Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

"Grandmother, it’s time to be serious," Chu Xueyu stated, her voice low and dangerous.

The playful, almost frantic energy that had radiated from Shen Daiyu only moments ago vanished as if it had never existed.

It was a transition that was jarring even for someone of Haoran’s mental fortitude.

The petite woman stood up straight, her posture shifting from a desperate, groping grandmother to a sovereign who had touched the true essence of the void.

Her eyes, which had been sparkling with mischief, now held the cold, ancient depth of a black hole.

Shen Daiyu met her granddaughter’s gaze, and for a split second, the air between them vibrated with a force that threatened to buckle the floating platforms.

"...Alright," Daiyu said, her voice dropping into a resonant, imperial tone. "I have something important to discuss with your son. The three of you... get out."

Chu Xueyu’s jaw tightened.

She opened her mouth to argue, her possessive instincts as a mother warring with her duty as a descendant.

But as she looked into the seriousness of Shen Daiyu’s eyes, the eyes of a Supreme who had seen the rise and fall of eras, she felt a weight of authority that even she could not defy.

Reluctantly, she nodded.

She gave Haoran one deep, lingering look, a silent promise of protection, before turning around.

Just then, a set of ethereal double doors manifested from the blue sky and swung open.

Leng Shuang gave Haoran a short, meaningful nod before turning around and walked towards the door and disappeared.

Feng Yuyan smiled and waved playfully, though her eyes were uncharacteristically focused, but she soon followed after her sister.

Chu Xueyu was the last to leave, her gaze fixed on him until the doors closed and vanished into the azure mist.

Once they were gone, the silence of the Supreme Hall became absolute as Haoran turned toward the woman who looked like a teenager but felt like a mountain.

"Great-Grandmother?"

Shen Daiyu chuckled, the sound echoing strangely in the vast space. "Just call me grandmother, lad. Though, I wouldn’t mind if you called me mother, or even sister. Age is just a number once you reach our level."

"Grandmother it is then," Haoran replied, his voice calm, his golden eyes observing her every movement.

Shen Daiyu shrugged, a casual gesture that belied the weight of her next words. "Tell me, Haoran. Have you seen the map of the Central Region? Or perhaps the entire Tian Yuan Empire, and the Vast Wilderness that surrounds it?"

Haoran nodded. "I have studied them extensively. Although, I’ve noticed there are many variations to the maps of the Vast Wilderness. Some show infinite mountain ranges, others show endless oceans of chaotic Qi. I don’t know which one is real, or if a ’real’ one even exists."

"That’s a good enough start. Come with me." Shen Daiyu snapped her fingers.

In a heartbeat, the blue sky, the floating castles, and the marble platforms were gone and Haoran found himself standing on nothingness, suspended in a boundless, dark void.

It was as if they had stepped outside the boundaries of the universe itself.

Below them, glowing with a light that was both beautiful and terrifying, lay the entirety of the Central Region.

The Central Region was a territory so infinitely large that the human mind struggled to categorize it.

It was divided into several sub-regions, each one the size of an entire universe, containing kingdoms the size of galaxies, mountain ranges that stretches for several star systems, demonic beasts the size of stars, and cities the size of planets.

In the innermost part of this tapestry lay the Imperial Capital—the heart of the Tian Yuan Empire.

It was separated from the rest of the Central Region by a vast "sea," but as Haoran looked closer, he realized it wasn’t water.

It was actually an infinite universe of its own, a swirling barrier of countless stars, nebulae, and galaxies that circled the Imperial Capital like a moat of fire, acting as a physical and spiritual barrier.

This is the first time he have seen, or even know of it. After all, aside from hunting demonic cultivators, he almost never left the clan.

The maps also only refer to that place as "Sea of Stars", so Haoran assumed that it was just a sea.

And whenever he went out, he was on a Profound Arc, so he also never saw it in person.

Haoran blinked, his golden eyes adjusting to the cosmic scale and saw that the "sun" people are seeing from the ground wasn’t a singular star, instead, it was a fleet of Three-Legged Golden Crows.

They are an ancient solar beasts that flew across the sky, providing different time zones to the vast territories below.

There were countless of them, to many to count, their golden plumage illuminating the world.

Not to mention the stars he had seen from his bedroom window weren’t actually distant suns, but the unhatched eggs of the Golden Crows, glowing with latent heat, while the moons were merely massive pieces of primordial rock, drifting along in the gravitational wake of the solar beasts.

"What do you think?" Shen Daiyu asked, her silhouette a small point of darkness against the glowing map below.

"Vast beyond measure," Haoran whispered. "It makes everything we do, the tournaments, the clan wars, or whatever petty going-on, seem like a play in a sandbox."

Shen Daiyu smirked, pointing a finger toward the shimmering sea of stars that acted as the moat for the Imperial Capital. "Do you see that belt of light? That sea of stars separating the Capital from the outer Central Region?"

Haoran nodded, his gaze fixed on the shimmering barrier.

"It’s infinitely wide and even expanding into itself, so unless you are a saint that can manipulate space or possessed a high quality Profound Ark, then crossing it will just be a pipe dream. And you might even end up getting lost and stuck there forever."

Haoran remained silent, his gaze focused on the sea of stars.

"And did you know," she continued, her voice dropping to a whisper, "that is where the countless ’lower realms’ are located? If you were to drift into that sea and lose your way, you might even accidentally find the Saint Burial Realm that you recently visited. In other words, those realms aren’t in another dimension, Haoran. It’s right there, floating in the void like a speck of dust."

Haoran’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, a rare flicker of shock crossing his face before he quickly regained his composure. "Is that so? So the ’void’ we cross when we descend is merely the distance between the higher concentration of Qi in the center and the lower concentration at the edges."

"Exactly," Shen Daiyu chuckled. "I wanted to show you this to ground your perspective. The ’lower realms’ you thought of as separate worlds don’t exist on another plane. They are part of the Prime Origin Realm itself, and they are even located in the Central Region. But they are just too small, too starved of spirit veins, and too insignificant for Saints or even Supremes to even bother them."

Haoran nodded slowly, remaining silent, sensing that she was leading him toward a much larger, more dangerous conclusion.

"So, what if... just what if..." Shen Daiyu turned toward him, giving him an uncanny, wide smile that didn’t reach her cold eyes. "The Immortal Realm also doesn’t exist on a different, higher realm? What if it is also here, in the Prime Origin Realm, but we are just too small and insignificant to know about it yet?"

Haoran turned to face her fully, his body tensing, his eyes narrowing until they were slivers of gold.

He looked incredibly solemn, his mind racing through the implications of her hypothesis.

It was a thought that bordered on heresy.

"What if, just like those in the lower realm who think they are ’ascending’ to a new world, but are actually just moving from the outskirts to the suburbs... what if we are the same?" Shen Daiyu asked, her voice echoing in the void. "What if, when we ’ascend’ to the Immortal Realm, we aren’t leaving the Prime Origin Realm? What if we are just finally gaining the strength to see a much wider, deeper part of a mostly unexplored world?"

She stepped closer, her petite frame radiating a pressure that made the void around them tremble. "Imagine it, Haoran. We think we are at the pinnacle because we are the ’Hegemons’ of this small patch of dirt. But what if the Prime Origin Realm is so vast that the Tian Yuan Empire is just another ’lower realm’ to someone else? What if the ’Ascension’ is just the moment you finally walk out of the front door and see the rest of the continent?"

Haoran looked down at the glowing map of the Central Region, then back at his grandmother.

His very own dao of supremacy within him resonated with the idea, after all, it was a path of Domination that didn’t just stop at the sky, but questioned the sky itself.

"Why tell me this?" Haoran asked. "I don’t see how that would benefit me or you?"

Shen Daiyu reached out, her hand hovering near his chest, where the Trinity power was sealed. "Because I’m sure you noticed it, don’t you? You’re smart, so you must’ve already realised it....the Clan is running out of luck. We simply no longer have the capacity to produce someone who can shoulder the Heaven’s Will and ascend to Immortality."

The Heaven’s Will, it is the gathering of the myriad dao which requires the gestation from the worlds themselves to form.

It serves as a shackle that encompasses and traps all living beings, and once a cultivator reaches the pinnacle, they must shoulder and control the Heaven’s Will so that they will finally be free from the prison.

Those who have done this are known as "Immortals".

And since there can only be one Heaven’s Will in existence, once someone ascended to become an Immortal, they will supress all dao, preventing anyone from challenging their authority, making them the only one in an era.

However, this suppression can only last for ten thousand years, after that, they must ’ascend’ to the ’Immortal Realm’, allowing another Heaven’s Will to be born.

Unfortunately, the Heaven’s Will has never appeared since the last Immortal from the Shen Clan ascended 65 thousand years ago.

"The Heaven’s Will will emerge in this generation," said Shen Daiyu, "And luck is indispensable if we want to get it."