Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The cold black steel slid into flesh without a sound as Haoran drove the dark edge of Azathoth straight into the base of the throat.

The metal did not stop at meat and bone, but even sank into the spirit itself, drinking the heat, the life, and every drop of light until the wound gave off no blood, only cold black smoke that smelled like a burned ditch.

”Eat up. This will be your meal.”

*

*

*

Inside Ye Fan’s sea of consciousness, everything was flat and pale gray.

Ye Fan opened his eyes.

He sat up from the floor of mist, rubbing his temples with trembling fingers, his hands felt light, with no weight of bone or skin.

The sound of ringing bells echoed in his ears, and the smell of blood was gone.

He looked around and wondered where this place was.

The sky above was an endless sheet of dirty white clouds that did not move. Below his knees was a quiet lake of silver mist, cold as pond ice in the dead of winter.

There were no trees, no rocks, and no wind, a vast empty space.

”Where... where am I?” Ye Fan whispered, his voice came out thin and hoarse, like dry paper tearing. ”Did I get knocked out again? System? System, open the shop! Give me an escape scroll!”

No blue screen appeared like he expected, making him more desperate.

Opposite to him, sitting on the silver fog thirty paces away, the soul of the Star Chasing Immortal King was there as well.

The ancient entity had lost his tall, three-headed shape, and now, he looked like an old man made of cracked glass, his hair white and thin, his grey robes torn into rags of smoke.

He was clutching his chest, coughing up wisps of pale blue light that melted into the fog beneath his boots.

”Shut your mouth, little fool,” the old ghost spat, his voice trembling with bitter rage. ”We are inside your own mind. That devil’s blade... it pierced your throat, and now its shadow is sinking down into the roots of your spirit.”

Ye Fan scrambled backward on his hands and knees, terror gripping his belly. ”You...It’s you! No... no, you said you were an Immortal King! You said you had seen worlds burn! Kill him! Push him out!”

”Push him out?!” the old man shouted back, his face twisting in ugly panic. ”Look up, you blind worm!”

Ye Fan lifted his chin.

The dirty white sky cracked open.

It did not crack like stone, or anything solid, instead, it tore open like greasy skin split with a dull cleaver.

Then, thick, wet, pitch black tendrils poured through the split sky like a nest of drowned leeches.

They were fat, slick with black grease that dripped down onto the silver fog, hissing and eating holes into the ground.

Along the sides of each rope, hundreds of wet, yellow eyes peeled open.

Some were large as human head, weeping cloudy yellow pus; others were tiny and clustered like insect eggs, twitching and rolling in every direction with sickening hunger.

The sight terrified the two.

Ye Fan’s bowels turned to water, his soul shivered so violently that cracks spread across his arms.

He had never seen anything like this in his two lives.

This was not the clean, proud qi of cultivators; this was a rotten, hungry filth that crawled out from the deepest ditch of the universe.

The old king took a step back, his glass like body shivering. ”A Primordial Fiend... This, that boy is really a devil... No, this cannot be in the hands of a mere junior!”

SHWIP! SHWIP! SHWIP!

The black tendrills suddenly whipped across the mist with terrifying speed, leaving trails of black slime in the air.

Alarm bells immediately began to ring in their heads.

Without much thought, Ye Fan scrambled across the fog, kicking his legs like a drowning dog, clawing at the empty air as he tried to find a door, a crack, anything to pull his mind back into his body.

The old ghost turned into a beam of pale silver starlight, shooting toward the far edge of the mind-space with all the strength left in his ancient soul.

It was useless.

The tentacles were too fast.

A thick, oily tendril wrapped around Ye Fan’s ankle, the skin of the tendril covered in small, tooth-filled mouths that clamped down into his spirit with a wet crunch!

”AAAHHH! LET ME GO!”

Another tentacle whipped around his waist, squeezing until his ribs caved in.

Crack!

”AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

Thirty paces away, three black tentacles slammed down onto the beam of starlight, pinning the old king to the ground like an insect skewered on an iron pin!

A thick tendril, lined with rotten yellow eyes, forced its way between Ye Fan’s teeth.

The taste was worse than eating rotted flesh dug out of a swamp.

It tasted of sulfur, grave dirt, and sour vomit.

The oily meat slid down his spiritual throat, expanding inside his belly like a balloon filled with maggots.

Small, hooked teeth along the rope began to chew on the inside of his chest, scraping away the lining of his soul, chewing on the fine threads of his memories.

”MMMPH! AAAAAGH!” Ye Fan screamed into the choking black flesh.

His eyes rolled back into his head, but the tendrils did not let his mind go numb and even injected a burning, greasy venom into his thoughts that made every single nerve ten times more sensitive.

Another tentacle coiled around his right arm.

It did not tear the arm off, but simply began to peel the skin of his soul back, layer by layer, like someone peeling a ripe fruit with a dull thumbnail.

Beneath the skin, tiny black worms crawled out of the tendril’s pores, burrowing into the raw meat of his spirit, eating their way through his channels, laying small, twitching eggs that hatched into more worms within seconds.

He could feel each worm’s mouth chewing on his thoughts.

He saw his past life—his quiet room, the glowing screen, the cold noodles—being eaten away, turned into black mush and spat out by the tendrils.

He saw his mother’s face, his childhood in the Ye Clan, all of it ground up like corn between two heavy stones.

”MMMMGGGGHH!!!”

Beside him, the Star Chasing Immortal King was suffering something even worse.

The black tentacles had split the old ghost’s chest open like a slaughtered pig.

Four tendrils were rooting around inside his spiritual heart, pulling out strings of ancient starlight and chewing them with loud, wet slurping sounds.

The yellow eyes on the ropes blinked, weeping yellow mucus onto his raw spirit, burning him like hot lye poured on an open cut.

”Mercy!” the old king wailed, his voice cracking into a high, wet shriek. ”I am an Immortal King! I know ancient tombs! I know the burial grounds of the True Celestials! Spare me! Spare my soul!”

The tentacles did not stop.

A fat tentacle drove its hooked tip into the old man’s ear, churning inside his head, scraping out his cultivation methods and his ancient pride, turning the proud master into a babbling, drooling husk that twitched in the black puddle.

Ye Fan screamed and begged for mercy.

”Please! Please stop! Kill me! Just kill me!”

Ye Fan sobbed, thick black tears running down his face as the worms chewed through his groin, his stomach, and his neck.

”Young Master Shen! Grandfather! Ancestor! Have mercy! I am just an ant! I don’t want the system! I don’t want the fox! Just let me die! End it! Please end it!”

His screams grew wet and ragged as more tendrils forced their way into his eye sockets, pushing his eyeballs aside to burrow straight into his brain, drinking his fear like sweet wine.

The pain went on and on, stretching each second into a thousand winters of pure, greasy agony, until there was nothing left of Ye Fan except a broken, weeping thing wrapped in black rot.

*

*

*

In the real world, the mountain wind blew cold across the ruined crater.

Shk.

The black metal slid smoothly out of the boy’s neck as his body fell forward like a sack of wet flour, his forehead hitting the sharp gravel with a dull thud.

His limbs gave two small, pathetic twitches, his breathing stopped completely, and the strange, lucky light that had protected him for years vanished from his flesh, leaving only a common, dirty corpse cooling in the dirt.

Haoran flicked his wrist, and Azathoth stabbed straight to Ye Fan’s forehead.

Then, as he pulled out, a small, squirming ball of bright blue glass, about the size of an apple, was dragged out from the corpse’s skull by three thin, oily threads of darkness.

The ball buzzes like an angry bee, flashing frantic rows of strange symbols and broken numbers, trying to kick itself free and jump into the void.

BZZZZT.

[Warning: Host Vital Signs Terminated.]

[Searching for Secondary Vessel... Error! Spatial Path Blocked!]

The black tendrils from Azathoth did not give it room to run, they wrapped around the glowing blue orb like tight leather straps, the dark metal drinking in the tool’s light, squeezing it until the glass surface showed thin, hairline fractures.

Haoran held the sword up, his golden eyes looking at the trapped blue light with a flat, indifferent glance.

”So this is the system, huh.”

A small, mocking breath left his nose.

He could feel the odd rules packed inside that little blue core—the trick of multiplying gifts, the strange trade shelves, and the ugly bait meant to lure greedy souls into traps.

It was smaller and cruder than the world core he had given to Ling Luochen, but the grease of the foreign Dao on its skin was the same.

He let the black tendrils drag the blue ball into the dark iron of Azathoth, sealing it away inside the blade’s cold belly to be ground into scrap later.

*

*

”

On another side.

Three hundred miles away, along the broken, rocky ridges of the Ye Clan border.

The battle had not lasted long.

The difference in realm was too wide, and the Sword Emperor’s blade had tasted too much blood over three thousand winters.

The earth was carved with deep, smoking trenches, and the rocks were painted with dark red splashes.

The Sword Emperor was standing in the center of the crushed clearing, his plain brown robes torn at the sleeves, but his breath was steady as an iron pump.

He was raising both Wei Zhingyi and Qing’er, both seriously injured in the air, grabbing them by the face.

His left hand, rough and covered in thick calluses, was clamped over Qing’er’s veil, his iron fingers digging deep into her cheekbones, pinning her jaw shut.

The girl’s black silk clothes were shredded, her curved tonfa blades snapped in half and lying in the dirt fifty paces back.

Blood dripped from her chin, soaking through the black cloth, her limbs hanging limp as the old man’s sword intent clamped down on her meridians like five heavy iron nails.

In his right hand, he held Wei Zhingyi by the jaw.

The proud Palace Mistress was in even worse shape.

Her nine magnificent silver tails were broken, dragging through the crushed gravel like wet rags, their fur scorched black by sword-light.

Her red and black war fans were shattered, the iron ribs scattered across the ground like broken teeth.

Her face was pale as chalk, a line of dark crimson leaking from her eyes and nose, her throat whistling with every painful breath.

”Trash.”

The Sword Emperor spat the word onto the dirt with cold disgust as he threw them to the ground.

THUD! THUD!

They hit the sharp stones, rolling three paces before coming to a stop in the dirt, coughing and gasping for air.

Qing’er tried to push herself up on one elbow, but a cough tore through her chest, spraying blood onto the gravel, her body too broken to stand.

The old man ignored the shadow girl entirely.

She was just an annoying mosquito from a big house; killing her would bring annoying elders, but leaving her broken in the mud meant nothing to him.

He walked towards Wei Zhingyi, his heavy, iron-toed boots crunched on the gravel, slow and unhurried.

He stopped right beside her trembling ribs, raised his right leg, and stepped on her stomach.

CRACK!

He brought his heel down with cruel, heavy force, pinning her flat against the sharp stones!

”GAAAH!”

Wei Zhingyi cried out, her back arching off the ground, a thick gush of red blood bursting from her lips and splashing across the grey leather of his boot.

Her hands clawed weakly at his ankle, but her fingers held no strength, sliding off the rough cloth like autumn leaves.

The Sword Emperor leaned down, his grey beard bristling, his eyes hard and cold as two iron spikes driven into a coffin.

”The treasure, give it back to me.”

• ~ ~ •

Author’s Note: