Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist Chapter 983: Subduing Half-Step Nascent Soul Realm experts

Despite possessing immense physical prowess and Peak Core Formation cultivation bases, Jin Da and Jin Er were utterly unprepared for the targeted, high-tier spiritual illusion attack. They stumbled violently, their perfectly honed combat movements faltering immediately. The colossal broadswords in their grasp wavered, the searing white heat flickering as their control over Qi frayed. To their afflicted senses, the blood-red courtyard began to spin violently and fragment. The solid jade pavement felt as though it were melting beneath their boots, and the pavilion walls seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting with terrifying speed.

"Ahhh! My head... the space is tearing apart!" Jin Da grunted, dropping to one knee. He released his two-handed grip on his sword to clutch at his armored helmet. The auditory illusion was shredding his spatial perception, making it impossible to discern up from down or friend from foe.

Shangguan Wan’er, however, proved why she reigned supreme as the ruler of the Golden-Scale Auction House. Her Half-Step Nascent Soul foundation, vastly more robust and condensed, fortified her spiritual sea like an ancient citadel. She sensed the dissonant chord attempting to invade her mind, the sickening vertigo threatening to destabilize her.

She gritted her teeth, her jaw clenching so hard her perfect facial muscles stood out sharply. She aggressively circulated her dense, golden Qi in a rapid, reverse-flow pattern through her upper meridians, forcefully and violently expelling the auditory illusion from her mind before it could take root. The vertigo vanished, her vision snapping back into sharp, blood-red focus.

"Who dares ambush the Mistress of the Golden-Scale Auction House?!" Shangguan Wan’er demanded, her voice resonating with absolute, tyrannical authority, piercing the chaotic, dissonant twanging of the zither. Her alluring, crimson-painted lips pulled back in an arrogant, feral snarl. She displayed no fear; instead, she radiated profound, murderous insult. "Show yourselves, cowards! Do you believe a cheap parlor trick of sound and light is sufficient to vanquish me?"

Her sharp, calculating eyes scanned the courtyard, her Half-Step Nascent Soul Divine Sense extending outward, attempting to map the confines of their prison.

‘This is no mere Ice Heart Palace formation,’ Shangguan Wan’er mused rapidly, her mind operating at a terrifying speed, discarding assumptions and dissecting the raw data of her surroundings. ‘The Ice Heart Palace embodies absolute zero, purity, and profound stillness. The Qi signature emanating from these walls, from the very ground beneath my feet, is utterly dark. It is heavy, oppressive, and entirely unfamiliar compared to anything within the righteous sects of this sea region. This is a demonic trap. But who possesses the power to orchestrate this directly under the City Lord’s nose?’

Deep within the main hall, seated comfortably behind the intricately carved frost-jade privacy screen, Wang Jian observed the Mistress’s defiant display with a dark, appreciative smirk. She was undeniably magnificent, a fiery, haughty sovereign of commerce unwilling to yield. Yet, her arrogance was precisely what he intended to shatter.

Wang Jian rested his hands on his lap, closed his eyes, and channeled his vast, bottomless Stellar Demonic Qi directly outward. Bypassing the ambient air, he sent his dark energy plunging downward, directly into the foundation nodes of the heavily modified Seven-Star Obscurity Array hidden beneath the floorboards.

He seamlessly transitioned the array’s primary function from a spatial lock to its secondary offensive protocol. He activated the Spiritual Mire Formation.

It was a complex, high-tier array modification that employed a forceful fusion of earth and water attributes, deeply corrupted by his potent Stellar density. The effect was instantaneous and physically devastating.

The ambient air within the sealed courtyard, previously thin and bitingly cold, instantly thickened. It transformed from breathable gas into a heavy, suffocating, gelatinous sludge. The very atmosphere became a hostile entity.

Concurrently, a sudden, immense, and entirely unnatural atmospheric pressure slammed down upon the entire courtyard from above. It felt as though a colossal, invisible mountain peak had just been dropped from the heavens directly onto their shoulders.

Jin Da and Jin Er, the two guards already reeling from the zither's spiritual vertigo, were completely incapacitated. The sudden multiplication of gravity struck them with full force. They were compelled to drop to a single knee, the stone pavement cracking under the immense pressure. Their heavy, gold-scaled armor, usually a second skin offering peerless defense, transformed into a deadly burden. The armor felt as if it weighed ten thousand pounds, bearing down on their chests, turning each breath into a grueling, localized fight for survival. They wheezed, their faces turning a ghastly purple behind their visors, utterly pinned by the sheer atmospheric density.

Shangguan Wan’er felt the crushing weight descend upon her shoulders. The pressure was specifically designed to force cultivators to their knees, demanding submission.

She refused to yield.

She unleashed her Half-Step Nascent Soul Qi to its zenith. Her golden aura erupted like a inferno in a tempest, fiercely repelling the invisible, oppressive force. The golden spirit-silk dress adorning her legs billowed wildly, whipped into a frenzy by the clashing energies of her aura and the descending pressure. She maintained her stance, her remarkably voluptuous form standing resolutely against the array's formidable weight, her back straight, her chin held high in defiance.

"Jin Da, Jin Er, shatter the floorboards! Destroy the array nodes!" Shangguan Wan’er commanded resonantly, recognizing that finding the concealed adversaries was secondary to dismantling the environmental trap that was currently suffocating her vanguard. She raised her own hands, preparing to unleash her potent, high-tier offensive spells to blast an opening through the pavilion's roof if required.

However, Wang Jian's trap was a masterfully constructed, multi-layered stratagem of lethal precision, engineered to exploit precisely this kind of diversion.

Just as the colossal guards, groaning under the prodigious weight of their armor and the overwhelming gravity, lifted their searing white broadswords to strike the jade pavement below in a desperate attempt to obliterate the subterranean array nodes, the shadows stretching beneath their kneeling forms began to writhe unnaturally.

The dark, elongated shadows cast by the crimson light no longer lay flat against the stone. They started to coalesce, deepen, and then, impossibly, separate and ascend, taking on a three-dimensional form.

Chen Ying, employing the absolute pinnacle of her Stellar Demonic Shadow Arts, materialized directly within the narrow, two-foot aperture between the two colossal, kneeling figures.

She remained entirely unaffected by the crushing pressure of the Spiritual Mire Formation. Prior to her deployment, Wang Jian had personally imbued her form with a dense, protective shroud of his own Stellar Qi, harmonizing her physical essence with the array's frequency. This allowed her to traverse the heavy, viscous air as effortlessly as a fish navigating clear water.

She appeared as an apparition in the blood-red illumination, utterly silent. Her deadly weapon, the Phoenix Plume Shadow Sword, was already unsheathed. The dark, non-reflective metal of the blade was liberally coated with a viscous, subtly iridescent fluid—Liu Ruyan’s most formidable, top-grade paralyzing neurotoxin, a preparation specifically designed to circumvent conventional Qi defenses and assault the nervous system directly.

With a movement of such fluid grace, pinpoint accuracy, and utter economy of motion that it resembled a terrifyingly exquisite, choreographed ballet of demise, Chen Ying struck.

She did not target the heavily armored torsos or the protected neck joints. She dropped low, pivoting on her heel, and swept the dark blade horizontally across the exposed backs of Jin Da's knees, cleanly severing the thick, reinforced leather joints of his golden armor.

The razor-sharp blade bisected his primary movement meridians and tendons in a single, impeccable motion.

Jin Da perceived the sudden, shocking absence of structural integrity before he registered the pain. He opened his mouth to emit a roar of agony, a sound intended to alert his Mistress to the presence of the assassin.

But the roar was brutally silenced. The instant the neurotoxin breached his exposed bloodstream, it reacted with horrifying, explosive swiftness. The poison coursed through his veins, instantly arresting the circulation of his Peak Core Formation Qi. His muscles seized rigidly, locking completely. The roar died in his throat, devolving into a strangled, gasping gargle.

Jin Er, despite the immense pressure pinning him and the lingering vertigo clouding his senses, possessed the finely honed reflexes of a lifelong bodyguard. He witnessed the shadow materialize, observed his brother's fall, and reacted with pure, aggressive instinct.

With a massive, blazing white broadsword, he executed a horizontal sweep, aiming to bisect the black-clad assassin. He gave no thought to the confined space or the proximity of his own brother.

Chen Ying remained unfazed. She made no move to intercept the immensely powerful, devastating strike.

Demonstrating astonishing flexibility and core control, she arched her body backward at a preternatural, impossible angle. The heavy, broad-bladed spirit sword sliced through the air where her head had been moments before. Its searing white heat passed mere inches from her chest, scorching the fabric of her dark stealth attire but leaving her skin untouched.

Leveraging the backward bend's momentum, Chen Ying placed a hand on the jade pavement and propelled herself upward. Mid-air, she twisted, aligning herself directly beneath Jin Er’s extended, swinging arm.

She drove the Phoenix Plume Shadow Sword upward with violent force. Skirting the thick, unbreachable golden scales of his chest and back, she guided the blade's tip into the sole vulnerable gap in his armor, located beneath his armpit—his single critical weakness.

The blade sank deeply into flesh, delivering its full, concentrated dose of paralyzing venom directly into the major artery cluster near his shoulder.

Jin Er’s eyes widened behind his visor. The broadsword slipped from his suddenly unresponsive, numb fingers, crashing loudly onto the jade ground.

In fewer than three breaths, the ambush had been decisively concluded. Both Half-Step Nascent Soul guards, formidable figures of great power and experience, crumpled heavily onto the frost-laden jade pavement. They lay there, completely immobilized, their gazes fixed in sheer, unadulterated terror upon the blood-red sky, their bodies reduced to unresponsive masses of flesh encased in golden prisons.

Shangguan Wan’er observed the swift, brutal ruin of her elite guard with absolute, stunning disbelief. Her mind, normally adept at calculating a thousand market variables per second, faltered momentarily. These were her finest protectors, men who had vanquished colossal, deep-sea demonic beasts through their coordinated efforts. Yet, they were neutralized, rendered completely helpless in mere heartbeats by a solitary, spectral assassin.

However, Shangguan Wan’er was not one to yield to panic. The shock lasted but an instant, quickly supplanted by a burning, incandescent rage. Her legendary, unmatched pride forbade her from displaying any hint of fear before this unknown adversary.

"Worthless scum!" Shangguan Wan’er berated her fallen guards, her voice resonating with tyrannical fury. She felt no sorrow for them, only contempt for their failure to protect her in her hour of need.

She recognized her solitary predicament, ensnared within a potent gravity field, facing a highly skilled assassin. Without hesitation, her delicate, jeweled hands moved like blurs, weaving a complex and rapid series of high-level hand seals.

The brilliant, dazzling golden Qi emanating from her voluptuous form surged outward, rapidly coalescing in the dense, heavy atmosphere. Above her head, dozens of long, exquisitely sharp spears forged from solid, resonating golden light materialized. These were the Golden-Scale Piercing Spears, a devastating, armor-penetrating offensive technique that channeled her Half-Step Nascent Soul power into unique points of absolute destruction.

She fixed her enraged gaze upon the shadowy assassin, resolved to annihilate the woman in black until only ash and recollection remained.

But before she could thrust her hands forward to unleash the devastating barrage of golden spears, a voice intervened.

"I would advise against damaging my favorite blade," a dark, impossibly smooth voice echoed through the blood-red courtyard. Though not loud, the voice carried an undeniable, crushing weight of absolute authority that seemed to resonate deep within her bones. "Fine tools are remarkably scarce in this era."

Shangguan Wan’er’s head snapped towards the origin of the voice.

The intricately carved frost-jade privacy screen at the rear of the main hall slid aside with a gentle scraping sound.

Wang Jian emerged from the hall's shadows into the crimson illumination of the courtyard.

The visual dichotomy he presented was striking and profoundly disquieting. He was clad in immaculate, flowing white scholar’s robes, resembling a distinguished, elegant nobleman taking an evening promenade. Yet, the aura radiating from his