Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

At this moment, Haoran and Ling Luochen stood in the middle of a large hall, as everyone in his inner circle gathered.

The floor was laid with cool white jade, smooth as a mirror, catching the lantern light that hung from the ceiling.

Outside, the night wind brushed past the tall palace walls of the academy grounds, but inside, nobody was paying attention to the weather.

Every person standing in the room was looking at the thin air right before their eyes.

Floating in front of each face was a small square of soft blue light.

All of them had been given a sub-system for becoming an ’NPC’, and they can access parts of the system.

It did not hurt their eyes, and it did not make a sound, but it showed clean rows of words and numbers that tracked their health, their energy, and their gear, with a 3D projection of their own physical body slowly spinning around.

To these young masters and ladies who had spent their entire lives reading dusty scrolls and memorizing dry mantras, seeing their own bodies laid out in neat little boxes was something entirely fresh.

It’s not like they are entirely ignorant to these holograms, after all, their academy token has one, but something this detailed was new.

Shen Tao remained silent as ever, arms crossed checking the system, observing all functions available.

Shen Cai stood with his heavy arms folded across his wide chest, his scarred jaw set tight.

He blinked his eyes, watching the numbers shift on his screen as he tensed and relaxed his thick muscles.

Next to him, Shen Fei furrowed his brows, poking at a little window that showed his weapon skills, feeling unsatisfied with the number.

Beside him, Shen Jian tapped the air with his finger to see how fast his sword strikes were measured.

Shen Ji was leaning against a pillar, grinning lazily as he scrolled through a long list of battle titles, laughing under his breath whenever he saw a funny phrase.

Shen Ying seemed uninterested, though. She only scrolled through once and closed it, deciding to instead focus on Haoran and Ling Luochen.

Shen Xun’er, meanwhile, squatted on the side, palms on her chin and cheeks, observing her stats and thinking of training plans to improve them.

Shen Xinye, meanwhile, was thinking of buying a far better sword than the one she was using.

On the other side, Shen Bai and Shen Hei were comparing who has the better stats.

Beside Haoran, Huo Yue was having a blast scrolling through the shop, her eyes were wide with excitement, glowing brightly as she swiped her fingers back and forth through the glowing shelves.

”Look at this,” she whispered, tugging at Ning Xueli’s sleeve with a broad smile. ”Nine-sun fire roots from a world I’ve never even heard of. And this pill here—it says it can clean out old poison from the lungs in three breaths! How does this small board hold so many strange things?”

Ning Xueli leaned in close to Huo Yue, tapping on a small bottle of cold frost dew that could freeze an entire pond in winter.

Zhu Ziyan’s soft cat ears flicked back and forth as she browsed through bags of rare beast feed made from dried thunder beetles.

Beside her, Xia Mengyao was reading through the descriptions of ancient sword techniques, while Luo Mingye ran her fingers over a shelf of silk zither strings that never snapped, even when pulled by a demonic ox.

Qian Yunxi looked through a list of books about military strategies, thinking of sending them to her mother.

And Xu Xiansu simply watched the text roll down, taking small, steady notes in her mind about the prices of different ores.

”Shall we begin?”

Standing at the front of the hall, Haoran looked at Ling Luochen.

His sleeves hung straight down, his posture relaxed and untroubled.

Ling Luochen met his golden eyes, took a deep, steady breath, and raised her right hand.

The pink pupils suddenly lit up with a clean, warm glow.

Then, Ling Luochen closed her eyes, letting her thoughts sink straight into the blue core nestled deep within her sea of consciousness.

The luck and fortune she had gathered from the land and rivers of the Ancient Heaven Star over the past two years began to move.

It did not rush out like a wild storm as she expected, instead it flowed like thin, invisible golden threads, stretching out from her fingers, passing through the walls of the palace, slipping past the clouds of the academy dimension, and piercing straight through the cold, dark void that separated the worlds.

The sleeping will of that far-off, quiet plane did not wake. As expected.

The golden threads slipped easily through the grey smog of that distant sky, seeking out the specific marks left on the souls of those who had once walked the battlefields of the lower realm.

*

*

*

Back in Blue Star.

The sky outside the window was dull and heavy with smog, the color of dirty dishwater.

Streetlights flickered on along the crowded avenues below, casting pale yellow circles on the wet asphalt as cheap electric cars crawled through the evening traffic.

In a small apartment, a young man lay down on a mattress, completely in a daze while staring at the ceiling.

The paint above his head was peeling in long, cracked strips, yellowed by years of cheap cooking oil and stale indoor air.

His room was tiny, barely wide enough to hold a single mattress, a plastic laundry hamper overflowing with unwashed shirts, and a cheap metal desk cluttered with empty instant noodle cups.

The radiator in the corner clanked and hissed, but the room still felt cold and drafty.

It has been two years since the Rising Dragon incident, where tens of thousands of gamers have lost their lives due to dying in the game.

The horror of that night was still etched into the memory of the entire globe.

Millions of families had watched news reports of screaming mothers, police sirens blaring through residential blocks, and rows of white sheets covering young bodies in hospital basements.

The government had acted with iron fists.

Factories had been shut down overnight, company leaders had been thrown into dark cells, and specialized squads had marched from building to building, dragging out every sleek white capsule they could find to smash them with sledgehammers in public squares.

This young man was one of the lucky ones who survived, and his in-game name was ThickThighsSaveLives.

He had not died that night, but the price had been steep.

When the pain dampeners had vanished, the sudden wave of agony had scorched his nervous system like hot grease poured down a pipe.

He had spent three months in an emergency ward, unable to speak, his limbs shaking with uncontrollable spasms every time a nurse touched his skin.

Even now, two years later, his hands would still tremble whenever he held a heavy cup, and a dull, throbbing ache would wake him up in the middle of cold nights.

”...two years...” His voice was hoarse, ”...I want to go back...”

Back in that world, he had not been a shivering boy in a damp room.

He had been a proud frontline defender of the Rising Dragon Sect, holding a heavy iron shield that could turn away the claws of mountain bears.

He had laughed with friends around campfires, tasted roasted beast meat that made his tongue sing, and felt the warm wind of a clean, endless sky against his face.

Even though that incident was dreadful, he still couldn’t forget it.

And no, it was not because of fear, but longing.

He rolled onto his side, his fingers digging into the thin, scratchy blanket.

The pain of having his ribs crushed by that spear had been real, but the life he had lived before that final strike had been real too.

Far more real than this grey, dead place where he spent ten hours a day packing plastic boxes in a windowless warehouse, only to come home to a cold room and silence.

That is the world where he belongs. Not in this shitty world.

Here, nobody cared about his name. His boss yelled at him for dropping a box of detergent, his landlord threatened to lock him out if his rent was two days late, and people on the train moved away from his worn-out jacket.

But in that land of mountains and clouds, he had been a warrior.

He had stood on the walls, shouted into the wind, and fought for something that felt grand and alive.

So even though two years have passed, sometimes he would dream of returning to that world.

He dreamed of the blue lakes that had no oil slicks on them.

He dreamed of the smell of pine needles under his boots.

He dreamed of picking up a shield and standing shoulder to shoulder with men who didn’t look at him like he was garbage.

It was not just him, thousands of people feel the same thing as him, and just like him, they are people who are outcasts in this society.

Across the cities of Blue Star, in basement rentals, in cramped attic rooms, and in dirty factory dorms, thousands of survivors sat in the dark.

They were the dropouts, the quiet workers who never looked up from their desks, the limping youths whose families wished they would just stop complaining about the headaches.

To the rest of the world, they were broken victims of a dangerous toy.

But to each other, in the secret forum threads that the police hadn’t managed to wipe out, they were homesick soldiers stranded in a foreign desert.

And...

At this very moment, while he was lamenting, there was suddenly a knock on the door.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound was firm, polite, and clean.

He groaned, rubbing his tired eyes with the back of his hand.

”Go away,” he muttered under his breath, thinking it was the landlord coming to ask for the water bill again.

The knocking came again, steady and unhurried.

With a sour scowl, he forced himself to stand up, his knees clicked, a familiar dull ache shooting up his calf, but he dragged his feet across the linoleum floor and turned the brass lock.

He opened the door, and there, standing in the narrow, dimly lit hallway was a tall man wearing a clean, dark blue jacket and a flat cap pulled low over his brow.

His posture was straight as an arrow, his face calm and pleasant, bearing none of the sweat or impatience common to regular couriers.

A delivery man, or a courier, whatever you wanna call him.

He was holding a box.

It was a sleek, black package just big enough to store a full face helmet, wrapped with a thin silver ribbon that carried no company logo, no barcode, and no postage stamp.

The delivery man looked at the scruffy youth standing in the doorway and spoke in a clear, level voice.

”Delivery for Mr. ThickThighsSaveLives.”

The man’s eyes widened.

His breath caught in his throat, his hand freezing on the doorknob, his heart gave a violent, painful thud against his ribs.

That is the username he used on Rising Dragon Online alone.

He had never used that handle on a food app.

He had never put it on a shopping site.

He had never even used it on other games!

He had only typed those letters once, ten years ago when Rising Dragon Online first appeared, on an encrypted neural setup that had supposedly been smashed to pieces by government bulldozers.

How could this delivery man know it?

The hallway seemed to grow dead quiet, and even the clanking of the old water pipes down the hall faded away.

”Please sign this,” the delivery man said softly, offering a plain wooden pen and a single sheet of pale, heavy parchment that smelled faintly of sweet pine needles.

In a daze, the man signed the papers.

His fingers were trembling so badly the ink wobbled across the line, but he wrote his legal name and signature without even reading the small, neat print at the bottom.

His mind was spinning in a wild, dizzy fog, unable to process what was happening.

The delivery man took the sheet back, checked the signature with a brief glance, and handed over the sleek black box.

”Thanks. I’ll be going now then.” He smiled and took two steps down the worn hallway runner, his shoes making no sound against the floor.

But then, he paused, stopping near the stairwell, turned his head, and smiled back to the man standing frozen by the open door.

”Oh, and one more thing.”

The delivery man’s dark eyes seemed to catch a faint, golden glint in the dim yellow light of the hallway lamp, his voice dropping into a warm, familiar tone that sent a deep shiver straight down the youth’s spine.

”Please enjoy this second chance, gamer.”