Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

"That isn’t true, by the way," Ye Hongyan said to Haoran, her voice dropping into a soft, fragile whisper that was almost entirely swallowed by the gentle rustle of the leaves above them.

At this moment, the two of them were sitting under a massive, ancient willow tree, watching the vast, velvet night sky.

The canopy of trailing branches wept down around them like a curtain of living emerald, swaying lazily in the cool midnight breeze.

The stars above shone with an intense, almost mocking brilliance, casting a silver glow over the hidden sanctuary.

After they had left a broken Elder Mu kneeling in the ruined classroom, Ye Hongyan had immediately brought him here.

She had grabbed his hand and traveled through the academy’s spatial pathways, bypassing the crowded main thoroughfares entirely.

She told him, her voice trembling slightly with residual emotion, that this was the specific, isolated place she always came to whenever she wanted to escape the heavy burdens of her station and reminisce about the bittersweet memories of the past.

She said that aside from her, absolutely no one else in the entire universe knew about this hidden spot, as she had personally woven a high-level concealment array—a masterpiece of Saint-realm spatial manipulation—to completely hide it from the sensory networks of the world.

Even the other Nine Sages could walk right past the perimeter and notice nothing but blank air.

Of course, with the exception of Venerable Sky Cloud, who was at the peak of Heavenly Saint Realm.

And Haoran was the first person, the absolute first soul aside from herself, to ever be permitted to stand within this sanctuary.

"What is?" asked Haoran.

He remained perfectly relaxed, leaning back against the thick trunk of the willow tree, his golden eyes reflecting the cold starlight as he turned his gaze toward her profile.

His demeanor was entirely unbothered, a stark contrast to her profound emotional turmoil.

"What Mu Chen said," said Ye Hongyan, her hands clenching tightly into the fabric of her silk robes as a fresh wave of humiliation and deep, cutting pain washed over her features. "That I... that I slept with men... that I was a whore. You see, I actually wanted to save myself entirely for him. For a thousand years, I didn’t let a single man touch me, nor did I allow anyone to cross into my personal life. So I..."

Haoran chuckled softly, the sound a low, melodic vibration that carried a hint of gentle, borderline mocking amusement. "Why are you explaining this to me, teacher? Shouldn’t you be telling all of that to Elder Mu? After all, he is the one who doubts your virtue, not me."

Ye Hongyan looked deeply pained at that remark, her shoulders dropping as she closed her eyes to hide the tears threatening to spill over. "Mu Chen... he... he has changed so drastically from the gentle, principled man I once loved in my youth. The man I remember would never speak such vile, disgusting words to me. It seems he has allowed his bitterness to completely corrode his soul."

Haoran smiled at that, a smooth, unyielding expression that seemed to slice right through the fragile atmosphere of her grief.

"I think you got it wrong, teacher."

Ye Hongyan opened her eyes and stared at him, thoroughly confused and slightly stung by his blunt contradiction.

She was a Heavenly Saint, a Rank 10 Master Teacher and one of the Ten Sages, she was accustomed to having her insights revered, yet this youth dismissed her perspective without a single shred of hesitation.

"What do you mean I got it wrong, student Haoran?"

Haoran continued smoothly, his voice taking on a cold, philosophical weight that seemed to command the very air around them.

"People don’t change, Teacher Ye. That is a comforting illusion invented by the weak to cope with disappointment. Instead, they simply show you who they truly are when the comforting circumstances are stripped away."

Ye Hongyan frowned deeply at that, her academic pride and her deeply rooted, thousand year old belief in human growth flaring up.

She shook her head in clear disagreement with his harsh words. "That is a deeply cynical worldview, student Haoran. True cultivators spend their entire lives refining not just their bodies, but their minds and characters. We undergo tribulations specifically to purge our flaws, to evolve and change for the better. To say people never change is to deny the very core philosophy of cultivation itself. Mu Chen was a good man, and the trauma of our past simply warped his current perspective. In other words, he had changed."

"Refinement is merely the act of polishing the surface, teacher," Haoran countered, his smile widening slightly as he engaged in the debate, his golden eyes locking onto her stern face. "A piece of iron can be polished until it shines like silver, but beneath the luster, its fundamental nature remains iron. If you subject it to enough heat and pressure, it will rust and warp into its original, crude form. Elder Mu did not change. The gentle, righteous persona he wore during your youth was simply the product of an easy, unburdened environment. He was ’good’ because he had nothing to lose, and because your father had not yet crushed his fragile pride."

"No, you are wrong," Ye Hongyan argued passionately, her voice rising as she tried to defend the memory of her first love, and by extension, the validity of her own thousand year sacrifice. "Character is built through choice, not just environment! Mu Chen chose the path of a scholar. He chose to stand against tyranny. What happened today was a momentary lapse of reason, a madness born from extreme jealousy and a deep fear of losing me again. It doesn’t define his entire true nature."

"Choice is a luxury dictated by circumstances," Haoran said, his tone utterly implacable as he systematically began to dismantle her philosophy. "When a man is calm and secure, he can choose to be noble. He can choose to be a gentleman. But true character is not revealed in the sunshine, teacher; it is revealed in the dark, when the ego is threatened. The moment Elder Mu saw you holding me, his secure world vanished. And what was the very first instinct that erupted from the deepest depths of his soul? It wasn’t logic, it wasn’t a protective urge for your well-being, and it certainly wasn’t trust. It was an ugly, possessive malice. He immediately reduced your entire thousand-year devotion to a cheap lie, projecting his own deep-seated insecurities onto your virtue."

Ye Hongyan opened her mouth to speak, to yell at him, to find a flaw in his cold logic, but the words caught in her throat, and she found herself completely speechless.

Every single syllable Haoran uttered echoed with a terrifying, undeniable truth that mirrored the raw horror she had felt when Mu Chen had screamed at her.

"He called you a whore, Teacher Ye," Haoran pressed further, his voice dropping into a dark, piercing whisper that forced her to confront the ugly reality. "A man who truly loves and trusts a woman would look at a confusing situation and seek clarity. He would ask questions. But Elder Mu did not seek truth; he sought to inflict pain because his own pride was wounded. He valued his fragile male ego far more than he valued your dignity or your shared history. That vile, accusatory nature didn’t appear out of thin air today. It was always sleeping quietly within his heart, hidden behind his scholarly smiles for over a thousand years. The pressure of my presence simply forced him to drop his mask."

Ye Hongyan stared at the young man, her breath hitching as her entire philosophical framework began to rapidly crumble under his relentless assault.

She wanted to believe that humanity was capable of genuine, altruistic transformation, but the visual of Mu Chen’s distorted, screaming face was an unyielding stain on her mind.

Haoran’s words acted like a supreme spiritual technique, methodically carving away her delusions until only the raw, bleeding truth remained.

"You spent a thousand years saving yourself for a concept, for an idealized version of a man that never truly existed," Haoran concluded, his golden eyes flashing with a final, victorious light as he saw the total defeat written in her hollow gaze. "You loved a shadow, teacher. And now that the light has shifted, you are finally forced to see the crude, ugly stone that cast it."

Ye Hongyan let out a broken, shuddering breath, her entire body going entirely limp as she completely lost the philosophical battle.

She couldn’t find a single counter-argument.

She looked down at her trembling hands, realizing that this premier-year student had just thoroughly deconstructed her entire life’s romantic justification within a matter of minutes.

He had won the debate completely, leaving her with absolutely nothing to defend.

She closed her eyes, the silence of the hidden willow sanctuary enveloping them once more, but this time, the emptiness in her heart was entirely absolute.

Haoran stared at her, completely silent.

Did he win this argument? Yes.

But did he believe his own words? Absolutely not.

Haoran, in fact, believe that people can change. After all, he is a prime example. If he himself doesn’t think that people change, wouldn’t he be ignoring his own growth?

"What do you think I should do?" asked Ye Hongyan, her voice cracking slightly under the immense emotional weight of her sudden realization.

She felt utterly sad and helpless, stripped of the aloof, untouchable armor that usually defined her existence as part of the Ten Sages.

The towering stacks of ancient knowledge and centuries of cultivation did absolutely nothing to soothe the sudden, raw ache in her chest.

What if Haoran was right?

The question echoed painfully through the hollow chambers of her mind, refusing to be silenced.

What if her first love probably didn’t even see her as a living, breathing person with her own feelings and sacrifices, but just a possession—a prized trophy that he felt entitled to own simply because he had claimed her heart a thousand years ago?

What if the good side, the gentle, principled scholar that he had shown to her all those years ago, was probably just because he didn’t have any power to reveal his true nature yet?

What if his righteousness was merely the default setting of a man who lacked the strength to enforce his own selfish desires, a mask that shattered the moment he felt his absolute ownership threatened?

"Anything you want, teacher," said Haoran. His voice was an incredibly smooth, comforting melody in the quiet night, lacking the cold edge from their philosophical debate.

He shifted his position slightly, his golden eyes softening as they locked onto her tear-stained face.

"Even... fall in love again."

Ye Hongyan paused. The words seemed to hang suspended in the silver starlight between them, heavy and foreign.

Fall in love again? How could she? After what her first love did? After having her entire past, her virtue, and her thousand years of pure, unyielding devotion reduced to a vile, public insult in a matter of seconds?

The very concept of love felt like a treacherous labyrinth, a trap designed to break her spirit all over again.

Slowly, almost tentatively, she turned towards Haoran.

The trailing branches of the weeping willow rustled softly above them, filtering the pale moonlight into intricate, dancing pattern across his flawless features.

Up close, she couldn’t help but notice just how incredibly serene he looked.

There was no anger in his eyes, no hidden judgment, and no demanding possessiveness—only a deep, welcoming ocean of absolute understanding.

"Fall in love... again?" she murmured, her lower lip trembling as she stared into his brilliant golden eyes. "You say it so easily, Haoran. But my heart is not a broken artifact that can be forged anew in a single night. It is shattered, and the pieces are sharp, anyone who tries to touch them will only bleed."

"Then let them bleed," Haoran whispered softly.

Moving with a deliberate, gentle grace, he reached out and lightly cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing away a single, stray tear that had escaped down her pale skin.

His hand was warm, radiating a comforting vital energy that seemed to soothe the frantic, erratic beating of her heart.

"A heart that cannot be broken is a heart made of stone, teacher. Yours is made of glass—pure, beautiful, and fragile. It only shattered because you gave it to someone who didn’t know how to hold something so precious."

Ye Hongyan’s breath hitched at the sheer intimacy of his touch.

Every instinct instilled in her as an educator, as a senior elder, and as a member of the supreme Ten Sages screamed at her to pull away, to re-establish the absolute boundaries of protocol.

Yet, her body refused to move. She felt entirely paralyzed, anchored to the spot by the intoxicating warmth of his hand and the magnetic depth of his gaze.

"You are my student, Haoran," she managed to say, though the protest sounded incredibly weak, lacking any real conviction as her voice dropped to a breathless whisper. "This... this is completely improper. The academy... the world..."

"The world isn’t here under this tree, Hongyan," Haoran countered smoothly, deliberately dropping her formal title for the very first time.

The sound of her true name leaving his lips sent a sharp, electric shiver straight down her spine, completely melting the final remnants of her composure.

"There is no academy within this array. There are no elders, no titles, and no rules. There is only a woman who has been trapped in a lonely cage for a thousand years, and a man who is willing to open the door."

He brought his face closer, closing the remaining space between them until she could feel the gentle, rhythmic warmth of his breath brushing against her lips.

That musky scent of a man that always clung to his robes enveloped her senses, making her mind swirl in a state of beautiful, dizzying vertigo.

"I don’t care about your past, and I don’t care about the shadows you left behind," Haoran murmured, his golden eyes burning with an intense, captivating fire that seemed to promise her a completely new universe. "I only see the woman standing right in front of me. If your heart is in pieces, then let me be the one to gather them."

Ye Hongyan stared at him, her vision blurring as a fresh wave of tears welled in her eyes—not from sadness, but from the overwhelming, suffocating beauty of his words.

For a thousand years, she had been a protector, a master, a pillar of strength for everyone else, while completely starving her own heart in the dark.

No one had ever offered to protect her.

No one had ever looked beneath her powerful Sage facade to see the fragile, lonely girl hiding underneath.

Unable to fight the overwhelming gravity of her own hidden desires any longer, she let out a soft, defeated sigh.

Her defenses collapsed entirely. She leaned forward, closing the final fraction of an inch, and allowed her lips to meet his in a gentle, deeply passionate kiss beneath the weeping willow, completely surrendering herself to the beautiful, dangerous storm of a new love.

Haoran was actually momentarily stunned that this woman immediately kissed him.

He was expecting at least another week or two.

However, it doesn’t matter.

For now, without this protector, Chu Yan’s luck had surely weakened greatly.

Next, it’s time to deal with him.