Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

"Kill them!" the Sword Saint roared, his ancient blade pointing straight down like the merciless finger of an executioner!

"KILL! SLAY THE CELESTIAL PARASITES! CLEANSE OUR WORLD WITH THEIR BLOOD!"

As the Sword Saint’s apocalyptic command reverberated across the firmament, hundreds of thousands of native cultivators roared with him in a unified, blood curdling war cry that tore the slate-grey clouds to shreds!

Over three hundred thousand indigenous warriors—riding winged war-beasts with razor talons, soaring on iron-clad battle skiffs, and hurtling forward on blood-soaked flying swords—plunged downward like an inescapable, catastrophic tidal wave of pure vengeance, aiming their lethal spears, toxic darts, and explosive talisman clusters directly at the trapped academy disciples.

Seeing the sky blacken with descending slaughter, the leading senior student standing atop the shattered stone outcrop did not cower.

Despite the crushing, gravitational suppression of the Nine-Abyss Primordial Sealing Array gnawing at his meridians, his eyes ignited with incandescent, blood-red fury.

The leading student turned murderous, his face contorting into a mask of pure disgust and venomous hatred as he looked up at the swarming native horde.

"You miserable, unwashed native mongrels!" the senior student bellowed, his voice laced with venomous insults that spat upon their very existence. "You filthy, backwater trash crawling in the dirt of a dead, barren rock! You dare bare your fangs against the proud scions of the Imperial Academy?! A pack of stray, starving dogs plotting in the mud for centuries thinks they can butcher dragons?! You are nothing more than livestock bred for our harvest, and today, I will personally pile your worthless corpses into mountains!"

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

With a ferocious roar that defied the array’s suppressing runes, the senior stomped his heavy boot into the rock!

Then, a massive ethereal figure of a colossal, two-hundred-meter-tall primordial golden dragon appeared beneath him!

The titanic dragon roared with an ear-splitting draconic pitch, its golden scales blazing like miniature suns, forcefully carving out a temporary sanctuary of pure, unsuppressed qi against the crimson sealing dome!

Standing proudly atop the golden dragon’s crystalline skull, the senior drew a six-foot heavy broadsword and raised it high into the storm, making a thunderous speech to boost morale and have the students fight to the death.

"Disciples of the Imperial Academy! Scions of the Tian Yuan Empire!" the senior shouted, his words carrying the unyielding weight of immortal pride that ignited the cold, trembling hearts of the thirty thousand trapped students! "Do not let these primitive savages see you crawl! Our ancestors conquered their skies, our elders harvested their lands, and our bloodlines reign supreme across the myriad heavens! If this cursed mud seeks to swallow us, then we will drown it in their blood! Stand on your feet! Draw your blades! Burn your dantians! WE FIGHT TO THE VERY DEATH—LEAVE NOT A SINGLE NATIVE DOG ALIVE!"

That single shout was all it took for all student’s blood to boil as they roared in unison.

"KILL! SLAUGHTER THEM ALL! SHOW THEM THE MIGHT OF THE ACADEMY!"

The desperate, suffocating panic that had paralyzed the tens of thousands of students vanished, instantly replaced by the terrifying, suicidal fury of trapped beasts!

The students roared in a deafening, unified chorus of defiance, their collective killing intent rising like a blood-red pillar into the firmament.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BANG! BOOM!

One after another, tens of thousands of students forcefully burned their dantian, smashed through the array’s suppressive weight, and summoned their Spirit Avatars as well.

In a matter of three heartbeats, the vast barren plain erupted into a breathtaking forest of ethereal titans.

Towering spectral swordsmen clad in silver armor, roaring five-element battle beasts, colossal jade golems, incandescent fire phoenixes, and multi-armed celestial guardians manifested across the landscape, their towering forms illuminating the dim world in a blinding, multi-colored sea of martial radiance.

Seeing the tens of thousands of upper-realm geniuses simultaneously summon an ocean of Spirit Avatars that pushed back against the very sealing array they spent centuries perfecting, the charging vanguard of native cultivators panicked for a brief moment.

The sight of tens of thousands of celestial titans standing ready to tear them apart sent an instinctual, hereditary chill down the spines of the front-rank warriors, causing flying beast mounts to shriek in fear and halt their charge mid-air.

"DO NOT FALTER! DO NOT COWER BEFORE PAPER TIGERS!" the Sword Saint roared at them, his voice exploding like a localized supernova that shattered the momentary hesitation in their minds! "Their spiritual channels are chained! Their qi are suppressed! SUMMON YOUR AVATARS AND DROWN THEM IN OUR ANCESTRAL WRATH!"

Hearing the Sword Saint’s thunderous roar, the hundreds of thousands of native cultivators instantly shook off their terror, their eyes turning bloodshot with fanatical zeal as they all gained confidence and summoned their Spirit Avatars as well.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

Over three hundred thousand indigenous Spirit Avatars—monstrous blood-thorn treants, howling spectral wind-wolves, mountain-sized granite titans, and venomous shadow serpents—erupted across the sky, completely blotting out the heavens and plunging the plains into an apocalyptic twilight.

Although their sizes were much smaller than those of the academy students, the sheer numbers were overwhelming!

The two forces had a stared down for a few moments...

Then... the two colossal armies collided!

CRACK—SHATTER—BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!

The catastrophic clash between over three hundred thousand Spirit Avatars, high-tier martial techniques, and spatial collisions was so horrifyingly destructive, so fundamentally apocalyptic, that it looked as if the very world was destroyed seven times and recreated seven times in a continuous, nightmarish cycle of cosmic annihilation!

In the first instant, the sky itself was completely ripped from its cosmic moorings, shattered into millions of jagged spatial glass shards before being violently re-welded together by intersecting pillars of incandescent divine fire and absolute-zero frost.

Then, the earth beneath them was eradicated—thousands of miles of solid plains were pulverized into floating atomic dust, creating a boiling, molten canyon that dropped into the planet’s core, only for towering earth-element avatars to forcefully raise continent-sized tectonic plates from the abyss, slamming them together like colliding worlds.

Shockwaves swept across the continent, instantly leveling mountain ranges hundreds of leagues away.

Lightning storms of pure, chaotic void energy vaporized thousands of combatants in flashes, while rivers of boiling, celestial and demonic blood rained down from the sky, drowning the fractured landscape in a crimson deluge of torn limbs, shattered avatar cores, and exploding dantians.

The laws of physics, gravity, and elemental balance ceased to exist, collapsing into an endless, churning vortex of pure, unadulterated slaughter that shook the foundational bedrock of the Ancient Heaven Star to its very limit.

Yet, amidst this earth-shattering cataclysm where thousands were being torn to shreds every passing second...

Shen Haoran stood completely untouched, his hands clasped casually behind his back as he observed the battlefield with cool, unbothered detachment.

Standing safely beside him, his inner circle—Xu Xiansu, Qian Yunxi, Ling Luochen, Xia Mengyao, Ning Xueli, Luo Mingye, Huo Yue, Zhu Ziyan, and the Ten Crowns—did not join the bloody meat grinder either.

They simply stood in an impenetrable, regal formation around him, observing the chaos like immortal spectators watching an ant colony war.

Haoran’s sharp golden eyes swept past the explosive avatar clashes, subtly observing Qing Yan, who was cowering at the very back of the academy ranks, his face pale as a ghost, clutching his trembling sword and desperately hiding behind the corpses of fallen seniors to avoid the flying spells.

Then, shifting his gaze slightly toward a chaotic fissure near the outer boundary of the sealing formation, Haoran’s eyes locked onto someone far more intriguing—Tang Lin—the new protagonist he had found.

Tang Lin was completely ignoring the apocalyptic battle surrounding him.

Moving with eerie, practiced familiarity, he was ducking under stray energy beams, navigating through the blind spots of the native army, and rapidly tinkering with the hidden runic nodes of the Nine-Abyss Primordial Sealing Array.

’Interesting...’ Haoran thought, his lips curling into a faint, calculating smirk. ’He knows the exact structural flaws of an ancient array of a lower realm despite only being here for the first time. A regressor, perhaps? Or someone carrying a profound ancient soul?’

But after awhile, he decided to ignore him.

He just casually turned his head, looking toward the other prominent sectors of the plain, and noticed that all members of the other great Immortal Lineages—Ling Yinchi, Su Meilin, Hei Xuan, Shi Tian, Jian Xi, Bai Wenxin and the others—were actually just standing on the sidelines as well, with arms crossed, weapons sheathed, or sipping wine from jade flasks, looking on as if the apocalyptic battle had absolutely nothing to do with them.

Well, it’s completely understandable.

All of them gathered here are the pinnacle geniuses of their respective immortal lineages.

Every single one of these clan heirs definitely has high-tier life-saving talismans, ancestral defensive armors, or spatial soul-seals secretly bound to their souls that would instantly allow them to summon at least the projection of a genuine Saint to protect them the very second their lives were placed in genuine, mortal danger.

To them, the lives of the ordinary students, the desperate fury of the natives, and this petty ambush array were nothing more than a noisy, irrelevant sideshow.

Shen Haoran turned his gaze back toward the sky, looking at the Four Great Masters—the Sword Saint, the Wind Emperor, the Xuan Yuan Saint, and the Nine Lives Demon King—who were currently leading their armies into the slaughter, drunk on their illusion of absolute vengeance.

He stared at the raging natives, a quiet, amused sound escaping his throat as he hummed softly under his breath.

"A well-prepared trap... yet constructed by frogs sitting at the bottom of a well."

On the other side of the blood-drenched, exploding battlefield, ducking beneath the severed limbs of shattered Spirit Avatars and dodging the stray arcs of incandescent lightning, Tang Lin was desperately hurrying over to destroy the formation.

His boots kicked up wet, ash-stained mud as he darted between the jagged crevices of the shattered plain, his hands moved in a flurry of intricate, high-speed mudras as ancient, golden deciphering runes flickered across his fingertips, piercing straight into the crimson runes of the Nine-Abyss Primordial Sealing Array.

Tang Lin was not a certified, scholarly Grand Formation Master by trade, but that title meant nothing compared to the boundless, blood-forged wisdom locked within his soul.

In his previous life, before the tragedy of the Immortal Road tore his world apart, he had clawed his way through thousands of life-and-death planar wars, stepped over mountains of divine corpses, and successfully ascended to the revered, god-like heights of the Supreme Emperor realm.

He had stood at the zenith of the cosmos and had even fought an apocalyptic, bloody battle with all supremes across the universe!

To a man who had once clashed with sovereign beings capable of shattering entire universe with a wave of their sleeves, the theoretical framework and foundational runic architecture of an array constructed by these lower realm natives was practically child’s play.

He had seen through its core nodes, its elemental counter-balances, and its structural stress points in a matter of heartbeats.

He knew precisely which three auxiliary nodes to sever in order to trigger a catastrophic, self-imploding chain reaction that would collapse the entire barrier dome from the inside out.

However, despite his confidence in dismantling the barrier, his brow was drenched in cold, oily sweat, and his teeth were clenched so tightly they nearly cracked.

He needed to hurry—faster, even faster!

Because ’that’ terrifying, monstrous guy is definitely watching from the shadows of this world.

In his previous life, Tang Lin remembered with bone-chilling clarity that the Ancient Heaven Star was not merely a playground of four declining Sacred Grounds.

Above the four sacred ground, there is another transcendent power founded by a supreme expert—a native monstrous entity whose terrifying talent, ancient bloodline, and ruthless ambition made the entire invading academy student body suffer catastrophic, irreversible losses!

That native monster had slaughtered countless upper-realm prodigies during this very trial, stole their spatial rings and immortal scriptures, and used their refined blood to break the world’s ancient boundary constraints.

Later, that very same native went on to ascend past the mortal thresholds, climbed into the Prime Origin Realm, and eventually became a terrifying, sovereign Supreme Emperor whose name struck terror across the myriad stars.

Rumors had it that he had once fought Shen Haoran to a draw and even forced him to retreat!

Tang Lin’s heart hammered furiously against his ribs like a war drum.

Before that monster detects all these commotions and decided to interfere in this battle... He need to destroy this cursed formation, leave, and secure all opportunities for himself!

HUMMMMMMMMMMM—!!!!!

But...

At that exact, suspended second, before Tang Lin’s fingers could press the final counter-rune into the dirt, the entire world suddenly darkened!

It was not a gradual sunset, nor was it the arrival of heavy storm clouds.

It was an unnatural and suffocating phenomenon—as if every single particle of vibrant color across the entire universe was forcefully drained, bleached, and swallowed into an infinite, monochromatic void.

The blazing crimson blood of dying cultivators turned pitch-black; the dazzling gold, blue, and emerald auras of over three hundred thousand Spirit Avatars dulled into lifeless shades of grey; and the bright afternoon sky faded into an eerie, dead charcoal canvas.

The roar of the apocalyptic battle instantly choked.

Tens of thousands of clashing swords, roaring war-beasts, and detonating spells ground to a dead, frozen halt as an unholy, primordial chill seized every living heart across the plain.

Tang Lin completely froze, the breath catching in his throat like broken glass.

His soul shuddered with an instinctual, overwhelming terror that transcended his memories as a former Supreme Emperor.

Slowly, trembling uncontrollably from his knees to his fingertips, he turned around toward the eye of the dead, colorless storm.

There, looking toward the calm center of the academy’s vanguard, Tang Lin’s eyes widened to their tearing limits!

Standing tall with his golden hair dancing in the vacuum, Shen Haoran slowly and casually pulled out a pitch-black sword that seemed to actively suck all the light, all the warmth, and all the colors in the world straight into its dark, bottomless steel.

The moment its cold edge cleared its invisible sheath, the void within the blade groaned with the weight of ancient, forgotten nightmares.

Viscous, pitch-black oily sludge bubbled quietly along the spine of the steel, tiny, lidless cosmic eyes blinked along the fuller, and the ambient reality surrounding Haoran’s boots began to melt into jagged, weeping dimensional fractures that defied all known laws of the Five Elements, the Dao, and the universe!

Tang Lin’s mind completely shattered in sheer, paralyzing horror.

What... WHAT IS THAT THING?!

His thoughts screamed in frantic disarray. He had lived through a full lifetime, he had fought across the stars, witnessed ancient emperor weapons, clashed with primordial divine beasts, and seen the peak of cosmic metallurgy.

Yet never—not once in all his centuries as a Supreme Emperor—had he ever felt an aura so profoundly grotesque, so fundamentally alien, and so completely outside the framework of the Heavenly Dao!

Did that Shen Haoran have this terrifying, scary sword in the past life?!

No! Absolutely not! In the previous timeline, Shen Haoran conquered his peers using only his pure talent, his divine physique, and peerless divine cultivation techniques!

There was never any mention of a black blade that could drain the very colors of reality!

How come... How come this is the very first time he has ever seen this monstrous artifact?!

What went wrong with the timeline?!

What kind of cosmic horror did Shen Haoran unearth while I was drowning in my past life’s regrets?!

While Tang Lin stood paralyzed in the mud, clutching his head as his past-life memories collapsed into chaotic fragments, Shen Haoran didn’t spare the shivering regressor a single glance.

Haoran stepped forward into the air, his boots treading upon the empty, colorless atmosphere as if walking up an invisible jade staircase.

The dark, devouring presence of Azathoth hummed against his palm, its writhing void sludge responding eagerly to his sovereign command.

High above, the hundreds of thousands of native cultivators, along with the Four Great Masters—the Sword Saint, the Wind Emperor, the Xuan Yuan Saint, and the Nine Lives Demon King—felt their hearts seize in suffocating agony, their towering Spirit Avatars shivering and dimming beneath the gaze of that one man.

Shen Haoran’s lips curled into a sharp, cruel, and profoundly arrogant smirk.

His golden eyes locked onto the swarming native horde with the icy, unbothered detachment of an immortal monarch looking down upon a nest of bothersome insects.

He raised the pitch-black blade slightly, pointing its void-dripping tip toward the sky, and made a cold, single sentence that echoed across the dead, colorless world like an irreversible decree of death.

"You had ten thousand years to learn your place, yet you chose to die like dogs beneath my blade. If so, I will grant your wish.... perish into nothingness."

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