Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The subterranean hall had become a pressure cooker of volatile, borrowed divinity.

The air itself groaned, heavy with the sharp reek of scorched marrow, ozone, and the coppery tang of the dark crimson qi that had poured from Ling Luochen’s flayed flesh.

The walls, carved from thousands of tons of ancient subterranean granite, wept fine streams of pulverized sand as fissures raced across the stone ceiling, illuminated by the blinding, unstable golden aura roaring around Yun Ming’s hovering frame.

Twenty paces away, Ling Luochen’s boots finally bit into the floor, halting her backwards momentum.

Her knees bent, her center of gravity dropping low like an apex predator unbothered by the sudden shift in the wind.

The black tribal markings covering her skin pulsed with violent, rhythmic heat, hissing as they drank in the residual shockwaves that had thrown her back.

Across the cavern, her dark red demonic sword remained embedded half a foot deep into the stone of the broken altar, vibrating with a high-pitched, thirsty hum.

”...Return.” She did not turn her head, nor did she break the manic, locked gaze of her pitch-black eyes and burning red pupils.

Her right index and middle fingers simply twitched backward in a sharp, hooked gesture, commanding her soul bound weapon.

SHIIIING!

The blade tore free from the altar with the screech of dying stone, spinning through the air in a blur of dark crimson mist, the demonic sword reversed its trajectory, cutting clean through the swirling dust.

As her sword flew back to her hands, she caught the leather-wrapped hilt without looking, her grip locking like an iron vice.

The weapon shrieked an eager, metallic cry as its corrosive miasma wrapped around her bare forearms, merging seamlessly back into the roiling aura of her Descending Asura Demonic Physique.

”Man, that’s cheating. You can even power up and heal?” Ling Luochen rolled her shoulders.

The sheer spectacle of Yun Ming’s sudden, grotesque ascension did not evoke a shred of caution within her marrow; it was an open invitation to an altar of blood.

”But it’s fine. It makes things more interesting...!”

BOOM!

Ling Luochen crossed the intervening distance in the fraction of a heartbeat, her silhouette blurring into a smear of pure, butchering speed.

Her long, pink hair undulated behind her like shadowy flames, her tongue running over her blood-stained lips as a guttural, feral growl tore from her throat.

She held the sword low, trailing its dark red edge along the ground, carving an incandescent furrow of sparks before bringing it upward in a vicious, diagonal disembowelment aimed straight from Yun Ming’s groin to his chin.

The killing intent radiating from the steel was dense enough to liquefy the internal organs of a mortal man before the edge even made physical contact.

Yun Ming didn’t even shift his footing.

Hovering three inches above the rubble, bathed in the blinding radiance of forty thousand harvested human lives, Yun Ming looked upon her desperate charge with eyes completely devoid of mortal panic.

The pupil-less golden light blazing within his ocular sockets saw the world in cold, geometric vectors, calculating her trajectory before the muscle in her thigh had even fully contracted.

Then...he simply flicked his wrist.

It was a motion so casual, so devoid of effort, that he might as well have been flicking an annoying speck of ash from his lapel.

SKRRRRR!

From the tip of his pale, light-infused forefinger, a crescent of hyper-condensed golden lighy burst forth!

It was barely three feet wide, yet the localized density of the strike was astronomical, whistling through the air with a terrifying, sonic frequency that sheared the atmosphere into a vacuum along its path!

It carried the pure, pressurized life-force extracted from an alien civilization, compressed through systemic algorithms into a razor that ignored the common defenses of mortal meridians!

The sharp, lethal premonition struck Ling Luochen’s instincts like an icy needle straight to the spine.

Her pupils snapped to the golden crescent hurtling toward her chest, and with an unnatural twist of her spine, she contorted her airborne frame to the side and dodged the attack.

The primary arc of the golden wave whistled past her ribs by less than a millimeter, the sheer ambient wind pressure slicing the fabric of her combat vest into ribbons and leaving a scorching burn across her waist.

SHHK!

Unfortunately, the trailing slipstream of the crescent energy still caught her left shoulder right at the joint!

There was no resistance. The dense muscle fibers and iron-forged bones of her Descending Asura Demonic Physique, which could turn the strikes of high level Artifacts to dull thuds, offered no more impediment than wet parchment.

Her left arm was sheared cleanly from her torso at the collarbone!

A fountain of dark, boiling crimson blood sprayed violently into the air, splattering across the cavern floor and sizzling against the hot stones.

The severed limb tumbled through the swirling dust, bouncing twice before coming to a rest against the base of a cracked pillar.

The shockwave from the attack threw her off balance, her feet skidding violently across the damp rock as she slid to a halt ten paces to the right.

But not a single gasp escaped her throat, not a single whimper of pain marred the cold, manic sneer carved across her features.

The Descending Asura Demonic Physique possessed no concept of agony; to a practitioner of this forbidden path, pain was merely fuel dumped onto a roaring furnace.

Her right hand blurred, darting across the rubble with mechanical precision, her fingers clamped onto the wrist of her severed left arm, hoisting the bloody limb from the dirt.

Then, without hesitation, she shoved the raw, severed stump of the limb directly against her open, bleeding shoulder wound!

HISSSS!

The black tribal tattoos covering her skin violently flared into an angry, glowing crimson!

Thousands of fine, worm-like threads of coagulated demonic blood and dark demonic qi erupted from both edges of the wound, snaking outward like ravenous parasites.

They intertwined across the bone, burrowing into the marrow, quickly stitching the severed arteries, muscle bands, and skin back together at a terrifying, cellular speed!

Within three seconds, the joint snapped back into its socket with a wet, sickening CRACK!

She rolled her newly reattached shoulder, flexed her black-taloned fingers, and let out a breathless, shuddering hiss of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.

”Heh...heheh...HAHAHAHA!”

She laughed.

The sound began as a low, wet chuckle in the back of her throat, rapidly escalating into a shrieking, unhinged peal of laughter that echoed through the subterranean chamber like the howling of an ancient ghoul feasting in an open mass grave.

”So that thing you are hiding can also do this?!”

Her voice shook with genuine, psychotic delight as her red pupils burned like dying stars in the deep black pools of her sclera.

”Now I want it more and more!”

The greed, the obsession, and the rabid hunger for power that defined her bloodline consumed her entirely.

If a mere mortal could command such heaven-defying power from this hidden artifact, what could she achieve if she ripped it from his dead skull and grafted it into her own soul?!

ROOOOOAAARRRRR!

The sound that tore from her chest was no longer human. It was the primal, blood-soaked war cry of an Asura stepping onto an ancient slaughtering field!

The Descending Asura Demonic Physique responded to her manic frenzy!

The black tattoos across her flesh expanded outward, peeling away from her skin as tangible, floating ribbons of dark crimson qi that coiled around her body like armor plates!

Her muscles swelled, her veins turning black as they pumped liquid demonic qi through her meridians!

Her speed doubled, the air howling as she shattered the sound barrier, leaving five distinct, bleeding afterimages behind her as she charged forward, her demonic blade held high, swinging downward in an executioner’s cleave meant to split Yun Ming’s skull clean in half!

WHOOOOOOM!

The cavern’s atmosphere warped under the sheer, physical weight of her descending strike!

But against the borrowed, astronomical life-force of forty thousand human souls converted through cold system mathematics, her furious demonic eruption was nothing more than a candle flickering against a solar flare.

Yun Ming’s golden eyes didn’t even widen, his reaction was smooth, and devoid of the chaotic desperation that had ruled him minutes ago.

He didn’t swing the halberd to block, he simply stepped forward onto the empty air, his left hand shooting out with the speed of an uncoiled iron spring!

BAM!

His bare palm slammed directly into the flat side of her descending demonic blade!

The impact was deafening, a metallic boom that reverberated through the bedrock like an exploding artillery shell!

The dark crimson qi clinging to the steel was instantly obliterated, scattered into harmless sparks, while the horrific concussive force traveled straight up the blade, shattering the bones in Ling Luochen’s right wrist into gravel!

”Guh...!”

Before she could even register the destruction of her wrist, Yun Ming’s right arm blurred.

The heavy shaft of his golden halberd whipped around in a lightning-fast horizontal strike, slamming squarely into her left ribs!

CRACK-CRUNCH!

The sound of half her ribcage splintering into jagged shards echoed through the hall!

The kinetic shock punched straight through her internal organs, rupturing her spleen and sending a massive spray of dark, clotted blood gushing from her lips as her feet left the ground!

She tried to twist in mid-air, her reattached left hand reaching for a sneak attack, but Yun Ming was already there.

He moved not with the erratic speed of a mortal, but with the instantaneous, frame-skipping acceleration granted by the system’s emergency combat protocols.

He appeared above her falling frame, his boot coming down like a falling meteor onto her stomach!

BOOM!

She smashed into the stone floor, the bedrock cratering five feet deep beneath her spine.

The breath left her lungs in a choked, bloody wheeze, her demonic aura violently flickering under the unrelenting, mechanical barrage.

She clawed at the stone, trying desperately to rise, trying to unleash the secondary power of her Physique—

THUD!

Yun Ming’s boot planted itself firmly upon her throat, pinning her neck to the broken stone with crushing, immovable weight!

His face looked down at her from above, cold, hollow, and completely purged of fear.

The golden light spilling from his eyes washed over her battered, bleeding face, illuminating the wild defiance that still burned within her red pupils.

”You wanted to take it?” Yun Ming’s voice was distorted, carrying the flat, synthetic resonance of the interface operating behind his tongue. ”You wanted to see what it could do? Then let it be the last thing you ever see.”

He reached down, his left hand clamping onto her jaw, violently lifting her battered body from the crater with effortless, one-handed strength!

He strode toward the largest, thickest pillar standing at the northern boundary of the chamber—a colossal, carved column of solid celestial rock that supported the weight of the entire mountain above.

With a brutal, sweeping motion, he slammed Ling Luochen’s spine against the flat face of the pillar!

The impact drove the remaining air from her crushed lungs, the rough stone biting deep into the weeping cuts along her back.

Before she could react—

CHHK! CHHK!

Two long stakes of condensed, solid golden qi materialized from thin air, humming with piercing energy!

Then, Yun Ming drove them forward simultaneously!

The golden spikes punched through the centers of Ling Luochen’s left and right palms, tearing through tendon, shattering the metacarpal bones, and sinking four inches deep into the solid granite behind her!

”AAAAAAAGH!”

A sharp, ragged scream finally tore from Ling Luochen’s throat, her fingers curling violently inward around the hot, foreign energy that burned like molten iron, cauterizing her flesh and preventing the Descending Asura Physique from initiating cellular regeneration!

CRACK! THUNK!

Without a pause, Yun Ming’s hand blurred again as two more heavy, burning stakes of golden light plunged downward, driving straight through the tops of her feet, pinning her insteps directly into the base of the pillar!

The bone shattered with the sickening crunch of dry branches beneath an iron boot!

Her legs spasmed, the dark crimson tattoos across her thighs flickering erratically as the golden light spread like a parasitic poison through her lower meridians, locking her joints and severing her connection to the earth’s spiritual leylines!

She was pinned, stretched out against the stone like an ancient, sacrificial beast offered to a cruel god.

Blood ran in thick, dark rivulets from her pierced palms, pooling at her fingertips and dripping down the granite surface to join the scarlet puddle gathering around her mangled feet.

Her long, pink hair hung in sweaty, matted clumps across her forehead, her chest heaving in shallow, desperate gasps.

Yet, even as her body hung broken, pinned to the bedrock by four burning spikes of light, she raised her head and looked into Yun Ming’s pupil-less golden eyes, and through the blood obscuring her vision, she smiled.

It was a broken, bloody curve of her mouth, trembling with the agony burning through her nerves, but it remained dripping with the unyielding, arrogant spite of the Imperial Academy.

”Is this all... you’ve got, you dog...?” she wheezed, her vocal cords raw, blood bubbling between her teeth with every syllable. ”You borrowed foreign strength... and you’re still... panting like a stray...”

Yun Ming didn’t answer.

He simply gripped the shaft of his halberd with both hands, stepping back half a pace to align the massive, curved crescent blade directly with her sternum.

SHRRRRK!

With a slow, deliberate, and merciless forward thrust, Yun Ming drove the massive weapon straight through the center of her chest!

The wide, sharp steel cleaved cleanly through her breastbone, tearing through her lungs, and pinning the back of her ribcage to the heart of the stone pillar!

The broad blade protruded three inches from the other side of her back, burying itself into the deep bedrock, locking her in place with absolute, immovable finality.

”GACK...!”

A heavy, dark fountain of arterial blood sprayed from Ling Luochen’s mouth, splattering across Yun Ming’s face and running down the pristine, glowing surface of his ethereal armor.

Her body arched violently against the steel, her fingers clawing helplessly at the golden stakes pinning her wrists, her eyes bulging as the dark crimson qi of her Descending Asura Demonic Physique began to rapidly wither, suffocated by the burning weapon embedded in her core.

Her head fell forward, chin resting against her bloody chest, hanging by her pierced palms, her ragged breathing shallow, rattling, and dying in the dark subterranean silence.

Yun Ming released his grip on the halberd’s shaft, leaving the weapon buried to the hilt in her chest.

He stood there in the flickering gloom of the ruined hall, his hands shaking slightly as the borrowed, stolen life-force of forty thousand human lives continued to boil within his veins, looking upon the crucified imperial disciple with eyes that burned with hollow madness.