Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

"Should we interfere?" Feng Yuyan asked, still smiling, but her eyes now looked incredibly serious.

Her fingers twitched, ready to weave the laws of creation to shield her nephew.

Chu Xueyu hummed, her eyes narrowed into golden slits as she stared at the swirling abyss in the sky, then back to Haoran, who stood defiantly upon the kiosk.

She saw the firmness on his shoulders, the absolute lack of fear in his golden eyes, and she slowly shook her head.

"No," she said, her voice low and somewhat cold, but it contained the absolute belief she had for her son, "Haoran can handle that. If he is to be the King of the New Era, he must be able to stare down the eye of even the heavenly storm itself."

Leng Shuang agreed with that statement, "Back then, didn’t we also go through something similar? Haoran is the combination of the three of us. He will be able to handle this much."

No sooner had she said those words, the heavens immediately let out a roar of pure, incandescent fury, and under their gaze, the first violet lightning bolt descended!

It was not a mere spark; it was a pillar of celestial execution, thicker than the palace towers, aimed with the surgical intent to erase Luo Mingye from the scrolls of time.

Haoran didn’t even flinch as he reached into his storage space and withdrew a simple looking knife, one of the many artifacts gifted by the ancestors in the Supreme Hall.

It was infused with a Supreme’s Sword Intent—a fragment of a Shen Daiyu’s intent that had once dominated the universe.

With a sharp, decisive grunt, Haoran slashed upward.

The two forces clashed in mid-air, and for a heartbeat, the world went silent.

Then, a sound like the tearing of a thousand silk sheets erupted as the strike caused literal tears in space and time.

The violet lightning crackled against the invisible wall of the sword intent, its energy seeking a path through the void, only to be ground down by the sheer, stubborn will of the small knife.

At that moment, the Seven Enshrined Elders appeared as if by magic, manifesting around the perimeter of the lake.

Their faces were grim, their robes fluttering in the atmospheric pressure generated by the clash as they stared up at the violet light and the lone youth standing beneath it.

"Is that... actually the Young Master?" the Fifth Elder whispered. "He’s resisting a Heavenly Tribulation of that grade at the Nascent Soul realm?"

The First Elder turned toward the rest, his voice a commanding bark that cut through the thunder. "Everyone, stop staring! Set up a containment array and isolate this space immediately! We cannot allow the aftershocks of this clash to cause damage to the Shen Clan’s domain or the Divine City. Move!"

The other elders nodded in unison.

Them, they moved with the synchronized grace of a single organism, forming a massive circle around the lake.

Their hands then blurred in a series of complex mudras, laying down high-level formation arrays to isolate the kiosk and the sky above it from the rest of reality.

At that moment, a shimmering, translucent dome began to rise, glowing with the protective power of seven Peak Heavenly Saints.

Just then, the First Elder felt several presences trying to approach the lake from the feast hall.

They were the leaders of the other Clans and Sects that they have invited, drawn like moths to a flame.

Normally, he would’ve prevented them from coming close, but now, he had no time to deal with them; his entire focus was poured into stabilizing the containment field.

A few seconds later, thousands of Saint-level powerhouses watched the scene from the balconies and gardens, their eyes wide, their hearts hammering.

They dared not even breathe too loudly, lest they draw the heaven’s ire upon themselves.

"Is that... Shen Haoran?"

"He’s the one who caused this tribulation? What did he do? Did he break a law of the universe or something?"

"Could it be because he massacred those scholars? Did the karma manifest that quickly?"

"Why isn’t anyone helping him? Are the Three Sisters that confident that he can deal with a violet-tier strike alone?"

"Oh shit! Look! The lightning... it was actually forced to retreat!"

Below, Haoran watched with a predatory grin as the first strike was scattered into harmless motes of light.

Unfortunately, the simple knife in his hand could not withstand the exchange and it crumbled into fine, grey dust, its purpose fulfilled.

"Is that it?" Haoran shouted, his voice challenging the clouds as he reached back into his storage and took out another knife, this one etched with runes of destruction.

His golden-purple aura once again burst out of his body, saturating the air with the scent of ozone and ancient power as he activated the blade.

"Come on! You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to kill someone I’m protecting! I thought the Heavens were supposed to be absolute!"

Luo Mingye stared at his back, her green eyes shimmering with a mixture of terror and a love so profound it felt like a weight in her chest.

Every fiber of her being was focused on the man who was literally fighting the Heavens themselves for her sake.

Her feelings, already deep, brightened even further, bordering on a spiritual obsession.

Xia Mengyao, meanwhile, stared at him in a daze.

For her, what she had felt for Haoran until this moment was nothing more than high admiration, the respect of one sword-master for a superior talent.

Love? That was a distant, foreign concept to her heart.

She had accepted the idea of marriage simply because her friend, Mengyao, is in love with him and she respected his strength.

But as she watched him stand against the apocalyptic strike, a crack appeared in her stoic heart.

The sight of his silhouette against the violet lightning was an image that burned itself into her soul.

At that moment, the heavens roared once more, as if offended by his mockery.

This time, the clouds didn’t just flash, but had actually birthed monsters; transforming into nine violet lightning bolts in a form of a gargantuan, serpentine dragons.

They let out a collective roar that seem to echoe through time, distorting the very laws of the universe itself!

"That is—!?"

"The Purple Annihilation Lightning Dragon!?"

"That’s a tribulation that’s only supposed to appear once someone breaks through to the Supreme Realm, isn’t it? It’s the ’Final Trial’ of the Saint path!"

"How did that kid manage to attract a heavenly tribulation that strong? He hasn’t even reached Spirit Ascension!"

The onlookers exclaimed in genuine shock, some even backing away in fear.

Many talented Heavenly Saints, arrogantly wanting to ascend to Supreme Emperor realm, have perished under these lightnings.

It was even known to kill Supremes!

But simply Haoran smirked, his eyes flashing with golden light as he took out several, dozen knives from his storage rings as they floated around him like a lethal halo.

Then, sith a flick of his will, he released all the sword intent stored within them at once.

"Scatter!" He roared, and the sword intent flew to meet the descending lightning.

The resulting clash was beyond description.

It tore the heavens and earth asunder within the containment dome.

It was as if reality itself was a piece of paper that had been crumpled, soaked in acid, and thrown into a cosmic blender.

The violet dragons met the sword intent in a collision that created a temporary void in reality.

Now, usually, activating just one of these knives would drain the Qi of a normal Nascent Soul cultivator to the point of death, and it still wouldn’t be enough to fully released its power.

But Haoran was not normal.

He possessed the Infinity Dragon God Physique, which acted like a perpetual motion machine within his dantian, causing his Qi to not just regenerate almost instantly, but to overflowed, replenishing itself faster than he could spend it.

Even before he activated his physique, he possessed vast amount of Qi, more than others of the same realm.

He could keep using as many as he wanted, and with enough knives, he could fight this war for a hundred years if he had to.

Unfortunately, these knives were difficult to make, and the only reason he has so many is because they are all the knives he received since childhood.

At that moment, with a cold, arrogant laugh, he once again took out several more knives and slashed them in a rapid-fire sequence.

The arcs of sword light flew upward, beautiful and terrifying.

And like a single stick trying to stop a tsunami, the sword intent met the descending dragons.

One by one, the violet beasts were pushed back, their scales of static were shattered, their roars silenced as they were ground into non-existence by the fragment of Shen Daiyu’s sword intent.

The final dragon disintegrated mere inches from the dome of the kiosk, its statics scattering everywhere like harmless sparks before dissipating into the air.

Finally, the heavens seemed to have relented.

The roaring in the clouds died down to a low, defeated rumble, and the abyssal blackness began to recede, revealing the calm sky Shen Domain once again.

The air grew still, the lake smoothed over, and the pressure vanished.

Haoran stood there, his breathing steady, his hand holding the fine powder that became of the knives before he let them drift into the aur.

He looked up at the clearing sky and then turned back to the two girls, his golden eyes softening just a fraction.

"I told you," he said, his voice returning to its calm, aristocratic tone. "As long as I’m here, the heavens are just a ceiling."

Luo Mingye finally collapsed to her knees, the adrenaline leaving her body in a rush, but her eyes never left him.

She made a promise then, with a certainty that reached into her future, that her life will no longer belonged to her—it will belong to the man who had just broken the sky.