Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Back with Shen Xinye.

As she entered the gate, she felt the world suddenly twist and turned before a bright light engulfed her, forcing her to close her eyes.

And when she finally slowly opened her eyes, she actually expected to find herself in an ancient, grand ancestral hall or a treacherous trial arena filled with roaring primordial beasts.

Instead, she found herself in a rather sensual bedchamber, with a rope in hand.

The room was bathed in a dim, rose-tinted glow emanating from floating, heart-shaped spiritual crystals set into the ceiling.

The air was thick with the suffocatingly sweet scent of blooming night-jasmine and exotic, aphrodisiac incense.

Crimson silk drapes hung loosely from towering mahogany bedposts, fluttering gently in an artificial, warm breeze.

In the center of the chamber sat an absurdly massive, round bed covered in plush velvet blankets and soft silk pillows.

And in her hands the rope seem to be made from a thick, shimmering, ruby-red silk that hummed with a subtle, strangely rhythmic vibration.

Shen Xinye froze. Her face turned an alarming shade of pale, her fingers stiffening around the supple cord.

She stared at the rope as if it were a venomous, three-headed viper waiting to sink its fangs into her flesh.

Then, a playful, absurdly enthusiastic voice echoed directly in her mind.

[Helloo~! Welcome, welcome, my lucky little successor! 🎉 Welcome to the Second Grand Crucible of the Boundless Pleasures! I am the spiritual remnant of the one, the only—the invincible, majestic, and utterly fabulous GREAT HEAVEN CHAINED EMPEROR! Bask in my glory, child!]

Shen Xinye’s cheek twitched violently. A cold sweat broke out across her forehead.

[Now, I know what you’re thinking! ’Oh great ancestor, where are the trials of sword and fire? Where are the bloodthirsty beasts?’ Bah! Boring! Utterly primitive! True cultivation is not about mindless slaughter, my dear. It is about CONTROL! It is about ART! It is about the delicate, exquisite geometry of human restraint!]

[So! For your Second Trial, you must demonstrate absolute mastery over the Seven Heavenly Knot Formations! Look to your left!]

Shen Xinye slowly, reluctantly turned her head.

Sitting tied to a wooden chair in the corner of the room was a wooden training dummy—except it was painted in a bright pink shade, sculpted with surprisingly detailed features, and wore a look of comical distress carved into its face.

[Your task is simple! You must use the Divine Restraint Rope in your hands to tie up that dummy using the Ancient Turtle-Lotus Suspended Harness! Points will be deducted if the knot is too loose, if the aesthetic curve is unflattering, or if it doesn’t look sufficiently humiliating! If you fail to achieve a 90% aesthetic rating within ten minutes... the room’s incense will double, and the dummy will start singing romantic poetry at you! BEGIN!]

Shen Xinye stood entirely paralyzed in the middle of the room, her brain completely short-circuiting under the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the situation.

"I... I am a proud descendany of the Shen Clan..." she whispered, her voice trembling so hard her teeth clicked together. "I am one of the Ten Crowns that stood above this generation... I have slain demonic beasts... I have mastered the celestial sword arts..."

She looked down at the bright red rope in her hand, then looked back at the pink, distress-carved wooden dummy waiting for her in the rose-lit chamber.

"WHY AM I BEING FORCED TO DO THIS?!" she shrieked internally, her hands gripping the rope so tightly her knuckles turned ghostly white.

Tears of utter, profound humiliation welled up in the corners of her large, expressive eyes.

She felt appalled to her very core. If any of her friends—if Huo Yue, Ning Xueli, or worse, those gossiping maidens from the other noble houses—saw her right now, standing in a dim, seductive bedchamber holding a bondage rope, she would have to immediately shatter her own soul to escape the shame!

"You perverted, shameless, wretched old bastard!" Shen Xinye cursed aloud, her voice echoing off the silk-draped walls as she glared up at the ceiling. "How did you become an Emperor?! How did the heavens not strike you down with a million holy thunderbolts the moment you thought of this madness?!"

[Ooh, feisty! I like the spirit!] the Emperor’s playful voice chimed back instantly, sounding entirely delighted by her rage. [But tick-tock, little successor! Eight minutes remaining! The incense is rising! You don’t want to hear the dummy sing, do you? It has terrible pitch!]

A thick, pink cloud of sweet-scented mist suddenly puffed out from four golden incense burners around the room.

Shen Xinye gasped, quickly holding her breath and channeling her spiritual energy to seal her pores.

Realizing that the insane trial was entirely automated and wouldn’t stop until she complied, she let out a choked, desperate sob and stomped her foot against the plush carpet.

"I hate this! I hate everything about this!" she wept silently, marching over to the pink wooden dummy like a soldier being forced onto an execution block.

She opened the ancient manual that materialized out of thin air beside the chair.

Her eyes widened in horror as her gaze scanned the diagrams detailing the Ancient Turtle-Lotus Suspended Harness.

The knots were insanely complex, requiring intricate weaving of spiritual energy to bind the limbs while simultaneously suspending the target in mid-air at an angle that maximized both physical helplessness and visual embarrassment.

"Why is there a diagram for a ribbon bow on the lower back?!" she internally screamed, her face burning so hot she felt like her head was about to explode into flames. "What function does that serve in combat?! Is this necessary for your dao?! It makes no sense!"

With trembling hands and tears streaming down her cheeks, she began wrapping the red rope around the wooden dummy.

Loop... pull... twist... weave.

To her absolute horror, her innate, terrifying talent as an elite cultivator worked against her.

Because her great control over her qi and sword intent were so exceptionally refined(a result of her training to compress her qi and sword intent into bullets), she picked up the technique at a frightening speed.

Within three minutes, her fingers were flying across the wood, executing intricate, flawless knots with absolute, professional precision.

"No... no, no, no!" Shen Xinye panicked, staring at her own hands in absolute terror as they deftly tied a perfect double-loop harness around the dummy’s torso. "Why am I good at this?! Stop! Hands, stop moving on your own!"

[MAGNIFICENT!"] the Emperor cheered inside her head, virtual confetti seemingly exploding in her mind. [Look at that tension! Look at that symmetrical precision! You’re a natural, child! The Dao of Bindi—ahem, The Dao of Invincibility flows through your very veins!]

"SHUT UP!" Shen Xinye screamed, her face buried in her hands as she kicked the base of the chair. "I am not a natural! I am a sword cultivator! I use blades! I do NOT use ropes! And how is this even related to invincibility!?"

[Naive! Look at how helpless the target once you tied them up? Doesn’t that make you feel very invincible?!]

"You are sick!"

With a final, desperate tug of her qi, the rope flashed with a brilliant red light.

The pink dummy was instantly hoisted three feet off the ground, suspended beneath the heart-shaped crystals in a perfectly executed, flawless Turtle-Lotus Harness.

*Ding!*

A chime resounded through the bedchamber, and a glowing golden text manifested in the air.

[TRIAL PASSED: AESTHETIC RATING 99/100. REMARK: A TRUE MASTERPIECE OF RESTRAINT!]

The heavy, rose-scented incense vanished instantly, and a stone door opened at the far end of the chamber, revealing a bright portal to the next layer.

Shen Xinye stood in the center of the room, her breathing heavy, her cheeks bright red, and her eyes hollow as she stared at the suspended dummy.

In that moment, a dark, terrifying resolve crystallized within her soul.

"If I survive this trial..." she whispered, her voice dropping to a cold, trembling, and utterly terrifying pitch that would have made even a Demon King shiver. "...I swear upon my ancestors, upon my sword, and upon my very life, that I will hunt down every single historical record, every scroll, every book, and every song mentioning this Shameless Emperor."

She will never call him with his proper title. The Great Heaven Chained Emperor is way too majestic of a title for that pervert.

She squeezed her small fists tightly, her eyes burning with a fierce conviction.

"I will burn his altars! I will erase his name from the tablets! I will rewrite history so that nobody... NOBODY will ever know this pervert existed, and nobody will EVER associate me with this cursed legacy!"

With a final, vengeful stomp of her foot, she marched straight through the portal, determined to conquer this ridiculous trial through sheer, spite-driven rage.

But just as she was about to proceed and step through the stone archway toward the next trial, the pink wooden puppet hanging suspended in mid-air suddenly twitched.

Its carved, wooden jaw clicked open with a loud, mechanical *clack*, and it actually started singing love poetry in a ridiculously dramatic, opera-style falsetto.

"Oh, radiant maiden of the morning dew~!"

"Your knots are tight, my heart is true~!"

"Bound in silk by your gentle hand~!"

"The most passionate beauty in all the land~!"

The horrific, off-pitch singing echoed off the silk-draped walls of the sensual bedchamber, vibrating through the air like a dying spirit beast.

Shen Xinye froze dead in her tracks, her foot hovering half an inch above the threshold of the portal.

Her entire body stiffened, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated horror as the agonizingly terrible poetry assaulted her ears.

"A soft wind blew through silk and lace~!"

"Where moonlight touched your blush-stained face~!"

"And bound within your fiery thread~..."

"...Were words my wooden heart once dread~!"

She clapped her hands over her ears, trying to block out the melodic torture, but the sound seemed to resonate directly inside her skull.

"Now sung aloud for all to hear~!"

"A song of passion, silk, and fear~!"

She was completely forced to stand there and listen to every single cringeworthy, embarrassing verse.

"You curse the rope, you curse the sky,

yet string me up ten fathoms high~!"

"In Turtle-Lotus, grand and sweet,

I dangle helpless at your feet~!"

"Though ice and cold adorn your eyes, your crimson cheeks betray no lies!"

"For beneath that proud and sword-sworn grace..."

"A master binder takes her place~!"

"So tie the silk and pull it tight~!"

"And sing with me into the night~!"

"The grandest beauty in the land,

has bound my heart with her own hand~!"

Then, before she could even process the psychological damage, the booming, tear-inducing laughter of the emperor echoed directly in her mind, drowning out the singing puppet.

[BAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, heavens! Look at your face! That was priceless!] the spiritual remnant of the Shameless Binding Emperor wheezed, practically rolling on the floor in his phantom state. [Did you really think the singing punishment was only for failing?! HA! I coded that mechanism into the array years ago just for this exact moment! Not even the academy can change it!]

The playful voice carried an immense, nostalgic amusement as the ancient pervert continued his triumphant gloating.

[Ah, wonderful! Simply exquisite! I just LOVE teasing prudes like you! You remind me so much of those untouchable jade beauties and arrogant, ice-cold holy maidens of my era! They all made that exact same furious, blushing face right before I tied them up in my divine silk! Ah, the memories! The glory days!]

Shen Xinye’s blood pressure spiked to catastrophic levels. The last remaining shred of her polite, refined, and gentle demeanor shattered into a million tiny pieces.

She turned around, her face burning like a miniature sun, her large eyes blazing with an unholy, murderous fire.

"YOU WRETCHED, DEPRAVED, ANCESTRAL GARBAGE!" Shen Xinye cursed at the top of her lungs, her voice cracking as she stomped her foot so hard the floorboards groaned.

She pointed a trembling finger up at the ceiling, completely abandoning all decorum as she swore at the air. "I SWEAR UPON THE HEAVENS, IF YOU WERE STILL ALIVE RIGHT NOW, I WOULD CHOP YOU INTO TEN THOUSAND PIECES AND FEED YOU TO THE DESERT WORMS! DIE AGAIN! GO DIE A THOUSAND TIMES, YOU DEPRAVED OLD PERVERT!"

She hurled every insult and curse she had ever read or heard in her entire life at the floating voice, her chest heaving as she panted for air.

Yet, hearing her furious tirade only made the emperor laugh even harder, his booming hilarity echoing through the entire chamber until she finally turned around in sheer defeat, let out a frustrated scream, and dove headfirst into the glowing portal to escape the torturous laughter and the still-singing puppet.

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