Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Chapter 258 - 26: Genesis Protocol

Sitting cross-legged in the center of the translucent silver barrier, Shen Haoran closed his eyes completely, his consciousness descending like a diving dragon straight into the absolute depths of his spiritual sea.

The conceptual blueprints of his proposed creation were rotating within his mind at a blinding, volatile speed.

He was not aiming to merely weave a temporary battle technique or a complex movement pattern; he was systematically attempting to forge a brand-new, localized cosmic mechanism—an entirely unrecorded micro-universe that operated purely on his own absolute terms.

To achieve this, he needed a flawless, primordial anchor to serve as the structural center of the entire network.

’The Gold Incinerating Supreme Flame...’ Haoran’s internal vision locked onto the brilliant, blindingly dense ember floating peacefully at the absolute nucleus of his dantian.

According to the most ancient, dust-laden records preserved within the deepest forbidden vaults of the Shen Clan, this primordial flame was universally recognized by the old world as the very first spark of cosmic heat that had given structural life and physical form to the barren worlds at the dawn of creation.

It was a flame of pure, unadulterated genesis.

’I will use its unique, life-giving abilities as the absolute core of the foundation.’

With a sharp, clinical flick of his mental fingers, Haoran forced a massive strand of his internal qi to wrap around the flame, dragging it upward into the center of his chest.

Next, he needed a mechanism to aggressively project and violently enforce this internal reality outward into the physical plane.

He turned his focus toward the glowing, silver-etched Heavenly Sword Dao Bone built straight into his skeletal structure.

The bone was humming with a razor-sharp, space-shearing velocity. Utilizing its innate, unmatched offensive dominance as a high-tier conceptual tether, Haoran aggressively extended its sharp spiritual resonance downward, forcefully wrapping the bone’s intent directly around the slumbering, pitch-black mass of the Black Imperial Sword, Azathoth, which lay deeply hidden within his storage ring.

Azathoth was a literal fragment of a chaotic outer god originating from the infinite void beyond the stars.

It was completely, fundamentally not an entity of this material world, and its very presence naturally rejected and distorted the orthodox physical laws of the Tian Yuan Empire.

’If I use the dominance that the Heavenly Sword Dao Bone hold over all swords to rigidly dominate and control its chaotic, foreign properties...’ Haoran analyzed, his teeth grinding slightly as a cold sweat began to break along his brow from the sheer kinetic strain of touching the outer god’s mass, ’and seamlessly overlay that outer fragment with my knowledge of complex Formation Arrays, I can forcefully create an external, localized field that completely, ruthlessly rejects the outside world’s core laws, permanently replacing the surrounding space with a blank, unwritten canvas that belongs entirely to my will.’

However, maintaining a completely separate, reality-defying miniature dimension required an absolutely terrifying volume of continuous energy that would instantly drain the core of any standard Nascent Soul cultivator into barren white dust within a fraction of a second.

To solve this mathematical equation, Haoran unleashed the gates of his magnificent Infinity Dragon God Divine Physique.

The ancient, cosmic bloodline inside his cells instantly roared to life, unleashing a nigh-infinite, bottomless reservoir of dense dragon-qi that surged through his pathways like a tidal wave of stars, effortlessly powering the massive spatial distortion.

Finally, he reached the absolute most dangerous, volatile phase of the entire experiment.

He needed to temporarily access the primordial forces of the Supreme Trinity, the absolute extreme trio of Creation, Destruction, and Domination, which currently lay heavily sealed within the deep recesses of his spirit.

However, there lies the absolute paradox of his own body, which was his very own Infinity Dragon God Physique and his Heavenly Sword Dao Bone acted as the permanent, physical seals keeping that god-tier trinity from completely obliterating his mortal shell from the inside out.

If he sealed away those two things to unseal the Supreme Trinity, everything would collapse.

’But... what if I don’t unseal them traditionally?’ a sharp, cold smirk formed on Haoran’s lips as he channeled the primordial, rule-breaking power of his Law of Absolute Severance. ’If I use the Law of Absolute Severance to cleanly, systematically sever the causal relationship between the seals and the trinity, I can completely bypass destiny, luck, and biological restrictions. I can temporarily, cleanly siphon the raw power of the Supreme Trinity out of the vault without having to remove or weaken the physical positions of my Divine Physique and Sword Bone.’

The execution was immaculate in theory.

With the raw parameters of the Supreme Trinity flowing into his micro-world, he could use the Extreme Creation to perfectly, flawlessly stabilize the newly birthed space, preventing the outer god’s chaos from collapsing the geometry.

Then, he could unleash the absolute weight of Domination to completely, ruthlessly suppress any enemy caught inside the field, a feat made entirely possible since they were now physically standing inside a localized universe owned entirely by his consciousness.

In the standard outside world, a cultivator would typically need to reach the legendary, planet-shattering realm of a Supreme Emperor to utilize a domain of this absolute magnitude, or be someone completely unhinged and crazy like his own mother, Chu Xueyu, who could force the heavens to bend through sheer slaughter and create a domain despite being only at the Heavenly Saint realm.

But for him, through this synthetic method, he was creating a shortcut to Supreme.

And finally, once the enemy was pinned to the floor by Domination, he could cleanly, instantly obliterate their entire physical and spiritual existence with the raw, entropic force of Destruction.

It was a perfect, beautiful masterstroke of cosmic science, but the physical universe did not surrender its laws that easily.

"First attempt... begin," Haoran muttered through his locked teeth, his internal qi flaring into a brilliant gold light.

He successfully projected the Gold Incinerating Supreme Flame as the nucleus, and cleanly used the Sword Bone to tether Azathoth.

Then, the dark, silver runes of his formation array began to rapidly materialize in the air around his boots, creating a faint, ten-meter ripple in the spatial fabric.

He channelled the infinite dragon-qi to stabilize the borders, and carefully swept the Law of Absolute Severance across the internal seals to draw a microscopic drop of Creation energy.

*BOOM!*

The exact millisecond the green light of Creation touched the outer god’s pitch-black aura, an immense, violent spiritual rejection erupted within his chest.

The chaotic properties of Azathoth violently twisted the creation energy backward, turning it into an unstable spatial vacuum.

The miniature world instantly collapsed into itself with a deafening pop, the kinetic backlash slamming straight into Haoran’s lungs.

"Gah!" Haoran gasped out loud, his eyes snapping open as a thin trickle of dark crimson blood spilled down the corner of his lips.

His chest burned with an intense, suffocating heat, his meridians twitching from the violent shockwave.

But he didn’t panic, he didn’t even show a single sliver of frustration and just casually reached up with a wide sleeve, cleanly wiping the blood from his chin, his golden eyes remaining as cold, analytical, and detached as a seasoned alchemist inspecting a broken cauldron.

"The ratio was incorrect," he murmured silently, his mind instantly reviewing the breakdown of the failure. "The outer god’s mass naturally rejects the standard structural matrix of creation. I cannot overlay them directly; I must use the Formation Array as a buffer zone to filter the properties before they touch."

He closed his eyes again, trying for the second time.

He adjusted the silver runes of the formation, tilting the spatial angles by three degrees to create a protective barrier between the sword’s chaos and the trinity’s light.

He ignited the flame, drew the dragon-qi, and severed the causality once more, siphoning a drop of Creation and a drop of Domination simultaneously.

The field expanded beautifully, covering twenty meters of the isolated dimension.

The space turned into a dark, gold-rimmed sanctuary where the air went completely dead.

Haoran felt a surge of triumph as the Domination law stabilized, heavy gravity locking onto the empty air.

*CRACK.*

Suddenly, his skeletal structure let out a sickening, high-frequency groan.

The sheer, overwhelming volume of the nigh-infinite dragon-qi required to continuously sustain both the Domination field and the filter array was far too dense.

The energy began to violently backflow into his own flesh, the pressure cracking his ribs from the inside out.

The world shattered into a million glowing silver particles, the backlash throwing his torso forward as he coughed up another heavy splatter of blood onto the stone floor.

"Second attempt... failed," Haoran breathed heavily, his knuckles turning white against his knees as he forcefully channeled his internal flame to rapidly heal the fractures along his bones.

"The dragon-qi is infinite in volume, but my current Nascent Soul pathways are too narrow to act as a proper valve. I must introduce a recursive loop within the formation itself, allowing the spent energy of the world to flow back into my physique to alleviate the internal pressure."

Ten times he constructed the matrix within the dark silence of his silver dome, and ten times the universe violently rejected his hubris.

During the fifth attempt, the Law of Absolute Severance slipped by a fraction of a millimeter, causing a terrifying thread of Destruction energy to leak into his own dantian, nearly incinerating his primary core into black ash before he forcefully suppressed it with his flame.

During the eighth attempt, the outer god’s memories temporarily flooded his mind, its dark whispers nearly driving his mental cultivation into a state of absolute madness before his Heavenly Sword Bone violently snapped it back into submission.

His royal gold garments were now visibly stained with patches of his own dried blood, his breathing ragged, his face pale from the immense, non-stop mental and physical toll of executing a science project against the laws of reality.

Any ordinary genius of the Twelve Sects would have long since given up in terror, their minds breaking under the sheer physical agony of the backlashes.

But Shen Haoran’s smile only grew sharper, colder, and more intensely predatory with every single failure.

His Dao of Supremacy thrived on the absolute defiance of limitations.

He didn’t care how many times his bones cracked; he would reforge them a thousand times until the universe finally bowed to his will.

Finally, half a month had passed, and as the sun of the academy’s testing window began to cast its final, amber glow across the outer plaza, Haoran took a deep, perfectly steady breath.

Every single variable had been calculated, every single failure recorded, and every single valve within his meridians adjusted to absolute perfection.

"107th attempt... execute," he whispered into the void.

The Gold Incinerating Supreme Flame ignited flawlessly at the nucleus.

The Heavenly Sword Dao Bone locked onto Azathoth like a vice of pure iron.

The Formation Array spun into existence, creating a perfect, self-sustaining recursive loop that beautifully recycled the bottomless reservoir of his dragon-qi.

The Law of Absolute Severance slid cleanly across his internal seals, drawing the immaculate, balanced streams of Creation, Domination, and Destruction without a single thread of friction.

*HUMMMMM!*

A deep, cosmic vibration resonated through the silver dome.

This time, there was absolutely no explosion, no violent rejection, and no bloody backlash.

The surrounding space within a thirty-meter radius cleanly, silently dissolved into a state of absolute, unwritten void.

A magnificent, dark gold-rimmed domain expanded outward, the interior of the sphere transforming into a pristine, localized world where the sky was made of pure golden fire and the floor was composed of solid, pitch-black outer metal.

The laws of the Prime Origin Realm were completely, thoroughly erased inside this boundary.

Haoran stood tall in the center of his creation, his golden hair billowing wildly within the sovereign wind of his own unique path.

He had successfully pioneered an entirely new, unrecorded method of combat—a localized miniature cosmos born from the fusion of anomalies.

He named it,

"Genesis Protocol: The Law Beyond Heaven."