Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!-Chapter 72: New Body

The main hall of the Ning Clan, once a symbol of pristine elegance and quiet strength, still smelled of ozone and ancient dust, but the atmosphere within had shifted from the despair of near-annihilation to a state of profound, breathless awe.

Old Jian, the Sword Saint who had nearly seen his soul dissipate into the void, was no longer a flickering blue orb or a broken old man.

Instead, he was standing in the center of the hall, clenching and unclenching his fists with a look of manic intensity.

He began jumping up and down, his movements blurring with a fluid, terrifying speed that his old, flesh-and-blood body could never have achieved.

He stretched his limbs, feeling the way the artificial meridians within this new form hummed with a resonance that felt more like singing than the mere flow of Qi.

Once he was certain the fusion was complete, Old Jian didn’t hesitate and immediately dropped to his knees, the sound of his impact echoing against the jade floor, and kowtowed deeply before the silent figure of Qing’er.

"Thank you so much for giving me this body, Miss Qing’er! This old man owes you a debt that transcends life and death!"

Qing’er stood like a statue of obsidian, her emotionless red eyes tracking his movements with the clinical detachment of a master craftsman.

"That body was forged using materials suited for a Saint Realm expert," she said, her voice like the chime of a cold bell. "It was designed to allow a Saint to display their full martial prowess after a soul-fusion. For a Spirit Ascension cultivator like yourself, its potential is far greater than your previous shell. This body effectively removes all the physical bottlenecks inherent in your bloodline. It will not only sustain you but will actively assist you in speeding through the Cultivation ranks until you reach the Saint Realm."

Old Jian’s head snapped up, his eyes wide and trembling. "S-Saint... Saint Realm!?"

The word hit the room like a physical shockwave.

It wasn’t just Old Jian who was stunned, but Ning Xiao, sitting upon his throne with his hands gripping the armrests, felt his breath hitch, and even Old Hu, who was currently covered in medicinal bandages and being treated by the clan’s top healers, stared at Qing’er as if she had just claimed the sun was made of spirit water.

For thousands of years, the Eastern Region had been a stagnant pond where not only had a Saint Realm expert not walked its soil in living memory, but even the Nirvana Rebirth realm, the stepping stone to Sainthood, had been relegated to the status of a myth.

The only reason the Eastern Region even believed such levels existed was that the Southern, Western, and Northern Regions still boasted Nirvana Rebirth experts in their highest ranks, maintaining a status quo that left the East as the "weakest" of the four cardinals.

To hear that Old Jian now possessed the guaranteed potential to surpass even those legendary figures was enough to make the heavens tremble.

"Thank you! Thank you! I will never be able to repay you in this lifetime or the next, Miss Qing’er!" Old Jian kowtowed again, his forehead hitting the floor with a rhythmic thud.

No one in the hall moved to stop him.

In the brutal hierarchy of the Cultivation world, where strength was the only true currency, having been given a clear path to the Saint Realm was a gift beyond value.

If an Emperor of one of the Big 3 Kingdoms were offered such a chance, they would have gladly barked and wagged their tail like a common cur just to be noticed.

Qing’er stared at him for a moment longer before turning her gaze toward Ning Xueli, who stood at the side.

Seeing the young lady nod in silent approval, Qing’er simply melted into the environment.

With a single, flickering step, she vanished into the shadows of the pillars, her presence erased from the room as if she had never been there.

A moment later, the tension in the room broke as Old Jian finally stood up, his face split into a grin so wide it made him look like a child who had just been promised his favorite toy by his parents.

He looked younger, the grey in his hair replaced by a vigorous silver, and his skin held a metallic sheen.

Old Hu, watching from his medicinal vat, let out a sharp, jealous snort. "Don’t act so smug, you old fossil. You just got lucky a pretty girl felt pity for your pathetic soul."

Old Jian laughed, a boisterous sound that rattled the remaining windowpanes. "Hahaha! Old Hu, I guess this is the day I leave you in the dust! I’ll be looking down at you from the clouds while you’re still struggling to fix your broken ribs. I guess I’ll have to leave you completely behind to chase my back!"

Old Hu gritted his teeth, his bandaged hands shaking with indignation. "Just you wait! My foundation is deeper than yours! I will catch up to you soon through sheer grit! I’ll reach the Saint Realm faster than you, mark my words!"

"Alright, grandpas, there’s no need to argue," Xueli interrupted, her voice soft but carrying an undeniable authority as she stepped forward, her blue dress sweeping across the floor.

"Tch... for my little Xueli’s sake, I won’t pursue this any longer, you insufferable Old Jian," Old Hu grumbled, though his eyes softened as he looked at her.

"Hmph! That’s my line," Old Jian countered, though he finally settled down, standing guard behind Xueli like an unbreakable shield.

Xueli smiled at them before her expression turned serious, turning toward her father. "Father... How is the Ning Clan?"

Ning Xiao’s expression, which had briefly brightened, immediately turned solemn and heavy as he looked at the ledgers on his desk, his voice laden with grief.

"Incredibly dire, Xueli. The numbers are still coming in, but many of our core members and elders died in the initial breach. Our ancestral defensive array, the pride of our family for ten generations, is shattered beyond repair. Eighty percent of the city was either burned to the ground or completely wrecked by the collateral damage of the high-level combat. It will take several generations of careful management before we can even dream of recovering to what we were before this disaster."

Xueli’s brow furrowed, her eyes flashing with a cold light. "Those Allied Kingdoms... they did this. Just you wait,i if Little Boy isn’t enough, I’ll drop Fat Man into them."

Ning Xiao slammed his fist onto the armrest, his voice trembling with a father’s rage. "They were truly too much! Instead of focusing their millions of troops on the Spirit Hall—the actual threat to their sovereignty—they chose to launch a full-scale annihilation campaign against us, a neutral party! They wanted our resources and our support spirits to fuel their war, and when we said no, they chose to erase us."

He paused, his anger simmering into a bitter realism. "Of course, I understand why they did it. In the of schemes and conspirackes, a neutral power is just a resource waiting to be taken by the enemy. If I were in their position, I might have made the same cold calculation. But that is that, and this is this. I will never forgive them for what they did to our home. They didn’t just attack a sect; they tried to slaughter a family."

"...Dad," Xueli said, reaching into her storage ring as she pulled out several ornate, silver-encrusted storage rings and handed them to her father.

Ning Xiao took them, his brow raised in confusion, but as he sent a sliver of his consciousness into the first ring, his eyes widened until it looked like they might fall out of his head.

He gasped, his hands shaking so violently he nearly dropped the artifacts.

"This... Xueli, this is—!? With this much wealth, you could buy the Ning Clan several times over! No, you could buy an entire Kingdom!"

"What!?"

Old Jian and Old Hu exclaimed in shock as Ning Xiao immediately tossed one of the rings to them so they could see for themselves.

"Holy—!?"

"W-What is this—!? Are these... Rank 5 Spirit Stones? And these herbs... they’re extinct!"

The two old experts stared at Xueli as if she were a god who had descended to walk among mortals.

The sheer volume of wealth—spirit stones, high-grade pills, rare ores, and ancient techniques—was enough to reshape the entire power structure of the Eastern Region.

Ning Xiao, however, felt a sudden surge of worry as he gripped the rings and looked at his daughter with a piercing gaze. "Xueli, tell me the truth... where did you get these? It couldn’t be from Young Master Shen, could it? If these are a ’gift’ from him... we cannot accept them."

He didn’t want the Shen Clan to look down on the Ning family. Most importantly, he didn’t want Haoran to misunderstand Xueli—to think of her as a gold-digging girl who was only tethered to him for his resources and status.

A marriage built on such a foundation would only lead to Xueli being a concubine or a servant in the Central Region.

"Take it, Dad. Relax," Xueli said, her smile turning proud. "Those were the things that the Senior Bright Silver Emperor left specifically for me in his inheritance. He was a Supreme Emperor who once ruled the stars; this wealth is but a fraction of his treasury. I’m giving it to the clan because I have already taken the core essentials I need for my own path. To me, these are just surplus."

"What!?"

The hall fell into a stunned silence.

Everyone stared at the rings with renewed reverence.

Everything here came from the inheritance? And Xueli was giving it up so easily because it was "surplus"? The realization hit them like a physical blow.

If this mountain of wealth was just the "leftovers," then just how amazing, how terrifyingly vast, was the true inheritance of the Bright Silver Emperor?

"With this," Xueli said, her eyes turning toward the window overlooking the ruined city, "we won’t need several generations to recover. We will rebuild the Ning Clan in three years. And when we are done, the Eastern Region will realize that attacking us was the greatest mistake the Allied Kingdoms ever made."