Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Xu Xiansu stared at Xiao Long and Chu Yan, her arms crossed firmly over her chest as she stood at the head of the path leading into the mountain clearing.

The crisp, biting alpine wind caught the edges of her hair, but her gaze remained as unyielding as the stone beneath her feet.

Sometimes, she really wondered just how that bastard of a man thought.

Shen Haoran possessed an uncanny, almost terrifying level of foresight that borderline defied natural logic.

Earlier that morning, right before all the chaos in the academy had ensued, he had explicitly told her and the others to stay entirely away from the main campus grounds.

The , he had given them a singular, highly specific mission: to quietly monitor the movements of Chu Yan and Xiao Long.

At the time, she had thought it was a trivial task, but lo and behold, the master-disciple duo had actually planned to leave the academy immediately, sneaking away while the rest of the academy was distracted, and had even made a long, arduous trip into this restricted mountain range for some inexplicable reason.

Now, looking at the glowing remnants of the trunk, they finally realized exactly why.

There was actually an independent, self-contained dimension hidden directly inside that ancient peach blossom tree.

Xiao Long’s eyes narrowed to sharp slits as he stared at Xu Xiansu, and then his gaze flicked toward the formidable group standing right behind her.

The lower half of the Shen Clan’s legendary Ten Crowns had completely cut off their escape path: Shen Xun’er, Shen Hei, Shen Bai, Shen Cai, and Shen Ying.

Standing alongside them were the core ladies of the villa: Qian Yunxi, Xia Mengyao, Luo Mingye, Ling Luochen and Zhu Ziyan.

"Hmph," Xiao Long snorted, his voice dripping with a forced, defensive arrogance as he tried to mask the sudden surge of anxiety within his soul.

He puffed out his chest. "You’re just a bunch of young Nascent Soul and Golden Core brats. So what if you managed to track us down? What can a group of children like you possibly do against a Nirvana Rebirth like me?"

"Hahaha!" Shen Cai burst out into a loud, booming laugh, his eyes gleaming with a mixture of absolute glee and technological pride. "What can we do, you ask? We can do exactly this!"

With a dramatic, heavy gesture, he reached into his high-grade spatial storage ring.

With a bright flash of spatial energy and a heavy metallic thud that caused the grey stone ground to tremble, he took out a massive, towering cannon.

The weapon was a masterpiece of specialized craftsmanship, gleaming with hundreds of intricate, overlapping spiritual arrays etched into its barrel, radiating a dense, imposing mechanical luster.

"This right here is the Kind-of-Sort-of Academy Compliant And Campus Safety Approved Cannon!" he laughed loudly as he introduced his favorite toy to the terrified duo. "This is a peak Rank 8 Artifact personally gifted to me by my own grandfather for self-defense! Forget about you being a mere Nirvana Rebirth cultivator, even if you were a full-fledged Earthly Saint Realm expert, you’d get blasted into smithereens by a single blast!"

Of course, operating a catastrophic siege weapon of this caliber once cost a massive, astronomical amount of high-grade Spirit Stones just to prime the firing arrays.

But with his current, absurd family wealth as a prominent crown of the supreme Shen Lineage, he could comfortably fire this monstrous thing dozens of times in a row without feeling a single shred of financial worry.

Qian Yunxi and Xia Mengyao let out a synchronized, deeply tired sigh, massaging their temples as they looked at the absurdly named weapon.

They found themselves seriously thinking to themselves if they were truly the only normal, sane people left in this entire eccentric group.

"That’s so cool..." Luo Mingye and Shen Xun’er whispered in tandem, their eyes staring at the massive, array-covered barrel in pure, unadulterated amazement.

They had always appreciated overwhelming, destructive firepower.

Shen Hei, however, noticeably cringed at the ridiculous name.

"Could you not have named it literally anything else?" he muttered under his breath.

Even Ling Luochen couldn’t help but look away, feeling embarrassed at being associated with the group of weirdos.

Shen Bai simply offered a slow, silent nod at that description, entirely unfazed.

The exact same went for Zhu Ziyan, who simply couldn’t care less about the ridiculous name of the weapon.

She had been forced to hang around the chaotic presence of Huo Yue long enough that she had successfully built a permanent immunity to weirdness; she could casually ignore most bizarre things by this point.

Beside them, the diminutive Shen Ying stared at the massive cannon for a silent second, her competitive nature flaring up.

Not wanting to be outdone by her fellow Crown’s mechanical display, she reached into her own storage ring and took out a massive, heavy bronze alchemy cauldron, slamming it onto the stone floor.

Then, without a single word, she threw several extremely rare, highly volatile high-ranking spirit herbs directly into the belly of the vessel.

After that, she sharply snapped her fingers, and a burst of vibrant, crimson flames instantly appeared, coiling fiercely around her arm like a living serpent.

She was actively preparing to intentionally trigger a controlled Cauldron Explosion so spectacularly massive that it would thoroughly outdo Shen Cai’s cannon in terms of pure destructive power.

Xu Xiansu sighed deeply, heavily pinching the bridge of her nose in deep annoyance at her companions’ complete lack of tactical restraint.

They were supposed to be securing a perimeter, not hosting an arms convention.

Xiao Long and Chu Yan took a frantic step back, their faces pale as they stared at the looming, array-heavy barrel of the cannon and the glowing alchemy fires in genuine fear.

The sheer volume of destructive force gathering in the clearing was entirely overwhelming.

"You... You’re all just worthless cowards relying entirely on your family wealth and ancestral names!" Chu Yan yelled out desperately, his voice cracking as he tried to find a loophole in the situation while he pointed a shaking finger at them. "If you are truly a real man, step forward and fight me one-on-one in a fair match! If I win, you have to stand down and let us leave this mountain in peace!"

As the words left Chu Yan’s mouth, a strange, invisible ripple of spiritual law seemed to distort the air, and at that exact moment, a bizarre phenomenon occurred.

Hearing his righteous demand, Shen Cai and the other Crowns actually felt a sudden, profound shift in their minds.

For some unexplainable reason, they suddenly felt that the boy was completely right, and that they should genuinely agree to his terms, as if a heavy, logic defying cognitive fog settled over their perceptions.

They didn’t even notice the unnatural shift within themselves; they genuinely began to believe that they should fight fair and square to protect their martial honor, and that they should even hold back their true strength since the opponent was just some random, unfortunate guy who wasn’t born as inherently privileged as them.

The invisible chains of a protagonist’s halo were silently warping their intelligence.

"Hahaha! Alright! A fair duel it is!" Shen Cai laughed boisterously, his eyes glazed over as he extended his hand, fully prepared to store his massive cannon back into his spatial ring to accept the challenge, when suddenly...

*SLAP!*

A sharp, echoing crack reverberated violently across the mountain peak.

Xu Xiansu had stepped forward with a flash of speed, her palm connecting forcefully with the side of Shen Cai’s cheek.

Her voice was sharp, cutting through the heavy mental fog like a bolt of lightning. "Are you a complete idiot?"

Shen Cai blinked rapidly, his eyes widening in total shock as the heavy fog in his mind vanished instantly.

He subconsciously raised his hand, gently caressing his burning cheek; the skin still stung intensely, the physical pain grounding his senses.

Everyone in the clearing instantly turned their gaze towards Xu Xiansu, the sudden silence broken only by the wind.

"We hold the overwhelming advantage in numbers, positioning, and weaponry. Why in the world are you willingly giving it away just because the enemy opened his mouth?" asked Xu Xiansu, her voice cold and completely unyielding as she glared at the crowns. "Are you all truly idiots? Just blast them into ash and be done with it. We are here in the orders of Haoran, not to play at being chivalrous knights."

Shen Cai blinked again, a cold sweat suddenly breaking out across his neck as he realized the sheer absurdity of his thoughts a second ago.

Yeah... why in the world did he feel so intensely compelled to compete with the enemy fair and square just now?

That made absolutely no logical sense. He had a Rank 8 cannon; why would he ever drop it to fight a stranger?

The other Crowns and girls also snapped out of the subtle enchantment, their expressions turning grave as they realized they had almost been led by the nose.

The terrifying, unnatural influence of Chu Yan’s luck had almost twisted their common sense.

Thankfully, Xu Xiansu’s sharp hand and grounded nature had violently reminded them of reality, otherwise... they would have walked straight into a classic trap.

"Thanks," Shen Cai nodded at her with a look of genuine gratitude, his grip tightening back around the firing mechanism of his cannon. "That slap was completely well-deserved. I almost went soft."

He then looked back at Chu Yan with a cold gaze, feeling angry that this guy had actually tried to trick him.

"Hmph." Xu Xiansu snorted softly, turning her gaze away from them.

Truthfully, these people, though very much bat shit insane, are all very logical, so why did they suddenly lose their mind now?

Actually giving up your advantage? Who in their right mind does that?

She will definitely tell this incident to Haoran later and have him punish these idiots.

But soon, she focused her attention back towards the ancient peach blossom tree standing in the center of the clearing.

For some completely unexplainable, deeply intrinsic reason, the moment her eyes locked onto the rough bark, a powerful, magnetic sensation flared deep within her soul.

She felt an overwhelming, instinctive feeling that she absolutely must touch that tree.

It felt as if a piece of her own soul was calling out to her from within the wood.

Noticing the sharp direction of her gaze, Chu Yan’s heart plummeted.

In a panic, he immediately shuffled his feet, desperately trying to block the conjoined sun and moon engravings with his own physical body, but his reaction was already far too late.

Xu Xiansu had already seen the engravings perfectly.

A slow, knowing grin split her face as she took a step forward, the energy within her body beginning to hum in perfect synchronization with the hidden dimension.

"I don’t know why you are trying to hide that tree from me," she said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, confident tone as she pointed a finger at him. "But move aside right now. That tree belongs entirely to me."

Chu Yan gritted his teeth. He couldn’t allow Xu Xiansu to take the artifact away!

Once the artifact fell into her hands, it will definitely fall into Haoran’s hands as well, and once he got the artifact, there would be no way for him to actually fight back!

A Hyperbolic Time Chamber plus the inexhaustible resources of the Shen Clan...Haoran will definitely be invincible!

That’s why...he must not allow Xu Xiansu near this tree!