Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The flash of light dropped straight from the sky, smashing through the tiled roof of the grand banquet hall with a deafening crash!

Tiles made of green glaze shattered into ten thousand pieces, raining down like sharp stones as timber beams snapped in half.

Smoke and dust blew outward in a violent circle, catching the flickering yellow lantern light.

Ye Hongyan arrived at the hall, and the very first thing she witnessed was slaughter.

Her boots hit the blood-soaked stone floor with a dull, heavy thud, her robes swirled around her ankles, the fabric catching the draft of hot ash.

The air inside the room was thick, sour, and disgusting. It smelled of spilled wine, vomit, burned meat, and hot, sticky blood that pooled around the legs of overturned tables.

She looked up, her eyes sweeping across the ruined pavilion.

Dozens of young cousins she had seen running in the yards when they were small were lying face down in the red puddles, their throats slit from ear to ear.

Servants who had carried fruit baskets were piled in the corners like sacks of old grain.

Old branch uncles who had argued over tea prices were pinned to the cedar pillars with rusted iron spears, their eyes wide and glassy, staring blankly at the ruined ceiling.

“….Damn you.”

For a thousand years, she had told herself that this house was nothing to her.

She had told herself that the Ye Family was just a cold stone pen filled with selfish elders who only cared about trading their daughters for land and spirit stone mines.

She had sworn she would never shed a tear if they all go down.

Yet looking at her own bloodline spilled like dirty water across the pavers, something wild, hot, and ancient snapped deep inside her chest.

A terrible, suffocating pressure exploded from her body!

The floor beneath her feet cracked, turning to fine gray sand.

The wooden pillars groaned, the paint peeling away as the temperature in the room skyrocketed in less than half a heartbeat!

The masked assassins who were busy tearing gold rings from the fingers of dead guests froze mid-reach.

The five elders of the rebel houses whipped their heads around, their faces turning the color of curdled milk.

“Ye Hongyan?!” Old Master Zhao screamed, his voice cracking as his battle ax shook in his hands. “How is she here?! She was supposed to be flying back to the academy!”

Ye Hongyan didn’t give them a single word.

She stepped forward, her pale hand lifting with a flick of her wrist and a wave of pure, scorching scarlet flame burst from her palms like an erupting volcano!

The fire instantly tore across the banquet hall with a high, screaming roar!

Three masked killers standing twenty paces away didn’t even have time to lift their curved sabers before the crimson wave washed over their chests.

Their armor burned to ash in a flash, their bones glowing white through melting skin, and before their screams could leave their throats, their bodies turned into piles of fine gray dust that scattered into the wind!

“Form up! Block her!” the Qian elder shrieked, his face twisted in raw terror as he threw three heavy iron shields forward.

Ye Hongyan’s silhouette vanished from the spot.

She appeared right in front of the Qian elder, her eyes burning like two coals of pure hellfire as she reached out, her slender fingers moving faster than lightning, grabbing the elder by his throat with an iron grip.

Crack!

The protective qi barrier around his skin shattered like thin glass as Ye Hongyan pulled him close, her face centimeters from his bulging eyes.

“You dared step into my mother’s home?” she whispered, her voice colder than the ice in the northern wastes.

“Spare me! Hongyan, niece, please!” the Qian elder choked out, blood and spit bubbling past his teeth as his hands clawed uselessly at her slender wrist. “It was the Zhao family! They forced us! We were just—”

SNAP!

Ye Hongyan twisted her wrist, snapping his collarbone with a sickening crunch.

She thrn drove her knee straight into his stomach, shattering his dantian into gravel!

The elder let out a high, squealing shriek of agony, but before he could collapse, Ye Hongyan drove a thin thread of scarlet fire directly into his veins!

The flame crawled through his broken meridians like thousands of red-hot needles, roasting his blood from the inside out, making every nerve in his flesh burn with unbearable agony!

He fell to the floor, thrashing like a fish thrown onto hot coals, screaming until his vocal cords tore to bloody ribbons!

“How dare you!” Old Master Zhao roared, his yellow eyes wild with desperation as he swung his heavy battle ax with all the strength in his arms, aiming straight for her neck.

Ye Hongyan didn’t even turn her head, she raised her left hand, catching the razor-sharp steel edge of the colossal ax with her bare, pale palm.

CLANG!

The iron blade struck her skin and groaned, but her flesh didn’t show a single scratch, then, she clenched her fingers tight.

CRUNCH!

The three-hundred-pound battle ax crumpled in her grip, the thick iron folding like wet paper before shattering into jagged iron fragments.

Old Master Zhao stumbled backward, his mouth hanging open, his arms shaking from the kinetic rebound as he dropped to his knees, his forehead slamming against the bloody stone, sobbing like a child.

“Mercy! Eldest Mistress, mercy! I will give you all the mines! We swore to never rebel again! Have mercy on my old bones!”

Ye Hongyan looked down at him with cold, dead eyes.

“Mercy is for those with conscience,” she said softly. “You are just a beast that bit its master’s hand.”

She stepped forward, her foot coming down onto his right knee.

CRACK!

The bone bent backward, poking out through his trousers in a shower of red.

“GAAHAHH!” Zhao shrieked, clutching his ruined leg, but Ye Hongyan’s other hand had already grabbed his jaw.

She forced a burning ember of her fire down his throat, searing his tongue and sealing his screams inside a chest that slowly baked until his heart burst.

Once done, she turned towards the other elders, who all backed away in fear.

“Now… who’s next?”

One by one, the remaining attackers were hunted down.

No one could run.

No one could jump through the broken windows.

Ye Hongyan moved through the smoke like a crimson ghost of death, breaking limbs, shattering bones, and setting their inner channels on fire, letting each traitor taste every second of the agony they had brought upon the innocent people lying in the dirt.

Within five minutes, the shouting stopped.

The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by the crackle of burning cedar beams and the soft drip of blood from Ye Hongyan’s fingertips.

She turned around, her chest heaving slightly, her robes spotless despite the river of blood around her boots.

At the edge of the shattered dais, Ye Liuman was still kneeling over Yan Renhua’s body.

His broad back was completely black, burned to charcoal by the fire attacks, with the deep, jagged wound from the ax exposing his cracked white ribs.

Three black poison needles were still sunk deep into the meat of his neck, the skin around them swollen and turning a foul shade of greenish-purple.

His head hung low, his arms shaking violently, but his fingers were still locked tight around his wife’s shoulders, shielding her from the falling ash.

Ye Hongyan’s throat tightened. A sharp, bitter ache stabbed behind her eyes as she hurried up the broken wooden steps, her boots splashing through the puddle of black blood beside him.

“Father,” she called out, her voice trembling just a fraction.

Ye Liuman didn’t move at first. His breathing was a wet, rattling gasp, blood dripping continuously from his mouth onto his chin.

Slowly, with agonizing effort, his heavy eyelids peeled open, and when his cloudy, bloodshot eyes saw her face, the tension holding his broken spine upright snapped like a dry twig.

He slumped sideways, his heavy frame falling off the bench, crashing onto the wooden floorboards with a dull groan.

“Hongyan…” he wheezed, his lips painted dark red, his hand twitching weakly across the boards toward her boot. “Your… your mother… is she… safe?”

“She is alive,” Ye Hongyan whispered, dropping down to her knees beside him.

She turned to Yan Renhua, who lay pale and motionless on the bench, paralyzed by the poison, tears streaming silently down her cheeks as she looked at her ruined husband.

Ye Hongyan quickly pulled out a small jade flask, pouring three pure white, fragrant pills into her palm.

She gently crushed one between her fingertips, turning it into a fine, sweet-smelling mist, and blew it into Yan Renhua’s parted lips.

The high-grade academy medicine dissolved on contact, neutralizing the cold poison in her blood within three breaths, bringing a flush of warm color back to her mother’s cheeks.

She quickly placed the remaining two pills directly into Ye Liuman’s bloody mouth, using her own Heavenly Saint energy to force the medicine down his throat and seal the gaping tear along his spine, stopping the fountain of red from draining the last drops of his life.

Yan Renhua’s fingers twitched, regaining their strength, and she immediately threw herself down beside her husband, weeping softly as she cradled his bloody head in her lap, stroking his hair with trembling hands.

Ye Liuman coughed, spitting a thick wad of dark phlegm onto the floor.

The medicine was working, knitting his broken bones and burning out the black poison, but the damage to his life force was severe.

He lay there with his head in his wife’s lap, looking up at the high, broken ceiling where the smoke drifted out into the cold night sky.

Ye Hongyan stood there, silent.

The room was quiet.

Outside, the distant bells of the city guards were finally beginning to chime, but inside the ruined hall, the world felt small, heavy, and still.

Just then, Ye Liuman looked at his daughter, his eyes cloudy, stripped of all the loud, boastful pride he had displayed at the landing plaza that afternoon.

There was no patriarch left in that battered body; there was only an old man who had looked into the jaws of the grave and barely crawled back out.

“Hongyan…” Ye Liuman croaked, his voice raspy and dry as sandpaper. “…it seems you still consider me your father.”

Ye Hongyan’s hands tightened on her knees, her jaw setting firm.

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” Ye Hongyan said, her voice low, flat, and hard. “I’m happy now, but happened in the past is something I will carry, and will never forget.”

Ye Liuman closed his eyes, a long, wheezing breath escaping his chest as a bitter, self-deprecating chuckle bubbled past his bloody lips.

“I know,” the old man admitted, his voice rough with old regret. “The same for me, I never regretted my actions back then.”

Ye Hongyan clenched her fist, “…what do I expect from a power obsessed bastard like you.”

“That isn’t about power!” Ye Liuman roared back, coughing violently, dark blood staining his beard as his wife frantically smoothed his chest. “It’s because we’re weak! Your grandfather had just died, and we had only two Earthly Saints back then! Rival families our eying us! The young master of Shi Clan then offered to protect us in exchange for your hand in marriage!”

He looked into his daughter’s eyes, his gaze burning with the fierce, desperate agony of an old father cornered by wolves.

“Do you have any idea what happened after you left!? We had completely offended the Shi Clan, and we have fallen into bankruptcy! We were even driven out of our ancestral land! If I wasn’t so lucky and discovered those Dragon-Horses, the Ye Family probably wouldn’t exist today!”

He sank back against his wife’s lap, his strength completely exhausted, tears leaking from the corners of his bruised eyes, mixing with the dried blood on his cheeks.

“For the past thousand years, I never again asked for your help, I never again disturbed you, because I know that I have no face left after what I did.”

The grand hall fell into complete, deafening silence.

The cool night wind blew through the gaping hole in the roof, carrying the smell of wet dirt and pine needles from the mountains outside.

Ye Hongyan sat completely frozen on the floorboards.

The words echoed in her mind like heavy bronze bells, shattering the rigid, bitter wall she had built around her heart for ten centuries.

The memory of her father’s cruel sneer, the harsh words he had barked at her in the ancestral hall, the way he had turned his back while she wept on the cold, all of it, as a patriarch, is necessary sacrifice to ensure the survival of the clan.

She can understand it.

But just because she can understand it, doesn’t mean she will accept it.

Her eyes grew hot, a burning lump rising in her throat.

She couldn’t say the words. A thousand years of coldness, a thousand years of lonely nights staring at the moon in the Clock Tower, could not be washed away in five minutes of bitter tears.

The scars were real, and the youth she had lost could never be handed back to her.

Yet looking at the battered, bleeding old man lying in her mother’s arms, the suffocating hatred that had poisoned her chest for ten centuries slowly dissolved like morning frost beneath a warm sun.

She reached out with her trembling, slender hand, her pale fingers coming to rest lightly over his cold, calloused knuckles.

She did not call him father.

She did not say she was sorry.

She simply squeezed his fingers with a firm, steady warmth, letting her Heavenly Saint energy flow quietly into his bruised hand, anchoring his tired soul to the earth as the morning light began to break through the clouds above.