Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Xiao Zhan stared at the fortress, took a deep breath, and decided to compromise.

Anyways, his son wasn’t killed, there is no need for a life and death feud with the Shen Clan over this matter.

"Kid, for the sake of the Shen Clan’s face, I will temporarily restrain myself and choose not to kill you today," Xiao Zhan spoke, his deep, spectral voice vibrating with an intense, forced composure that poorly masked the trembling anxiety underneath.

Indeed. He was anxious. He has no way of knowing if the Shen Clan here has a method to contact the Shen Clan in the Immortal Realm.

But if they do, and this incident was known, it would surely be a catastrophic event.

His misty eyes locked hard onto the hovering fortress. "However, you must immediately swear an absolute, binding oath to the high heavens right now that you will no longer target my son, nor cross his path ever again, or else..."

He abruptly stopped, deliberately leaving his final words hanging ominously in the air.

Although he was afraid, he need to look tough. Because if they knew that he doesn’t dare offend the Shen Clan, they will certainly ask for price that will make him bleed.

Beside him, Xiao Long looked completely and utterly stunned, his jaw dropping in sheer disbelief as he stared wildly at his father’s protective back.

"Dad?! What in the world are you saying?! That monster up there is the exact man who literally orchestrated the killing of my disciple and almost murdered your own biological son! Why are you trying to negotiate with him?! Just kill him! There is no reasoning with a madman!"

Xiao Zhan remained completely and agonizingly silent, refusing to look back at his screaming child.

In truth, he would also like to kill the person who tried to kill his son, but the tragic and unchanging reality of the universe was a crushing weight.

He cannot afford to.

The proud Xiao Family was indeed considered a highly formidable, wealthy, and powerful clan within the standard hierarchies of the upper Immortal Realms.

Over all, they can be ranked in the upper-middle tier.

But, that’s all. They were not even a top tier force, much less a dominant, ruling superpower that owned an entire sovereign immortal realm to themselves.

They were still subject to the grand cosmic food chain, hiding under the covers of a superpower that owned the Immortal Realm where they resides in.

And they absolutely, under no circumstances, could afford to offend the batshit insane titans of the Shen Clan.

If this dangerous situation only involved his own individual life, then killing this arrogant young man might still be a calculated risk worth taking.

After all, once the deed was done, he could simply shatter his own identity, sever his karma, and spend the next few millennia running and hiding across the infinite, vast reaches of the outer domains where the Shen Clan’s standard tracking arrays wouldn’t easily be able to pinpoint his soul signature.

However, he wasn’t a lone wolf.

He possessed a beloved wife waiting for his core return, a massive, thriving ancestral clan filled with thousands of innocent bloodlines, and a vulnerable son standing right behind him.

If the unhinged, merciless elders of the Shen Clan targeted his entire lineage because of a single transgression committed here today, then his family would be entirely erased from existence, and he would never, ever be able to forgive his own foolish pride.

"..."

Xiao Zhan looked up and carefully observed the massive, humming structure of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and, realizing that the fortress had completely ceased its bombardment and didn’t make an immediate, aggressive counter-move, he quietly breathed a long, deep sigh of mental relief.

At the very least, it seemed to him that the specific, younger branch descendants of the Shen Clan stationed here in this remote mortal realm weren’t quite as completely unhinged and unreasonably violent as the terrifying, old monsters he had personally encountered back in the immortal realm.

They were willing to pause and consider diplomatic boundaries.

However... his calculation was a fatal, catastrophic mistake.

The very instant that he lowered his guard, believing that Haoran was already reasoned with...

*SHNG——!*

A sharp, sudden sound of a single, highly compressed energetic ray violently resounded directly beside his left ear.

Then, an instantaneous, incredibly intense flash of blinding purple heat caused his spectral eyes to suddenly widen to their absolute limits in profound, paralyzing shock.

The sheer velocity of the strike completely bypassed the reaction time of his residual soul fragment.

A few moments later, as the blinding, burning hot ray slowly dissipated into the atmosphere, Xiao Zhan slowly, tentatively turned his spectral head back toward the side—toward the exact, brief patch of ground where his son, Xiao Long, had just been standing a mere fraction of a second prior.

Now, there was absolutely nothing left.

Where his son had stood, there was only a massive, perfectly circular smoking hole carved deep into the black metallic earth, with the local space around the edges still violently warping, twisting, and melting from the catastrophic heat of the beam.

Not even a single trace, a single drop of blood, or a single microscopic fragment of his son’s physical body or soul signature remained.

Xiao Long had been completely and utterly vaporized, erased from the annals of existence down to his very atomic composition.

High above, inside the heavily armored, luxurious central control room of the floating garden, Shen Haoran let out a low, incredibly amused chuckle as he rested his chin back on his hand.

"You are just a pathetic, decaying fragment of a soul that doesn’t belong in this world, and yet you actually think that you possess the qualifications to try and negotiate terms with me?" Haoran’s voice echoed smoothly across the communications channel, dripping with an icy, merciless contempt. "The audacity. Know your low place, you worthless worm."

"Ah... Ahhh..." Xiao Zhan stared blankly at the empty, smoking void where his beloved child had been.

A profound, suffocating tide of absolute despair, agonizing grief, and mind-numbing pain ripped through his spiritual core, tearing at the very fabric of his consciousness.

The realization that his immense sacrifice, his compliance, and his desperate restraint had resulted in the immediate death of his only son shattered his sanity into a million jagged pieces.

"AAAAAHHHHH!"

He screamed at the absolute top of his lungs, a raw, guttural, and demonic shriek of pure, unadulterated hatred that shook the cosmic laws.

Tears of glowing green soul essence flowed freely from his bloodshot eyes as the entirety of his hidden, suppressed immortal-tier powers suddenly and violently burst out of his spectral body like a supernovic explosion, no longer caring about hidden consequences or clan survival.

In a single, terrifying instant, the immense pressure of his unleashed immortal qi caused the boundaries of Haoran’s independent world to loudly crack.

The black metallic earth and the crimson sky fractured into millions of pieces before the entire pocket world slowly crumbled into dust and completely disappeared from the cosmic grid, unable to contain the raw wrath of a grieving father.

Now, the three of them—Haoran, Qing’er, and the raging spectral figure of Xiao Zhan—suddenly reappeared floating high in the open sky of the original Imperial Academy Dimension.

The hanging gardens remained in Haoran’s world, after all, he couldn’t really use it outside due to cultivation restrictions.

But even within this larger space, the sheer, catastrophic volume of Xiao Zhan’s immortal energy was so intensely massive that the whole academy dimension was still violently shaking as deep, black spatial cracks starting to appear rapidly across the real sky above the burning ruins of the city.

"Why?! Why did you do it?! Why?!" Xiao Zhan screamed hysterically, his bloodshot eyes glaring with a burning murderous intensity straight the two figures in front of him.

A wave of bitter, toxic regret swallowed his mind.

He shouldn’t have ever tried to reason with these monsters!

He shouldn’t have let his fear of the clan name dictate his movements!

He should have listened to his son’s warnings from the very first second and mercilessly slaughtered these two arrogant brats on the spot!

That’s right... the members of the supreme Shen Clan were all certified, bloodthirsty lunatics.

Why in the world had he foolishly expected a young lunatic to ever listen to diplomatic reason?

Now, his only son was dead, his soul completely scattered into the void.

How in the nine layers of heaven was he ever going to return to the immortal realms and explain this horrific, tragic failure to his loving wife?

The grief would destroy her.

"Ah! I will not kill you! I will absolutely not grant you the sweet mercy of death anymore, Shen Haoran!" Xiao Zhan roared, his voice shaking the mountain ranges below as he pointed a finger at them. "I will keep your miserable body alive! I will forcefully drag your soul out of your flesh and torture you for the next ten thousand years in ways that go far beyond the boundaries of human imagination! I will flay your meridians daily, burn your consciousness in purgatorial soul-flames, and make you beg for the release of oblivion every single second of your wretched existence!"

"How cute," Haoran’s smooth voice drifted out, entirely unbothered, sounding as if he were casually reviewing a boring performance by a common street actor. "Unfortunately for you, old man... you simply won’t have the chance to touch me."

At that exact, critical second, right beneath Xiao Zhan’s floating spectral feet, a massive, ancient, and blindingly complex golden runic heptagon suddenly and violently glowed to life across the sky, trapping him within its cosmic matrix.

"W-What!? What is this!?" Xiao Zhan exclaimed in shock.

At that moment, he felt as if he was completely immobilized, unable to move even a muscle.

Then, from each corner of this runes, seven familiar figure stood, pouring their qi to power the formation.

They are the Seven Enshrined Elders of the Shen Clan!

Qing’er stared at them, startled. She doesn’t know when did they get here, or why. After all, these old folks almost never left their nests, wanting to cultivate to breakthrough to Supreme Realm as soon as possible.

"I called them." Said Haoran.

Qing’er blinked, turning towards him.

Haoran smiled, "Before I left the Academy City after dealing with Elder Mu, I contacted them, just in case things didn’t go as planned."

Qing’er nodded, almost in awe at how farsighted her own young master was.

"That’s not all..." Haoran looked up and grinned.

Qing’er followed his gaze, and her eyes snapped wide open.

There, high above, a triangular formations with countless glowing runes was descending like a meteor.

And on three sides, were the three Shen Sisters; Chu Xueyu, Feng Yuyan, and Leng Shuang.

"AAAAHHHH!" Xiao Zhan roared, trying to break free.

But at that moment, the triangular formation slammed into him.

And in that instant, he was slammed down to the ground.