Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

”Well, I guess it’s time to end this.”

The black steel of the blade whistled through the dead, colorless air as Haoran brought the sword down, aiming the dark tip straight toward the shivering hollow of the boy’s collarbone.

CLANG!

A sharp, deafening sound of colliding iron rang out across the barren plateau, loud enough to crack the surrounding ridges.

Ye Fan’s trembling fingers shot up from the gravel with blinding, unnatural speed, his bare palms clamped together like an iron vise, catching the descending edge of Azathoth mere inches above his throat.

Sparks of cold silver light exploded between his skin and the obsidian blade, sizzling like drops of fat dropped into a blazing fire.

The boot pinning his ribs down was shoved upward by a sudden, terrifying heave of raw power, forcing Haoran to take a step back, frowning.

He still holds Azathoth, but Ye Fan also grabbed its blade.

Just then, Ye Fan stood up.

He rose from the cracked earth with slow, unhurried movements, shaking the grey dust from his shoulders.

The terrified tears, the trembling jaw, and the frantic panic that had covered his face moments ago had vanished entirely.

His face now looked aloof and indifferent, his posture was straight as an ancient cedar standing on a high mountain peak.

His eyes, which had been wide and full of cowardice, were now half-closed, cold and distant, looking upon the dark world around him as if it were nothing more than an ant farm beneath his boots.

He held up his right hand, flexing his fingers one by one.

The skin was rough, calloused from pulling weeds, and completely unsuited for the vast, ancient presence that now filled every vessel in the flesh.

He then let out a low, disappointed click of his tongue.

”A defective vessel,” the voice that came out of Ye Fan’s throat was no longer the thin, frightened voice of an adopted orphan.

It was deep, layered with the echoes of thousands of dead worlds, carrying an ancient resonance that made the pebbles on the ground vibrate.

”A mortal shell with clogged paths and dry marrow. To think a piece of trash like this would be chosen as my host, and that it was nearly squashed by a common whelp, even forcing me to use my lingering soul power to save him.”

Haoran stared at him, his boots landed lightly on the cracked bedrock three paces away, his grip on the black hilt steady and relaxed.

His golden pupils narrowed slightly, sweeping across the pale, ghostly white fire that had begun to leak from Ye Fan’s pores.

”I see, so it’s like that, huh.” Haoran murmured, his voice calm, flat, and undisturbed.

This guy must be the creator of the system.

Through the research of his aunts, Feng Yuyan and Leng Shuang, they had discovered various types of system.

And based on this man’s words, Ye Fan’s system is probably the one made by a dead Immortal who is looking for a body to take over and revive himself.

Ye Fan, or whoever is controlling his body, tilted his chin upward, looking down his nose at the white-robed youth.

”Junior,” the entity spoke, waving his wide grey sleeve with the effortless grandeur of an emperor granting an audience to a common peasant. ”You have some strange tricks in your hand, and that dark iron blade carries an unpleasant stench. But I have walked through the burning sea of stars while your ancestors were still crawling in the mud. Walk away. Leave this clearing, forget what your eyes have seen tonight, and I will forgive your offense. Otherwise, don’t blame me for being impolite.”

Haoran just smirked.

The corner of his lips curled into that cold, mocking line that had looked down on emperors and saints alike.

”I always hated people telling me what to do,” Haoran whispered. ”If I encounter them, I always wants to crush them.”

HUMMMMMM!

Haoran’s knuckles tightened around the dark leather hilt as he increased the power of Azathoth!

The obsidian blade roared like a starving beast awakened from a hundred-year sleep!

The pitch-black steel then began to swallow the air itself, spinning a dark vortex around the edge that bent the empty void into sharp, jagged ribbons!

The monochrome world groaned, the black and white rocks cracking as the weight of the sword multiplied a hundredfold in an instant!

The entity possessing Ye Fan’s body felt his palms slip.

SHICK!

Azathoth sliced clean through the spirit-armor coating Ye Fan’s fingers, cutting Ye Fan’s thumb clean off at the knuckle!

A spray of dark red blood hit the grey stones, and before the entity could even blink, the black blade whipped horizontally in a blinding, brutal arc, slashing his chest from his right shoulder down to his left hip!

RIP!

Coarse grey cloth and pale flesh tore open like rotten silk!

Blood erupted from the diagonal gash, soaking the front of the tunic, the terrifying momentum knocking the possessed body three steps backward, his boots carving deep furrows into the solid stone!

Ye Fan stood frozen.

He looked down at his bleeding hand, then at his severed thumb lying in the dirt, and finally at the deep, burning wound across his ribs.

He was stunned.

For ten thousand years, across dozens of realms, nobody had ever dared to swing a blade at him with such casual, dismissive disrespect.

Even in his weakened, lingering state, his divine sense was enough to make Earthly Saints fall to their knees!

Yet this white-robed boy hadn’t even hesitated. He had swung the blade as if he were cutting down a dry weed in a roadside ditch!

After awhile, the cold, aloof mask shattered into a hideous snarl of pure, wounded pride.

The pale ghostly flame leaking from his skin boiled over, turning into a blinding pillar of starlight that shot ten thousand feet into the night sky, blowing the clouds away in a violent circle!

”Insolent ant!” the entity roared, his voice shaking the mountains for three hundred miles!

He cursed Haoran at the top of his lungs, his eyes turning entirely white, burning with ancient, mad rage!

”How dare you! How dare a backwater brat touch my flesh! You have offended me! Me! Ye Fan! The Star Chasing Immortal King!”

The name thundered across the firmament like a collapsing mountain.

In his golden era, kings had offered their daughters to carry his sandals, and sects had burned their own libraries just to earn a single glance from his carriage!

To be nicked by a child in the dirt was a stain that could only be washed clean by mountains of severed heads!

”I will grind your bones to paste! I will rip your soul from your ribs and burn it in my astral furnace for ten thousand winters!”

The Star Chasing Immortal King stomped his right foot down!

BOOOOOOM!

The barren plateau split wide open!

A chasm three miles long tore through the bedrock, vomiting geysers of white-hot liquid earth and blinding star-fire!

The possessed youth didn’t need a weapon as he just raised his bleeding hand, and the starlight in the sky answered his call!

Thousands of burning silver meteors, each as large as a fortress, pulled from the cold void of the upper firmament, came screaming down through the clouds like an apocalyptic rain!

The heat alone melted the surrounding mountain ridges into glowing slag, the air whistling with enough friction to burn the lungs of anyone breathing within fifty leagues!

Haoran did not dodge, nor did he flinch. He just stood tall, his golden whipping wildly against the blinding glare of the falling fire.

He lifted Azathoth with two hands, pointing the obsidian tip toward the heavens.

”Swallow them,” Haoran commanded softly.

SHIIIIING!

A wave of pure blackness erupted from the blade, expanding into a colossal dome of pure abyss that swallowed the entire mountain range!

When the falling stars struck the black dome, they did not explode nor cause any impact, they were just torn apart, sheared into thin strands of white light, and dragged straight into the dark steel of the blade, feeding the ancient sword like dry grass thrown into a bonfire!

”What!?” Ye Fan exclaimed.

Haoran smirked, ”If that is all the so-called Immortal King can do, then you are embarrassing yourself.”

”....Die!” the Immortal King screamed, his silhouette flashing through the smoke like a white thunderbolt!

He formed his remaining fingers into a palm strike, driving all the lingering soul power he had saved for eight decades into a single, devastating thrust aimed straight for Haoran’s forehead!

The space around his fist collapsed inward, dragging the air, the dust, and the very concept of direction into a swirling, crushing point of singularity!

Haoran took half a step forward. His boots struck the stone with the heavy, unmovable authority of an ancient titan.

Then, he swung the Black Imperial Sword in a clean, vertical downward cleave to meet Ye Fan’ strike.

CRACK-BOOOOM!

The collision shattered the firmament!

A blinding ring of monochrome shockwaves exploded outward, leveling every hill, every forest, and every rock formation for a hundred miles around them!

The bedrock beneath their feet dissolved into fine dust, creating a crater so vast and deep that the dark waters of the subterranean world began to bubble up from below!

The two forces ground against each other in the center of the devastation.

The Star Chasing Immortal King gritted his bloody teeth, his ghostly white aura flickering violently as he realized with rising horror that the dark blade was not slowing down.

It was eating his ancient soul-power, biting deeper into his palm, crushing his pride, and pressing him down into the dirt where he had started!

Haoran’s cold golden pupils stared right through the white fire into the ancient soul hiding behind the boy’s eyes.

”An Immortal King?” Haoran whispered, his voice cutting through the roaring thunder like a sharp needle. ”You’re an embarrassment.”

Ye Fan gritted his teeth, ”You... You really are good. But that’s still not enough!”

Just then, his legs blurred, leaving seven silver mirages trailing across the shattered bedrock.

Each afterimage moved along a different orbital path, snapping into positions that formed the shape of the northern ladle.

The earth groaned beneath their feet.

Columns of pale starlight erupted from the fractured trenches, linking the seven figures together in a web of blinding radiance.

Then, the seven figures slammed their palms together in unison.

The shattered boulders littering the plateau liquefied, turning into roaring rivers of burning slag that surged upward like great jaws.

Two massive tectonic plates lifted from the chasm, rushing toward Haoran from both sides with the momentum of falling moons.

The heat radiated from the liquid stone instantly ignited the surrounding air, creating a vacuum that dragged the gravel inward.

Haoran took a deep breath, and for a moment, a flicker of gold, silver, and purple aura manifested around him as he swang his sword.

Then, a wave of concentrated spiritual pressure pushed through the burning air, cutting straight through the incoming sea of molten stone.

The left tectonic slab split into rubble, collapsing into the abyss below.

Simultaneously, Haoran spun on his right heel, bringing Azathoth around in a low, sweeping arc.

The obsidian blade cut through the second stone slab like dry reeds.

The strike continued onward, its black arc widening until it sheared through five of the astral mirages.

The silver copies dispersed into sparkling motes, leaving only the real body perched atop a jagged pillar of smoking basalt.

Ye Fan frowned. For a second there, he felt danger coming from Haoran’s aura, but it quickly vanished.

”What was that?” He couldn’t help but asked.

Haoran smiled, ”What was what?”

Of course, he knew what he was talking about.

The Supreme Trinity.

The supreme power granted him by his mother and aunts, something he had only used within a mental world and within his Genesis Protocol.

The only moment he had used this outside was during the tournament years ago.

Since then, he had actually never tried using it outside once again.

Ye Fan paused, but then shook his head. ”Never mind, I will learn your secrets once I have killed you.”

”You need to be able to kill me before I kill you first.”

”You insolent whelp, you’re really more arrogant than me!” the Immortal King screamed, his voice cracking into a ragged, desperate rasp. ”Very well, let’s see just how you survive this!”

He crossed his broken wrists, driving his palms down into his own dantian.

RIP!

The ancient soul violently ripped the core out of Ye Fan’s flesh as he crushed the glowing sphere in his bloody palm, absorbing the raw, unstable spiritual fire directly into his astral form.

His body expanded, growing three heads and six spectral arms made of roaring silver plasma.

Each ethereal hand held a weapon forged from celestial lightning: a spear, a halberd, a spiked mace, an iron wheel, a broadsword, and a curved bow.

”Perish under the wrath of the heavens!”

The six-armed figure surged forward, swinging all six weapons in a coordinated, blinding storm of slaughter.

Lightning arced across the ground, carving deep trenches that hissed with ozone.

The halberd swept low to sever Haoran’s knees, the spear thrust forward to pierce his heart, while the spiked mace descended from above to smash his skull!

Haoran’s hair whipped wildly in the violent gale, and for a moment, the world seem to pause.

From his forehead, a slit appeared, and opened, revealing a golden pupil.

This was not quite the Supreme Trinity. Without sealing away his physique and sword bone, he still couldn’t use it as he see fit.

But if he did seal them, his nigh infinite qi provided by his Physique, then he won’t have enough qi to support the usage of Supreme Trinity.

And without his sword bone to subdue Azathoth, who knows if that guy would once again rebel if he showed signs of weakness, just like last time when he was breaking through to Spirit Ascension.

But even if it’s just one eye, Haoran’s strength is beyond comprehension!

With a a blink, he stepped forward into the darkened ground, his silhouette blurred, reappearing directly above the six-armed specter.

”What!?” Ye Fan was startled, but before he could react, the black blade descended.

A single line of pitch-black sword intent sliced through the air.

SHICK!

The three right arms of the spectral avatar were cleaved clean off at the shoulder, dissolving into harmless blue smoke.

Haoran didn’t stop. He spun mid-air, driving his heel into the central head of the avatar.

The kick carried the full, terrifying weight of his dual dragon constitutions and the sliver of Supreme Trinity.

The silver skull of the projection shattered like brittle clay, the kinetic shockwave driving the remaining two heads into the dirt.

The Immortal King let out a choked, wet cry as the avatar collapsed.

The spectral arms and extra heads evaporated, leaving only Ye Fan’s mangled, bloody mortal body kneeling in the dirt, shivering violently in the dark pool of Haoran’s domain.

Haoran landed softly on the shattered ground five paces away.

He leveled Azathoth at the trembling youth, the tip of the black blade hovering an inch from Ye Fan’s throat.

The ancient soul inside Ye Fan flickered like a dying candle in a howling storm.

The pride, the ancient arrogance, and the towering wrath were burned away, replaced by the bitter, cold realization of his own mortality.

”Who... what kind of monster are you...?” the Immortal King wheezed through Ye Fan’s broken teeth, blood pooling around his knees.

Haoran’s expression remained indifferent.

”Your question has no value.”

Haoran drove the blade forward, the black steel sliding into the base of the throat with a wet, final sound.

• ~ ~ •

Author’s Note: