Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist Chapter 1040: The Stellar Demonic Infant

Nine dazzling fissures of violet-black starlight tore across the surface of Wang Jian’s revolving Golden Core from pole to pole.

Inside the deep-earth Frost-Jade Meditation Chamber beneath the second outer island, the air pressure dropped into a suffocating vacuum. As the fist-sized black-gold sphere inside Wang Jian’s lower energy reservoir split apart, the ten-thousand-year essence of the Dragon-Vein Spirit Pearl pressed against his solar plexus and the medicinal wave of the Peak-Grade Rank 4 Soul-Nurturing Pill exploded simultaneously within his torso.

BOOOOOOM!

A muffled roar vibrated through Wang Jian’s flesh and Spirit Bones, shaking the flood-dragon skull altar beneath his crossed legs. The three-foot-deep pool of liquid spiritual essence covering the chamber floor surged upward in a boiling white funnel, pouring into his open pores at a terrifying rate.

Standing around the outer rim of the stone basin, Mu Lianhua, Su Binglan, Yue Lingshan, Lin Wanyue, Shangguan Wan’er, Hua Yimei, Hua Ling’er, Shen Mengqi, Bing Yun, Liu Ruyan, and Chen Ying braced their feet against the frost-jade floor as a wave of scorching dark-gold wind swept outward from the altar.

Inside Wang Jian’s lower energy reservoir, his Golden Core reached its final structural limit and shattered into ten thousand glowing black-gold fragments.

Yet unlike an ordinary cultivator whose core dissolved into peaceful mist, Wang Jian cultivated the heaven-defying Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture atop his innate Heavenly Yang Divine Physique. The moment his core broke, a raging vortex of gravitational dark starlight and blazing golden Yang fire collided within his spiritual sea. His flesh turned as red as heated copper, thick blue veins bulging across his bare chest and neck as plumes of white steam hissed from his skin.

At that exact instant, the external world vanished from Wang Jian’s senses.

The Heart Demon Trial descended. Because his cultivation path devoured the vitality of others and defied heavenly equilibrium, the mental backlash triggered by his core shattering was twice as ferocious as the trial Mu Lianhua had endured months prior.

Wang Jian found himself standing atop the shattered ruins of Azure Peak beneath a weeping sky of crimson blood. Around his boots lay the broken, lifeless corpses of Su Binglan, Mu Lianhua, and Shen Mengqi, their chests pierced by golden imperial lances. Ten paces ahead stood Yue Lingshan, her white Thousand-Year Spirit-Silk robes stained with blood and tears as she pointed the Verdant Willow Blade straight at his heart, her eyes filled with revulsion.

"You lied to me from the beginning, Wang Jian," the phantom of Yue Lingshan wept, her voice echoing with a soul-piercing vibration designed to fracture his Dao Heart with guilt and paranoia. "You turned our sisters and allies into your secret playthings behind my back! Look behind you—the upper-realm sovereigns have arrived to purge your demonic heresy! Bow your head and disperse your core, or die in eternal torment!"

Behind the weeping phantom of his wife, the crimson clouds parted to reveal three towering, faceless titans wreathed in blinding celestial chains, pressing down upon Wang Jian’s shoulders to force him to his knees.

Wang Jian looked at the weeping illusion of Yue Lingshan, then raised his calm, dark gaze toward the descending celestial titans. No trace of guilt, panic, or hesitation rippled across his mind.

’Guilt is a shackle for weak mortals who beg the heavens for permission to live,’ Wang Jian thought coldly. ’What belongs to me is mine by right of conquest. Even if the true heavens descend, I will tear down their throne before I bow.’

"Stellar Demonic Devouring Art: Swallow the Mind!"

Instead of defending against the mental illusions, Wang Jian opened his arms inside his spiritual sea. The swirling vortex of black-gold core fragments erupted behind his conscious projection like a ravenous black hole.

With a deafening mental shriek, the phantom of Yue Lingshan and the three faceless celestial titans were ripped off their feet, torn into ribbons of pure soul-energy, and dragged straight into the swirling vortex of his Dantian! Rather than allowing the Heart Demon to corrode his sanity, Wang Jian crushed the invading mental trial with sheer tyrannical willpower, refining the shattered illusions into pure spiritual nourishment to thicken the nascent embryonic form gathering at the center of his broken core.

Wang Jian’s eyes snapped open inside the Frost-Jade Meditation Chamber.

Before anyone could speak, the bedrock ceiling three hundred feet overhead groaned violently. Even through thousands of tons of solid island granite and forty-eight buried Profound Iron Array Anchors, the oppressive, suffocating wrath of the heavens locked directly onto Wang Jian’s spiritual coordinate.

"The Heavenly Tribulation has formed above the peak!" Yue Lingshan cried out, looking down at the glowing Zenith-Lotus jade control plate trembling in her hands. "Husband, the density of the storm clouds is twice as thick as Sister Lianhua’s breakthrough! It is not standard Six-Nine Heavenly Thunder—the sky inside the barrier is turning violet-black!"

"Nine-Nine Violet-Black Heavenly Thunder," Su Binglan breathed, her porcelain face tightening with genuine alarm as she sensed the terrifying pressure gathering above the island. "That is the ancient annihilation tribulation reserved for heaven-defying physiques!"

Wang Jian rose smoothly from the flood-dragon skull altar. If he remained inside the deep-earth chamber, the descending Nine-Nine Violet-Black Heavenly Thunder would blast straight through the island’s crust, shattering their underground herb gardens and collapsing the dual Fourth-Grade Spiritual Veins.

"Lingshan, take your formation disciples to the lower cliff bastion and channel the full output of both Fourth-Grade Spiritual Veins into the Grade-4 Void-Shrouding Sanctuary Formation," Wang Jian commanded, his voice calm and resonant as he fastened a fresh black silk robe around his waist, leaving his muscular upper torso bare. "Binglan, Lianhua—ascend with me to the upper dome. You two will intercept the scattered outer lightning arcs so they do not overload Lingshan’s spatial curtain. Leave the central thunder pillars to me."

"Be careful, Husband!" Yue Lingshan said earnestly, stepping forward to touch his warm forearm for a brief second before turning toward the side transit tunnel with Liu Ruyan and Chen Ying to man the primary array nodes.

The moment Yue Lingshan vanished up the side passage, Wang Jian glanced at the remaining women. Even in the face of a life-or-death heavenly calamity, Shen Mengqi, Lin Wanyue, Shangguan Wan’er, Hua Yimei, and Hua Ling’er looked at him with feverish, worshipful devotion.

Wang Jian did not waste words. He blurred into a streak of dark-gold light, shooting straight up the vertical central shaft toward the island’s open summit, with Mu Lianhua and Su Binglan flying close behind his shoulders.

When Wang Jian emerged onto the flat basalt peak of the second outer island, the afternoon sky had vanished entirely.

Five hundred feet above the island stretched the shimmering silver dome of the Grade-4 Void-Shrouding Sanctuary Formation, which bent light and sound to project the illusion of an empty, sun-drenched island to the merchants docked in Abyssal Pearl City twelve miles away. Inside the dome, however, a terrifying funnel of pitch-black and deep violet clouds churned like a boiling cauldron of ink. Arcs of violet-black lightning as thick as ancient pine trees slithered through the clouds, radiating a destructive pressure that made the basalt rock beneath Wang Jian’s bare feet hiss and crack.

"We will hold the eastern and western skies, Master!" Mu Lianhua called out.

Flanked by Su Binglan, the two Early-Stage Nascent Soul Grandmasters rose three hundred feet into the air on opposite sides of the summit. Mu Lianhua summoned her Myriad Beast Fire Cauldron, unleashing a roaring canopy of blue Azure Sky Heart Phoenix Flame, while Su Binglan spread her arms in her translucent glacial-silk robes, projecting a three-hundred-yard lotus barrier of absolute-zero Grand Yin Ice Flame.

At the center of the summit, Wang Jian stood alone beneath the eye of the violet-black vortex.

With a thought, he summoned the pair of dark, curved Ancient Treasures looted from the Primal Dragon Grotto—the Twin Abyssal Scale Guards. The overlapping flood-dragon scale bracers clamped tightly around his thick forearms, glowing with dense black water runes. In his left hand, Wang Jian gripped the heavy handle of the seven-foot-tall Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion, planting the bottom edge of the forty-nine-folded Star-Core Iron shield into the stone.

KRA-BOOOOOOM!

The vortex overhead tore open. The first wave of the Nine-Nine Violet-Black Heavenly Thunder did not descend as single bolts—nine massive pillars of violet-black lightning dropped simultaneously, merging mid-air into a thirty-foot-wide lance of celestial wrath that plunged straight toward Wang Jian’s crown!

Twenty peripheral arcs of purple lightning splintered off the main pillar, shooting outward toward the island cliffs.

In the eastern and western skies, Mu Lianhua and Su Binglan moved instantly. Ribbons of blue phoenix fire and freezing glacial walls intercepted the twenty stray arcs in mid-air, detonating them into harmless showers of sparks before they could strike Yue Lingshan’s outer spatial curtain.

Down on the central peak, Wang Jian sank his hips into a rooted horse stance, channeling the swirling black-gold power of his shattered core into his arms, and raised the Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion overhead at a forty-five-degree angle.

CLANG-ROOOOAR!

The thirty-foot pillar of violet-black thunder slammed squarely into the face of the heavy Star-Core Iron shield.

The physical weight of the impact was astronomical. The basalt peak beneath Wang Jian’s heels exploded into a ten-foot-deep crater of pulverized stone dust. Wang Jian’s knees bent three inches as ten thousand catties of downward celestial momentum tried to crush his spine. Along the surface of the Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion, the lightning-diverting runic grooves glowed blindingly bright, routing half of the destructive energy down into the island’s deep bedrock, while the remaining violet-black thunder spilled over the shield’s rim and washed straight across Wang Jian’s bare torso!

HSSSSSS!

Wang Jian clenched his jaw as hundreds of tiny violet lightning snakes bit into his bare chest and shoulders. His skin split open in dozens of shallow cuts, spilling dark-gold blood that sizzled on contact with the thunder. Yet having refined fifteen catties of Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Dragon Marrow into his flesh and Spirit Bones over the past three months, his physical vessel held firm like indestructible divine steel.

Instead of expelling the invading thunder, Wang Jian inhaled deeply, using the Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture to drag the searing violet lightning through his torn pores and straight down into his lower energy reservoir!

Inside his Dantian, the ten thousand black-gold core fragments bathed in the celestial thunder-marrow. Under the鍛 (tempering) hammer of the heavenly lightning, the scattered fragments melted and fused together, shaping the lower legs and torso of a miniature, three-inch infant seated in the lotus position.

Before Wang Jian could exhale, the second, third, fourth, and fifth waves of the Nine-Nine Violet-Black Heavenly Thunder crashed down in rapid, merciless succession!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Thirty-six pillars of violet-black annihilation lightning hammered the summit over the next quarter-hour.

Down on the lower cliff bastion, Yue Lingshan knelt before the central array stone, her white Thousand-Year Spirit-Silk robes drenched in sweat and clinging tightly to her heaving breasts and wide hips. Blood trickled from the corner of her rosy lips as she burned stacks of High-Grade Spirit Stones to keep the Grade-4 Void-Shrouding Sanctuary Formation from rupturing under the acoustic shockwaves.

In the sky above, Mu Lianhua and Su Binglan were both breathing heavily, their pale faces flushed as they continuously intercepted hundreds of splattered lightning tendrils. And on the edge of the lower sanctuary tunnel, Shen Mengqi, Lin Wanyue, Shangguan Wan’er, Hua Yimei, and Hua Ling’er watched with wide, breathless eyes as Wang Jian stood inside a raging sea of violet-black fire.

By the eighth wave, the Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion was glowing cherry-red, its thick surface dented and smoking, and three dragon scales on Wang Jian’s Twin Abyssal Scale Guards had cracked down the middle. Wang Jian’s bare upper body was crisscrossed with char marks and gilded blood, yet inside his lower energy reservoir, the three-inch black-gold infant was ninety percent complete—only its crown and eyes remained unformed.

Overhead, the violet-black cloud vortex contracted violently, shrinking from a mile wide down to a condensed, pitch-black sphere barely a hundred feet across.

All eighty-one bolts of the final ninth wave had compressed into a single, terrifying entity: a hundred-foot-long Violet-Black Thunder Flood-Dragon with eyes of pure white destruction!

"Husband, raise all defensive treasures!" Yue Lingshan screamed through the array link, terrified by the apocalyptic pressure of the final strike.

Wang Jian looked up at the descending Violet-Black Thunder Flood-Dragon. If he hid behind the Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion now, the shield would shatter and the residual force would still strike him passively. To forge a supreme Nascent Soul capable of dominating ancient monsters, he needed to swallow the heart of the ninth tribulation wave directly.

Wang Jian tossed the glowing-hot Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion aside, letting the massive shield embed itself upright into the stone cliff.

Crossing his Twin Abyssal Scale Guards in front of his chest, Wang Jian bent his knees in the deep crater, ignited every drop of his Heavenly Yang Divine Physique and Stellar Demonic Qi, and launched himself straight up into the sky to meet the diving Thunder Flood-Dragon head-on!

"Come down!" Wang Jian’s roar shook the entire spatial dome.

Fifty feet below the cloud vortex, Wang Jian’s rising fist—wrapped in the ancient flood-dragon scale bracers and a swirling vortex of black-gold starlight—collided squarely with the horned snout of the Violet-Black Thunder Flood-Dragon!

KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!

A blinding sphere of violet and black-gold light engulfed the sky. Both halves of the Twin Abyssal Scale Guards shattered into fragments from the monstrous impact, having absorbed sixty percent of the dragon’s physical momentum.

As the remaining forty percent of the Violet-Black Thunder Flood-Dragon roared against his bare fists, Wang Jian opened his mouth and his solar plexus simultaneously, unleashing the full devouring suction of his Dantian!

Like a whale swallowing a river, Wang Jian dragged the thrashing core of celestial thunder-marrow straight down his throat and through his primary meridians. His muscle fibers tore and regrew in the same heartbeat under the green nourishment of his Verdant Eternal Spring Essence, while the pure, concentrated violet thunder-marrow crashed into the crown of the three-inch infant inside his lower energy reservoir.

HUMMMMMM!

A deep, ancient bell chime echoed from within Wang Jian’s abdomen.

Inside his expanded spiritual sea, the three-inch Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant opened its miniature eyes. Its body looked as though it were cast from indestructible black-gold metal, etched with faint purple dragon-scale patterns along its tiny arms and crowned with a halo of revolving dark stars.

With a single breath from the miniature infant, a vast, suffocating expanse of Initial Stage Nascent Soul Realm pressure erupted from Wang Jian’s physical vessel, sweeping outward across the sky and blowing the remaining violet-black tribulation clouds into nothingness!

Sunlight streamed back down through the translucent dome of the Grade-4 Void-Shrouding Sanctuary Formation, illuminating the scorched, cratered summit of the second outer island.

Hovering fifty feet in the air, Wang Jian exhaled a long breath of violet-gold vapor. As his newly formed Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant circulated its essence through his body, the char marks and cuts across his broad, muscular chest flaked away in seconds, revealing flawless, bronze-toned skin that gleamed with an unyielding, immortal luster. Even compared to Mu Lianhua and Su Binglan, the sheer density of Wang Jian’s Initial Stage Nascent Soul foundation was at least three times wider and heavier.

Down on the lower cliff bastion, having held the spatial barrier against eighty-one bolts of heaven-defying thunder, Yue Lingshan’s legs finally gave out. She slumped softly onto the stone beside her control plate, her face pale with spiritual exhaustion, though a radiant, joyful smile lit up her virtuous features.

Wang Jian flashed through the air via instantaneous short-range spatial movement—the signature ability of a Nascent Soul Grandmaster—appearing right beside Yue Lingshan in a single blink to catch her before her shoulders touched the floor.

"You held the sky for me, Lingshan," Wang Jian said softly, cradling his virtuous wife against his warm chest while feeding a gentle stream of his Verdant Eternal Spring Essence into her wrist to soothe her strained meridians.

"You succeeded, Husband... you are a true Nascent Soul Grandmaster now," Yue Lingshan murmured happily, resting her sweat-dampened cheek against his collarbone. "Not a single ripple leaked past the fourth outer island. The city suspects nothing."

"Your spiritual sea is completely empty," Wang Jian said, lifting her effortlessly into his arms and summoning Liu Ruyan and Chen Ying, who had kept their respectful, sisterly demeanor around Yue Lingshan. "I am placing you inside the Upper Lotus Recovery Array for the next three months to nourish your foundation. Sleep deeply and consolidate the insights you gained from holding down a Nascent Soul tribulation. When you wake, I will have a batch of Rank 4 pills waiting to push you to the Peak of Core Formation."

Yue Lingshan nodded obediently, her eyelids already growing heavy from the soothing green life-essence. Wang Jian personally carried her up to the quiet, heavily warded bedchamber at the highest spire of the island pavilion, tucked her beneath a warm spirit-silk quilt, and activated the inner slumber-and-recovery formation around her bed.

The moment the heavy stone doors of Yue Lingshan’s recovery chamber clicked shut, sealing his virtuous wife in three months of peaceful, dreamless meditation, Wang Jian’s gentle, doting expression vanished.

Inside his lower energy reservoir, his newly born Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant was pulsing like a miniature furnace of violet-black thunder and scorching Yang fire. Because his Heavenly Yang Divine Physique had just swallowed forty percent of a Nine-Nine Heavenly Thunder Flood-Dragon, the aggressive, masculine heat coursing through his veins was so intense that his blood practically boiled. Without vast, continuous quantities of pure Yin essen