Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!-Chapter 102: The Ancient Saint

The golden light of the spatial gateway did not merely dazzle as he entered, but it felt like a physical weight pressing against Shen Haoran’s retinas, forcing him to shield his eyes as the world he knew was stripped away.

Or rather, he felt as if he was falling down, even though he knew that he wasn’t moving.

When the sensation of falling finally subsided and he regained his vision, the biting frost of the Northern Continent had been replaced by a heavy, humid stillness.

He stood in the center of a clearing within a dark, ancient forest.

The trees here were titanic, their bark gnarled like the skin of prehistoric saurians, and their leaves were a deep, bruised purple that seemed to absorb what little light filtered down from a stagnant, emerald sky.

Haoran remained perfectly still, his arms crossed over his chest, his golden eyes scanning the trees, or rather, the entire surroundings.

"...these are... Dragon Scaled Oak Tree? Never knew they still exists. They have been extinct in Prime Origin Realm for nearly a hundred thousand years."

"...and that flower, a Sun Kissed Daisy? They have also been extinct for ten thousand years."

"And that one..."

Haoran was actually surprised by the floras of this realm, after all, almost all of them were already extinct.

Although they weren’t necessarily great for Cultivation, it was still a good decorations.

Some seniors who are into these stuffs wold pay quite the hefty sum for these extinct flora species.

Shaking his head, he went to one of the trees and leaned back on it as he waited for several minutes... but the space around him remained silent.

There was no ripple of light, no sign of Ling Luochen or Shangguan Mu’er, or even any other people who entered.

"...A randomized spatial displacement, perhaps?" Haoran murmured, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the oppressive quiet. "The gateway was designed to scatter participants. A classic tactic to prevent groups from dominating the trials through sheer numbers."

Suddenly, the air itself began to vibrate, and a deep, majestic voice, carrying the weight of eons and the sharpness of a thousand blades, echoed throughout the entire realm, resonating not in the ears, but directly within the souls of those who had entered.

[I am the Heaven Piercing Saint! You have entered the final resting place of the man who defied the stars. You are now within my trial grounds; if you wish to advance and claim what I have left behind, you must first prove your strength! The weak have no place in my lineage. Hunt down as many demonic beasts as you can within one hour and present their cores at the central altar. Only the ten individuals who slay the most shall pass to the next stage. Be warned: the quality and rank of the beasts will weigh more heavily than mere numbers. Begin!]

With a final, booming resonance that caused the purple leaves to shiver, the voice vanished, leaving a lingering hum in the atmosphere.

"Heaven Piercing Saint?" Haoran’s brow furrowed, a flicker of genuine recognition crossing his face. "So, this is where that old ghost ended up. The man who dominated his era and suppressed his peers to the point they couldn’t even raise their heads, three hundred thousand years ago."

Haoran remembered the history books within the Shen Clan’s Library, and also since it was taught to every member of the Shen Clan.

This is about Heaven Piercing Saint, who was a legendary figure, a rogue cultivator of such immense talent that the Shen Clan—usually dismissive of "outsiders"—had actually extended a formal invitation for him to become a High Enshrined Elder.

But he had refused with a scoff, famously claiming he would rather be a free dog than a golden bird in a Shen cage, completely offending them.

But the offense was intolerable to the Shen Clan of that era, so they had dispatched a Supreme Emperor to "reclaim the face of the clan" and execute the upstart.

The battle that followed was a cataclysm that had rewritten the geography of three star systems.

But against all logic, the Heaven Piercing Saint, despite being a rank lower, had managed to escape, no, he hadn’t just fled; he had traded life-force for a forbidden strike that slew the Shen Clan’s Supreme Emperor on the spot!

This shook the entire realm back then, as for the first time since recorded history, a Saint had killed a Supreme from the Shen Clan!

Let it be known that the Shen Clan possessed one of the most complete cultivation techniques and knowledge, both theoretical and practical passed down since time immemorial!

It has always been the Shen clan who skips ranks to kill opponents who are at a higher realm, not the other way around!

It was one of the greatest humiliations in the millions of years of Shen history, so much so that rven now, three hundred thousand years later, the clan’s spite remained fresh.

In every major city within the Shen Domain, a statue of that fallen Supreme was erected in the public squares—not out of honor, but so that every passing clan member could slap the stone face and vent their anger on the "failure" who lost to a mere Saint.

"...The Shen Clan never forgets, and they certainly never forgive. In other words, we are incredibly petty." Haoran mused, rubbing his chin as he looked up at the emerald canopy. "Still, to think he fell and hid his secret realm here, in a corner of the Saint Burial Realm. Heh, if I hadn’t descended, Jiang Chen would have stumbled upon this place. He would have inherited the techniques of the man who had once killed a Shen’s Supreme. The heavens really do love their irony."

He began to walk deeper into the forest, his pace leisurely yet deliberate.

His excitement was palpable, after all,the inheritance of a Saint capable of slaying a Supreme Emperor of the Shen Clan was infinitely more valuable than the dusty scrolls of the Bright Silver Emperor.

It was a power that allowed even a rouge Cultivator to step on the head of a Shen Clan’s Supreme, and he intended to be the one to own it.

*

In a separate region of the forest, where the trees were choked by thorny, black vines, Ling Luochen stood her ground.

Before her, a Golden-Toothed Winged Tiger paced in a low crouch.

The beast was a nightmare of evolution, its fur shimmering with metallic scales and its fangs glowing with a sickly, necrotic yellow light.

It was a demonic beast at the peak of the Core Formation realm, its aura thick with a predatory hunger.

The tiger let out a roar that shredded the nearby foliage, its wings unfurling to reveal serrated edges.

Ling Luochen didn’t flinch. She reached into her storage ring and drew her sword—a slender, single-edged blade of exquisite white jade-steel that seemed to hum in anticipation.

She didn’t adopt a standard defensive stance. Instead, she stood straight, her blood-red eyes reflecting the beast’s rage.

Suddenly, the tribal tattoo on her back erupted with a violent purple light as the air behind her warped and curdled, manifesting a towering, phantom image of an Asura.

The purple-skinned, demon-like entity possessed three heads—one weeping, one laughing, and one snarling—and six massive arms that mirrored her movements.

"If you wish to feast upon my flesh, little cat, you should have brought a Nascent Soul pack leader with you," Luochen said, her voice dropping into a chilling, demonic register.

As the tiger lunged, a blur of purple and silver, Luochen moved.

She just simply swing her sword, and the Asura behind her struck with six spectral blades simultaneously.

The forest was silenced by the sound of rending meat and shattering bone.

*

*

*

Elsewhere, near a black-watered lake that smelled of sulfur, Shangguan Mu’er walked through a literal carpet of gore.

She was surrounded by the carcasses of dozens of demonic beasts—beaked serpents, armored boars, and multi-eyed wolves.

In her hand, she held a pitch-black sword that seemed to be alive as she stood amidst the carnage, the blade emitted a low, rhythmic thrumming, like a heartbeat.

Tendrils of dark crimson mist rose from the fallen beasts, flowing toward the sword; it was drinking their blood!

No, it wasn’t just drinking their blood; the very muscle and marrow of the demonic creatures were being unnaturally withered, their essence stripped away and absorbed into the black steel!

This is a method used by every demonic cultivators!

Shangguan Mu’er let out a long, weary sigh of disappointment as she flicked the blade, sending a spray of useless, grey ash—all that remained of a Rank 3 and 4 beast—into the wind.

"The blood of these low-tier demonic beasts is thin and bitter," she murmured, her Bluish-silver hair catching the emerald light. "It provides no satisfaction for my blade’s thirst at all. Perhaps this trial would be more efficient if I simply hunted the other participants. Human essence is always so much... richer."

She looked toward the center of the forest, her eyes cold.

She wasn’t here for the inheritance or whatever, instead she was here to serve her Young Master, but if she could feed her blade along the way, she wouldn’t hesitate.

*

*

*

Deep in the frozen sector of the secret realm, where the ancient forest was encased in permafrost, Xue Bing’er stood alone.

Seven Frost-Bite Dire Wolves circled her, their eyes glowing with a feral blue intelligence.

They growled, their breath turning into jagged icicles in the air.

Xue Bing’er didn’t even reach for a weapon as she simply stood with her arms crossed, her light blue hair fluttering in the unnatural wind.

With a casual flick of her wrist, she whispered a single syllable.

Instantly, the moisture in the air for a fifty-meter radius crystallized.

The wolves didn’t have time to yelp as they were almost instantly frozen solid mid-growl, turned into exquisite, terrifying statues of ice.

The trees, the ground, and even the falling leaves were encased in a foot of diamond-hard frost.

Xue Bing’er walked forward, her boots clicking softly on the frozen ground, and as she passed the first wolf, she lightly tapped the ice with her knuckle.

SHATTER.

The frozen beast disintegrated into a million crystalline shards, followed by the others in a rhythmic chain reaction of destruction.

She didn’t stop to check her work as she continued walking toward the golden light in the distance, her expression as indifferent as the winter she commanded.

To her, these "trials" were merely a distraction from the true objective.