Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The next day dawned with a pale, golden light filtering through the heavy drapes of the bedroom, casting long, peaceful streaks across the floorboards.

"You’re leaving already?"

Gu Xunyi’s movement froze mid-stride as she turned back to the bed, her hand resting lightly on her collar where she was finalizing the adjustments to her fresh purple qipao dress.

Haoran was still lying there, exactly as he had been hours before, his arms folded loosely on the back of his head, his eyes closed in a state of absolute, tranquil repose.

To anyone else, he would look deep asleep, but the sharp, steady rhythm of his breathing proved otherwise.

"Yep." Gu Xunyi smiled, the familiar, slightly manic gleam returning to her crimson eyes as she tilted her head. "I still need to go back and attend a blind date. My family had arranged a suitable partner for me from one of the prominent secondary lineages. We were actually supposed to meet last night, but well... you were very... persuasive."

She let the word linger in the quiet air, a playful, thoroughly satisfied purr vibrating in her throat as she recalled the sudden, intense possessiveness he had displayed and the intense mind blowing sex they had before the night had concluded.

Haoran slowly opened his eyes, the brilliant golden depths instantly locking onto her silhouette, completely devoid of any morning drowsiness.

He turned his head towards her, his voice dropping into a flat, dangerously calm register. "You’re going to marry someone else?"

Gu Xunyi pouted, crossing her arms defensively as she stepped a bit closer to the edge of the mattress. "Of course. If a certain someone doesn’t like me, doesn’t want to claim me, and constantly wanted to push me away like a nuisance, then I’d just have to find someone else who does. A girl has her needs, and the clan demands an alliance. Just think of last night as a break-up fuck."

"That won’t happen," said Haoran, his tone entirely level, carrying the absolute certainty of a supreme decree.

"What do you mean?" Gu Xunyi furrowed her brows at him, her pride slightly pricked by his dismissive attitude. "Are you saying I can’t have a suitor?"

She pouted angrily and placed her hands on her hips, leaning over him slightly. "I will have you know, even though I’m a bit... eccentric like this, I am still an incredibly beautiful, highly talented, single young woman of the supreme Gu bloodline. My suitors could fill an entire city! If I open my courtyard gates, the lines of young masters wanting to marry me would stretch across the Empire!"

"You misunderstood," said Haoran, closing his eyes once more as if the very concept she was describing was entirely unworthy of his visual attention.

"Misunderstood my mass." Gu Xunyi crossed her arms.

Haoran sighed and shifted slightly on the pillows before delivering his final verdict. "What I was saying won’t happen is the marriage itself... because I’d personally kill anyone who tries to marry you."

Gu Xunyi blinked in absolute silence, processing the casual brutality of his statement.

A second passed, and then she broke into a melodic, echoing chuckle that filled the bedroom. "What a truly cruel, selfish bastard you are, Shen Haoran. You won’t take me for yourself, you won’t give me a proper title, but you absolutely won’t let anyone else have me either?"

"That’s right," Haoran replied, not a single shred of shame or hesitation in his voice. He opened one eye, fixing her with a sharp, predatory glare. "So, do you have a problem with that?"

Gu Xunyi remained silent for a long moment, her chest heaving slightly as she stared down at the man who had fractured her psyche so thoroughly years ago.

Then, a massive, brilliantly wicked grin split her face. "Nah. You can have me all you want. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides... that whole marriage thing is just a joke I made up to see your reaction."

She walked back towards the bed, her skirts swishing softly, and sat down right beside his resting form, the mattress dipping slightly under her weight.

Her expression turned significantly more serious, the playful light fading into cold calculation. "The real reason I have to depart so early is because my clan seniors have recently captured a high-level spy from the Hei Clan within our outermost territory, and they are specifically asking me to go there immediately to discuss what to do with him and extract the information."

"Them again?" Haoran frowned, a faint wrinkle appearing between his brows as his mood soured slightly at the mention of that particular name. "They really are like an annoying cockroach that refuses to die no matter how hard you stomp on it."

In the past several centuries, the Hei Clan had become rather alarmingly active across the continent.

They had been silently expanding their dark networks, planting insidious spies, hidden nests, and compromised informants into every single corner of the empire, slowly bleeding information from the other major factions.

The notorious Shadow Hall that Huo Yue had violently destroyed some time was just one of their many hidden limbs, a mere branch of a much vaster, more deeply rooted tree of espionage.

"Yep. Apparently, according to our clan’s initial interrogations, they, not just the ones in academy, but the whole Hei Clan are frantically searching for absolutely anything related to the ancient supremes—ancient inheritances, forgotten tomb coordinates, or sealed artifacts," said Gu Xunyi, her brow furrowing in irritation. "My father is getting a massive, daily headache trying to deal with their border incursions and hidden agents. However... your Shen Clan should be entirely safe from their nonsense, right?"

"Yeah," Haoran replied casually. "After all, unlike you or the other standard clans, the entire Shen Clan is ruled by my mother and my aunts alone with an absolute iron fist."

In other clans, it might still be possible to bribe some servants or branch families who wanted to rise to power, but it’s completely different in the Shen Clan.

Although there has been infighting, but it’s limited to that. Everyone can fight and compete as long as they didn’t bring harm to the clan.

If something like a betrayal happened, the Main Line holds an absolute authority to eliminate any traitors and their nine generation of families.

Gu Xunyi chuckled softly at that, a touch of genuine awe in her voice. "Yeah, I guess that’s exactly what would happen if you produce a completely invincible genius who grew into a completely invincible expert. No one dares to even breathe wrong near your borders."

She was referencing the terrifying reputation of the Shen Clan’s matriarchs, whose combined might kept the entire clan in a state of absolute, unyielding order.

Perhaps not just in the coan either. Those three sisters have even ended any open fighting between the clans for fear of the Shen Clan.

Not to mention the three sistsers, the rest of the Immortal Clans can be sure that the Great Calamity, Shen Daiyu, was still as well.

That was a woman who truly deserves to be called the Empress of that era.

In fact, she was so fierce and unyielding that when she got married, almost every men had meet up and started a religious feast to pray and honor the soul of the brave man who dared to marry her.

Gu Xunyi stood up from the bed, smoothing down her robes one final time before looking down at him with a look of genuine warning.

"Still, you should be careful of the Hei Clan too while you’re operating within the academy grounds. Hei Xuan really hated your guts, you should know that right?"

Haoran nodded, "Nothing new. Many people hate me."

"...yes. But you know, whenever there are formal gatherings or banquets between the young heirs of the various Immortal Clans, he will always stand up and swear to the heavens about how he’d find a way to make you regret ever crossing him."

The grand gathering of the heirs of the Immortal Clans was, in reality, pretty much just a giant, shallow dick-measuring contest.

It was a tedious event where the pampered young masters of the top families gathered to boast loudly about their breakthrough speeds, their newly acquired treasures, and their latest achievements in the outside world.

Of course, there are some formal conversations and events happening, but since almost no one cared, it remained exclusive to the most elite.

However, Shen Haoran had always felt that such events and the people who attended them were entirely beneath him.

They were like children playing in a sandbox, so he hadn’t bothered attending them even once, completely ignoring every single invitation sent to his courtyard over the decades.

This, of course, had only fueled Hei Xuan’s deep-seated inferiority complex and burning hatred.

"Regret?" Haoran snorted, a cold, mocking smirk playing on his lips as he stretched his limbs out on the bed. "If he truly has the capability to do so, I would honestly love to know what it feels like to experience regret. It would be a fascinating new emotion to analyze."

"Heh," Gu Xunyi chuckled, shaking her head in amusement as she walked toward the exit. "Right. I highly doubt the word regret even exists anywhere in your vocabulary."

She paused at the threshold, her hand twisting the smooth brass door handle. "Well, I’m leaving now. Don’t miss me too much."

Haoran merely hummed in response, offering no further farewell as Gu Xunyi walked out, the heavy wooden door clicking shut behind her and leaving the room in a state of absolute, quiet solitude once more.

Haoran remained unmoving on the bed, his golden eyes wide open now, staring blankly up at the detailed patterns on the high ceiling.

The conversation had shifted something within his mind.

The pieces on the board were moving, and the external variables like the Hei Clan were beginning to create noise.

He should also start accelerating his own grand plans.

He couldn’t care less about what the Hei Clan was plotting in the dark, nor did he care about their frantic search for ancient supreme inheritances; those were petty squabbles for lesser clans.

But he absolutely could not turn a blind eye to the growing threat of the protagonists—the anomalies like Chu Yan who possessed the absurd, logic-defying luck of the world itself.

Since killing them directly at this current stage would be incredibly hard due to the heavenly dao increasing their immense world luck, shielding them, and the high probability of triggering a massive, unpreventable plot armor intervention from hidden masters, then...

his lips curled into a sinister, sharp smirk.

"I’ll just slowly, and thoroughly destroy every single person around you first."

He thought of Elder Mu, and couldn’t help but think of his expression, and unknown to him, the man was utterly broken, kneeling on the hill, his pride dismantled by his simple, petty psychological trick.

Then, his mind wandered to the aloof, beautiful figure of Ye Hongyan, currently sitting in her locked office, her face burning red as she struggled to comprehend the absolute psychological damage of the cliffhanger novel he had deliberately left behind on her desk.

The trap had been set perfectly, and she was already stepping right into the center of his web.

He chuckled softly to himself, the sound dark and thoroughly anticipating the chaos to come, as he finally closed his eyes to plan his next move.