Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Back in the Academy City.

Haoran looked up, his sharp, discerning gaze seem to pierce through the fading dust clouds toward the distant, jagged mountain range where an unusual spike of spiritual energy had just rippled across the horizon.

Then, a cool, knowing expression settled over his face before turning towards Ye Hongyan and Huo Yue. "Well, I’ll be going for now. I have something personal to take care of."

Ye Hongyan and Huo Yue looked confused, wondering what could possibly distract him right after such a cataclysmic battle, but seeing the absolute certainty in his eyes, they nodded in understanding.

Huo Yue especially knew better than to question his actions when he assumed that particular, calm and collected demeanor.

And Ye Hongyan just believes in him.

Haoran left them without another word, stepping away from the perimeter of the crater.

The moment he took a single step away, Qing’er immediately turned into a fluid, liquefied shadow, gliding across the stone floor and completely disappearing into his own shadow, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

As he walked down the debris-strewn path, he took out his secure communication artifact from his spatial storage ring.

With a few swift movements, he sent a highly specific, encrypted message to someone, and then stored it back inside the ring.

With that final preparation complete, he flipped his palm downward and instantly summoned a sleek, silver ornament sword from his storage ring.

The weapon floated before his chest, radiating a dense, metallic hum.

With a sharp, fluid flick of his wrist, the sword suddenly grew in size, expanding until it was wide enough to serve as a proper mount, and hovered silently in front of him.

Then, he jumped towards the flat side of the gleaming blade, his posture perfectly balanced and relaxed.

"Go." He whispered softly.

In the blink of an eye, the silver sword erupted with a dense trail of golden qi and flew straight to the sky, cutting through the clouds like a bolt of lightning.

*

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"Hahahaha! Die! Just die already!" Shen Cai laughed hysterically, his face flushed with pure, unadulterated joy as he threw hundreds of thousands of high-grade Spirit Stones directly into the burning alchemical hopper of his weapon to power up his massive cannon.

The intricate arrays along the barrel glowed so intensely they looked like lines of liquid starlight.

Xiao Long tried to stop it, his body moving rapidly as he gathered his qi to try and disrupt the firing sequence.

But every single time he was about to make a move, to dive forward and crush the array mechanisms, Shen Ying would instantly aim her volatile bronze cauldron directly at him, her arm coiled in white-hot alchemy flames.

He knew exactly how terrifyingly dangerous a sudden, intentional cauldron explosion was, especially if that cauldron was meticulously constructed from high quality ancient materials and stuffed to the brim with highly volatile high quality spirit herbs.

If she detonated that vessel, the raw concussive backlash would rip his fragile soul form into scattered fragments.

"Damn it, fine!" Xiao Long roared, his voice trembling with a mixture of absolute frustration and terror.

He realized he could no longer afford to hold back his true, forbidden reserves if he wanted to survive this insane ambush.

"Spirit Avatar!"

Then, from behind him, rising straight out of the dark earth like a terrifying demon crawling out of the deepest depths of hell, a giant, terrifying spectral figure emerged, expanding rapidly until it completely enveloped his own form and the trembling body of Chu Yan.

The spectral entity was clad in ancient, heavily detailed Chinese armor, its glowing eyes radiating a cold, murderous intent.

It held a massive, double-bladed halberd in its spectral hands, standing at a staggering 150 meters in height, its very presence causing the surrounding alpine winds to freeze in place.

It was Xiao Long’s ultimate trump card, his Spirit Avatar, a manifestation of his dao, his concept of invincibility given form!

However, despite the towering, world-crushing scale of the spectral giant, the lower half of the Ten Crowns showed absolutely no signs of fear.

They just stood their ground with a chilling, aristocratic calmness.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" Shen Cai laughed like a madman as the massive cannon finished charging its final matrix, the tip of the barrel compressing the air into a tiny, black singularity.

*BOOOOOOM!!!*

The weapon shot a blinding, catastrophic blast straight towards the center of Xiao Long and Chu Yan’s position.

The sheer, unyielding kinetic and spiritual energy of the projectile literally distorted the very fabric of space and time along its trajectory, creating a localized vacuum.

Before the terrifying might of that Rank 8 ancestral blast, the majestic, 150-meter-tall Spirit Avatar appeared as fragile and thin as a common piece of paper.

It took only one single blast.

The burning hot beam pierced cleanly through the center of the Spirit Avatar’s armored chest, shattering the core arrays holding the entity together.

The massive spectral giant immediately started to violently crumble, fracture lines of golden soul energy spreading across its arms and torso.

However, Xiao Long didn’t stay to fight to the bitter end.

Clenching his teeth, he immediately controlled his rapidly crumbling Spirit Avatar to escape, turning his giant form around and flying at desperate speeds towards the distant horizon, dragging Chu Yan along in a protective bubble.

However, looking at the retreating streak of light, none of the Shen Clan heirs or the villa girls gave chase.

They simply relaxed their stance, watching them flee with calm, indifferent expressions.

"This should be more than enough to satisfy the young master, right?" asked Shen Cai, coughing slightly from the heavy mechanical smoke clearing from the cannon’s exhaust vents.

Xu Xiansu nodded slowly, her arms remaining crossed as she watched the horizon. "Yes. Haoran only told us to scare them so they would flee in panic, and he’d handle the rest of the operational execution himself."

Everyone nodded in unison, completely trusting the Shen Haoran’s grand strategy.

The reason why Haoran did this was because he was afraid that if they really pushed these unreasonable chosen ones into an edge, the universe might just directly give them a Supreme backer, and it would be far difficult to kill them then.

"Phew." Shen Cai wiped an imaginary layer of sweat from his forehead, a massive, proud grin spreading across his face as he lovingly patted the smoking barrel of his weapon. "Oh man, firing this beautiful baby was a complete dream come true. My old man has had this locked in my storage ring for decades and never let me test-fire it even once."

"I can certainly see why he kept it locked away; it literally distorted time and space during the launch sequence," said Shen Ying, her brow furrowing into a sharp frown as she examined the spatial fractures lingering in the air where the blast had traveled.

She began cooling her alchemy cauldron, extinguishing her coiling flames.

Xu Xiansu ignored their banter entirely and turned her gaze back towards the ancient peach blossom tree standing in the center of the clearing.

"Alright, enough talking. Tell Haoran if he arrives that I’m going ahead inside that tree’s dimension."

With that definitive statement, she walked purposefully towards the tree trunk and firmly pressed her palms straight towards the conjoined sun and moon engravings.

The ancient bark instantly glowed with a brilliant, blinding silver and golden light, recognizing the true resonance of the Sun Moon Divine Physique within her soul.

And within a single, breathless instant, her physical body dissolved into a flash of starlight, and she completely vanished from the clearing, entering the hidden pocket dimension of the Sun Moon Refinement Tower.

*

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At this exact moment, several miles away in the upper sky.

"Shit! Dammit! Shit!" Xiao Long cursed frantically, the soul energy composing his Spirit Avatar flickering violently as the damage from the cannon blast began to rot his spirit circuits.

In a state of absolute, unadulterated panic, he screamed deep within his mind. "System! System, help me right now! I’m really, truly going to die out here, you know!"

Before the mysterious system could even offer a formal mechanical response, the shadows stretching across the clouds below suddenly warped and twisted.

Moving with an unnatural, silent speed, a giant hand constructed entirely from high-density, ink-black shadow energy erupted from the sky, instantly grasping his fleeing, crumbling Spirit Avatar in a crushing, inescapable grip.

"Ack!?" Xiao Long coughed up a thick mouthful of spectral, glowing blood as the shadow hand compressed his Spirit Avatar, halting his flight entirely.

"Master!" Chu Yan shouted worriedly, his face turning completely pale as he hung helplessly within the collapsing energy bubble, watching his ultimate backer get pinned like a bug.

However...

"Going somewhere so soon, you two?"

The cold, smooth voice drifted down from above, instantly chilling them to the absolute core of their bones.

The two of them looked up with wide, terrified eyes, and saw Shen Haoran standing completely at ease upon his floating silver sword, his dark robes fluttering gently in the high-altitude wind.

And beside him, standing effortlessly on the empty space itself, was the quiet, lethal figure of Qing’er.

Her slender hands were extended forward, her fingers wrapped in thick strands of dark energy that were directly connected to the giant shadow hand that had captured their avatar.

Haoran looked down at them, a polite, completely serene smile playing on his lips.

For a brief, terrifying fraction of a second, his golden eyes completely flickered into the shifting, brilliant color of a rainbow, before slowly returning to their original, calculating golden color.

It was an absolute success. Using his Karmic Light Observation Technique, he could clearly see that Chu Yan’s legendary protagonist luck—although technically still containing the outline of seven distinct colors—was now entirely faded, dull, and washed out, completely unlike the brilliant, blindingly bright colors it possessed when they first encountered each other in the classroom.

In other words, due to his plans over the past week, the boy’s world luck had now officially run out, and the plot armor was about to be completely gone.

Although, as he examined the duo closely, Haoran was slightly surprised to find out that the elderly spirit traveling with Chu Yan, this Xiao Long, was actually also a formal protagonist variable himself.

In fact, his intrinsic luck was currently even brighter and more vibrant than Chu Yan’s luck had been in his prime.

"System! Do something! Help me! I don’t want to die here!" Xiao Long screamed hysterically in his mind, his soul structure cracking under Qing’er’s crushing grip.

[Ding! Analyzing current hostile parameters... Threat level: Critical.]

[System Notice: Host... The System can indeed temporarily activate the supreme Emergency Life Preservation Mode to take over your body and fight in your stead temporarily, with an enhanced strength. However, executing this transcended cosmic maneuver will require an absolute, massive amount of world luck value to bypass the world’s suppression.]

[System Choice: Would you like to use your own accumulated personal luck values(Note: This action is Very Important and will permanently degrade your system level)—or would you prefer to entirely devour and liquidate the remaining world luck of the designated chosen one, your disciple Chu Yan?]

What...? Xiao Long’s thoughts froze completely as the systemic prompt blinked in his consciousness, the dark choice hanging before his soul.