Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The jagged grey rocks of the mountain plateau were slick with dark, cooling blood.

The biting mountain gale screamed across the barren ridge, whipping the dry dust into stinging swirls that bit against exposed skin.

Underneath the heavy iron heel of the Sword Emperor, Wei Zhingyi felt the bones in her chest creak with agonizing slowness.

Every tiny breath scraped against her cracked ribs like broken glass.

The nine magnificent silver tails that once fanned out behind her with ancient pride were scorched, broken, and dragged through the red mud like discarded rags.

Blood bubbled between her pale lips, staining her chin and the torn fabric of her collar.

Her inner meridians were shattered, dry, and cold as frozen ditches.

Yet, looking up into the cold, ancient eyes of the old rogue, the stubborn fire of the celestial fox bloodline burned in her pupils.

“Treasure? Heh.” Wei Zhingyi gritted her teeth and glared at him, “I’d rather die.”

The words tore out from her raw throat, wet with blood, yet hard and unyielding as flint.

For a thousand years, she had guarded the dignity of her palace. She had walked through the sea of human desires, watched emperors beg on their knees for a single smile, and kept her purity untouched like mountain snow.

To hand over the relic that held the secrets for her advancement to Supreme realm to a thieving vagabond who waited like a vulture in the shadows was something her soul would never permit.

She would rather have her core detonated into grey ash.

Sword Emperor frowned. “I see. Then, as you wish.”

His rough, weathered face did not show a flicker of regret or anger.

To an old monster who had spent three thousand years slicing through the flesh of saints and kings, a stubborn maiden was no different from a dry branch in the road.

If the stone refused to move, you simply kicked it into powder.

His fingers straightened, forming a broad, heavy sword gesture as a grey, humming haze of concentrated sword intent gathered along the edge of his palm, so sharp and dense that the air around his wrist began to split with high, shrieking cracks.

He aimed the strike directly toward the center of her forehead, ready to pierce through her skull, sever her soul sea, and peel the spatial ring from her dead finger once her body went cold.

But…

“Oh? What’s this? The Sword Emperor actually wanted to kill the Palace Mistress of Immortal Coupling Palace? I wonder what those old fossils will do once they heard of this.”

A voice cut through the howling gale.

It was neither loud nor hurried. It was calm, smooth, and laced with an easy, chilling amusement, rolling across the desolate clearing like a clear bronze bell.

The Sword Emperor’s fingers froze an inch above Wei Zhingyi’s brow.

The suffocating grey sword intent buzzing along his palm flickered, the hair on the back of his neck prickled with a sudden, strange tension—not because the voice carried a wave of overwhelming cultivation, but because he hadn’t felt the slightest ripple in the surrounding space before the speaker arrived.

In this empire, very few living things could stand within five paces of him without alerting his keen senses.

Sword Emperor slowly turned his gaze behind him, there, standing just a few meters away, was Shen Haoran.

The youth stood casual and still against the backdrop of the dark, ruined mountain peaks.

His robes, woven and embroidered with coiling five-clawed golden dragons along the wide hem and sleeves, did not have a single speck of dust or grease on them.

In his right hand, resting loosely at his side, was Azathoth, the dark Tang Dao sword whose blade seemed to drink in the pale moonlight, reflecting nothing, giving off a faint, terrifying stillness that warped the air around the steel.

Golden hair, and golden eyes… Sword Emperor furrowed his brows.

The wind caught the bright locks, blowing them lightly atop Haoran’s head, and under the moonlight, that golden hair shone like pure, molten sunlight, vivid and untamed.

In the vast expanse of the upper realm, hair that carried the true brilliance of celestial gold was a rare, sacred mark.

It was not a color that could be faked with pills or illusion arts; it was the mark of a primeval lineage that had bathed in the solar fire of the ancestral stars since the dawn of creation.

The mark of a Shen Clan.

Of course, having golden hair does not necessarily means you are from the Shen Clan, but since that Shadow Guard is following him, then it’s certain that he is one.

The Sword Emperor’s sharp eyes darted down toward the dirt thirty paces away, where Qing’er lay battered and bleeding in the gravel.

The tight, unmarked black silk, the curved tonfa blades that had bitten into his palms earlier, and the silent, fanatical obedience the girl possessed—that was the signature of the Shen Clan’s private shadow units.

They were hounds bred in the cold dark of the family’s secret valleys, answering to no sect, no imperial law, and no academy decree.

Not to mention those eyes… The old swordsman stared deeply into the youth’s face.

Haoran’s pupils were not oranhe, nor were they the common amber of branch descendants.

They were pools of clear, deep, radiant gold, carrying a heavy, primeval authority that felt like an ancient mountain looking down upon a common pebble.

From what he knew, only the main line of the Shen Clan, who carried the purest, unpolluted blood of their Immortal Ancestors, possessed those bright golden pupils.

And for someone this young… it must mean that this young man is none other than Shen Haoran, the young master of the Shen Clan.

The sole son of the current patriarch, the man acknowledged to be the greatest talent born in the history of the Shen Clan.

The monstrous young master protected like treasure by those three lunatics.

Sword Emperor clicked his tongue as a sour, bitter taste rose his throat, his thick jaw tightened beneath his grey beard, his boots grinding into the crushed stone.

He was not afraid of Shen Haoran, of course.

The boy before him was talented, possessing an aura so thick and refined that it put the geniuses of the central dynasties to shame.

But at the end of the day, Haoran was still a junior in the Spirit Ascension realm.

The Sword Emperor was a true Supreme, an ancient warrior who had spent three thousand years bathing in the blood of battlefields, standing at the precipice of the grand dao.

If they truly traded blows without outside interference, he was entirely confident he could snap the boy’s neck with a single draw of his blade.

But if he dared to even cut a strand of his hair, those three lunatic sisters will surely hunt him down.

The mere thought of those three names made the old rogue’s chest tighten with cold dread.

Chu Xueyu and her two sisters, Feng Yuyan and Leng Shuang—the terrifying pillars who guarded the Shen Clan, the three sisters who, in their era, suppressed all talents across all the Great Thousand Realms that they couldn’t even lift their heads.

They were not reasonable cultivators, in fact, they did not care about the rules of the martial world, they did not care about who was right or who was wrong, and they certainly did not care about the dignity of an independent Supreme.

If their precious son/nephew came home with a single scratch on his cheek, those three women would tear open the sky, pull the stars from their orbits, and turn every mountain, forest, and river within the entire observable universe into an ocean of scorched ash just to find the person responsible.

The destruction of the Golden Cloud Immortal Sect was still fresh from his mind, after all, it’s only been a few years.

The Sword Emperor still remembered the day the sky turned red.

The Golden Cloud Immortal Sect had been an ancient pillar that stood tall for tens of thousands of years, boasting more than a Dozen Heavenly Saints, three half-steps Supreme ancestors, thirty-six mountain peaks lined with divine defensive arrays, and over a million disciples.

Yet, because they offended the Shen Haoran, the Shen Clan’s war arks had darkened their sky before the sun had set that very day.

The three sisters had even descended in person.

They did not negotiate, nor did they accept any apologies.

They simply unleashed the clan’s divine armies, crushed the thirty-six mountain peaks into flat gravel, slaughtered every elder, burned down their territory, and erased their legacy from the history books in less than three days.

To this day, the territory where the Golden Cloud Immortal Sect once stood was nothing more than a lifeless, blackened crater where not even weeds could grow.

Now, Sword Emperor was confident in his strength, but he really doesn’t dare dream of surviving the pursuit of Shen Clan.

He was a lone cultivator. He had no grand mountain to hide behind, no immortal defensive formations to shelter him, and no ancient ancestors to plead his case.

He survived by being swift, merciless, and knowing when to pull his hand back.

Standing against the Shen Clan was not a matter of courage; it was simple, unadulterated suicide.

The old swordsman slowly lifted his boot from Wei Zhingyi’s stomach and took half a step backward, letting the grey sword intent around his fingers dissipate into the cold mountain breeze, though his grip on his plain iron chopper remained firm.

“Young master of the Shen Clan,” Sword Emperor began, his voice dropping into a low, cautious rumble, forcing his stiff neck to bow by a small, polite fraction. “I will apologize personally for hurting your servant, but as for Wei Zhingyi, I believe she’s not related to you, is she? She stole something of mine, so I want to take it back.”

His tone was steady, trying to draw a clear line in the dirt.

He was willing to swallow his pride, hand over healing pills for the shadow girl, fork out some treasures, and offer polite words to give the young scion face.

But the ancient relic that Wei Zhingyi had held the key to his own breakthrough, it might even be possible for him to break through to Half-Step Immortal realm and even compete for the Heaven’s Will.

And after chasing the fox across three provinces and burning thousands of miles of void, walking away empty-handed was a bitter pill he was loath to swallow.

Haoran chuckled.

The sound was light, dry, and careless, slipping from his throat like the rustle of silk.

He tilted his head slightly, his golden eyes sweeping over the battered, blood-stained fox woman lying in the mud, taking in her torn lilac robes, her mangled tails, and the terrified, desperate look in her eyes.

“I honestly couldn’t care less about her.”

Haoran’s words were cold, flat, and completely devoid of warmth.

To him, the life or death of a palace mistress was less important than a speck of dust on his white boots.

If she died in this ditch, the wind would blow her bones away, and the world would continue turning without a pause.

Hearing that, the Sword Emperor’s eyes brightened with a flash of eager relief as a small, cruel smirk began to pull at the corner of his weathered mouth.

If the young scion held no care for the fox, then this matter was settled.

He could strike the woman down, take the box, and leave before the moon reached its peak.

“Then—” the Sword Emperor started, his hand already rising to summon his sword-light once more.

“But,”

Haoran’s voice cut in, sharp and sudden as a drawn blade.

The Sword Emperor’s words caught in his throat.

Haoran took a single, measured step forward. His boots came down softly upon the cracked stones, not making a single sound, yet the space around the plateau seemed to tighten by an inch.

The dsrk blade in his hand hummed with a low, deep vibration that made the surrounding gravel tremble.

Haoran stared straight at his eyes.

Those golden pupils, bright as ancient suns, locked onto the old Supreme’s face with cold, absolute arrogance.

There was no hesitation, no fear of the gap between their realms, only the calm, unshakable belief of an imperial dragon looking down at a stray wolf.

“But, someone I know will definitely be sad if she dies.”

Haoran thought of Su Xishi.

He remembered the woman sitting across from him in the tea room of the Ancient Heaven Star, sipping her bitter brew, sighing as she agreed to plant the banner of the Demonic Lotus Sect among the Four Local Powers.

He remembered how she had smoothed her purple dress, bowed her head with quiet respect, and walked out into the corridor, looking forward to meeting her master in the upper realm after ten long years of separation.

That woman was his now.

Although it was due to her own lust taking over, thay woman had still made him her dao to pursue, offering her body and soul to him.

If her master was killed because he couldn’t care less about saving her, it would bring an unnecessary, messy distraction to his plans.

Haoran’s golden eyes sharpened until they pierced like cold needles.

“So, leave her be and scram. She’s under my protection.”

The words dropped onto the mountain peak like heavy iron anvils, echoing against the barren cliffs with final, unyielding authority.

The wind howled between them, carrying the smell of burned ash and fresh blood.

The Sword Emperor stood completely still, his fingers tightening around his notched iron chopper until his knuckles turned white as bone.

His chest heaved with suppressed rage, his pride screaming at him to swing his blade, to tear this arrogant junior in half and show him what a true Supreme was capable of.

Yet, looking at those unblinking golden eyes, looking at the spotless black and gold robes that carried the terrifying weight of the Shen Clan’s sovereign bloodline, the old swordsman’s arm remained frozen.

The image of the scorched, lifeless crater of the Golden Cloud Immortal Sect burned brightly behind his eyelids, chilling the hot blood in his veins back to ice.

Beside the rocks, Wei Zhingyi lay curled in the red dirt, her breath shallow and trembling, her eyes looking up at the golden-haired youth standing between her and the grave in stunned, disbelieving silence.

~•~•~•~

AN: Apologies for not updating. I just had a writer’s block, so I took a break. Updates will resume as usual from now