Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist

Chapter 978: Chen Ying And Hua Yimei’s Victory

The eastern corridor of the upper landing had become a crucible of opposing extremes. The pristine, frost-covered walls of the Ice Heart Pavilion wept streams of melting water, only for that water to instantly vaporize into blinding clouds of steam.

Hua Yimei floated half a foot above the wooden floorboards, her heavy purple and gold ceremonial robes billowing around her despite the lack of a natural breeze. Her eyes, normally a soft, calculating brown, now blazed with a terrifying, molten gold. She was no longer the cautious, politically mindful Sect Leader of a declining faction. She was a predator fully unleashed, her cultivation at the Middle-Stage of the Core Formation Realm pressing down upon the corridor like a physical weight.

Standing opposite her, Elder Leng’s expression was incredibly grim. The scar on the older woman’s chin twitched as she gritted her teeth, her knuckles turning white around the hilt of her blue crystal sword. Elder Leng was only at the Early-Stage of the Core Formation Realm. In the harsh, unforgiving hierarchy of the cultivation world, the gap between the Early and Middle stages was akin to the difference between a rushing river and a vast lake. It was a chasm of spiritual capacity and density that could rarely be bridged by mere technique.

’She is too strong,’ Elder Leng thought, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. ’Her aura... it is not the gentle, alluring Qi of the Fragrance Melody Sect. It is violent. It is pure destruction. How did Hua Yimei achieve such a breakthrough?’

But Elder Leng was a veteran of the Ice Heart Palace, a woman who had spent a century freezing her emotions to achieve martial perfection. She would not simply roll over.

With a sharp, guttural cry, Elder Leng bit the tip of her tongue, using a drop of her blood essence to forcibly stimulate her meridians. She performed a rapid series of hand seals, her fingers blurring.

"Art of the Frozen Heart: Thousand Icicle Storm!"

The ambient temperature in the corridor plummeted violently. The vapor in the air crystallized instantly, forming hundreds, then thousands, of razor-sharp projectiles. They hung suspended in the air for a fraction of a second, gleaming with a deadly, pale blue light, before launching themselves at Hua Yimei with the speed of fired arrows. The sheer volume of the attack filled the entire width of the narrow hallway, leaving no physical room for evasion.

Hua Yimei did not even attempt to dodge. A look of supreme, arrogant disdain crossed her beautiful features.

She raised her hands, and with a flash of brilliant light from her spatial ring, her Lifebound Weapon Magic Treasure materialized before her.

It was the Nine-String Phoenix Zither.

Forged entirely from a single, massive branch of thousand-year-old Phoenix Fire Wood that Wang Jian had bestowed upon her, the instrument was a work of deadly art. The wood possessed a natural, deep crimson hue that seemed to pulse with an internal heartbeat, and the nine strings were spun from the refined tendons of a peak Core Formation Realm fire-wyrm. It was one of the highest-tier Magic Treasures a cultivator of her realm could hope to wield.

Hua Yimei’s slender fingers danced across the strings. She didn’t pluck a melody; she struck a single, dissonant chord of pure aggression.

TWANG!

A shockwave of Golden Phoenix Flame erupted from the instrument. It expanded outward in a perfect hemisphere, a dome of holy, burning gold.

The Thousand Icicle Storm collided with the flame aura. There was no sound of shattering ice. Instead, there was merely the fierce, violent hiss of absolute annihilation. The razor-sharp projectiles, infused with Elder Leng’s most potent Ice Qi, evaporated the very millisecond they touched the golden fire. They did not even have the chance to melt into water; they were turned directly into nothingness.

"Your ice is impure," Hua Yimei taunted, her voice echoing with the domineering cadence she had learned from Wang Jian. She stepped forward, the zither floating obediently before her. "It is brittle. It lacks conviction. It melts far too easily before true power."

Elder Leng stumbled backward, her face paling as the backlash of her destroyed technique sent a tremor through her dantian. ’Impossible! Even a superior fire attribute should not erase my ice so effortlessly! What kind of monstrous flame is she wielding?’

Hua Yimei did not give her time to recover. Her fingers blurred across the wyrm-tendon strings, playing a rapid, aggressive tempo that made the air itself vibrate with heat.

"Phoenix Wing Slash!"

She struck the lowest string with tremendous force. A massive blade of soundwave, completely engulfed in the Golden Phoenix Flame, tore through the corridor. It took the distinct shape of a massive, burning avian wing, its leading edge sharp enough to cleave through solid spirit-steel. The heat radiating from it scorched the walls of the pavilion, turning the white spirit-wood black in an instant.

Elder Leng’s eyes widened in terror. She recognized the lethal intent behind the strike. She slammed her crystal sword into the floorboards, pouring every ounce of her remaining spiritual energy into her defense.

"Absolute Glacial Shield!"

A massive, thick wall of profound ice erupted from the floor, glittering with defensive runes. It was a desperate measure, a technique that drained her reserves to construct a fortress in an instant.

The Phoenix Wing Slash slammed into the ice wall.

For a single heartbeat, the shield held. But then, Elder Leng screamed.

She felt it. The fire was not just melting the ice; it was eating it. The Golden Phoenix Flame possessed the terrifying property of burning spiritual Qi itself as fuel. The more energy Elder Leng pumped into the shield to maintain it, the hotter and more violent the golden fire became.

The heat breached the shield, washing over Elder Leng. The silk of her right sleeve instantly turned to ash, and the skin beneath blistered and blackened.

"Ahhhh!" Elder Leng screamed, dropping to her knees, clutching her scorched arm. "What flame is this?! This is not natural fire! You are using demonic arts!"

"Demonic?" Hua Yimei laughed, a cold, harsh sound that felt entirely out of place coming from the previously gentle Sect Leader. "It is the holy flame of rebirth. You are simply too weak to withstand its grace."

Hua Yimei pressed the advantage. Her combat style had evolved drastically under Wang Jian’s brutal training. She was no longer a stationary support cultivator playing melodies from the rear. She moved with aggressive, fluid grace, advancing on the crippled Elder.

As she walked, she remembered Wang Jian’s explicit orders. ’Do not kill them. I want them alive. I want their Primal Yin intact.’

’For the Master,’ Hua Yimei thought, an obsessive devotion fueling her movements. She shifted her aim from Elder Leng’s heart, altering the trajectory of her spiritual targeting to the woman’s dantian.

Elder Leng, realizing that her defenses were entirely useless against the golden fire, scrambled backward, trying to retreat down the narrow hallway toward the disciples’ quarters. ’I must escape! I must warn the City Lord! She is a monster!’

But the hallway was too narrow, and Hua Yimei, propelled by the explosive nature of her fire attribute, was vastly faster.

Hua Yimei plucked the highest string of the Nine-String Phoenix Zither and pinched it, pulling the spiritual energy outward. Instead of a soundwave, a long, crackling whip of solid Golden Phoenix Flame manifested in her grip.

With a flick of her wrist, the fire whip lashed out like a striking serpent. It bypassed the distance instantly, wrapping tightly around Elder Leng’s waist.

The heat was unfathomable. The heavy, frost-resistant silk of Elder Leng’s robes was cauterized instantly, adhering to her flesh. The golden fire burned into her skin, sending a jolt of paralyzing, unimaginable agony through her nervous system.

Elder Leng’s retreat was halted abruptly. She was stunned by the pain, her vision going white.

Hua Yimei yanked the whip backward with brutal force. Elder Leng was pulled through the air, flying helplessly back toward her attacker.

As the Ice Heart Elder sailed toward her, Hua Yimei released the zither, letting it hover beside her. She drew back her right hand, concentrating a dense, swirling ball of Golden Phoenix Flame into her palm.

She slammed her palm directly onto the center of Elder Leng’s chest as the woman collided with her.

"Seal!" Hua Yimei commanded.

She didn’t shatter the woman’s organs. Instead, she forcibly injected the concentrated mass of golden fire directly into Elder Leng’s meridians. The invading flame rushed through the Elder’s pathways like a conquering army, violently suppressing the native Ice Qi and locking her spiritual sea in a cage of burning gold.

Elder Leng coughed violently, spraying a mouthful of freezing blood onto the scorched floorboards. Her eyes rolled back in her head, the agony and the sudden, complete loss of her cultivation rendering her unconscious instantly. She collapsed into a heap of ruined silk and blistered skin.

Hua Yimei stood over the defeated Elder, her chest heaving slightly, the golden flames slowly receding back into her body. She looked down at the proud woman who had insulted her just hours prior.

"One down for the Master," Hua Yimei whispered, a dark thrill of accomplishment running through her veins. She had proven her worth.

On the opposite side of the upper landing, a completely different type of battle was taking place. Where Hua Yimei’s fight was a display of overwhelming, explosive destruction, Chen Ying’s engagement with Elder Han was a masterclass in lethal precision and technical perfection.

Elder Han, true to her reputation within the Ice Heart Palace, was a defensive specialist. The moment the ambush had begun, she had activated multiple layers of Glacial Armor, encasing herself in overlapping plates of diamond-hard, spiritually reinforced ice.

But Elder Han was not merely a turtle hiding in a shell. She was a Core Formation Realm expert with a deep treasury. Surrounding her were three distinct attacking magical treasures, floating and humming with lethal intent.

To her left hovered a Crystalline Decapitation Chakram, a spinning disc of serrated ice that moved independently. To her right was the Frost-Bite Needle Swarm, a gourd that continuously spat out clouds of hair-thin, poison-laced ice needles. Above her head floated a Blizzard Pearl, constantly generating a localized, disorienting snowstorm that obscured vision and disrupted Divine Sense.

"You think a mere assassin can break my defenses?" Elder Han shouted, directing the chakram to slice toward the dark shadow dancing at the edge of her vision.

Chen Ying did not speak. She moved.

In her hand was her newly forged Lifebound Weapon Magic Treasure—the Phoenix Plume Shadow Sword. Wang Jian had provided the materials, including a core branch of Phoenix Fire Wood, but Chen Ying had spent two entire months forging it herself, hammering her absolute loyalty and her Shadow-Wind Qi into the very steel. The blade was a masterwork of dark, non-reflective metal, but deep within the fuller ran a vein of shimmering gold.

Chen Ying’s battle style was rooted in the Seven Absolutes Sword Art, a technique defined by its lack of wasted movement. Every step, every parry, every thrust was calculated to the millimeter.

The Crystalline Decapitation Chakram whistled toward her neck. Chen Ying merely tilted her head a fraction of an inch, letting the serrated edge shave a single strand of hair from her head, while simultaneously stepping inside the weapon’s guard.

She swung the Phoenix Plume Shadow Sword. She didn’t use wide, sweeping arcs. She used short, brutally fast thrusts. Furthermore, she had seamlessly integrated the Golden Phoenix Flame Wang Jian had bestowed upon her into her sword qi.

Every time her dark blade struck Elder Han’s Glacial Armor, it left a scorching, golden scorch mark on the indestructible ice.

Elder Han controlled the Frost-Bite Needle Swarm, sending a cloud of thousands of needles at Chen Ying.

Chen Ying’s sword became a blur. She executed the Third Absolute: Wind-Wall Deflection. Her sword spun so fast it created a localized vacuum, catching the needles in a slipstream and redirecting them harmlessly into the wooden walls.

"Impossible," Elder Han muttered. ’She is at the Early-Stage of the Core Formation Realm, just like me! Her Qi capacity shouldn’t allow her to deflect my magical treasures so casually!’

Chen Ying didn’t just attack randomly. Her terrifyingly sharp combat instincts, honed by Wang Jian’s ruthless sparring sessions, identified the structural nodes of the Glacial Armor.

She moved like a phantom through the localized blizzard, her dark form weaving between the magical treasures. She appeared directly in front of Elder Han.

Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.

In the span of a single breath, Chen Ying thrust her sword four times. Each strike hit the exact same geometric point on the center of Elder Han’s chest plate.

But it wasn’t just the physical impact. Chen Ying vibrated her Shadow-Wind Qi at a terrifyingly high frequency, infusing the sword tip with the Golden Phoenix Flame. The combination of high-frequency vibration and extreme heat created a microscopic stress fracture in the ice.

Chen Ying drew her sword back a final inch, her cold eyes locking onto Elder Han’s through the visor of ice.

"Break," Chen Ying whispered, her voice devoid of any emotion.

She thrust a fifth time.

CRASH!

The structural integrity of the Glacial Armor failed catastrophically. The overlapping plates of ice shattered outward into a million glittering fragments, leaving Elder Han entirely exposed.

Elder Han panicked. Her ultimate defense, a technique that had once withstood the strike of a Middle-Stage demonic beast, had been dismantled by an assassin in seconds.

Desperation overtook her discipline. She plunged her hand into her spatial ring and pulled out a handful of offensive talismans.

"Die with me!" she shrieked, throwing them directly at her own feet to catch Chen Ying in the blast radius.

There were Talismans of the Roaring Blizzard and Shatter-Frost Explosives.

The corridor erupted. A massive explosion of concussive force, jagged ice shrapnel, and blinding white smoke filled the space. The magical detonation tore through the floorboards and walls, creating a crater on the landing.

Elder Han, protected by a hastily erected secondary ice shield, coughed violently, peering through the thick, freezing smoke. ’Did I get her? I must have hit her. No one can survive that point-blank without a defensive treasure.’

The smoke swirled.

A figure stepped through the center of the explosion.

Chen Ying emerged entirely unscathed. Her black stealth suit was completely untouched by the frost or the shrapnel. Surrounding her body, hovering just an inch off her skin, was a thin, almost invisible layer of heavy, dark energy.

It was a layer of Stellar Qi that Wang Jian had personally gifted her before they departed, a protective measure woven directly into her aura to ensure his favorite weapon would not be broken by stray attacks. The chaotic explosion of the talismans had simply slid off the absolute density of the Stellar energy.

Elder Han froze, her eyes widening in absolute disbelief. ’She walked through it... as if it were a gentle breeze.’

Before Elder Han could summon another magical treasure, the shadow behind her seemed to detach from the wall.

Chen Ying utilized her Shadow-Step technique, bypassing the physical space. She appeared directly behind the Ice Heart Elder.

The cold, dark edge of the Phoenix Plume Shadow Sword rested gently against the side of Elder Han’s neck. The faint golden heat radiating from the blade caused a bead of sweat to roll down the Elder’s freezing skin.

Elder Han went perfectly still. The slightest twitch would result in her decapitation.

"You..." Elder Han whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of terror and profound confusion. "You are at the Early Stage, like me. We are of the same realm. Yet your sword... how is your sword so heavy? How does your aura carry such crushing weight?"

Chen Ying did not move the blade. Her expression beneath her veil remained as placid as a still lake. She thought of the man standing on the staircase, the man who had broken her down and rebuilt her into a flawless instrument of his will.

"My Master honed me," Chen Ying replied enigmatically, her voice a soft, deadly murmur. "I am merely his blade. His will is heavy; therefore, my sword is heavy."

Without giving Elder Han a chance to comprehend the terrifying devotion in those words, Chen Ying rotated her wrist. She did not use the edge. She struck Elder Han squarely on the temple with the heavy, pommel-end of the sword hilt.

It was a precise, calculated blow, injecting a tiny sliver of concussive Qi directly into the brain’s meridian network.

Elder Han’s eyes rolled back, and she slumped forward instantly, her consciousness snuffed out like a candle in the wind.

As the Elder fell, Chen Ying smoothly caught her by the shoulder, preventing her armored body from crashing into the floorboards and making a loud thud that might distract her master. She lowered the unconscious woman gently to the ground.

With practiced efficiency, Chen Ying produced a coil of shimmering silver rope from her belt—the Spirit-Binding Rope. Her hands moved in a blur as she tied the unconscious Elder, wrapping the rope in a complex pattern that sealed the major Qi gates, rendering Elder Han completely powerless even if she were to wake.

Her task complete, Chen Ying stood up. She flicked her sword, clearing it of imaginary dust, and sheathed it silently. She looked across the ruined landing.

Hua Yimei was standing over the scorched body of Elder Leng, having just finished sealing her cultivation.

The two women locked eyes across the distance. A silent nod of acknowledgment passed between them. The subordinates had been secured. The flanks were clear.

They both turned their gaze toward the grand staircase in the center of the pavilion, focusing their complete attention on the main event.

Bing Yun stood alone on the upper landing, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

The silence that followed the defeat of her two fellow Elders was deafening. It had happened in mere minutes. The elite vanguard of the Ice Heart Palace, dismantled with a terrifying, clinical efficiency.

Fear, a cold, unfamiliar serpent, coiled in her stomach. But Bing Yun was the Holy Maiden’s master, an Elder who had cultivated for a century and a half. She forced the fear down, replacing it with a searing, resolute fury.

She fixed her pale blue eyes on the man ascending the stairs.

’He is only at the Early-Stage of the Core Formation Realm,’ Bing Yun reasoned with herself, gripping the reality of her cultivation superiority like a lifeline. ’I am at the Middle-Stage. I have deeper reserves. I have a purer foundation. I have the legacy artifacts of my Sect. His aura may be strange and dense, but he cannot sustain a prolonged battle against my absolute zero.’

She initially thought this would be a simple execution of a disrespectful junior. But as the fight had developed, the shock had continued to mount. The sheer, oppressive weight of his alien aura defied all logic of cultivation ranks.

"Die, villain!" Bing Yun screamed, her voice cracking the frozen air.

Hovering majestically above her head was her most prized possession, the Frost-Moon Mirror. It was a magical treasure of immense pedigree, capable of channeling the purity of moonlight into a beam of absolute zero temperature.

She poured a massive surge of her Middle-Stage Core Formation Qi into the mirror. The artifact vibrated, glowing with a blinding, ethereal white light.

ZOOOM!

A thick, concentrated beam of absolute zero energy fired from the mirror’s surface, aimed directly at Wang Jian’s chest. The air in the beam’s path instantly crystallized, leaving a trail of solid ice in its wake. It was an attack that bypassed physical defense, designed to freeze the very spiritual sea of the target.

Wang Jian did not dodge. He didn’t even break his slow, steady stride up the stairs.

He simply raised his left hand, his palm open, facing the incoming beam of destruction.

He didn’t use a magical treasure. He didn’t use a defensive spell. He merely engaged his Stellar Body Tempering aura. His skin took on a dark, abyssal luster, radiating a heavy, unbreakable physical vitality.

The beam slammed into his bare hand.

The impact sounded like a glacier collapsing. A massive bloom of profound ice exploded outward from his palm, instantly encasing his left arm up to the shoulder in a block of solid, crystalline ice. The temperature was so extreme that the wooden stairs beneath his feet cracked and splintered from the sudden thermal shock.

For a second, the beam pushed against him, the absolute zero energy attempting to invade his meridians and freeze his blood.

Bing Yun’s eyes widened in triumph. ’Got him! No one can take the Frost-Moon Mirror’s direct beam without an Earth-Grade defensive treasure!’

Wang Jian stopped on the stairs. He looked down at his encased arm. He tilted his head slightly, as if examining a minor curiosity.

Then, he flexed his fingers.

CRACK.

A deep, resonant sound of shattering echoed through the pavilion.

The block of absolute zero ice encasing his arm didn’t just break; it exploded into fine, glittering dust. The sheer, terrifying physical strength of his Stellar Body Tempering, combined with the devouring nature of his Stellar Qi, had simply crushed the ice from the inside out.

Wang Jian lowered his arm, casually dusting a few remaining ice crystals off his pristine white sleeve.

"Is that it?" Wang Jian asked, his voice echoing in the dead silence of the room. He looked up at Bing Yun, a look of profound, mocking disappointment on his face. "I expected more from the famous Ice Heart Palace. This breeze is barely enough to cool my wine."

Bing Yun was horrified. The blood drained completely from her face.

’That beam could freeze a volcanic rock!’ she screamed internally, her mind reeling. ’It could turn a magma-wyrm into a statue! And he caught it with his bare flesh?! What kind of monster is he? What kind of body tempering technique achieves such indestructibility at the Early Stage?!’

Panic began to fray the edges of her frozen discipline. She realized with a sinking dread that normal attacks, even powerful ones from her magical treasures, were useless against this anomaly. She needed to trap him, to crush him with overwhelming physical mass and spiritual sealing.

She rapidly changed tactics, discarding the mirror’s beam function. She bit her lip, bringing her hands together in a complex, forbidden hand seal that strained her meridians.

"Art of the Frozen Heart: Glacial Coffin!"

The ambient Qi in the entire pavilion surged toward her. The temperature dropped so drastically that the very air became viscous.

Above Wang Jian, the space warped violently. From thin air, massive blocks of profound ice materialized. Each block was the size of a carriage, dense as mountain bedrock, and inscribed with heavy, sealing runes. There were dozens of them, forming a falling avalanche of inescapable death, aiming to smash Wang Jian into paste and entomb whatever was left.

Wang Jian looked up at the falling ice-boulders. A genuine smile finally graced his lips.

"Better," he murmured.

He decided to play along, testing another facet of his vast arsenal. The Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture allowed him to command all elements, fusing them with the overarching density of the stars.

He extended his right hand, his fingers curling like claws. He bypassed the fire attribute, tapping directly into the boundless vitality of the Wood attribute, infusing it heavily with his abyssal Stellar Qi.

"Verdant Dragon Bind."

The response was instantaneous and earth-shattering.

The solid wooden floorboards of the staircase and the landing erupted. Massive, thick vines burst forth. But these were not ordinary green plants. They were a dark, sickly green, almost black, pulsing with the alien, starlight energy of his Core. They possessed a terrifying, muscular vitality, thick as ancient tree trunks and covered in bark that looked like dragon scales.

The vines shot upward with explosive force, meeting the falling ice blocks in mid-air.

BOOM! CRASH!

The collision shook the foundational arrays of the pavilion. The dark, stellar-infused vines acted like massive whips, smashing the carriage-sized blocks of profound ice to dust. The raw physical strength of the Verdant Dragon Bind, fueled by Wang Jian’s monstrous spiritual sea, was overwhelming.

The ice didn’t stand a chance. The massive boulders were reduced to a shower of harmless snow that drifted down around Wang Jian like confetti.

But the technique didn’t end there.

Like a nest of angered, colossal snakes, the dark vines surged forward, continuing their trajectory past the destroyed ice and diving directly toward Bing Yun.

Bing Yun gasped, leaping backward. She drew a secondary weapon from her ring, a slender rapier made of frost-steel. She slashed furiously at the incoming vines, her sword qi cutting deep gashes into the bark.

"Sever!" she cried, lopping the head off a massive vine that tried to wrap around her waist.

But the victory was momentary. The moment the vine was cut, the immense, unnatural vitality of the Stellar-Wood attribute surged. The severed stump writhed, and two new vine heads sprouted instantly, snapping their jaws toward her. They were relentless, regenerating faster than she could cut them down, forcing her to constantly retreat, her movements becoming frantic.

Wang Jian resumed his walk up the stairs, completely unbothered by the shower of ice and the writhing mass of monstrous vegetation that was currently terrorizing the Ice Heart Elder. He moved with the casual elegance of a lord inspecting his domain.

"You insulted my Sect," Wang Jian said, his voice easily carrying over the sound of snapping wood and shattering ice.

He reached the top of the stairs, finally standing on the same level as Bing Yun. He snapped his folding fan open once more, waving away the lingering dust of her destroyed technique.

"You called us ruins," Wang Jian continued, his abyssal eyes locking onto her desperate, frightened gaze. He stepped forward as the dark vines coiled around her legs, trapping her in place.

"I will show you," Wang Jian whispered, his smile turning cruel and deeply predatory, "that ruins can bury you."