Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

"Alright, I’ll see you around. I still have something to do," Gu Xunyi smiled at Huo Yue and Shen Xinye, her expression smoothly shifting back to that of a polite, ordinary academy disciple.

She brushed a stray strand of her long, purple hair behind her ear, the manic light that had consumed her back then in Haoran’s room now completely hidden behind a flawless, calm facade.

"Alright, see you around, sister Xunyi! Don’t be a stranger, come visit the villa whenever you want!" Huo Yue grinned broadly, waving her hand with absolute enthusiasm.

Her mind was still half-occupied with calculating potential betting pool profits and her plan to steal the flame from the Fire Ignition Tower.

Shen Xinye offered a polite, gentle bow, her quiet demeanor contrasting sharply with Huo Yue’s energetic display. "Take care on your journey, classmate Gu."

With those final pleasantries exchanged, Shen Xinye and Huo Yue turned on their heels and walked away down the grand corridor, their voices fading into the distance as they discussed their plans for the remainder of the afternoon.

Gu Xunyi watched their retreating figures for a brief second before she chuckled softly to herself, a low, melodic sound that carried an undercurrent of absolute mischief.

Turning around, she purposefully walked towards the main administrative pavilion where the faculty office was located.

Upon arriving at the heavy, ornate double doors, she knocked softly twice before pushing the door open and stepping inside.

The room was spacious, filled with rows of large mahogany desks covered in towering stacks of graded talismans, ancient scrolls, and spiritual inkpots.

There were several master teachers around, some conversing in hushed tones about curriculum adjustments, while others were deeply engrossed in their own research.

And there, right in the center row, she easily found Elder Mu sitting behind his desk.

He was a picture of utter restlessness; his hands were fiddling aimlessly with a blank jade slip, and his head turned toward the entrance from time to time, his eyes searching the doorway with a desperate, pathetic longing.

It was obvious to anyone with eyes that he was waiting for Ye Hongyan to return.

Gu Xunyi smiled politely, stepping forward into the room and greeting the room at large with a flawless, deferential posture. "Hello, honored teachers. I apologize for the sudden intrusion. May I ask where Teacher Ye’s desk is located? She specifically asked me to come by and pick up some instructional materials and personal stuff for her."

Before any of the other master teachers could even open their mouths to point her in the right direction, Elder Mu suddenly stood up with such explosive force that his heavy wooden chair screeched violently against the polished floorboards, drawing startled looks from everyone in the room.

His eyes were locked onto Gu Xunyi, his face tight with an anxious, possessive tension. "Are you referring to teacher Ye Hongyan? Did she send you here?"

Gu Xunyi nodded innocently, her eyes wide with simulated docility. "Yes, Elder Mu. She told me she needed a specific scroll from her desk. So..."

"Why didn’t she come and get it herself?" asked Elder Mu, his brows furrowing deeply as a wave of intense jealousy and suspicion began to rot his thoughts. "The lecture concluded minutes ago. She should have returned to the office by now."

"Oh, she wanted to, but she’s currently still in the classroom alone with my classmate, Shen Haoran. They seemed deeply engrossed in a very private discussion, so she’s rather busy at the moment—"

She didn’t even get to finish her words.

The very moment the name ’Shen Haoran’ paired with the phrase ’alone in the classroom’ reached his ears, Elder Mu’s rational mind snapped completely.

The carefully cultivated advice that Chu Yan had spent a week drummed into his head vanished into thin air.

Before anyone could utter a word of caution, Elder Mu completely bypassed his desk and bolted out of the door like a maddened beast, his robes whipping violently behind him.

Gu Xunyi stood alone in the center of the faculty office, watching the empty doorway.

She chuckled darkly at the sight, a brilliant, satisfied grin splitting her face as she faced the door to hide it from other master teacher.

’So easy,’ she thought to herself.

The old man was nothing more than a reactive puppet, dancing perfectly on the strings they had woven for him.

*

*

*

Meanwhile, back inside the isolated, quiet classroom.

"This... I..." Ye Hongyan was entirely speechless.

Her heart was pounding furiously against her ribs, her mind utterly paralyzed by the intense, suffocating proximity of the young man standing before her.

Haoran’s face was mere inches from her own, his brilliant golden eyes staring straight into her soul, completely stripping away her authority as a teacher.

Haoran pressed further, his voice dropping into a low, heartbreakingly vulnerable cadence that carried the perfect weight of a tragic protagonist from the very novels she had been reading.

"Are you truly going to try and heal me, teacher? Are you going to make me forget her? The first one who broke my heart? Are you prepared to take that place? Are you going to replace her?"

Ye Hongyan remained entirely silent, her lips trembling.

She didn’t know how to answer. Her logical mind told her that this was entirely inappropriate, that he was her student, and that her heart had belonged to Mu Chen for a thousand years.

Yet, the emotional narrative she had been fed, combined with the raw, intense magnetic pull of Haoran’s proximity, left her completely defenseless.

Seeing her stubborn, frozen silence, Haoran let out a soft, thoroughly disappointed sigh.

He slowly took a step back, shaking his head with a look of profound, weary resignation before he turned away from her completely, his shoulders slumped as he began walking towards the exit, explicitly showing her his back as if intending to leave the room and shut her out of his life forever.

However, seeing him walk away like that, a sudden, unpreventable wave of panic surged deep within Ye Hongyan’s chest.

The thought of him slipping away into his own dark, isolated world, forever viewing her with disappointment, was entirely unacceptable to her.

Acting completely on pure, unadulterated instinct, she lunged forward and grabbed his wrist.

"Wait! Haoran, just wait a minute!" she cried out, her voice tight with emotion.

Haoran stopped his footsteps, but he didn’t pull away. He slowly turned his head back towards her, his golden eyes completely dull, reflecting a profound, crushing apathy.

"Teacher. You don’t have to force yourself to pity me. I am fine. Truly. I’ve long since grown used to being abandoned and pushed aside, so I’m not expecting anything from you anyway."

The sheer, raw pain dripping from his words pierced through the last remnants of Ye Hongyan’s emotional defenses.

She stared at his hollow expression and let out a deep, trembling sigh.

Throwing all academic protocol, her fierce pride as a Sage, and her centuries of absolute isolation to the wind, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms completely around his waist, hugging him tightly from behind as she buried her face against the broad cloth of his back.

"Haoran... please don’t say that," she whispered desperately, her voice muffled against his robes. "I know you have been hurt deeply before, I know the world has been cruel to you, but—"

*BANG!*

The heavy wooden door of the classroom suddenly opened, no, it didn’t just open—it was violently slammed open, the structural wood splintering under a massive surge of uncontrolled spiritual energy.

Elder Mu stood at the threshold, his face entirely red, his veins bulging against his temples as he fumed like a demon escaped from the underworld.

He had sprinted across the academy grounds, fueled by a roaring fire of jealousy, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him.

His eyes landed squarely on Ye Hongyan, the pure, unapproachable goddess he had worshiped for a millennium, wrapping her arms tightly around the waist of the freshman student, hugging him from the back in a display of absolute intimacy.

In that single fraction of a second, every ounce of his remaining sanity, logic, and self-control was completely vaporized, his fury spiked beyond the heavens.

"Shen Haoran! You beast! How dare you! Let go of Hongyan right now!"

His sealed power burst out of his body in a chaotic, destructive wave, the ambient air pressure dropping instantly as the windows of the classroom cracked under the strain.

Blinded by an absolute, murderous rage, he lunged forward, his hand hooked like an iron claw as he reached out towards Haoran’s throat, fully intending to crush the brat’s skull into paste.

However, the moment the door had shattered, Ye Hongyan had already realized what was happening.

Her supreme combat instincts as a 6th stage Heavenly Saint expert flaring instantly as she immediately detached herself from Haoran and materialized directly in front of him in a flash of pink light.

Just like last time, her hand shot out with terrifying precision, clamping down onto Elder Mu’s wrist and entirely halting his lethal momentum in mid-air.

"Mu Chen—" she began, her voice sharp with a mixture of shock and burgeoning anger.

"Shut up, Hongyan you whore!" Elder Mu roared, his eyes completely bloodshot as he glared directly into her face before she could utter a single word of explanation.

The sight of her standing as a protective shield for the boy completely shattered his mind.

"Why are you constantly protecting him?! Why are you shielding this brat at every turn?! Could it be that you were also fucking him behind my back?! Were all those centuries of showing yourself as pure, aloof, and untouchable just a disgusting show you used to trick me?! Just how many random men have you slept with behind my back, huh?! Answer me! Do you really enjoy tormenting me this much?!"

The words echoed through the shattered classroom like a physical strike.

"What...?" Ye Hongyan gasped, her entire body going completely rigid.

She was utterly stunned, so thoroughly shocked and horrified by the vile, disgusting accusations flying out of the mouth of her first love that her mind went completely blank.

Her grip against Elder Mu’s wrist loosened entirely from the sheer emotional impact, allowing him to instantly retreat several steps, where he stood breathing heavily, his chest heaving as the adrenaline began to slowly fade from his system.

Ye Hongyan stared at him, her eyes wide, her face draining of all color.

She couldn’t believe it. She truly, honestly could not believe that the man she loved, the man whose memory she had cherished through a thousand years of agonizing separation, could actually say all those horrific, deeply insulting things to her face.

He was doubting her purity?

He was calling her a whore?

She had literally threatened to slaughter her own father for his sake!

She had confined herself to a lonely, isolated library for centuries just to avoid the advances of other men, completely preserving herself for him!

She had explicitly forbidden any male from ever stepping foot into her private office because she was so terrifyingly afraid that he might see it and misinterpret the situation!

She had sacrificed her youth, her family, and her entire life to remain loyal to a memory.

Yet after all that immense sacrifice... she wasn’t even trusted by a single fraction?

In his eyes, was she truly just that shallow, that disgusting, and that cheap?

Elder Mu, looking at the absolute, hollow despair and shattering heartbreak written across her pale face, felt the icy water of reality crash over his head.

The blinding rage dissipated as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind a hollow void of immense, crushing guilt.

He realized the absolute gravity of the horrific words he had just shouted in a fit of blind, uncontrolled jealousy.

He winced, his hands trembling as he stepped forward. "Hongyan... I... I didn’t mean... I was just—"

"Enough."

Ye Hongyan spoke, her voice no longer angry, but completely dead, cold, and entirely devoid of any human warmth.

She glared at him with a gaze that carried the absolute finality of an executioner’s blade. "Obviously, in your eyes, I’m just a common whore. I am completely unworthy of someone of your supreme, righteous stature, Elder Mu."

Before he could even attempt to beg for forgiveness, she turned her back on him completely.

She faced Haoran, her expression softening by a fraction, and deliberately grabbed both of his hands.

Then, right in front of Elder Mu’s burning, desperate gaze, she made sure to slowly, firmly interlock her fingers with Haoran’s, holding their joined hands up high so that the old man could see the absolute reality of her choice.

"Let’s go, Haoran," she said softly, her voice steady.

"Yes, Teacher," Haoran replied, his expression a perfect imitation of a supportive, comforting junior.

And with that, without offering Elder Mu a single secondary glance, the two of them walked right past him and exited the shattered classroom.

The heavy silence of their departure left Elder Mu entirely alone in the ruined room.

The weight of his absolute failure crashed down upon his soul, and his legs gave out beneath him as he collapsed heavily onto his knees in the middle of the dust, staring blankly at the floor.

Outside in the wide, sunlit corridor, Haoran walked side-by-side with Ye Hongyan, their fingers still tightly interlocked.

As they rounded the first major corner leading towards the library path, Haoran’s sharp gaze immediately caught a flash of purple hair hiding behind a decorative stone pillar.

Gu Xunyi was leaning against the pillar, her arms crossed as she watched them leave.

Noticing her gaze, Haoran paused for a fraction of a second and sent her a slow, deeply satisfied, and victorious smile.

Gu Xunyi grinned back widely, lifting her hand to flash him a classic peace sign, her eyes sparkling with absolute, shared malicious delight before she turned around and gracefully vanished down the adjacent hallway, leaving the area completely clear.

Haoran looked back toward the path ahead, his grip on the teacher’s hand firm as he felt the subtle, chaotic fluctuations of her emotional energy bleeding into his own.

’Almost done,’ he thought to himself, a dark, hidden smirk playing behind his calm expression.

The pieces had fallen precisely where he had designed them to, and the final checkmate was fast approaching.