Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist Chapter 1050: The Crucible of the Sunken Bone Archipelago

Time flowed like an indifferent river across the Myriad Reefs Sea Region.

Following the catastrophic three-way collision at Crimson Reef and the secret taming of the Scarlet Serpent Matriarch Hong Lin, another six months rolled by—bringing the total passage of time since the plundering of the Dragon-Spine Trench to four full years.

During these final six months of the four-year cycle, an exhausted, eerie stalemate settled over the war-torn sea domain. Having lost his left arm and thirty years of longevity essence, Heavenly Tide True Monarch remained sealed inside the inner sanctum of the Myriad Ocean Palace; Blood-Bone True Monarch hid behind the bone-fortresses of the northwest nursing his cracked Seven-Skulls Blood Pagoda; and down in the ten-thousand-foot southern abyss, Shifting-Tide Patriarch—missing three tentacles and believing that Red-Scale Matriarch had perished in the frost storm at Crimson Reef—halted the Grand Beast Tide to regrow his severed limbs.

Yet fourteen hundred miles south of Abyssal Pearl City, deep within the storm-lashed, lawless reefs of the Sunken Bone Archipelago, a lone fire had been burning in the dark for four unbroken years.

On a bleak, rain-swept morning in the third month of the fourth year, a jagged mountain cave formed from the petrified skull of a prehistoric sea-behemoth suddenly trembled.

CRACK—BOOOOOOM!

A thirty-foot crescent of condensed, icy blue-gold sword wind erupted from the inside of the sealed bone cavern, slicing the five-hundred-ton boulder blocking the entrance cleanly into two smooth halves that slid down into the churning black surf!

Out from the dark cavern walked Ye Fan.

Four years had passed in the outer world since the day he had been pinned face-down atop the dead wyrm’s skull in the Dragon-Spine Trench—yet inside the three-fold time-accelerated boundary of the Temporal Jade Bead hanging against his chest, Ye Fan had endured twelve grueling, solitary years of blood, fire, and bone-grinding cultivation!

Every trace of the rash, hot-headed youth who had once walked into Coral Cloud Island was gone.

Ye Fan now stood tall and broad-shouldered, his frame leaner yet packed with dense, scarred muscle tempered by twelve internal years of fighting Grade 6 and Grade 7 Demon Beasts across the archipelago. He wore a fitted, sleeveless battle-coat crafted from the dark-blue scales of a Grade 7 Thunder-Fin Leviathan, belted at the waist with links of black abyssal iron. A long, jagged white scar ran from the corner of his left eyebrow down across his jaw—left behind by the claw of a Grade 7 Blood-Winged Sea Eagle five internal years ago—and his dark eyes were as cold, steady, and bottomless as two wells of winter iron.

Across his broad back hung his five-element bone scabbard, from which protruded the long hilt of his reforged lifebound weapon. Over twelve internal years inside the Temporal Jade Bead, Ye Fan had fused the calcified dorsal sword-bone of a Grade 7 Thunder-Horned Swordfish and three thousand catties of deep-sea meteoric iron into his heavy black broadsword—elevating the four-inch-wide blade into a terrifying Peak-Grade Magic Treasure that hummed with compressed wind, deep-blue frost, and a hidden core of golden purifying flame.

More importantly, the spiritual pressure radiating from the revolving Golden Core inside his lower energy reservoir had reached its absolute mortal ceiling: the Peak Great Circle of the Late-Stage Core Formation Realm, standing just half a step from shattering into a Nascent Soul!

SKREEEEEEE!

High above the storm clouds over the bone island, a deafening, metallic cry tore the rain curtain apart.

Descending from the thunderclouds on a pair of sixty-foot wings covered in dark-silver feathers that crackled with natural blue sea-lightning was a ferocious Grade 7 Mutated Thunder-Winged Roc! Three years ago in the outer world, Ye Fan had slain a pack of blood-sharks attacking the Roc’s nesting cliff and fed its wounded body ten drops of diluted spirit-vein marrow inside his temporal field, binding the Late-Stage Core Formation sky-predator as his war mount.

Landing on the jagged bone ledge beside Ye Fan with a gust of ozone wind, the sixty-foot Thunder-Winged Roc lowered its hooked iron beak respectfully against Ye Fan’s shoulder.

Ye Fan stroked the metallic feathers of the Roc’s neck with his scarred left hand, his cold gaze turning northward across the stormy gray horizon toward the inner human sea.

For four thousand three hundred and eighty days inside the Temporal Jade Bead, whenever exhaustion threatened to make him drop his broadsword, Ye Fan had closed his eyes and replayed the exact same five seconds in his mind:

His beloved Teacher, Shen Mengqi, wrapping her pale arms around that dark-robed man’s bicep, pressing her half-bared breasts against his sleeve, and kissing his jaw while calling Ye Fan a delusional street rat—right before that man tapped Ye Fan’s cheek with the flat of Shen Mengqi’s own sword.

’Twelve years inside the bead,’ Ye Fan thought, his heartbeat slow and cold as glacial iron as his fingers gripped the hilt of his heavy black broadsword. ’My Golden Core is at the Peak Great Circle, and the seventh layer of the Heavenly Gale Calamity Sword is complete. Yet to break open a Nascent Soul stronghold and sever that bastard’s head in front of Shen Mengqi, I need the final catalyst to shatter my core—and I need to know who that dark-robed mastermind behind Executive Shangguan Wan’er truly is.’

"Let’s go," Ye Fan said quietly, leaping lightly onto the armored back of the Grade 7 Thunder-Winged Roc. "Thirty leagues north of here sits Blood-Skull Outpost—the southernmost supply fortress of the Holy Nether Sea Organization. It’s time to test twelve years of iron on their necks and read their command scrolls."

BOOM!

With a single downward beat of its sixty-foot lightning wings, the Grade 7 Thunder-Winged Roc shot northward across the wave tops at blinding speed.

Two hours before sunset, the jagged black silhouette of Blood-Skull Outpost rose out of the rain thirty leagues north of the Sunken Bone Archipelago.

Built atop a crescent-shaped volcanic island that guarded the southern shipping bottleneck, the outpost was a heavily fortified demonic garrison manned by six hundred Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment blood-cultivators, twelve Early and Mid-Stage Core Formation captains, and two notorious Peak Late-Stage Core Formation garrison commanders: Daoist Xue Sha of the Azure Blood Sect and Daoist Gu Hun of the Corpse-Refining Hall.

Surrounding the island’s central blood-stone citadel was a third-tier defensive barrier—the Twelve-Pillar Blood-Miasma Formation—which projected a dome of corrosive red fog three hundred feet into the air.

Inside the central courtyard of the citadel, Daoist Xue Sha—a burly, scar-faced man wielding a pair of heavy Blood-Drinker Axes—was overseeing the loading of twenty crates of refined blood-iron onto a courier ship bound for the northern headquarters when a lookout atop the main watchtower screamed in panic:

"Enemy attack from the southern sky! A Grade 7 Thunder-Winged Roc is diving straight toward the main barrier!"

Daoist Xue Sha and the gaunt, gray-robed Daoist Gu Hun snapped their heads upward.

Streaking down out of the storm clouds at a seventy-degree angle was the sixty-foot Thunder-Winged Roc—and standing upright on the beast’s neck with his arms crossed was a tall, scarred man in dark-blue Leviathan-scale armor!

"A lone Core Formation cultivator riding a Grade 7 Roc dares charge Blood-Skull Outpost head-on?!" Daoist Xue Sha barked a cold laugh, raising his command token. "Raise the Twelve-Pillar Blood-Miasma Formation to full power! Fire the twelve Blood-Bone Ballistae!"

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

From the twelve stone bastions ringing the citadel, twelve ten-foot-long iron-bone javelins dipped in marrow-corroding poison shot upward into the rain, trailing ribbons of black fire as they converged on the diving Roc!

Standing on the Roc’s back two hundred yards above the red barrier dome, Ye Fan did not command his mount to swerve.

In the heat of combat, Ye Fan’s mind was silent and lethal. He stepped off the Roc’s neck into empty air, falling straight ahead of his mount toward the twelve rising ballista javelins as his right hand drew his four-inch-wide heavy black broadsword from its bone scabbard!

"Heavenly Gale Calamity Sword, Fifth Layer: Gale-Cleaving Wheel!"

Rotating his heavy frame in mid-air like a falling iron millstone, Ye Fan swung the heavy black broadsword in a single three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circular slash.

SHING-CLANG-BOOM!

A fifty-foot ring of compressed azure wind and deep-blue glacial fire expanded outward from his blade. All twelve ten-foot iron-bone javelins were sheared cleanly in half in mid-air, their poison warheads frozen solid before exploding harmlessly behind him!

Without losing a fraction of his downward momentum, Ye Fan plummeted straight down to the zenith of the outpost’s Twelve-Pillar Blood-Miasma Formation, while hundred feet above him, the Grade 7 Thunder-Winged Roc folded its wings and spat a concentrated bolt of blue-white Grade 7 beast lightning right onto the back of Ye Fan’s broadsword!

Channeling the Roc’s natural lightning along the Thunder-Horned Swordfish bone spine of his blade and combining it with the full weight of his Peak Late-Stage Core Formation essence, Ye Fan gripped the hilt with both hands and drove the point of the heavy black broadsword straight down into the central keystone node of the red miasma dome!

"Break!"

KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!

Where twelve internal years ago Ye Fan would have needed fifty strikes to wear down a fortress barrier, the sheer physical and spiritual density of his twelve-year blade—backed by Grade 7 lightning and a hidden needle of purifying golden flame—punched through the third-tier blood-miasma dome like an iron anvil dropping through rotten silk!

The twelve stone formation pillars ringing the island exploded into flying gravel simultaneously as the red dome shattered into fragments!

THUD-CRACK!

Ye Fan’s heavy boots slammed straight down onto the blood-stone flagstones in the center of the citadel courtyard, blasting a twenty-foot crater into the stone and sending thirty nearby Foundation Establishment guards flying through the air with ruptured eardrums!

"That black broadsword... and that blue-cloaked flame!" Daoist Gu Hun’s sunken eyes bulged as he recognized the description on the four-year-old hundred-thousand-stone warrant. "It’s Ye Fan! The thief of the Dragon-Spine Trench isn’t dead—he’s reached the Peak of Core Formation!"

"Peak of Core Formation or not, there are two of us and only one of him! Kill him and split the hundred-thousand High-Grade Spirit Stone bounty!" Daoist Xue Sha roared in greedy ferocity.

Both Peak Late-Stage Core Formation demonic commanders moved at once from opposite sides of the courtyard!

On the left, Daoist Xue Sha stomped the flagstones, his muscles swelling as he swung his twin Blood-Drinker Axes in a whirlwind of thirty overlapping crimson axe-shadows aimed at Ye Fan’s head and knees. On the right, Daoist Gu Hun slapped a black iron coffin strapped to his back; the coffin lid flew off, and a Peak Grade 6 Refined Iron-Corpse—its skin cast in poisonous black bronze and holding a spiked mace—lunged silently at Ye Fan’s blind spot while Daoist Gu Hun fired three green Soul-Piercing Bone Needles toward the back of Ye Fan’s neck!

Surrounded on three sides inside the twenty-foot crater while six hundred lower-realm disciples tried to form a blood-net around the walls, Ye Fan did not retreat a single step.

His boots pivoted three inches in the rubble, his hip balance shifting with effortless mastery.

Instead of parrying Daoist Xue Sha’s thirty crimson axe-shadows one by one, Ye Fan swung his heavy black broadsword in a single, flat horizontal sweep from left to right—unleashing the final, seventh layer of the inheritance he had perfected inside the Temporal Jade Bead:

"Heavenly Gale Calamity Sword, Seventh Layer: Silent Void Squall!"

There was no roaring wind sound. As the four-inch-wide black broadsword swept across the courtyard, the air within twenty yards in front of the blade was compressed into a thin, silent vacuum line laced with deep-blue frost and golden purifying fire!

SHING—CRACK—CRACK!

The silent vacuum line passed straight through Daoist Xue Sha’s thirty crimson axe-shadows as if they were painted smoke!

When the heavy black broadsword met the real blades of the twin Blood-Drinker Axes in Daoist Xue Sha’s hands, the hidden golden purifying flame instantly burned out the blood-spirits inside the axes, and the monstrous physical weight of Ye Fan’s strike shattered both High-Grade Magic Treasures into flying iron shrapnel!

Before Daoist Xue Sha could even pull his bleeding hands back, the flat tip of the broadsword continued its horizontal arc across his chest—slicing straight through his protective bone-breastplate and opening his ribcage from left shoulder to right hip!

At the exact same breath, without turning his head, Ye Fan released his left hand from the broadsword hilt, caught the three incoming green Soul-Piercing Bone Needles two inches from his neck inside a compressed vortex of palm-wind, and flicked his wrist to fire all three poisoned needles straight back into the eye sockets of the lunging Peak Grade 6 Refined Iron-Corpse!

CLANG!

As the Iron-Corpse staggered blindly for half a second from the needles striking its eyes, Ye Fan stepped backward on his right heel, spun his torso one hundred and eighty degrees, and brought the heavy black broadsword crashing down diagonally across both the Iron-Corpse and Daoist Gu Hun standing ten feet behind it!

KRA-SHING!

A blinding flash of blue-gold flame lit up the rain-swept courtyard. Both the Peak Grade 6 Refined Iron-Corpse and Peak Late-Stage Core Formation commander Daoist Gu Hun were cleaved cleanly in two from shoulder to waist in a single, unstoppable stroke!

Up in the air above the courtyard wall, the sixty-foot Thunder-Winged Roc swept down with a flap of its lightning wings, unleashing a storm of blue thunder-feathers that slaughtered the fleeing Core Formation captains along the ramparts.

Within less than fifty breaths from the moment the barrier fell, the central courtyard of Blood-Skull Outpost was dead silent save for the hiss of rain falling on cauterized corpses.

Ye Fan stood motionless in the center of the blood-stained crater, not a single drop of blood touching his dark-blue Leviathan-scale coat. He reached out with his spiritual sense, pulling the spatial rings off the severed fingers of Daoist Xue Sha and Daoist Gu Hun, and walked straight into the outpost’s inner command vault.

Inside the command vault, beside three chests containing twelve thousand Mid-Grade Spirit Stones and a jar of Rank 3 blood-pills, Ye Fan found a freshly unsealed, golden-trimmed parchment scroll sitting atop the command desk—bearing the joint wax seals of the Myriad Ocean Palace and the Holy Nether Sea Organization.

Ye Fan picked up the golden scroll and scanned the characters inside. For the first time in four years, a sharp, scorching flame flared inside his cold dark eyes.

"A sea-wide truce decree... convening the Grand Sea-Domain Convocation at Sky-Pillar Island in three months," Ye Fan read softly in the quiet vault. "All ten major factions of the Myriad Reefs Sea Region—including the Golden-Tide Consortium and the delegation of Abyssal Pearl City led by Executive Shangguan Wan’er and her chief military advisor—will gather at Sky-Pillar Island to open the Ancient Void-Sea Ruin and compete for the Heaven-Mending Stone..."

Ye Fan slowly rolled the golden scroll shut in his scarred hand.

The Heaven-Mending Stone was a legendary divine mineral formed in ancient spatial pockets—capable of allowing a Peak Late-Stage Core Formation cultivator to shatter their Golden Core and birth a flawless Nascent Soul with zero risk of Heart Demon failure. And even better, the very people who had framed him at the Dragon-Spine Trench and stolen his Teacher Shen Mengqi were sailing to that exact same island!

"Four years outside... twelve years in the bead," Ye Fan whispered, turning on his heel and walking back out into the storm as his heavy black broadsword hummed on his back. "At Sky-Pillar Island, I will take the Heaven-Mending Stone, step into the Nascent Soul Realm, and settle every drop of the Dragon-Spine debt in blood."