Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

(AN: I made a mistake, because of a friend of mine in discord rushing me for lower realm arc, I forget that there’s supposed to be a Faction War Arc first by the end of the year, and the lower realm arc starts five years later. But since this arc already started, I will be switching them)

Tang Lin coughed violently beside a wide, misty lake, hacking up mouthfuls of clear lake water onto the muddy reeds as his entire body shivered, drenched from head to toe.

His sodden student robes clung heavily to his skin, dripping water into the gravel below.

Earlier, when the spatial fabric above the barren plains violently tore apart, the chaotic dimensional currents had pulled him through the void and sent him careening straight down from the clouds like a lead weight, crashing hard into the center of this massive lake.

The violent impact had knocked the wind clean out of his chest, forcing him to paddle desperately through the freezing depths just to drag himself onto the rocky shoreline.

As he knelt in the mud, panting and struggling to catch his breath, his memories of the descent flickered back into focus.

He remembered that when the dimensional rift spit him out into the sky, there seemed to be someone else who had tumbled through the exact same spatial tear and crashed into the lake right alongside him.

Pushing himself up with trembling arms, Tang Lin turned around toward the water’s edge, intending to offer a hand and help them pull themselves out of the churning shallows.

SPLASH.

But before he could take a single step forward, the surface of the lake parted, and a solitary figure slowly emerged from the deep waters.

The woman stepped out onto the muddy bank with slow, measured steps.

Droplets of water cascaded down her form like liquid diamonds, tracing the lines of her silhouette under the pale afternoon sun.

Beneath thick, soaking-wet bangs that clung to her forehead, a pair of piercing, cold, and utterly emotionless crimson eyes stared outward with clinical indifference.

Long, lustrous golden-blonde hair was plastered in heavy, wet ribbons across her shoulders and down her back.

Her soaked, translucent white robe was glued tightly to her skin, revealing the sinfully curvaceous, breathtakingly voluptuous hourglass frame that was normally completely hidden away beneath the oversized, baggy fabric of her usual attire.

As she reached the dry stones of the shore, she casually raised one pale, slender hand and slicked her wet golden bangs straight back over her head in a single, fluid motion, fully exposing the sharp, peerless, and dangerously striking beauty that had been concealed beneath those disheveled strands.

Yet, as the water dripped from her porcelain jawline, Tang Lin couldn’t enjoy such a breathtaking, intoxicating sight in the slightest.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

His heart violently constricted inside his chest, his blood running colder than the lake water, the veins in his temples throbbed with sudden, suffocating intensity.

’Shen... Ying...’ Tang Lin gritted his teeth so hard that the metallic taste of blood seeped onto his tongue, his fists clenched tightly inside his wet sleeves until his fingernails tore into his palms.

It was her.

Standing right before his eyes was the very woman responsible for orchestrating the catastrophic downfall and ruin of his entire previous life.

This was the cold, unfeeling demoness who had developed that insidious, soul-corroding alchemical poison—the ’Ethereal Bliss Powder’—that had trapped his younger self in an inescapable cycle of chemical addiction.

She was the mastermind behind the underground syndicates that plunged him into insurmountable, crushing debt, forcing his noble father to spit blood and die in grief, driving his mother to an early grave, and ultimately dragging his beloved younger sister, Tang Rou, into that nightmarish underground laboratory where she was subjected to horrific, inhuman flesh modifications and soul experiments until her body gave out in agony.

Tang Lin’s past-life memories flashed with terrifying, unyielding clarity.

Even right now, in this current era before the world had fully recognized her name, this woman had already quietly spread her shadowy, toxic hands into dozens of prominent cities across the Imperial Academy Dimension.

Countless talented disciples, promising scions of top tier clans, and indigenous servants were already unknowingly addicted to her customized spirit elixirs, their wills subtly eroded as they became obedient puppets in her grand commercial web.

In the future timeline, her terrifying drug empire would expand to an unimaginable, horrifying scale.

She would command an entire unstoppable legion of thousands of chemically altered, berserk death-corps soldiers—warriors whose pain receptors were severed, who were entirely impervious to fear, agony, and death, blindly following her every cold whispered command onto the bloodiest battlefields without caring about the suicidal outcome.

And right now, standing here with water dripping from her robes, she was already well on her unstoppable, ruthless way to becoming the undisputed, feared Queen of the Underworld.

"...What?" Shen Ying’s brows furrowed slightly as she caught the intense, burning hostility and erratic breathing coming from the soaked youth standing nearby.

Her crimson eyes locked onto him with a cold, piercing squint, her voice flat and completely devoid of warmth.

"Why are you staring at me like that?"

Tang Lin’s chest tightened. Realizing he had let his past-life hatred bleed through his expression and nearly exposed his hostile intent before he had the cultivation to back it up, he forcefully swallowed the venom in his throat and hastily shook his head.

"Nothing... I’m sorry," Tang Lin muttered, forcing his facial muscles to relax into a look of sheepish, flustered embarrassment. "I just... I didn’t realize you were that beautiful beneath that bangs and robes."

The words felt like burning acid in his mouth; he almost physically gagged and threw up from sheer disgust the second the compliment left his lips.

Although, deep in his heart, he knew this wasn’t a lie.

Shen Ying was a top tier beauty with a top tier body.

Shen Ying stared at him in dead silence for several long, calculating seconds, her cold crimson gaze dissecting his posture.

Finally, she gave a slow, indifferent nod.

She is indeed exceptionally beautiful. In her practical, detached worldview, her physical aesthetics were simply an objective biological fact, so it was entirely normal and expected for ordinary young men to stare when she revealed her appearance.

Although, that burning stare was a bit too much... She slowly looked down at her own chest and realized what the issue was.

The violent impact of the spatial landing and the rushing lake currents had caused her inner silk chest bindings to become completely undone beneath the soaked fabric.

The sheer weight and fullness of her natural, voluptuous bust pushed out so prominently against the clinging white silk that it had completely blocked her line of sight, making it physically impossible for her to see her own feet.

Shen Ying let out a quiet, exasperated sigh as she pinched the soaked collar of her robe, preparing to channel a controlled spark of her heavenly flames to instantly evaporate the moisture and speak to the academy student—

SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH!

But before she could say a single word, several sharp rushing sounds echoed through the dense mist hanging over the lake’s southern bank.

Four young male cultivators, dressed in matching jade-trimmed azure robes belonging to a prominent local sect of the Ancient Heaven Star, leaped gracefully through the reeds, landing atop the rocky shore with weapons drawn and defensive spiritual talismans floating around their shoulders.

They had found a map of an inheritance site along the shoreline, but upon clearing the tall grass and seeing the two figures standing by the water, all four young cultivators froze in their tracks, looking utterly surprised that there were already other people who had arrived at this secluded lake shore first.

"Hold on... who are they?" the lead youth murmured, lowering his silver blade slightly as his eyes adjusted through the mist.

Then, as the four sect disciples’ gazes simultaneously landed on the soaking-wet, golden-haired woman whose clinging white robes left nothing to the imagination, their eyes widened to the size of saucers, their jaws dropping in collective, stunned disbelief.

Shen Ying sighed.

What a sin, beauty is truly the bane of heroes.

*

*

*

The howling gale of the northern frontier whipped across the desolate mountain ridges like a thousand shrieking phantoms.

Glacial frost clung to the crags, turning the craggy peaks into jagged fangs of solid ice that pierced an ashen sky.

At this exact moment, nestled deep within the frozen belly of a colossal valley, stood a completely ruined city in the middle of a vast mountainous tundra covered in thick, unyielding snows and assaulted by a perpetual, heavy snowstorm.

Crumbling stone pillars carved with forgotten, weathered relief murals rose out of towering white drifts like the skeletal remains of a long-dead primordial beast.

Shattered battlements, collapsed domes of petrified celestial stone, and fragmented archways were buried under centuries of pristine, undisturbed permafrost.

The sheer scale of the ruins spoke of an ancient epoch of unimaginable grandeur—a metropolis that had once scraped the heavens before being cast down into ruin and entombed in ice.

Inside one of the half-collapsed stone pavilions whose vaulted ceiling barely kept out the falling hail, Ning Xueli stood huddled against a cracked pillar, shivering violently from head to toe.

"Damn it, why did I wear this thing?" she hissed through chattering teeth, crossing her arms tightly over her chest as her breath puffed out in thick, crystalline clouds of white vapor.

Right now, she was wearing nothing but a sleek, form-fitting black and gold cheongsam.

The delicate silk, embroidered with intricate golden crane motifs along the high collar and torso, was split daringly high along both thighs, leaving her long, porcelain-pale legs almost entirely exposed to the biting, sub-zero draft sweeping through the ruined stone corridors.

While the dress was exquisitely designed and tailored to showcase her slender, graceful figure back in the temperate gardens of the Imperial Academy or the bustling avenues of Boundless Sky City, it was practically a death sentence in the frozen heart of an ancient tundra.

"Just how cold is this cursed place?!" Ning Xueli complained aloud, her voice echoing faintly against the frosted stone. "I’m a genuine 1st stage Nascent Soul realm expert, you know! Natural cold and snow shouldn’t even bother me like this!"

Normally, a cultivator who had successfully formed their Nascent Soul was completely immune to the standard extremes of mortal weather.

They could bathe in boiling magma without scorching their skin and walk through blizzards without feeling a chill.

Yet the frost permeating this mountainous valley was distinctly unnatural.

It wasn’t merely low atmospheric temperature; it carried an ancient, primordial chilling intent—a lingering conceptual frost that bypassed spiritual defenses and sank directly into the soul.

"Damn it!" She kicked a small stone.

And at that exact moment, the chaotic swirl of falling snow inside the pavilion gently shifted.

Without a sound, the air rippled with soft, ethereal light, and Gu Xunyi suddenly appeared, stepping lightly onto the snow-covered flagstones as if materializing out of the mist itself.

Her skin tight dark purple cheongsam cling around her with pristine grace, completely untouched by the howling blizzard outside.

An intricate spatial talisman hovered above her palm before dissolving into faint golden motes.

Gu Xunyi looked at the shivering, bare-legged girl huddled against the stone and smiled warmly at her, her red eyes carrying an amused sparkle.

"Well, it seems like you’re struggling here, Little Xueli," Gu Xunyi remarked in her soft, tranquil voice, completely unbothered by the biting cold.

Ning Xueli clicked her tongue in mild annoyance, though a visible sigh of relief washed over her features upon seeing her return. "Tell me about it. I was thrown into the sky by that spatial storm and barely managed to land in this frozen graveyard without snapping an ankle, only to realize I’m freezing to death in a silk dress."

Gu Xunyi chuckled. "You need to temper your body more."

Ning Xueli shook her head, "So, Sister Xunyi, what did you find out while surveying the perimeter?"

Gu Xunyi’s expression grew slightly more solemn, though her posture remained graceful as she stepped further under the stone archway, turning her gaze toward the vast expanse of frozen ruins stretching across the valley floor.

"This lower realm seems to be far more than meets the eye," Gu Xunyi explained steadily, her fingers tracing an ancient, eroded carving on the pavilion wall.

Ning Xueli raised an eyebrow, "How so?"

"When the academy elders briefed us, they painted the Ancient Heaven Star as a typical, albeit rebellious, depleted lower realm, just a standard world with a declining martial lineage and a handful of local sacred grounds. But from what I found out, it’s more than that."

She paused, taking out a recording artifact and opening it, showing Ning Xueli an image of ancient carvings on stone walls and pillars.

"Most importantly, the ancient historical chronicles and monumental inscriptions preserved within this ruined city continuously speak of a so-called Divine Realm."

Ning Xueli blew warm air onto her numb fingers, shivering slightly as she listened, before casually shrugging her shoulders.

"The Divine Realm?" Ning Xueli muttered dismissively. "Isn’t it just another grandiose, poetic word for our Prime Origin Realm? You know how ignorant these people from the lower realms are, they like to prostrate themselves and start crying about ’gods’ and ’divine realms.’ It’s probably just their ancestors’ primitive way of describing the Prime Origin Realm that conquered them."

Gu Xunyi slowly shook her head, her sharp eyes studying the glyphs with deep scholarly precision.

"That was my initial assumption as well," Gu Xunyi replied, "but the empirical evidence recorded here directly contradicts that theory. The writings left behind by the scholars of this ancient city describe specific geographical landmarks, cosmic hierarchies, and planar laws within their ’Divine Realm’ that simply do not exist anywhere within our Prime Origin Realm."

She pointed toward the image with series of detailed pictographs etched into the basalt.

"They describe towering silver pantheons resting upon golden clouds, celestial rivers of ambrosia that grant immortality without needing for cultivation, and great entities born directly from primordial concepts rather than martial cultivation. None of their descriptions align with the system of our realm."

Ning Xueli leaned against the pillar, rubbing her cold arms, and suggested a simpler explanation.

"Well, isn’t it completely normal for legends to become distorted over millennia? The people born in this isolated lower realm have never actually set foot in the Prime Origin Realm. They only catch brief glimpses of otherworldly cultivators during the academy trials every few centuries. It’s totally natural for primitive tribes and ancient kingdoms to make up places, invent fantastical myths, and wildly exaggerate things to fill the gaps in their understanding. For all we know, an ancient city lord had a vivid dream after eating toxic spirit herbs and had his stonemasons carve it onto the walls."

Gu Xunyi smiled softly, her lips curving into an enigmatic, thoughtful arc.

"Maybe," she conceded gently. "In ordinary circumstances, mundane exaggeration and mythological drift would be the most logical conclusion."

Her smile deepened, carrying the sharp, calculating intellect that made her one of the most perceptive minds in the entire generation.

"However, I believe there is far more to this mystery than mere mortal fantasy," Gu Xunyi continued, turning her head to look out into the raging white storm. "Have you heard of the Western Continent?"

Ning Xueli nodded, "It’s called the Herion Continent, right? I read of them during my time studying in the Shen Clan."

Gu Xunyi looked back at Ning Xueli, her eyes glittering with profound intrigue.

"Indeed. Unlike us, the people in that continent cultivate this thing called "mana", and their cultivators are called "mages". The people there all worshipped these beings known as Gods who all reside in this so-called Divine Realm."

Ning Xueli hummed, "Well, you seem to know a lot about that continent."

Gu Xunyi chuckled at that. Of course she does, the person she disliked the most was a saintess of a church from the Western Continent.

She continued explaining, "The naming conventions, the conceptual iconography, and the divine titles recorded on the stone tablets of this frozen city match the records of the Western Continent’s records of Divine Realm with near-flawless accuracy."

Ning Xueli blinked, the realization finally dawning on her.

"In other words... this small, supposedly insignificant lower world might not just be a random hunting ground under the academy’s boot. It might possess an ancient, severed connection directly linked to that mysterious, divine realm."

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