden vertical slit of his third eye flared with blinding, incandescent imperial decree.

And the dragon felt the universe twist.

The fundamental coordinates of the mental cosmos violently inverted.

Up became down; the flow of time within the sea of consciousness ground to a screeching halt; the very distance between the stars collapsed in upon itself like folding paper.

It was not a localized technique; it was the absolute, despotic subjugation of the entire mental plane.

The dragon’s colossal infinitely long serpentine body, coiled among ancient nebulae, was instantly caught within an inescapable, omnidirectional vise of localized space-time curvature!

CRACK! SKRRRRR!

A sound like the shearing of tectonic plates tore through the consciousness realm as the space around the silver dragon shrank by a factor of ten thousand in less than a second!

The colossal beast let out a breathless, strangled wheeze as billions of tons of compressed dimensional force slammed into its spine from every angle simultaneously!

”GRAAAAGH!”

The dragon roared, attempting to violently thrash its mountainous tail to tear through the spatial compression and ignite the ancestral flames of the Heavenly Order.

It drew upon the primordial laws of its core, attempting to manifest the silver dragon breath capable of erasing an immortal’s soul platform!

Yet, the moment its titanic maw parted, Haoran’s raised palm lightly rotated downward, pressing toward the void with a single, delicate twitch of his wrist.

BOOOOOOM!

A pillar of triple-colored celestial majesty slammed directly onto the crown of the silver dragon’s mountainous skull!

The sheer, suffocating density of the pressure bypassed the physical laws of the soul entirely.

It was a complete suppression of rank, pedigree, and existence.

The ancient dragon’s majestic, branching silver horns groaned under the kinetic impact, fracturing into thousands of spiderweb cracks before shattering completely into shimmering, powdery dust!

The massive skull was violently slammed down, crashing straight into the invisible platform of reality beneath Haoran’s feet!

The dragon’s jaw was pinned flat against the void, its silver scales grinding against the floor of the universe with an ear-piercing shriek, unable to open its mouth by even a millimeter.

Its proud whiskers were instantly severed by the invisible gravitational shears; its titanic serpentine coils, which had spanned entire star clusters, were forcefully straightened and nailed down into the empty space by three thousand colossal, ethereal stakes of incandescent gold and purple light!

The dragon struggled frantically, its massive muscles coiling and straining with such violent desperation that the surrounding star systems threatened to disintegrate from the kinetic tremors!

It burned through its remaining ancestral memories, attempting to ignite its primeval essence to blow Haoran’s spiritual sea apart from within!

”KNEEL.”

Haoran uttered the single syllable, his voice dropping into a register of terrifying, unyielding finality.

The third golden eye on his forehead pulsed.

An invisible, mountainous hand of imperial authority descended upon the dragon’s broad neck.

Every single silver scale across the entity’s million-mile frame violently buckled, sizzling with dark purple corrosion as the devouring laws of Azathoth and the suppressed Infinity Dragon God began feasting directly on its vital marrow!

The struggle ceased.

Not because the ancient dragon chose to yield, but because its divine will was being physically, systematically pulverized into nonexistence.

The golden light in its massive, plate-sized pupils dimmed rapidly, flickering like dying candles in a hurricane. Its muscles went slack, its lungs seized, and the ancient consciousness of the Heavenly Order Dragon Body was rendered entirely paralyzed, flattened like a beaten worm beneath the unblinking, three-eyed gaze of the young master.

It could not roar.

It could not move its tail.

It could not even muster the strength to close its eyes.

Standing barely a few yards from the tip of the beast’s colossal, pinned snout, Shen Haoran slowly let his right hand drop back to his side, his expression as calm and undisturbed as if he had merely pressed an unruly insect into the dirt.

”Now,” Haoran murmured softly, his cold gaze piercing through the glazed, terrified gold of the beast’s eyes, ”let us begin the true digestion.”

*

*

*

Outside the deep, isolated confines of Chen Feng’s spiritual sea, the howling wind its mournful wail across the desert.

The sky remained scarred, weighed down by dense, unnatural clouds that tasted of ash and lingering lightning.

Shen Xun’er hovered gracefully in the empty air, her hands gathered demurely inside the long, embroidered sleeves of her gown.

Barely three paces before her, the horrifying scene hung suspended in total, eerie stillness.

The Black Imperial Sword, Azathoth, remained buried to its hilt within the shattered sternum of the White Dragon Emperor.

Chen Feng’s body had gone completely limp, hanging off the dark blade like a discarded puppet, his head tilted at an unnatural, broken angle, his aura long extinguished into lifeless gray.

Haoran stood motionless, his slender, pale fingers locked firmly onto the weapon’s pommel, his eyes closed as though he had drifted into a quiet slumber mid-execution.

Yet, beneath his pale, flawless skin, microscopic flickers of gold, silver, and purple light danced in rhythmic, calculated pulses.

Seeing that, Shen Xun’er couldn’t help but reminded of that scene years ago, when Haoran had first used the Supreme Trinity on them.

They were completely suppressed they can’t even lift their heads.

With that light, she knew that her young master was entirely in control of his internal assimilation, so Xun’er smoothly turned on her heel, her eyes casting their gaze thousands of leagues downward toward the Rising Dragon Sect.

The colossal, dome-shaped barrier of the Great Dragon-Smiting Heaven-Lock Array was burning with blinding, crimson and azure runic energy, wrapping the entire sect in an impenetrable, churning fortress of localized killing intent.

Tens of thousands of proud, Imperial Academy prodigies hovered in vast, uneasy ranks along the outer perimeter of the sect, their mounts restlessly pawing at the clouds, their flying swords humming with suppressed power.

Yet, despite their overwhelming numbers and illustrious pedigrees, not a single one stepped across the threshold of the shimmering boundary.

Several have already tried, and all of them died.

Scattered along the outer rim of the barrier, pinned against the jagged rocks below, lay the horrific remnants of their failed incursions.

Three arrogant young masters from prominent ancient clans, along with four early-stage Nirvana disciples, had believed they could brute-force through a lower-realm formation.

The consequences had been instantaneous and gruesome.

The moment their boots crossed the perimeter, the array had inverted and thick, blood-red chains of primordial binding runes had erupted from the bedrock, tearing through their high-grade celestial breastplates like parchment, impaling their dantians, and detonating their nascent souls into fine, red mist before they could even draw their weapons.

Their mangled corpses still hung suspended in the formation’s outer wards, serving as a gruesome, silent warning to the trembling host above.

Emboldened by the slaughter, the defenders behind the translucent barrier were having the time of their lives.

Lining the battlements, thousands of players danced, gestured wildly, and threw crude taunts into the sky, their colorful user tags bobbing erratically as they laughed at the paralyzed army above.

”Hey! You fancy-robed upper-realm virgins! What happened to all that big talk about crushing lower-realm monkeys?!” a player named GirthQuake shouted at the top of his lungs, slapping his armored backside toward the clouds. ”Come on in! We prepared tea! Why are you all floating up there shaking like wet poodles?! Are you scared of a little defensive grid?!”

”Look at them! Total cowards! A bunch of dogs waiting for their master to give them permission to die!” another player named SizeDoesNotMatter laughed, casually sipping a recovery potion atop a watchtower. ”You guys spent three whole cutscenes hyping up your divine bloodlines, and you can’t even step past the front door! Come down here and taste these turrets, you glorified loot pinatas!”

Up in the firmament, the scions and maidens of the Imperial Academy were trembling with unbridled, suffocating fury.

They were the peerless dragons and phoenix of the heavens, yet they were being openly cursed, mocked, and humiliated by a swarm of crude, disrespectful vermin hiding behind an ancestral turtle shell.

Yet, with the gruesome sight of their comrades’ shredded remains rotting below, nobody dared to make the first suicidal leap.

Seeing the stalemate, Shen Xun’er checked her academy token, and opened the map as a blue holographic screen appeared from the token.

Small, glowing golden markers dotted the perimeter of the map, each one representing the spatial coordinates of the academy’s core vanguards.

From the south, a massive, blazing crimson beacon indicated that Huo Yue was crossing the continental divide at breakneck speed.

From the southwest, the marker of Gu Xunyi, and Ning Xueli was tearing through the cloud cover.

To the east, the signature Luo Mingye, Xia Mengyao, and Xu Xiansu were closing the distance in tight formation.

There was no need for rash, uncoordinated sacrifices.

Once the Ten Crowns and all their inner circle arrived, their combined force would be more than capable of orchestrating a simultaneous, multi-directional siege that could overwhelm the barrier’s energy flow.

And just as she was about to close the map, her delicate fingers paused mid-air, her eyes narrowed slightly, zeroing in on a solitary, emerald-green coordinate pulsing deep within the heart of the enemy fortress.

It wasn’t hovering above the walls, nor was it trapped in the defensive kill-zones.

The marker was actively snaking its way through the subterranean layout of the compound, gliding effortlessly from one auxiliary warehouse to the next, precisely navigating the dead zones of the sect’s internal surveillance.

She looked confused, but then she let out a soft chuckle.

For a brief second, she wondered why an imperial disciple would be wandering through the enemy’s storage basements.

But then, seeing that it was actually King Luochen, then everything should be fine.

She was probably severing the internal energy nodes of the grand array, cutting the throat of the beast from the inside out while the defenders were too busy shouting insults at the sky to notice the daggers at their backs.

A cold, amused smile blossomed across Shen Xun’er’s porcelain face.

She lightly closed the holographic projection, resting her hands back within her flowing sleeves as she looked down at the screaming, mocking players with the quiet, pitying gaze of an executioner watching condemned men toast to their good fortune.

”Well,” Xun’er murmured softly, her crystalline voice carried away by the cold wind, ”it seems these people won’t be mocking for long.”