Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!-Chapter 112 - 113: Emergence
The blizzard that gripped the Northern Continent seemed to howl with a renewed, mournful intensity, mirroring the chilling silence that had fallen within the snowy cave.
Hidden deep beneath a towering mountain of ice, the Heavenly Saint Elder of the Golden Cloud Immortal Sect—the man who had risked his life to play guardian to a "Child of Fate"—stared at the communication artifact in his trembling hand.
For a full year, the device had been a cold, dead hunk of jade, a symbol of his isolation in this backwater realm, but now, it began to show signs of being in connected.
His eyes, as if clouded by a century of weariness, suddenly flared with a desperate joy.
Finally! After twelve months of hiding in the shadows like a rat, he had managed to pierce the spatial interference and contact the High Heavens.
"Sect Master!" he whispered, his voice cracking. "Is that you?"
A holographic projection flickered into existence, casting a pale, ghostly light against the cave’s frozen walls.
But as the image stabilized, the Elder’s joy didn’t just fade—it was violently ripped away, replaced by a paralyzing, visceral shock.
The man who appeared in the projection was barely recognizable as the majestic 8th Stage Heavenly Saint who had once commanded the Golden Cloud.
The Sect Master was missing his entire left arm, the sleeve of his robe tied off in a blood-soaked knot.
His left eye was swathed in thick, filthy bandages, the seeping crimson suggesting the organ was lost forever.
He looked as if he had aged a thousand years in a single winter; his skin was a sallow parchment stretched over a skeletal frame, and his once-vibrant white hair was thin and matted with grime.
"Sect Master!?" the Elder shrieked, falling forward on his knees. "In the name of the Ancestors, what has happened to you? What has happened to the sect!?"
The Sect Master’s remaining eye was hollow, filled with a bottomless, soul-crushing pained exhaustion.
He looked at the Elder through the transmission as if peering through a long, dark tunnel.
"Elder Ji..." he rasped, his voice a dry rattle in his throat. "I won’t beat around the bush... the Golden Cloud Immortal Sect... is no more. We are now nothing more than a memory, a footnote in a history book that is currently being burned."
"No more?" The Elder’s breath hitched, his mind refusing to process the words. "What... what does that mean? We are a Great Sect of the High Heavens! Our foundations are ten thousand years deep! How can we be no more?"
The Sect Master shook his head slowly, a single tear tracing a path through the soot on his cheek. "Exactly as it sounds, Ji. It was a systematic eradication. All our disciples—tens of thousands of them—were slaughtered in the courtyards where they studied. Our treasury, the wealth of a hundred generations, was emptied in an hour. Our territory was razed to the ground; even the grass was salted so that nothing might grow again. Our fellow elders... they were beheaded in the public square and their bodies crucified along the main roads as an example to the rest of the world. I... I only managed to escape with a handful of survivors. We have fled like dogs to the Southern Region, hiding in the mud."
"Wh-What!?" The Elder’s voice rose to a panicked shriek. "Did the Demonic Cultivators launch a coordinated strike? How could the world be so cruel? What about the Western Sacred Palace? Or the Immortal Ascension Hall? They are our sworn allies! They signed the Blood Pact! They shouldn’t have left us to face such a nightmare alone!"
The Sect Master let out a low, bitter laugh that turned into a hacking cough. "Allies? Ji, in the face of the storm that hit us, there are no allies. It was not the work of the Demonic Cultivators. It was the Shen Clan."
The Elder went silent.
It was a silence so absolute it felt as though his heart had stopped beating.
After all, the name ’Shen’ was not just a name; it was a conceptual weight that crushed the air from his lungs.
Finally, after several minutes of staring blankly at the flickering hologram, he managed to choke out a response. "...And the Empire? Surely... surely the Imperial Family wouldn’t have stood idly by while a Great Sect was butchered? They represent the law! They represent the balance!"
"No," the Sect Master replied, his voice devoid of hope. "Have you forgotten your history, Elder? The current Imperial Family only managed to rise to power because they were supported by the Shen Clan tens of thousands of years ago. Although they aren’t necessarily a puppet family, but they owe the Shen clan their very existence. So when those three lunatic sisters moves, the Emperor simply closes his eyes and waits for the everything to stop."
".....No..." The elder almost collapsed, his forehead hitting the cold stone of the cave. "All of this... because of one boy? Because we tried to claim a thread of destiny? What have we done? How can we face our ancestors now?"
"....I am calling you now to give you my final command," the Sect Master said, his image beginning to flicker as his energy waned. "Forget that boy. Forget Jiang Chen. If he is dead, let him rot. If he is alive, abandon him. Make sure you hide your aura. Do not show yourself to the world. If you can find a chance to leave the Saint Burial Realm, do so. If you cannot... then it is not a bad fate to establish a small, nameless sect there in the North. At least then, our bloodline and our techniques wouldn’t be completely cut off from the universe. We would still exist like a spark in the dark."
"Sect Master..." the elder whispered, hot tears finally spilling onto the ice.
"Stop. No need to say more," the Sect Master cut him off, his eye fluttering as he struggled to remain upright. "I am barely holding on to this mortal coil. I will not last another year; my foundation is shattered and my soul is leaking. I am simply using my remaining life-force to ensure those who survived the fire will have a small chance to breathe. Farewell, Elder Ji. This is the last time I shall ever call upon you. Live... for the sake of the Golden Cloud Sect."
With a final, sharp crackle of spiritual energy, the call ended as the jade artifact went dark.
The Elder dropped to his knees, his eyes blank and glassy as he stared into the empty, freezing space of the cave.
His world had ended, not with a bang, but with a quiet transmission from a Heavenly Saint Elder, to a dying man.
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Meanwhile, the tranquility of the Northern Continent’s grand glacier had been replaced by a scene of chaotic carnage.
"RUN!"
"Why are these gods fighting here!? The ground is breaking!"
"Damn it! Get clear of the Nascent Soul shockwaves!"
Low-level Cultivators fled in every direction, their desperate cries lost in the roar of elemental magic as the Sky Water Sect and the Ice God Palace had engaged in a full-scale battle, the frozen tundra now stained with arcs of steaming red blood.
Yet, amidst the violence, a small pocket of absolute stillness remained.
Shangguan Mu’er, Ling Luochen, and Qing’er stood in a triangular formation directly in front of the stone gates.
They did not participate in the slaughter, and the fighting cultivators instinctively steered clear of them, sensing a depth of power that made the current battle look like a children’s spat.
They remained silent, their eyes fixed on the shimmering veil of the gate, waiting for their master to emerge.
"Just give up, Bing’er!" Shui Heng’s voice boomed across the battlefield as he was hovering in the air using his blue-scaled water dragon flying under him. "I am a Nascent Soul expert! A Golden Core like you, no matter how talented, simply cannot bridge the gap of the realms! You cannot beat me!"
Xue Bing’er stood on the ground, her white robes tattered and stained, her light-blue hair matted with frost.
"You broke through to that level by exhausting your potential through forbidden pills, Shui Heng!" she roared back, her voice carrying the chill of the North. "Your foundation is hollow! Your combat power isn’t even as refined as mine! You are a paper tiger!"
"Snow Wind Palm!" She thrust her hands forward, and a massive burst of spiraling snow and razor-sharp wind launched toward him, capable of shredding even the toughest diamond.
Shui Heng flicked his wrist, his water-sword cutting the technique in half with a sneer as Xue Bing’er stared at him in shock.
"Your spirit is high, but look at reality. Your combat techniques, your artifacts, and your cultivation remain exactly as they were before you entered the gate. It seems like you didn’t have the time to digest the treasures you got from the secret realm, did you? You are fighting with your old strength against me! You have no chance!"
Xue Bing’er remained silent, her jaw tight. What he said was the painful truth. She had indeed received a legendary legacy inside, but Shui Heng had ambushed her the moment she stepped out.
She literally hadn’t had five minutes to meditate, let alone digest the expert’s gifts.
"Look around you!" Shui Heng laughed, gesturing to the blood-soaked snow. "Your disciples are dying! Your elders are being suppressed! Is it worth it, Bing’er? To let your entire sect burn just to keep a few scrolls?"
Xue Bing’er looked around, and her heart constricted as she saw the disciples she had raised being cut down one by one by the Sky Water Sect’s superior numbers.
She saw one of her elders—the man who had taught her her first frost technique—falling under a barrage of water spears.
In this battle alone, the Ice God Palace was losing the foundation of its power. It was a blow they wouldn’t recover from for a hundred years, even if they won.
"GIVE UP!" Shui Heng screamed, raising his sword for a final, crushing blow.
Xue Bing’er glared at him, her eyes burning with a suicidal resolve.
She would rather detonate her Golden Core than hand over her legacy to this dog.
After all, if she just handed it to him, then what was the meaning of those who had died?
But at that exact moment, the stone gate behind her glowed with a blinding, kaleidoscopic radiance that silenced the battlefield.
The spatial pressure was so immense that Shui Heng’s water dragon let out a whimper and recoiled.
From the heart of the light, a figure stepped out.
Shen Haoran emerged, his robes pristine, his golden eyes scanning the carnage with a look of supreme, bored disappointment.
He took one look at the situation—at the bleeding Xue Bing’er and the arrogant Shui Heng, and the war that is happening around him.
"Well now," Haoran said, his voice carrying over the entire battlefield like the tolling of a funeral bell, "It seems like interesting things tends to happen when I’m away."
