Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The spatial tear snapped shut with a hollow pop that ruffled the dry grass.

Hundreds of miles away from the Ye Heavenly City, Wei Zhingyi and Ye Fan appeared under a tree.

The night air here was cold and clean, carrying the scent of damp pine needles and wet moss.

A colossal, crooked cedar tree reached into the dark purple sky, its heavy roots curling over the damp earth like sleeping pythons, blocking out the light of the three moons.

Behind them, the rocky cliffs of a barren ridge rose high into the fog, far removed from the fires and screams of the besieged city.

Ye Fan stumbled as his boots hit the packed dirt, sliding two paces before regaining his balance.

He supported the silver-haired woman against his torso, letting out a loud, panting groan of exhaustion.

”We... we made it out, senior,” he wheezed, his voice ragged, making sure to stagger as if the escape had drained the very last drop of blood from his veins.

Carefully, he lowered Wei Zhingyi onto the soft bed of fallen pine needles clustered between two thick roots.

Her silver hair spilled out over the dark loam, and her nine magnificent tails lay curled weakly around her legs, shivering against the night chill.

Then, Ye Fan called out to the system.

’System,’ he commanded in his mind, his eyes narrowing into cold slits beneath his dark bangs. ’Give me the Seven Desires Aphrodisiac Dust.’

Ding!

A faint blue ripple flashed inside his sea of thought, and a tiny, translucent porcelain vial containing a powder materialized directly within his wide right sleeve.

With his back half-turned to the woman, he slipped the cork free with his thumb and took out the powder and sprinkled it.

The dust was as fine as ground flour, completely invisible in the dim moonlight.

It held no scent, no bitter chemical tang, and no spiritual fluctuation that could alert an expert’s senses.

He shook his wrist gently, letting the fine white particles drift downward on the light mountain draft, settling over her pale face, her parted lips, and her torn collar like morning mist.

Wei Zhingyi had no idea about this.

She lay against the rough tree bark, her chest rising and falling in shallow, painful gasps.

The shock of the spatial jump had rattled her cracked meridians once more; her vision was swimming with dark rings, and her ears rang with a steady, dull buzz.

At this moment, she truly believed that this plain, courageous boy had risked his life, taken blade strikes from four vicious killers, and burned a treasure just to carry her away from those wretched men.

But soon, without her notice, she started feeling hot and restless.

At first, it was just a faint prickle beneath the skin of her collarbones, like sitting too close to a winter hearth.

But within five breaths, that tiny spark flared into a roaring, uncontrollable furnace!

A strange, suffocating heat erupted from deep within her lower abdomen, rushing upward through her dry channels like boiling water!

Her pale, porcelain cheeks flushed a deep, feverish scarlet, her breath hitched, turning hot and ragged, each exhale burning against her swollen lips.

Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs, not with fear, but with a wild, maddening itch that clawed at her insides.

Her blood felt thick, molten, and turbulent, pounding in her temples until the cool mountain breeze felt like scalding steam against her neck.

She shifted uncomfortably against the roots, her limbs twitching, her nine silver tails lashing weakly against the dirt in uncoordinated, frantic movements.

Ye Fan dropped down to his knees beside her, his face twisting into an expression of frantic, panicked innocence.

He reached out with trembling hands, hovering his palms over her shoulders without daring to touch her, playing the part of a terrified, helpless youth to perfection.

”Senior?! Senior, what has happened to you?!” Ye Fan cried out, his voice shaking with desperate concern. ”Your breathing... your face is burning! Are your internal injuries worsening from the jump?!”

Wei Zhingyi twisted her neck, her teeth digging into her swollen lower lip, her silver eyelashes wet with hot sweat.

”Hot...” she gasped out, her usually proud, dignified voice cracking into a strained, breathy whimper that shocked even her own ears. ”It burns... inside... my chest... my veins...”

Ye Fan’s brow knitted tightly, slapping his own thigh with a look of sudden, horrific realization.

”Curse them!” Ye Fan roared, clenching his fists until his knuckles popped, his voice dripping with righteous fury. ”Those beasts! One of their curved sabers must have carried a vile, dirty poison! They coated their weapons in wicked street filth to subdue you! Senior, hold on! I will find cold water! I will try to suppress it with my own Qi!”

He leaned closer, his eyes wide and trembling with fake panic, but deep within his pupils, a hungry, lecherous flame was beginning to burn.

The poison worked fast and mercilessly.

Wei Zhingyi was a thousand year old celestial fox who had walked the cold path of the Emotionless Dao, but right now, her foundation was utterly broken.

She had zero spiritual energy left to build a barrier, and the foul powder entered her bloodstream like wild fire poured over dry straw, completely bypassing her weakened mental defenses.

The heat was suffocating.

It felt as if a hundred burning irons were being pressed into her skin.

Wei Zhingyi was unable to bear the heat.

A choked, desperate moan escaped her throat, her hands, which had been limp and useless moments ago, clawed frantically at the throat of her lilac cotton dress.

Her trembling, feverish fingers pulled at the front buttons, tearing the fabric open down to her sternum, showing her cleavage.

The cool night air rushed against her bare, burning skin, but it wasn’t enough; it gave her no relief at all!

She tugged frantically at her sleeves, kicking her legs against the dirt, trying to peel the heavy, suffocating cloth from her feverish body, her nine silver tails fanning out in wild, agitated waves, her mind drowning in an ocean of raw, dizzying lust.

Ye Fan’s eyes lit up as a sickening, triumphant sneer tore across his face, the mask of the innocent, dutiful disciple shattering completely.

His breathing turned heavy and greedy, his eyes locked onto her exposed, snow-white collarbones and the flushed curve of her throat.

’It worked!’ his mind screamed with ecstatic, depraved victory.

He reached his hands forward, his fingers crooked like claws, aiming straight for her trembling shoulders—

”So that’s your plan, huh.”

A cool, indifferent voice dropped down from the branches above.

The voice was neither loud nor hurried. It held no anger, no shock, and no excitement.

It was as calm and flat as someone commenting on a dead insect squashed beneath a carriage wheel.

Yet the moment those words touched the air, the wind died completely.

The rustling leaves froze.

The crickets in the grass went dead silent.

The very temperature around the massive cedar tree plummeted by twenty degrees, turning the humid mountain fog into falling frost!

Ye Fan’s eyes widened as alarm bells rang in his mind!

DANGER! LETHAL THREAT! EVADE!

The system inside his skull shrieked with deafening, crimson warning sirens that hammered against his brain like heavy iron bells!

A primeval, paralyzing terror seized his spine, the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up!

Without hesitation, without even looking back to see who had spoken, he kicked off the ground with both heels, activating his movement skill to the absolute limit, his body turning into a gray blur as he vanished from the spot!

Thud.

Ye Fan crashed onto the rocky slope twenty feet back, his knees bent low, his hands clawing into the loose shale to steady himself.

He whipped his head up, his teeth bared, his eyes wide with frantic, rabid paranoia.

Standing beneath the crooked cedar, right where Ye Fan had been kneeling a second ago, was a tall, slender figure draped in spotless, black and gold robes.

It was Shen Haoran.

His hands were tucked loosely into his wide sleeves, his golden hair swaying with the wind, his expression as quiet and undisturbed as a mountain lake in winter.

Haoran stared at Ye Fan.

His golden eyes flickered toward the panting, crouching youth on the rocks, his gaze cold, detached, and utterly unimpressed.

He looked at Ye Fan the exact same way a man might look at a dirty stray rat that had managed to jump over a low drainage ditch—an ugly little thing, but ultimately not worth moving an arm to swat.

He shook his head, and turned his back on Ye Fan completely, treating trembling youth as if he were made of empty air.

He slowly walked towards Wei Zhingyi.

The fox woman was writhing on the ground, her eyes half-glazed with feverish pink mist, her hands still weakly tearing at the shredded remnants of her collar, soft, broken whimpers slipping past her teeth as the aphrodisiac ravaged her empty meridians.

”You really are a pathetic sight,” Haoran said plainly, loud enough for her fevered ears to catch every syllable. ”A peak Heavenly Saint who ruled an entire palace with enough power to rival an Immortal Sect, brought down by an ant with a pinch of cheap street powder. And to think Su Xishi looked up to you.”

Wei Zhingyi’s glazed eyes twitched, the words cutting through the thick, burning haze in her skull like cold drops of rain.

But before she could process the truth, Haoran flicked his left wrist and immediately took out several pills.

Three round, dark azure pills appeared between his pale fingers.

They gave off no fiery light, but a sharp, bitter scent of thousand year frost lotus and dragon gall herbs immediately spread through the clearing, instantly freezing the dew on the grass nearby.

He didn’t offer them gently, and he didn’t wait for her to open her mouth politely.

He simply crouched down, reached out with his left hand, clamped his fingers firmly around her soft jaw, forced her teeth apart, and shoved them into her mouth!

”Swallow,” he commanded coldly.

His palm pressed flat against her throat, his finger tapping a precise meridian point right beneath her chin.

Gulp.

The three pills dissolved into pure, icy liquid the second they passed her tongue, shooting down her dry esophagus like a torrent of glacial water.

BOOM!

A terrifying, bone-chilling cold erupted inside her stomach!

It was not a gentle medicine; it was a ruthless, freezing flood that swept through her burning channels with absolute, unforgiving force!

The boiling heat of the aphrodisiac was stamped out instantly, crushed into cold vapor as the medicinal frost washed through her blood, freezing the foul dust, cleansing her lungs, and forcefully stitching the tears in her merdians!

Wei Zhingyi’s eyes suddenly cleared.

The thick, pink fog that had drowned her pupils shattered like cheap glass.

The wild, manic heat drained from her cheeks, leaving her skin pale, pristine, and cool as jade once more.

Her body cooled down.

Her trembling stopped.

Her ragged, shameful panting died away in the mountain breeze, replaced by deep, steady, controlled breaths.

The terrible, humiliating urge that had threatened to tear away her dignity vanished as if it had never existed, wiped entirely clean by the high-grade pills.

She lay down there, staring up through the cedar branches at the pale moonlight.

The pieces of the past thirty days rushed through her mind, no longer clouded by the drug or the heavy exhaustion of her coma.

She remembered the strange boy who had found her by the water.

She remembered his constant sob stories about his wicked stepmother, his endless, rehearsed speeches about how pure and kind he was, and how he had placed that jade bangle on her arm while whispering sweet, filial words.

She remembered the strange incense that had dragged her out of her slumber right before the attack, the convenient arrival of those four filthy brigands, and the way the boy had thrown himself into the room, shouting heroic lines like a bad actor on a wooden stage.

It was all fake.

Every single word.

Every drop of warm water.

Every gentle touch.

It was a disgusting, manufactured play directed by a greedy, lecherous little monster who wanted to break her pride and crawl onto her bed!

Her teeth ground together with a harsh, sickening crunch, blood welling on her lip.

’How could I... How could I fall for such a crude, disgusting trick?!’ she screamed at herself inwardly, her heart twisted with profound, burning humiliation. ’I am Wei Zhingyi! I am the Mistress of the Immortal Coupling Palace! I have cultivated the Emotionless Dao for over a thousand years! I have stepped over the broken hearts of kings, laughed at the empty vows of grand emperors, and guarded my pure body through centuries of slaughter! And tonight... tonight I almost tore my own robes open for a mortal ant! I almost let this filth defile the sacred blood of the celestial fox because of a pinch of common powder!’

The sheer shame of it burned hotter than any poison ever could.

If this youth hadn’t dropped from the sky, if those pills hadn’t frozen her blood, she would have become the plaything of a pathetic, scheming insect.

Her nine silver tails flared violently, whipping against the tree trunk with terrifying force, snapping two thick roots in half with loud, splintering cracks.

Even with her meridians barely mended, the terrifying, ancient fury of a 9th Stage Heavenly Saint erupted from her chest like an active volcano!

She forced her arms down, pushing her upper body off the dirt, her torn collar fell shut, held tight by her trembling, blood-drained fingers.

Her silver hair whipped wildly in the sudden, murderous gale that kicked up around her shoulders, her fox ears pinned flat against her skull, her pupils turning into two freezing, slit-like voids of pure, unadulterated hatred.

She locked her burning gaze onto Ye Fan, who was still crouching on the rocks twenty paces away.

”You...!”

The word tore from her throat like a jagged blade of ice, shaking the very stones of the mountain.

”You deserve to die!”