Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

High above the architectural expanse of the academy, deep within the structural sanctuary of the central Clocktower, a heavy, almost suffocating silence dominated the grand council chamber.

Gu Xunyi stood gracefully near the edge of the hall.

Just then, she calmly reached into her silk robes and took out a highly secure communication artifact.

The device vibrated softly in her palm.

Injecting it with her qi and opening it, she found a brief, coded message sent directly by Shen Haoran.

The text was short but concise, informing her that everything regarding the plan had been thoroughly taken care of, and that everyone involved was currently gathering back within the private confines of their villa.

The final line noted that she should come over to join them as well.

A slow, knowing smile played on Gu Xunyi’s lips as she closed the artifact.

She then smoothly stored the artifact back into her pockets before turning her gaze back towards the assembly of the realm’s highest authorities.

The Ten Sages sat upon their elevated thrones, their expressions tight with a mixture of political anxiety and profound helplessness after being forced to watch half of their pristine domain get turned to absolute ash by the crossfire of monsters.

"Well, honored sages," Gu Xunyi spoke, her voice carrying a light, melodic, yet unyielding tone that brooked no argument.

She offered them a perfectly polite, aristocratic bow that felt more mocking than respectful. "It has been a pleasure observing the crisis management of the academy administration today, but I am afraid my personal schedule calls, and I should get going."

With that definitive statement, before any of the ancient masters could even form a spoken word to retain her for questioning, she sharply turned on her heels and walked away with a fluid, confident stride.

Her heels clicked sharply against the polished marble floorboards, leaving the Ten Sages staring silently at her retreating back, their hands tightly clenching the armrests of their thrones in impotent frustration.

No matter how angry they are, they cannot touch her.

Behind her stood the Gu Clan, and they cannot afford to offend them.

*

*

*

Down within the heavily ruined, smoke-heavy streets of the Academy City, the fires were finally being contained by the arriving disciples.

The scent of ozone, burnt stone, and residual blood hung thickly in the air.

Ye Hongyan stood at the edge of the catastrophic crater, her beautiful, proud face looking incredibly drained, yet fixed with an ironclad, solemn determination.

She extended her slender hand toward the center of the pit, then channeling a dense stream of her qi, she gently lifted the broken, bloodied body of Elder Mu Chen completely off the hard ground through precise, focused telekinesis.

The paralyzed man floated listlessly in the air, his limbs hanging loose like a broken puppet, entirely dependent on her energy to even remain suspended.

She turned her complicated gaze towards the young fire brand, Huo Yue, and the rest of the upper half of the Ten Crowns who were assisting with the local perimeter security.

"Students," Ye Hongyan called out, her voice tight but steady as she reassumed her authoritative demeanor as their homeroom master. "I shall be taking my leave of the campus for now. The immediate threat has been neutralized, and I will bring him directly back to his personal home to ensure he remains safely confined away from the public eye."

Huo Yue, still casually tossing a spark of heavenly flames between her fingers, offered a cooperative, understand nod alongside the upper half of the Crown.

They knew the plan; the young master had already decreed that this old trash was to be preserved for psychological torment.

With that final piece of business sorted, Ye Hongyan waved her right hand sharply through the empty air before her chest.

The space directly in front of her caved inward, twisting and folding violently until it constructed a swirling, stable spatial wormhole that vibrated with immense gravitational force.

Without a single second of hesitation or a backward glance at the ruined academy, she stepped forward, dragging the floating, paralyzed form of her former lover along with her as she entered the dark vortex.

*

*

*

The spatial distortion snapped shut behind them, and within a single, breathless fraction of a second, the harsh, metallic scent of the burning city was completely replaced by the crisp, fragrant perfume of blooming flora.

They arrived instantly within a vast, breathtakingly hidden garden sanctuary located deep within an unmapped pocket dimension.

The landscape was a flawless masterpiece of natural beauty, far removed from the violent political struggles of the central continent.

Endless fields of soft, emerald-green spiritual grass rolled gently across the terrain, carpeted with thousands of rare, glowing medicinal herbs and vibrant blue wildflowers that danced lazily under a warm, perpetual twilight sky.

Crystal-clear streams of pure, spirit-dense water cut through the earth, the soft babbling of the currents providing a peaceful, rhythmic melody to the quiet air.

Standing directly in the absolute middle of this paradise was a simple, rustic, yet impeccably crafted two-story wooden hut, its dark timber covered in climbing green ivy and blooming pink jasmine vines.

"This is my private house, Mu Chen," said Ye Hongyan, her voice dropping into a soft, intensely raw whisper as her boots touched the emerald grass.

She turned her head to look down at Elder Mu, her beautiful eyes swirling with a deeply complicated, agonizing cocktail of grief, nostalgia, and pity.

"I bought this hidden world centuries ago... I always thought that it would be incredibly nice, peaceful, and perfect for us to live here together once we finally got married and retired from the heavy duties of mortal affairs, but ...."

She paused, a self-deprecating, bitter smile playing on her lips as she shook her head, letting the sentence die in the quiet wind.

She walked slowly towards the wooden hut, her steps unhurried as she navigated the path.

There, sitting right on the polished balcony facing the warm glow of the sun, was a simple, weathered rattan rocking chair that she had personally woven in her youth.

With a gentle, incredibly mindful manipulation of her telekinetic qi, she lowered his broken body down, carefully placing Elder Mu on the comfortable rattan chair, ensuring his paralyzed head was resting at a comfortable angle against the woven backrest.

She pulled up a small wooden stool, sitting directly beside him, her gaze drifting out over the beautiful, glowing fields of flowers.

The silence of the garden seemed to unlock the floodgates of her memories, and she began to talk.

"Do you remember those days, Mu Che ? When we were nothing more than young, starry-eyed rogue cultivators, racing through the dangerous mortal realms without a care for sects or rules? Just the two of us against the world..."

She smiled faintly, her fingers tracing idle patterns in the air as if summoning the past.

"We’d brew that sweet spiritual tea—jasmine blossom and moonlit dew—over that rickety old copper stove we scavenged from a ruined village. It always tasted like hope, didn’t it? No matter how bitter the journey."

"And those nights... lying under the open starlight, whispering fierce promises to each other."

"No matter what ascends or what falls, we face it together."

"We spoke of so many desperate, beautiful ’what ifs’—what if we left the cultivation world behind? What if we built a hidden home in the mountains? What if we were simply mortal and free?"

She let out a quiet, wistful laugh.

"Those silly dreams kept my heart warm for a thousand years, you know. Even when I thought I’d lost you forever."

"If only my proud father hadn’t been so relentlessly cruel back then," she murmured, her voice cracking slightly as she rested her chin on her hands. "If only he hadn’t used the power of the Ye Family’s forces to break us apart and force you to leave... perhaps we would have been happy here. Perhaps you wouldn’t have become so twisted by jealousy, and perhaps those innocent children at the academy would still be breathing today."

She let out a long, heavy sigh, her eyes clearing as her thoughts naturally, inevitably drifted away from the decaying corpse of her past toward the vibrant, dominant reality of her present.

"But... looking back now, I suppose destiny works in mysterious ways," Ye Hongyan said, a sudden, entirely genuine warmth illuminating her features as she turned her head back to look at the paralyzed man. "If I hadn’t been forced to teach at the academy due to that ancient grief, I would have never had the privilege of meeting Shen Haoran."

Elder Mu’s pupils instantly contracted into tiny, frantic pinpricks at the mention of the boy’s name.

"He is truly an extraordinary young man, Mu Chen," Ye Hongyan continued, her voice filled with a profound, unscripted admiration that cut deeper than any physical blade. "He is so incredibly good, so naturally diligent in his daily studies, and possesses a kind-hearted, gentle nature that is so exceedingly rare among the arrogant heirs of the Immortal Lineages."

Elder Mu tried to argue, tried to scream...but ge couldn’t move. He was forced to listen, his heart feeling like it has been stabbed by a knife.

"Despite his monstrous talent and his supreme family background, he treats me with nothing but the utmost respect and care. When the city was collapsing today, his very first instinct wasn’t to protect himself, but to run straight into the danger zone and asked his friends to help with the rescue."

She smiled softly, a faint blush warming her cheeks as she lost herself in the thought of the young master’s comforting touch.

"He is a true gentleman. A soul so pure and protective that I can’t help but feel a deep sense of peace whenever he stands beside me."

All the while, Elder Mu Chen sat entirely, horrifyingly trapped within the frozen cage of his own meat.

Because his spine was destroyed and his cultivation was thoroughly crippled, he was completely paralyzed—utterly unable to form a single spoken word, unable to tilt his head away, and unable to move even a single millimeter to block out her words.

He could only sit there helplessly, forced to consciously listen to the only woman he had ever loved loudly praise the exact, manipulative beast who had planned his downfall.

He could see the genuine, radiant affection shining in her eyes for Shen Haoran, and the sheer, agonizing psychological torture caused his internal anger to spike to unprecedented, dangerous heights with every passing second, his mind screaming in a silent, suffocating hell of absolute madness.

*

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*

Shen Haoran and the others finally arrived back in the ruined expanse of the Academy City, navigating through the clearing smoke and the fragmented streets.

Right beside him stood Xu Xiansu, her face still slightly flushed and her eyes deliberately looking anywhere but at Haoran, her hands nervously adjusting the cuffs of her robes as she tried to master the absolute chaos of her newly realized internal feelings.

The lower half of the Ten Crowns—Shen Xun’er, Shen Hei, Shen Bai, and Shen Cai—along with the rest of the girls, walked in a tight, protective formation around them, their expressions a mix of lingering boredom and satisfaction with the day’s harvest.

At the designated perimeter checkpoint near the edge of the central plaza, they easily met up with Huo Yue and the upper half of the Ten Crowns, who had just finished securing the local district.

Huo Yue was casually leaning against a half-collapsed marble pillar, the small, flame across her knuckles which she had been playing around with finally dying down as she spotted their approach.

Her eyes immediately zipped past Haoran to lock onto Xu Xiansu, her sharp instincts picking up on the sudden, uncharacteristic shift in the girl’s aura.

"Well, look who finally decided to crawl out of the shrubbery," Huo Yue huffed, crossing her arms with a competitive smirk. "You look like you stumbled into an ancient vault, Xiansu. Don’t tell me you actually found something useful in those boring mountains while we were down here doing all the heavy lifting?"

Xu Xiansu’s plan to shoot back with a sharp, arrogant retort instantly crumbled the moment she caught Haoran looking over at her out of the corner of his golden eye.

Her throat went completely dry.

"I-It was just a minor opportunity," she stammered out, her voice dropping into that same gentle, impossibly soft register that made the surrounding Upper Crowns raise their eyebrows in synchronized disbelief. "Nothing for you to concern yourself with, Huo Yue."

"What the hell? Did you hit your head or something?" Huo Yue muttered, blinking in genuine shock at the uncharacteristic meekness.

Shen Cai, meanwhile, was already busy whispering to Shen Jian and Shen Ji, proudly pointing toward the massive, smoking barrel of his ’Kind-of-Sort-of Academy Compliant And Campus Safety Approved Cannon’ which was still resting in his storage ring, eagerly recounting how he had single-handedly shattered a a Nirvana Rebirth avatar with a single shell.

Haoran stepped into the center of the gathering, his golden eyes completely calm, carrying the serene authority of a grand commander who had just successfully wiped a major variable off the board.

He looked at the tattered state of their uniforms and the heavy layer of grime covering the crowns, a faint, polite smile gracing his lips.

"Everything has already been solved," Haoran said, his smooth voice instantly commanding the absolute attention of everyone present. "There is no longer any need for us to remain out here in the open ruins of the campus to be stared at by the surviving students and staff."

He turned his gaze back toward the direction of their private residential sector, his mind already calculating the next phases of his plan now that Chu Yan and Xiao Long had been dealt with.

"We have spent enough time dealing with trash today. Let’s return to the villa."

Everyone nodded in uniform agreement, their exhaustion finally catching up to them.

With a unified step, the group fell into line behind their young master, leaving the ruined city behind as they finally planned to return to the luxurious sanctuary of the villa to rest and prepare for the broader shifts traveling from the upper realms.