Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Haoran watched with a calm, analytical detachedness as Xiao Zhan’s immortal soul was forcefully pinned to the ground by the blinding weight of the golden runic matrix.

The immense spiritual pressure that had just threatened to tear the entire Imperial Academy Dimension into microscopic fragments was now being violently compressed, forced back into the old man’s spectral core until he could barely hiss through his teeth.

The Seven Elders all looked solemn, their figures standing tall and proud as they stared at the immortal soul.

At that moment, Haoran and Qing’er descended from the sky like two falling leaves, their boots landing with a soft, synchronized thud on the shattered stone tiles just a few meters away from the heavily suppressed Immortal soul.

Just then, the very fabric of space behind them rippled like water as three figures emerged from the spatial tear, their auras so profoundly immense that the ambient air instantly dropped in temperature and the space distortion immediately stopped.

Chu Xueyu, Feng Yuyan, and Leng Shuang landed perfectly in unison beside him, their expressions a mix of maternal concern, calculating coldness, and unhinged curiosity.

In that very instant, seeing the arrival of the matriarchs of the lineage, Qing’er immediately dropped to her knees before them.

She pressed her forehead flat against the cracked, dust-covered stone floor, her shoulders trembling slightly as she didn’t dare raise her head even a single fraction of an inch to look them in the eye.

"Madam... please forgive my incompetence," Qing’er’s voice was a tight, muffled whisper of pure, raw shame. "Forgive me for not being able to properly protect the young master from the enemy. I have failed my duties as a shadow guard."

Chu Xueyu turned her elegant head, her majestic eyes softening slightly as she looked down at the kneeling shadow guard.

She casually waved her slender, silk-sleeved hand through the air. "It’s fine, child. Stand up. You fought bravely against an entity that wielded the strength of a Supreme Emperor, and you kept him safe. You did your best, and you should not be punished or be ashamed."

But despite the matriarch’s explicit, gentle permission, Qing’er remained firmly pinned to the ground, her rigid training and her deep internal guilt refusing to let her stand up so easily.

Seeing her stubbornness, Chu Xueyu didn’t insist or force the matter, turning her focus back to the true priority.

Instead, she just patted her shoulder, as if to reassure...but the moment she did so, she froze.

This... Yin Yang Origin Sacred Physique? She thought in shocked, staring at Qing’er, Her physique has fully awakened?

But how? This requires her to have intercourse with someone who possessed extreme Yang essence.

Did her son made her sleep with someone else? No, that’s impossible. With how possessive Haoran is, that is not an option.

In other words, either Haoran found a method to awaken the physique without requiring for intercourse, or he himself had sex with Qing’er.

Haoran possessed the ember of Gold Incinerating Supreme Flame, which is also an extreme yang essence, making him eligible to be her partner.

But... How did he do it without exploding?

...it seems she needs to figure that out soon.

Chu Xueyu turned fully towards her son, a beautiful, genuinely warm smile gracing her flawless features as she stepped forward to examine his tattered robes.

"It is an incredibly rare occasion for you to actively reach out and ask us for direct assistance, son. Are alright?"

She has a lot of questions to ask, but those can wait. Haoran’s safety is more important.

"I’m completely fine, mother," Haoran smiled smoothly, his demeanor instantly returning to its standard, relaxed elegance as he adjusted his cuffs. "I just simply thought that since you had previously warned me that hunting down these slippery dogs of the heavens would be significantly harder now, I simply decided that it would be most efficient to just add a contingency plan to the grid. There was no need to gamble with my own safety."

"You did the right thing, Haoran," said Feng Yuyan, smiling broadly as she stepped closer.

However, her focus wasn’t on her nephew’s well-being at all.

Instead, her wide, unhinged eyes were completely and intensely fixed on the heavily suppressed, glowing green soul of Xiao Zhan lying in the dirt.

Her eyes were literally sparkling with a manic, obsessive light. There was also thick, viscous saliva that was literally drooling out of the corner of her mouth, dripping onto her pristine silk collar.

Right now, she looked less like a Heavenly Saint Realm expert and more like a starving beast presented with a royal feast.

"Immortal soul... a genuine, functional Immortal soul... oh, the possibilities... the dissection channels... immortal soul...immortal soul...hmmm~! I’m so excited I’m about to burst!"

"Wipe your disgusting mouth, sister," Leng Shuang said, her voice an absolute, ice-cold sheet of northern frost as she stood with her arms crossed, glaring at her sibling’s lack of decorum. "You are embarrassing yourself."

But Feng Yuyan seemed to completely not hear her words, her mind entirely consumed by the intoxicating, rare essence of the immortal prey before her.

She kept muttering under her breath, her fingers twitching as if she were already holding a scalpel.

"Haoran," Chu Xueyu called out, her tone suddenly turning sharp and business-like as she looked up at the trembling dimensions of the school. "We cannot afford to stay here in this place for much longer. The Shen Clan right now is rather defenseless without our presence."

Indeed, the reality of their sudden deployment was highly dangerous.

Every single peak Heavenly Saint Realm expert of the Shen Clan had gathered here today in this academy dimension just to ensure Haoran’s safety.

Although there were still several ordinary Heavenly Saint Realm experts currently left behind to guard the clan’s main borders, those branch elders were ultimately entirely powerless before a 9th Stage Heavenly Saint Realm vanguard, much less a Supreme Emperor from a rival clan.

If those other houses who are bitter enemies of the Shen Clan somehow caught wind of the fact that their top experts were currently missing from the ancestral halls, they would definitely launch a full-scale, apocalyptic preemptive attack to erase the clan’s territory.

"I understand completely, mother," Haoran nodded, his expression turning serious. "Let’s wrap this up immediately."

Just then...

"AAAHHH! YOU PATHETIC BRATS TRULY THINK A CRUDE MORTAL FORMATION CAN STOP ME?!"

Xiao Zhan’s roaring voice shattered the brief silence.

Defying the colossal weight of the golden runic matrix, he actually forced his spectral legs to stand up, his knees trembling and shaking violently as green soul sparks flew out from his joints.

His eyes burned with an unquenchable, demonic fury.

The Elders were startled, and immediately poured all their power to the formation, fearing that he will be able to break free and slaughter them all.

Chu Xueyu frowned deeply at his stubborn resilience. "How persistent. The Seven Seal Formation deployed by the Seven Elders can even comfortably restrict three fully realized Supreme Emperors simultaneously, and the secondary Tri-Seal Formation the three of us formed should also easily restrict a rogue Supreme on its own. It seems even though it’s just a soul, an Immortal is still immortal."

"Immortal soul... a beautiful, angry immortal soul..." Feng Yuyan kept muttering, rubbing her legs, her eyes turning bloodshot with a manic desire to begin her experiments.

Leng Shuang turned her cold gaze towards Chu Xueyu. "Sister, let’s stop playing around and let’s use that formation immediately."

Chu Xueyu thought deeply for a brief, calculated moment and nodded her head in agreement. "Very well. Although that formation technically requires three Supremes to properly operate without backlash, the three of us together should be more than enough to do it."

With that definitive statement, her body dissolved into a flash of golden light as she flew to another distant cardinal direction of the clearing, her eyes locked on to Xiao Zhan.

Seeing her sister move, Leng Shuang turned and sharply elbowed Feng Yuyan directly in the ribs with enough concentrated, brutal force that the unhinged woman let out a sudden, ragged hurl.

Her spine bent completely double, and she was even forcefully driven down to her knees against the hard stone.

*Cough! Cough!*

"What in the hell was that for, you icy brute?!" Feng Yuyan raised her head frantically, wiping the dust from her chin, looking completely shocked and indignant.

"We’re using that formation. Quit drooling and get to your designated quadrant immediately," said Leng Shuang coldly, before her figure blurred, flying to another opposite direction of the sky to anchor the secondary node.

Feng Yuyan heaved a heavy, annoyed breath, rubbing her sore ribs and muttering several highly colorful, profane curses under her breath before her body transformed into a streak of green light, flying to the final remaining direction of the triangular perimeter.

"Ready?" Chu Xueyu called out, and without waiting for a reply, she immediately started.

Behind her, a massive, golden spectral figure of a woman in armor, holding a spear, emerged from her back.

When it stood, it completely reached the skies, with height of over ten thousand meters!

This was her Spirit Avatar! A Spirit Avatar of a Saint!

Following that, Feng Yuyan also summoned her Spirit Avatar that is no way smaller than Chu Xueyu.

It was an abomination, a fevered nightmare given flesh, a grotesque chimera of several beasts brutally slammed and stitched together into one thrashing horror.

Three heads crowned its lurching neck: a snarling wolf-lion with cracked fangs and a single mad eye, a gaping reptilian dragon-crocodile maw lined with crooked horns, and a shrieking avian-boar hybrid shedding feathers over exposed bone.

They snapped and fought one another, tearing at shared sinew.

Its patchwork body was a bulging mass of clashing fur, scales, and feathers, held by crude black threads and glowing runes that wept pus and ichor.

One forelimb was a massive clawed bear arm, the other a spindly chitinous blade; its hind legs mismatched—a powerful tiger limb beside a dragging hooved one, and a venom-dripping serpent-scorpion tail whipped angrily from its spine.

Every jerking movements caused stitches to pop and reseal with wet, sucking sounds.

The air reeked of rot and unstable qi as the creature roared in a chorus of growls, hisses, and shrieks—a living violation of nature, born from forbidden power.

Lastly, Leng Shuang also summoned hers.

Unlike Chu Xueyu, Leng Shuang’s Spirit Avatar is just a massive, gold and red spectral bipedal dragon.

It emerged from her as if it crawled out of hell, its wings unraveled, causing tornados that seem to blow worlds apart.

It roared, its tail swinging with such force space bent over it.

Then, moving with a terrifying, absolute synchronization that had been honed through centuries of shared battles, the three sisters simultaneously made several intricate, blindingly fast hand signs, drawing massive, glowing primordial runes directly into the empty air.

Their Spirit Avatars glowed.

*OMMMMMM——!*

Then, a colossal, perfectly triangular-shaped formation of pure, blinding white and gold energy materialized across the sky, anchoring itself directly beneath Xiao Zhan’s trapped feet.

Xiao Zhan froze completely, the sheer, crushing concept of the new array causing his spectral form to turn rigid.

"This... This is..."

"Immortal Soul Suppression Array!" the three sisters called out in unison, their voices overlapping to create a single, dictatorial decree that echoed through the fabric of the dimension.

In that exact, terrifying instant, Xiao Zhan slowly found his spectral body getting encased from the boots upward in what appeared to be heavy, dull grey concrete, but was actually an unknown, primordial cosmic material forged specifically to solidify soul essence.

"No! Damn you! Curse you into the deepest pits of the abyss!" Xiao Zhan roared frantically.

He reached down with his spectral hands, grabbing the rising grey material and ripping it away with wild, desperate strength, but the cold substance quickly formed and multiplied once again, crawling up his thighs and torso like a living plague.

Xiao Zhan growled like a trapped animal, his bloodshot eyes glaring past the barrier to lock directly onto Shen Haoran’s calm, smiling face.

He threw out his final, desperate curses, his voice cracking with pure, unadulterated venom.

"Shen Haoran! You arrogant, merciless little bastard! Do not think this is the end of your play! My main soul is still waiting in the higher Immortal Realms! My clan will eventually learn of this atrocity! I will hunt your lineage down through a thousand worlds! I will skin your soul! I will make you suffer—"

*CLANG!*

His hateful words were cut off completely.

The grey, primordial material crawled over his mouth, his eyes, and finally his crown, completely encasing and sealing him into a solid, motionless statue of grey stone.

The Immortal Soul Suppression Array sank into the earth, locking his essence away into absolute, silent darkness, fully prepped for Feng Yuyan’s future laboratory table.