Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Night fell across the vast stone avenues of Ye Heavenly City like a heavy, dark blanket.

The bustling street vendors who had spent the daytime hawking low-grade medicinal herbs, fried meat skewers, and coarse beast hides had packed away their wooden stalls.

Iron lanterns hanging from the eaves of tall brick buildings flickered with pale, dancing flames, throwing long, crooked shadows across the damp gray pavers.

A cold wind blew down from the eastern ridges, carrying the bitter scent of wet dust and fallen autumn leaves.

Near the corner of a quiet crossing, a lone shadow darted between two shuttered tea houses.

Ye Fan was sneaking around and looking around to check for any passerby in the streets of Ye Heavenly City.

He pulled the hood of his rough, charcoal-colored travel cloak deep over his brow, hiding his face in thick shadow.

His back was pressed flat against the rough brick wall of an apothecary, his fingers digging into the cold mortar as his eyes darted left, right, and across the wide, empty thoroughfare.

His ears strained against the quiet night, listening for the rhythmic clanking of bronze armor or the heavy thud of patrol spears that belonged to the city garrison.

When a stray black cat jumped from a wooden railing into a pile of dry straw, making a sudden rustling noise, his heart gave a hard, painful jump against his ribs.

He froze in place, barely daring to draw a single breath, his right hand clutching the small, flat jade token tucked deep within his belt.

Only after the animal scampered away down a drainage ditch did he exhale a thin plume of white mist into the frosty air.

Seeing that the wide road was completely clear, he pushed off from the bricks, sprinted lightly on the balls of his cloth shoes across the open stones, and disappeared into an alleyway.

The passage was narrow, foul-smelling, and clogged with piles of discarded rotten cabbage and broken wooden crates.

High stone walls rose on both sides, blocking out the starlight and plunging the path into pitch-black gloom.

And after a while of walking he entered a building.

The structure was an old, dilapidated grain warehouse that had been abandoned for decades, its wooden planks swollen from rain and its tiled roof sagging heavily in the middle.

The front entrance was boarded shut with heavy iron nails, but near the back, behind a mound of rotting grain sacks, a small wooden trapdoor was propped open with an iron wedge.

Ye Fan slipped through the low opening like a nimble ferret, his boots dropping onto cold, packed dirt.

He walked down a short, damp stone staircase that descended into an underground cellar.

Down below, the air was warm, stagnant, and thick with the heavy stench of strong sorghum liquor, pipe tobacco, and the sharp, metallic tang of unpolished iron.

A dozen fat tallow candles were stuck to the stone walls, their greasy yellow flames sputtering and casting jumping shadows across a wide, circular wooden table set in the center of the subterranean vault.

Ans there, seated around the rough table were more than twenty burly, hard-faced men.

They wore thick coats of cured monster hide, heavy chain vests, and dark steel bracers scarred by old blade marks.

Behind their wooden stools rested heavy battle axes, spiked maces, and broad iron cleavers wrapped in stained rags.

Their faces were weathered, their jaws square and unshaven, their eyes carrying the cold, hungry glint of wild wolves that had smelled fresh meat in the snow.

They are the Five Major Families under the rule of the Ye Family.

For hundreds of years, these five regional clans—the Zhao, the Qian, the Sun, the Li, and the Zhou—had held the farming basins, the spirit stone mines, and the outer border garrisons surrounding the grand city.

They had bled in the trenches whenever wild beast tides swarmed from the mountains, and they had handed over seventy percent of their harvested grain and spirit stones to the main Ye Clan every single autumn.

Generation after generation, their elders had choked down their bitter resentment.

They watched the bloodline descendants of the Ye Clan live in grand white jade pavilions, eating thousand-year spirit fruits and drinking nectar, while their own sons were forced to work the rocky border soil like draft animals.

The hatred had festered in their bones like old poison, passed down from grandfather to grandson, waiting for the day when the high wall would show a crack wide enough to drive a bloody spear through.

A month ago, after the system screen had awarded him, he had sent secret letters to the patriarchs of the five clans under the guise of an oppressed, terrified boy crying for help.

In those letters, he had poured out his grievances, weeping about how his stepmother starved him, how the clan elders beat him with willow switches, and how he wished for nothing more than to see the cruel main family burn so he could claim a small corner of the estate to live out his days in peace.

He had played the part of a pathetic, frightened child so well that the hardened old warlords had immediately taken the bait, viewing him as a convenient, brainless key to unlock the back gates of the grand compound.

As Ye Fan stepped fully into the yellow candlelight of the cellar, the low murmurs around the circular table cut off instantly.

Every single head turned toward him.

A massive, bald warrior from the Zhao Clan—his bare chest covered in crude tiger-striped tattoos and crisscrossed with jagged sword scars—spat a mouthful of yellow tobacco juice onto the dirt right by Ye Fan’s cloth shoes.

Several younger commanders sneered openly, leaning back in their wooden chairs, their eyes sweeping over his thin frame and cheap grey servant tunic with utter contempt.

To these hardened killers who had hacked through bandit dens and monster packs, a cowardly boy who couldn’t even stand up to his own stepmother was lower than dirt.

”Look who finally crawled out of the kitchen,” the bald warrior barked, his raspy voice scraping against the stone walls like rusty iron. ”We thought your stepmother had locked you in the pig pen again, little dog.”

The other men chuckled in low, mocking rumbles, tapping the hilts of their daggers against the wooden tabletop.

Ye Fan kept his shoulders hunched, his head lowered, and his hands tucked nervously into the opposite sleeves of his cloak.

He forced his knees to tremble slightly, letting out a small, frightened squeak as he bowed deeply to the assembled figures.

”Uncle Zhao... seniors... the patrols were very tight tonight,” Ye Fan stammered, his voice thin, high-pitched, and filled with cowardly hesitation. ”I had to hide in a ditch for two hours before I could slip past the stable guards...”

The bald man snorted in disgust, waved a massive, hairy hand dismissively, and told him to take a seat.

”Sit down and shut your mouth,” the warrior grunted, pointing his chin toward an empty, wobbly wooden stool placed at the far edge of the table, far away from the center where the maps were laid out. ”Don’t touch anything, and don’t make a sound. If your hands shake and knock over my wine jar, I’ll snap your fingers one by one.”

”Y-yes, senior! Thank you, senior!” Ye Fan whimpered, bowing two more times before scurrying over to the stool like a frightened rat, perching lightly on the edge of the wood with his hands pressed flat against his knees.

With the useless boy tucked away in the corner, the leaders of the Five Families leaned forward over the rough wooden table once more.

Spread out across the timber was a detailed map of the main Ye Family compound, drawn in red ink upon cured sheepskin.

Every courtyard, every guard tower, every underground wine cellar, and every secret escape tunnel was marked with crisp, dark crosses.

”The timing will never be better than this,” a grey-haired elder from the Li Clan said, his long, bony finger tapping heavily against the red circle marking the central banquet hall. ”The matriarch’s eleventh cycle is a grand milestone. The entire clan will gather in the central pavilion. All the outer branch elders, the city magistrates, and the merchant guild leaders will be seated inside, drinking wine and watching the dancer troupes.”

”This thing will be our primary blade,” a lean, sharp-faced scout from the Qian Clan chimed in, pulling a small clay vial filled with dark purple liquid from his leather belt. ”We have already bought off two Gourmet Hunters responsible for the dishes, and with then, we can apply this Seven Day Bone Melting Powder. It has no taste and no smell. Once it is stirred into the foods and drinks, even a peak Earthly Saint expert will feel his dantian go cold after three cups! Within half an hour, their spiritual channels will lock up tight, and their limbs will go limp as wet noodles!”

”And what about the guards at the outer gates?” the bald Zhao warrior asked, grinning viciously as he ran his thumb along the notched edge of his battle ax.

”That’s where this little brat comes in handy,” the Qian scout said, casting a sharp, sneering glance toward Ye Fan sitting in the corner. ”The boy has stolen the patrol rosters for the eastern stable walls. When the midnight gong strikes, he will open the narrow supply gate near the dung heaps. All of our warriors will slip through the shadows, slit the throats of the stable guards, and encircle the central pavilion before anyone realizes the wine was spiked!”

”We strike fast and we strike mercilessly!” the Li elder growled, slamming his fist onto the sheepskin map. ”Every elder who carries the Ye bloodline must lose his head! The patriarch, the matriarch, the core disciples—none of them leave that hall alive! We will hang their heads from the four city gates before sunrise, seize the treasury vaults, and divide all Ye Family assets equally among our five houses! From that night forward, Ye Heavenly City will have new masters!”

A chorus of dark, guttural cheers rose from the throats of the twenty men, their eyes burning with the rabid fever of impending slaughter.

Ye Fan sat quietly on his wobbly stool in the corner, his head bowed, his hands folded obediently on his lap.

Ye Fan appeared to be listening, nodding nervously whenever one of the commanders looked his way, offering quick, obedient whimpers of agreement.

But in his mind he had been thinking on how to use this opportunity to directly get the favor of Wei Zhingyi.

Underneath the thick shadow of his cloak hood, the frightened, cowardly expression had completely vanished from his face.

His lips were set in a thin, cold line, his pupils glowing with sharp, detached calculation.

’Kill the patriarch? Slaughter the elders? Divide the city?’ he scoffed mockingly within his thoughts. ’You bunch of brainless, backwater brutes actually think you can take down a millennium-old clan with a vial of cheap poison and your ragtag warriors? You don’t even know that Ye Hongyan is returning from the Imperial Academy with the young master of the Shen Clan! The moment you pull your blades in that hall, that woman will turn your entire coalition into burnt grease with a flick of her sleeve!’

He had never cared about their pathetic rebellion. He had never intended to help them rule the city, nor did he give a damn whether his adoptive mother had her throat slit or lived for another thousand winters.

These twenty fools were nothing more than sacrificial chess pieces he was about to throw onto the board.

He turned the grand scheme over in his head, refining every single detail like a master clockmaker.

When the banquet fell into chaos, when the alarms shrieked through the night and the clan guards clashed with the rebels in the central courtyards, he would not run to the main hall.

Instead, he would take a squad of the bloodiest, most savage members from the Zhao and Qian families, telling them that the clan’s secret treasure vault was hidden in the abandoned shed behind the stables.

He would bring those violent, drooling beasts straight into the quiet room where the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox lay sleeping on the cot!

When those rough men saw a breathtaking, peerless woman with silver hair, nine fluffy tails, and skin as white as fresh cream lying helpless on a bed, their animal greed would take over instantly!

They would draw their daggers, tear their shirts open, and rush forward like rabid dogs, intending to defile her body before dragging her away!

But of course, before this happens he will use the Soul Awakening Incense in his storage to temporarily wake up Wei Zhingyi, but would still leave her severely weakened from her injuries.

And then, she would look up to see five or six filthy, foul-smelling mercenaries lunging onto her bed with crude grins and clawed hands!

She would feel the absolute, suffocating terror of a proud Heavenly Saint about to be defiled by creatures lower than swine, completely unable to lift a finger to save herself!

And at that precise, perfect second of absolute despair...

Ye Fan would jump into the breach!

He would throw his own body over her trembling frame! He would let the mercenaries’ curved sabers slash across his back, shedding real blood, screaming with righteous fury as he fought with his bare hands to protect her purity!

He would take three blade strikes, cough blood onto her blanket, and drag her battered body into his arms, weeping tears of desperate devotion as he shielded her from the beasts!

How could she not be moved?! Ye Fan’s mind screamed with ecstatic, wild triumph.

A thousand-year-old emotionless fox? A proud master who treated men like dirt?

When she was looking into the jaws of humiliation, and a young man took five blades to his ribs, drenched her clothes in his own lifeblood, and stood between her and total depravity without asking for a single coin—the thickest ice of her Emotionless Dao would shatter into a thousand pieces!

Her favorability wouldn’t just rise by five points! It would jump by a hundred points in a single night!

If that wasn’t enough, he will also use an untraceable aphrodisiac to rile her desires, then he will act weak and use a teleportation talisman to take her into the deep mountain caves, far away from the city.

With her body still suppressed, with her mind reeling from gratitude, trauma, and the heat of her desire, he wouldn’t need to ask for permission anymore.

Once the rice is cooked, what’s there to fear?

In this world, once a woman gave her body to a man, especially an ancient celestial beast whose purity had been guarded for a thousand years, her fate was sealed!

She would belong to him, body and soul!

Even if she felt anger later on, the heavy weight of the karmic bond and the debt of her saved life would tie her hands forever!

As for the gap in strength, isn’t that what his system is for? It already made sure that it will allow him to have sex with anyone stronger than him without repercussions.

Sitting in the dim corner of the old cellar, surrounded by the rough shouts of men planning a petty clan murder, Ye Fan kept his head down against his knees.

Underneath the dark shadow of his hood, his lips curled upward into a wide, crooked, vicious sneer.

His shoulders shook with silent, trembling mirth as he chuckled.