Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist

Chapter 983: Subduing Half-Step Nascent Soul Realm experts

The transition from absolute, pristine security to a suffocating, lethal snare happened in a fraction of a millisecond.

As Shangguan Wan’er, the undisputed Mistress of the Golden-Scale Auction House, took her first confident steps into the expansive main courtyard of the Ice Heart Pavilion, the trap was definitively sprung. The heavy, reinforced spirit-wood doors, banded with profound cold-iron and inscribed with countless defensive runes, slammed shut behind her and her two elite guards with a resounding, thunderous boom that shook the very foundations of the courtyard. The intricate, interlocking locking mechanisms engaged simultaneously with a series of heavy, final clacks that sounded less like a door closing and more like the sealing of an ancient, inescapable tomb.

Instantly, the ambient lighting within the courtyard underwent a terrifying, unnatural transformation. The soft, pale blue, purifying luminescence that naturally radiated from the Ice Heart Palace’s legacy arrays—a light that Shangguan Wan’er was deeply familiar with—was violently extinguished. In its place, the Seven-Star Obscurity Array inverted its internal matrix, flooding the enclosed space with an eerie, oppressive, blood-red luminescence. The red light cast long, distorted, demonic shadows across the frost-covered jade pavement, turning the once-holy sanctuary into a slaughterhouse floor.

Shangguan Wan’er immediately recognized the profound, existential danger. Her instincts, honed over decades of ruthless merchant negotiations and surviving assassination attempts from rival consortiums, screamed at her. She did not hesitate or wait to ask questions. Her incredibly dense, Half-Step Nascent Soul Qi flared to life with the explosive force of a detonating sun. She radiated a brilliant, blindingly pure golden aura, her spiritual energy manifesting as a tangible, surging tide of light that aggressively attempted to push back the encroaching, blood-red darkness pressing in from all sides. The sheer power radiating from her incredibly sexy, curvaceous body caused the surrounding air to crackle and hiss, the golden light illuminating the deep, luscious cleavage exposed by the plunging neckline of her golden spirit-silk dress.

”Formation ambush! Protect the Mistress!”

The roar tore from the throat of Jin Da, the senior of the two elite, golden-scaled guards flanking her. His voice, enhanced by his Peak Core Formation cultivation, boomed with enough force to shatter ordinary glass. He moved with explosive, rehearsed precision, reaching over his massive shoulder and drawing his signature weapon—a massive, broad-bladed spirit sword forged from deep-sea volcanic iron. The blade ignited with a fierce, searing white heat. Beside him, his twin brother, Jin Er, mirrored the action perfectly, drawing an identical broadsword, their movements so perfectly synchronized they appeared to be a single organism occupying two bodies. They stepped firmly in front of Shangguan Wan’er, their massive frames creating a living wall of golden-scaled armor, preparing to establish their combined, impenetrable defensive array that had saved their Mistress’s life on countless occasions.

But before the two veteran guards could even cross their blazing swords to establish the first link of their synergistic defensive array, a sound cut through the tense, red-lit air.

It was a haunting, wildly dissonant chord, entirely lacking any melodic grace or musical harmony. It echoed from the hidden, pitch-black rafters of the pavilion’s main hall, striking their eardrums with the physical force of a hammer blow.

High above, completely concealed within the unnatural shadows of the modified array, Hua Yimei had taken her position. The former Sect Leader of the Fragrance Melody Sect sat cross-legged on a sturdy wooden beam, the Nine-String Phoenix Zither resting securely across her lap. Her golden-brown eyes glowed with a feral, devoted light as she stared down at the prey trapped in her master’s web. Her slender fingers curled into claws, and she began to fiercely, aggressively play the wyrm-tendon strings of her Lifebound Weapon.

She did not unleash waves of scorching Golden Phoenix Flame. Instead, under Wang Jian’s explicit tactical instructions, she unleashed the Melody of the Shattered Mind.

The soundwaves generated by the frantic, chaotic plucking did not carry physical, destructive kinetic force aimed at breaking armor or rending flesh. Instead, they acted as a potent, highly concentrated spiritual venom. The dissonant frequencies were specifically engineered to bypass physical barriers and auditory defenses entirely, vibrating at a pitch that resonated directly with the foundational core of a cultivator’s soul.

The moment the dissonant chords struck, the spiritual venom instantly disrupted the delicate equilibrium of the guards’ spiritual seas.

Jin Da and Jin Er, despite their immense physical strength and Peak Core Formation cultivation bases, were utterly unprepared for a targeted, high-tier spiritual illusion attack of this magnitude. They stumbled violently, their perfectly synchronized, battle-hardened movements faltering instantly. The massive broadswords in their hands wavered, the searing white heat flickering as their control over their Qi frayed. To their infected senses, the blood-red courtyard began to violently spin and fragment around them. The solid jade pavement felt as though it were turning to liquid beneath their boots, and the walls of the pavilion appeared to be breathing, expanding and contracting with terrifying speed.

”Ahhh! My head... the space is tearing!” Jin Da grunted, dropping to one knee, releasing his two-handed grip on his sword to clutch at his armored helmet. The auditory illusion was tearing his spatial perception to shreds, making it impossible to tell up from down, friend from foe.

Shangguan Wan’er, however, proved why she was the undisputed ruler of the Golden-Scale Auction House. Possessing a vastly more robust, highly condensed Half-Step Nascent Soul foundation, her spiritual sea was fortified like an ancient citadel. She felt the dissonant chord attempt to claw its way into her mind, the sickening vertigo threatening to topple her balance.

She gritted her teeth, her jaw clenching so hard her perfect facial muscles stood out in stark relief. She aggressively circulated her dense, golden Qi in a rapid, reverse-flow pattern through her upper meridians, forcefully and violently purging the auditory illusion from her mind before it could take root. The vertigo vanished, her vision snapping back into sharp, blood-red focus.

”Who dares ambush the Mistress of the Golden-Scale Auction House?!” Shangguan Wan’er demanded, her voice echoing with absolute, tyrannical authority, cutting through the chaotic, dissonant twanging of the zither. Her sexy, luscious lips, painted a deep crimson, pulled back in an arrogant, feral snarl. She did not look afraid; she looked profoundly, murderously insulted. ”Show yourselves, cowards! Do you think a cheap parlor trick of sound and light is enough to bury me?”

Her sharp, calculating eyes darted around the courtyard, her Half-Step Nascent Soul Divine Sense pushing outward, trying to map the confines of their prison.

’This is no simple Ice Heart Palace formation,’ Shangguan Wan’er thought rapidly, her mind working at a terrifying speed, discarding assumptions and analyzing the raw data of her surroundings. ’The Ice Heart Palace utilizes absolute zero, purity, and profound stillness. The Qi signature radiating from these walls, from the very floor beneath my feet, is utterly dark. It is heavy, oppressive, and completely foreign to anything found in the righteous sects of this sea region. This is a demonic trap. But who has the power to orchestrate this right under the City Lord’s nose?’

Deep within the recesses of the main hall, seated comfortably behind the intricately carved frost-jade privacy screen, Wang Jian watched the Mistress’s display of defiance with a dark, appreciative smirk. She was indeed magnificent, a fiery, arrogant sovereign of commerce who refused to bow. But her arrogance was precisely what he intended to break.

Wang Jian rested his hands on his lap, closed his eyes, and channeled his vast, bottomless Stellar Demonic Qi directly outward. He bypassed the ambient air and sent his dark energy plunging downward, directly into the foundation nodes of the heavily modified Seven-Star Obscurity Array that lay hidden beneath the floorboards.

He seamlessly shifted the array’s primary function from a spatial lock into its secondary offensive protocol. He activated the Spiritual Mire Formation.

It was a complex, high-tier array modification that utilized a forceful combination of earth and water attributes, deeply corrupted by his heavy Stellar density. The effect was instantaneous and physically devastating.

The ambient air within the sealed courtyard, which had previously been thin and biting cold, instantly thickened. It turned from a breathable gas into a heavy, suffocating, gelatinous sludge. The very atmosphere became a hostile entity.

Simultaneously, a sudden, immense, and completely unnatural atmospheric pressure slammed down on the entire courtyard from above. It felt as though a massive, invisible mountain peak had just been dropped from the sky directly onto their shoulders.

The two guards, Jin Da and Jin Er, who were already struggling to maintain their balance due to the spiritual vertigo induced by the zither, were completely overwhelmed. The sudden gravitational multiplier slammed into them. They were forced to drop entirely to one knee, the stone pavement cracking beneath the impact. Their heavy, golden-scaled armor, which was normally a second skin that provided unparalleled defense, suddenly became a lethal liability. The armor felt as though it weighed ten thousand pounds, pressing down on their chests, making every breath a localized, agonizing battle for survival. They gasped, their faces turning purple behind their visors, utterly pinned to the floor by the sheer atmospheric density.

Shangguan Wan’er felt the crushing weight hit her shoulders. The pressure was designed to drive cultivators to the ground, to force them into a posture of submission.

She refused.

She flared her Half-Step Nascent Soul Qi to its absolute maximum limit. Her golden aura roared like a bonfire in a hurricane, violently pushing back against the invisible, crushing weight. Her golden spirit-silk dress fluttered violently around her legs, whipped into a frenzy by the clashing energies of her aura and the descending pressure. She stood her ground, her extremely curvaceous figure standing entirely defiant against the array’s immense weight, her back straight, her chin held high in absolute refusal to yield.

”Jin Da, Jin Er, break the floorboards! Disrupt the array nodes!” Shangguan Wan’er ordered loudly, realizing that finding the hidden enemies in this environment was secondary to disabling the environmental trap that was currently suffocating her vanguard. She raised her own hands, preparing to unleash her own devastating, high-tier offensive techniques to blast a hole through the roof of the pavilion if necessary.

But Wang Jian’s trap was a multi-layered masterpiece of lethal timing, designed to exploit exactly this type of distraction.

Just as the massive guards, groaning under the immense weight of their armor and the crushing gravity, raised their searing white broadswords to strike the jade pavement beneath them in a desperate bid to shatter the subterranean array nodes, the shadows stretching beneath their kneeling forms suddenly began to behave erratically.

The dark, elongated shadows cast by the red light did not simply lie flat against the stone. They began to pool, thicken, and then, impossibly, detach and rise upward, gaining three-dimensional form.

Chen Ying, utilizing the absolute pinnacle of her Stellar Demonic Shadow Arts, materialized directly in the narrow, two-foot gap of space between the two massive, kneeling brothers.

She was completely unaffected by the crushing weight of the Spiritual Mire Formation. Before she had deployed, Wang Jian had personally woven a dense, protective aura of his own Stellar Qi around her body, synchronizing her physical presence with the array’s frequency, allowing her to move through the heavy, sludgy air as if she were a fish swimming through clear water.

She appeared like a ghost in the blood-red light, completely silent. Her lethal weapon, the Phoenix Plume Shadow Sword, was already drawn. The dark, non-reflective metal of the blade was heavily coated in a viscous, slightly shimmering liquid—Liu Ruyan’s most potent, highest-grade paralyzing neurotoxin, a concoction designed specifically to bypass standard Qi defenses and attack the nervous system directly.

With a movement so fluid, precise, and utterly devoid of wasted energy that it looked like a terrifyingly beautiful, choreographed dance of death, Chen Ying struck.

She didn’t aim for the heavily armored torso or the protected neck joints. She dropped low, spinning on her heel, and slashed the dark blade horizontally across the back of Jin Da’s exposed knees, slicing cleanly through the thick, reinforced leather joints of his golden armor.

The razor-sharp blade severed his major movement meridians and tendons in a single, flawless motion.

Jin Da felt the sudden, shocking loss of structural support before he felt the pain. He opened his mouth to roar in agony, a sound meant to warn his Mistress of the assassin in their midst.

But the roar was cut brutally short. The moment the neurotoxin entered his open bloodstream, it reacted with terrifying, explosive speed. The poison surged through his veins, instantly freezing the circulation of his Peak Core Formation Qi. His muscles locked rigidly into place, seizing completely. The roar died in his throat, turning into a choked, breathless gurgle.

Jin Er, despite the immense pressure pressing down on him and the vertigo still lingering in his mind, possessed the honed reflexes of a lifelong bodyguard. He saw the shadow materialize, saw his brother fall, and reacted with pure, aggressive instinct.

He swung his massive, searing white broadsword in a sweeping, horizontal arc, aiming to cleave the assassin clad in black entirely in half, ignoring the risk of hitting his own brother in the confined space.

Chen Ying did not panic. She did not attempt to block the incredibly heavy, devastating blow.

With a display of terrifying flexibility and core strength, she bent entirely backward at an impossible, physics-defying angle. The heavy, broad-bladed spirit sword cleaved through the air where her head had been a microsecond prior, the searing white heat of the blade passing mere inches over her breasts, singeing the fabric of her dark stealth straps but leaving her flesh entirely unharmed.

Using the momentum of her backward bend, Chen Ying planted her hand on the jade pavement and launched herself upward, twisting her body in mid-air to orient herself directly beneath Jin Er’s extended, swinging arm.

She thrust the Phoenix Plume Shadow Sword violently upward. She bypassed the thick, impenetrable golden scales covering his chest and back, driving the point of the blade directly into the tiny, unprotected gap of the armor located under Jin Er’s armpit—the singular structural weak point.

The blade sank deep into the flesh, injecting the full, concentrated dose of the paralyzing venom directly into the cluster of major arteries located near his shoulder.

Jin Er’s eyes widened behind his visor. The broadsword slipped from his suddenly numb, unresponsive fingers, clattering loudly against the jade pavement.

In less than three breaths, the tide of the ambush had been definitively decided. Both Half-Step Nascent Soul guards, men of immense power and experience, collapsed heavily onto the frost-covered jade pavement. They lay there, entirely paralyzed, their eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated terror as they stared up at the blood-red sky, their bodies having become entirely unresponsive lumps of meat encased in golden tombs.

Shangguan Wan’er watched the rapid, brutal dismantling of her elite vanguard with absolute, paralyzing shock. Her mind, usually capable of calculating a thousand mercantile variables a second, temporarily stalled. These were her finest protectors. These were men who had slaughtered massive, deep-sea demonic beasts with their combined techniques. And they had been disabled, neutralized completely, in the span of a few heartbeats by a single, shadowy assassin.

But Shangguan Wan’er was not a woman who allowed panic to dictate her actions. The shock lasted only a fraction of a second, rapidly replaced by a searing, boiling rage. Her legendary, unparalleled arrogance refused to let her show an ounce of fear in the face of this unknown enemy.

”Useless trash!” Shangguan Wan’er cursed her fallen guards, her voice echoing with tyrannical fury. She didn’t mourn them; she despised them for failing her in her moment of need.

She realized she was entirely alone, trapped in a heavy gravity field, facing a highly skilled assassin. She did not hesitate. Her delicate, jewel-adorned hands blurred as she formed a complex, rapid series of high-tier hand seals.

The brilliant, blinding golden Qi radiating from her extremely curvaceous body surged outward, rapidly condensing in the heavy, sludgy air. Above her head, dozens of long, incredibly sharp spears formed entirely of solid, thrumming golden light materialized. They were the Golden-Scale Piercing Spears, a devastating, armor-penetrating offensive technique that concentrated her Half-Step Nascent Soul power into singular points of absolute destruction.

She locked her furious gaze onto the shadow assassin, intending to obliterate the woman in black until nothing remained but ash and memory.

But before she could cast her hands forward to launch the devastating volley of golden spears, a voice interrupted her.

”I would advise against damaging my favorite blade,” a dark, incredibly smooth voice echoed through the blood-red courtyard. The voice was not loud, but it carried an undeniable, crushing weight of absolute authority that seemed to vibrate directly in the marrow of her bones. ”Good tools are so remarkably difficult to forge these days.”

Shangguan Wan’er’s head snapped toward the source of the voice.

The intricately carved frost-jade privacy screen located at the back of the main hall slid aside with a soft scraping sound.

Wang Jian stepped out from the shadows of the hall and into the blood-red illumination of the courtyard.

The visual contrast he presented was striking and deeply unsettling. He was dressed in pristine, flowing white scholar’s robes, looking like a refined, elegant nobleman out for an evening stroll. Yet, the aura radiating from his body was an ocean of dark, abyssal, all-consuming energy that seemed to devour the very light around him. He held an elegant folding fan in his right hand, tapping it casually against his left palm as he walked forward, completely unaffected by the crushing gravity of his own array.

Shangguan Wan’er locked her sharp, calculating eyes onto the handsome, physically imposing man. Her Half-Step Nascent Soul senses immediately probed him, attempting to ascertain the cultivation level of the mastermind who had dared to trap her.

’He is only at the Early-Stage of the Core Formation Realm,’ Shangguan Wan’er calculated, her mind racing, processing the impossible data. ’My senses confirm it. His realm is vastly inferior to mine. I am standing on the precipice of the Nascent Soul realm. He should be an ant beneath my boot.’

She stared at him, her golden spears thrumming dangerously above her head.

’Yet... his pressure,’ she realized, a cold bead of sweat forming on her pristine forehead despite the immense heat of her own aura. ’His spiritual pressure feels like a collapsing, infinitely dense mountain. It defies all established logic of the cultivation path. His aura is heavier, darker, and vastly more profound than anything I have ever encountered. He is an anomaly. A terrifying, rule-breaking anomaly. I cannot engage in a battle of attrition. I must crush him instantly, with absolutely overwhelming force, before he can deploy whatever other tricks he has hidden in his sleeves.’

”You are the rat hiding in Fairy Bing’s shadow?” Shangguan Wan’er sneered, her incredibly sexy, curvaceous body practically vibrating with the strain of holding back so much concentrated offensive Qi. She pushed her large, heavy breasts forward defiantly, refusing to yield an inch of psychological ground. ”You used her to lure me here? A cheap, cowardly tactic fitting for a man who hides behind illusions and poison.”

”I prefer the term ’strategist’, Mistress Shangguan,” Wang Jian replied calmly, offering her a polite, entirely mocking bow.

Without waiting for another exchange of words, Shangguan Wan’er acted. She thrust both of her hands forward, palms facing Wang Jian.

”Die!” she screamed, her voice a mixture of absolute rage and lethal intent.

She launched the dozens of Golden-Scale Piercing Spears directly at Wang Jian’s chest. The attack was magnificent and terrifying. The spears tore through the heavy, sludgy air of the courtyard, leaving trails of superheated golden plasma in their wake. The combined force of the attack carried enough localized, destructive kinetic energy to easily level a small mountain or shatter the defensive arrays of a minor sect.

Wang Jian didn’t flinch. He didn’t even bother to draw a weapon from his spatial ring. He simply stopped walking.

He raised his left hand, his palm open, facing the incoming barrage of golden death. He engaged the devouring property of his Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture.

A localized, swirling vortex of pure, pitch-black Stellar Demonic Qi materialized in the center of his palm, expanding outward like a miniature, hungry black hole.

The barrage of Golden-Scale Piercing Spears struck the vortex.

There was no massive explosion. There was no concussive shockwave to shatter the courtyard. The terrifying, destructive golden spears plunged into the black vortex and simply vanished. The profoundly dense, starlit energy of Wang Jian’s Core effortlessly swallowed the Half-Step Nascent Soul attack, breaking down the golden Qi and neutralizing its power entirely without letting a single, microscopic scratch mar the skin of his hand.

The courtyard fell dead silent, save for the heavy, ragged breathing of the paralyzed guards.

Shangguan Wan’er stared at Wang Jian’s raised hand, her mind entirely blank. Her ultimate, concentrated offensive technique had been erased. Not blocked, not deflected. Erased.

”Is that all the esteemed Mistress of the Auction House can muster?” Wang Jian mocked her, his voice dripping with condescension. He lowered his hand and resumed his slow, deliberate steps forward, the sound of his boots echoing loudly in the silent, red-lit space. ”I was promised a Half-Step Nascent Soul powerhouse. Thus far, you fight with the desperation of a cornered foundation establishment novice.”

Shangguan Wan’er’s face flushed a deep, vibrant crimson, her blood boiling with an unprecedented level of rage. No one, not even the City Lord, dared to speak to her with such blatant, humiliating disrespect.

”I will turn your bones to ash!” she screamed, abandoning the ranged attacks that he could apparently swallow. She decided to rely on the sheer, overwhelming physical force of her superior cultivation base.

She charged forward, her golden spirit-silk dress whipping around her thighs. She channeled the entirety of her remaining Half-Step Nascent Soul power directly into her hands, her palms becoming coated in a searing, blindingly bright golden light that radiated an intense, flesh-melting heat.

She closed the distance in a fraction of a second, launching a devastating, close-quarters palm strike aimed directly at the center of Wang Jian’s chest, intending to blast his heart out through his spine.

But Wang Jian was fully prepared. His Stellar Body Tempering made his physical reflexes, his muscular density, and his spatial awareness vastly superior to any standard cultivator of his realm. He saw the strike coming long before she even committed to the motion.

He didn’t try to block the searing, golden palm. He casually, almost lazily, sidestepped to his right, rotating his hips to let her furious, blinding assault pass harmlessly by his chest, the heat singeing the edge of his white robes but nothing more.

As her momentum carried her past him, Wang Jian struck with brutal, calculated efficiency.

He reached out and grabbed her firmly by the thick, intricately woven golden sash tied securely around her slender, wasp-like waist.

With a brutal, incredibly powerful downward yank fueled by his monstrous physical strength, he completely shattered the foundational anchor of her defensive aura. The protective, golden Qi barrier that surrounded her body—a defense that had withstood the blows of deep-sea leviathans—cracked, spider-webbed, and then shattered entirely like fragile glass under a hammer. His overwhelming, dense physical strength rendered her Half-Step Nascent Soul ethereal defenses entirely useless.

Shangguan Wan’er gasped, feeling the sudden, terrifying loss of her protective shell.

Before she could attempt to re-establish her aura or counterattack, Wang Jian used his grip on her sash to spin her violently around to face him again.

He drew back his right hand and delivered a devastating, fully committed, open-handed slap directly across her beautiful, arrogant face.

CRACK!

The sound of the slap was sickeningly loud, echoing off the walls of the pavilion like a thunderclap.

The sheer physical force of the blow was immense. It lifted Shangguan Wan’er entirely off her feet, sending her flying through the heavy, sludgy air. She crashed hard onto the frost-covered jade pavement, her body skidding several feet before coming to a halt. The impact scattered her priceless, jeweled hairpins across the floor with sharp, clinking sounds. Her meticulously styled, dark hair fell instantly into a wild, messy tangle, obscuring her face.

She lay there for a stunned, silent second, the absolute shock of the physical violation overriding the pain.

”You dare... you dare strike me?!” Shangguan Wan’er screeched, pushing herself up onto her hands and knees. She tasted the warm, metallic tang of blood in her mouth, a thin red line trickling from the corner of her luscious lips. The side of her beautiful face was already swelling, bearing the stark, bright red imprint of his large hand. Her immense, legendary pride was visibly fracturing under the sheer, unprecedented physical humiliation. She was a queen of commerce, untouchable and revered, and she had just been swatted to the ground like a disobedient servant.

Wang Jian did not stand back and gloat. He pursued his advantage relentlessly. He stepped over her fallen form, towering above her as she glared up at him with tear-filled, hateful eyes.

He reached down, his large hand grabbing the high, elegant collar of her incredibly expensive, custom-tailored golden spirit-silk dress.

He didn’t pull her up. He simply closed his fist tightly around the fabric.

With a single, violent, downward motion of his arm, he ripped the fabric cleanly.

RIIIIIP.

The sound of tearing silk was loud and profound in the quiet courtyard. The incredibly durable spirit-silk, designed to deflect blades, offered absolutely no resistance to his Stellar-tempered strength. The dress was torn cleanly down the middle, the fabric parting from her collarbone all the way down to her navel.

The violent action completely exposed her large, heavy, plump breasts to the biting cold air of the pavilion. They spilled out of the ruined fabric, heaving violently with her panicked, ragged breaths, her prominent pink nipples tightening instantly in the freezing temperature. The tear extended far enough to expose the smooth expanse of her stomach and the deep, incredibly curvaceous, sexy lines of her hourglass figure.

Shangguan Wan’er gasped in sheer, unadulterated horror, her hands flying up instinctively to cover her exposed, massive breasts, her face flushing an incredibly dark shade of crimson. She scrambled backward on the jade pavement, trying desperately to pull the ruined halves of her dress together, her plump, curvaceous ass jiggling with every frantic movement as she struggled on the floor.

”Your arrogance, Mistress Shangguan,” Wang Jian grinned darkly, a predatory, profoundly wicked smile spreading across his handsome face as he stood over her. His dark, starlit eyes leisurely and unapologetically devoured the sight of her massive, heaving breasts peeking through her trembling fingers, and the desperate, humiliated way she thrashed on the ground before him. ”Is exactly as fragile as this silk.”