Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Chapter 178: Capture

Run!

I need to run!

If I don’t get out of this domain in the next nine minutes, I am a dead man!

Those were the only thoughts screaming through the frantic, cluttered mind of Ye Feng as he desperately tried to flee.

The world around him was like a blur of jade and gold, the air whistling past his ears with the force of a hurricane as he pushed the borrowed power of the Nirvana Rebirth Experience Card to its absolute limit.

His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped beast, mapping out the entire geography of the Shen Clan and thinking on how to escape through the portal and head to the outside world.

But how could it be that simple?

How could anyone, especially one who only has the power of a peak Nirvana Rebirth expert, simply walk out of the heart of the Shen Clan?

At that moment, the sunlight reflecting off the road seemed to distort as shadows that should have been stagnant began to coil and harden like obsidian snakes.

Without warning, they shot out from the ground with the speed of thought, turning into jagged, solid spears.

Ye Feng didn’t even have time to scream before the shadow-spikes pierced his chest, his stomach, and several other parts of his body, pinning his momentum for a split second.

He coughed up a mouthful of hot, metallic blood, the crimson liquid splattering against his chin.

But he ignored the agonizing heat in his lungs and the holes in his flesh; he tore himself away from the shadow-tethers, leaving behind chunks of spiritual essence, and continued flying away, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

But then, a cold and feminine voice echoed from the void.

"Fall."

At that, a massive, compressed ball of pure shadow manifested above him, blacker than the deepest reaches of space.

The moment that ball slammed into him, it instantly rewrote the gravity in his immediate vicinity.

The pressure was so immense that Ye Feng was slammed down onto the ground, the pavement shattering into a crater upon his impact.

It felt as though an entire mountain range had been dropped onto his spine, suppressing his borrowed Qi until his bones began to creak and crack.

"Gah!" He screamed in a mixture of pain and frustration.

At that moment, two Shadow Guards, wearing the signature sleeveless black full bodysuit that clung to their forms like a second skin, appeared beside the crater.

Their faces were hidden behind masks of matte-black metal, and their auras were like bottomless pits.

Ye Feng gritted his teeth, the borrowed Peak Nirvana Rebirth Qi swirling violently within him, but he couldn’t even so much as twitch his fingers, much less attack and escape.

He had fundamentally underestimated the power scale of the Main Line.

He doesn’t know that Every Shadow Guard was a veteran of a thousand wars, all of at the Profound Saint Realm at the very least—beings who can already bend the laws of space.

Someone like Ye Feng, who was only at the peak of Nirvana Rebirth using a temporary system card, still wouldn’t be able to escape their coordinated net.

He was like a bird trying to fly through a wall of solid iron.

Just then, the sound of soft, deliberate footsteps echoed across the shattered tiles.

Haoran slowly walked towards the edge of the crater, his hands tucked back into his sleeves, his expression one of mild, clinical boredom.

"Resisting arrest, causing massive property damage, and injuring several dozen clan descendants during a sacred feast. Your crimes have just piled up quite nicely, boy," Haoran said, his golden eyes looking down at the struggling Ye Feng.

’Damn it! Damn it all!’ Ye Feng cursed internally, his mind racing. ’System! I don’t care about the cost! Use my Nirvana Rebirth Puppets! Deploy them now!’

[Deploying Two Nirvana Rebirth Puppets. Caution: Host remains under suppression.]

At that moment, the space beside the crater warped, and two grey, featureless humanoids at the 1st stage of the Nirvana Rebirth realm manifested.

Of course, Ye Feng didn’t actually intend for these puppets to deal with the Shadow Guards—he wasn’t that delusional.

Instead, the instant they appeared, he issued a mental command of absolute destruction.

’Self-destruct! Target Shen Haoran!’

The two puppets moved instantly, ignoring the Shadow Guards’ in front of them, and hurtled toward Shen Haoran.

Then, their bodies began to glow with a blinding, unstable white light as they prepared to explode their Cores.

With that, Ye Feng took the chance when the Shadow Guards shifted their focus to protect the Young Master, and the gravitational pressure momentarily flickered.

Without hesitation, he lunged out of the crater, moving like a streak of blood-red light, and fled toward the city gates.

One of the Shadow Guards, a female whose movements were a blur of obsidian, immediately appeared in front of Haoran.

Without thinking of her own safety, dhe expanded her own shadow-domain into a thick, multi-layered shield, using her own body as the final anchor to block the explosion.

*BOOM!*

The twin detonations of the Nirvana Rebirth cores rocked the city, creating a shockwave that leveled several nearby structures and sent a plume of fire into the sky.

Normally, the self-destruction of a First Stage Nirvana Rebirth realm expert would be like the destruction of a star, however, the materials used to build the Main City was so high quality the explosion didn’t deal that much damage.

When the smoke cleared, the Shadow Guard was still standing, preventing even a single scratch from reaching Haoran’s robes.

However, the cost was high.

She coughed up a thick spray of blood, her black bodysuit in tatters and her skin scorched.

She was bleeding heavily from dozens of shrapnel wounds, and she eventually slumped to one knee, her breathing ragged.

Haoran didn’t even look at the carnage as his eyes remained on the small dot on the horizon that was Ye Feng.

"Capture him," Haoran ordered the other Shadow Guard. "Alive. I want his soul intact."

Without a word of hesitation, the second Shadow Guard stepped forward and immediately reached into the air and summoned her Innate Artifact—a jagged, four-pointed hook connected to a seemingly infinite length of silver chain that hummed with the vibration of the void.

Innate Artifacts were the true hallmark of a Saint.

They were not found in ancient tombs or forged by smiths; they were the actualization of a cultivator’s Dao, their very path given physical form and tempered by their soul.

With a flick of her wrist, she threw the hook.

It moved as if it wasn’t traveling through air but travelling through the dimensions, vanishing the moment it left her hand.

Kilometers away, at the very edge of the residential district, Ye Feng was grinning, his heart was filled with a frantic, soaring hope.

He could already see the shimmering boundary of the spatial exit.

’Just a few more seconds! Just a little more speed! I’ll be free! I’ll find a lower realm, hide for a decade, and come back to—’

"Ha... haha.. hahah—urgh!"

He paused mid-flight, his laughter turning into a wet, strangled gasp as he coughed up a mouthful of blood and looked down at his chest.

There, he saw a blood-soaked, four-pointed hook had pierced through his sternum from his back, its barbs locked firmly into his ribcage.

The silver chain connected to it was vibrating with a frequency that instantly paralyzed his borrowed Nirvana Qi.

At that moment, Ye Feng was filled with a despair so absolute it felt like drowning, but before he could even form a thought, the hook was pulled back with a violent, spatial jerk.

In an instant, the world blurred, and he found himself back in the marketplace, pinned to the ground by the boot of the second Shadow Guard.

Haoran walked towards him, a small, chilling smile playing on his lips. "You truly thought you could escape from my shadow? How remarkably... laughable."

He reached into his storage ring and withdrew a high-grade, emerald-colored healing pill.

With a grip that felt like iron, he forced Ye Feng’s jaw open and shoved the pill down his throat.

Ye Feng didn’t even have the strength to resist and he was forced to swallow, and almost immediately, he felt the cool, restorative energy of the pill begin to knit his shattered ribs and close the holes in his lungs.

But as his injuries healed, he felt a secondary effect—a deep, heavy sluggishness that made his very soul feel like it was made of lead.

"You’ll surely die from the backlash of your injuries the moment your ’borrowed power’ ends," Haoran said, looking down at the countdown in Ye Feng’s eyes that only he seemed to perceive. "And I don’t want that. Not yet. After all, you still have your uses in my aunt’s laboratory."

He turned towards the Shadow Guard who had captured him. "Come with me. We have a delivery to make."

Then, he turned his gaze toward the first Shadow Guard—the one who had used herself as a shield against the explosions.

She was already standing, breathing heavily, her blood staining the paved road.

"And you," Haoran asked, his voice softening just a fraction. "What is your name?"

"Xiao Xiao... Young Master," the injured guard whispered, her voice steady despite the pain.

Haoran nodded, a flicker of genuine acknowledgement in his golden eyes. "I will remember your name, Xiao Xiao. Your loyalty has earned you a place in the inner circle’s medical pavilion. Recover well."

With that, Haoran and the other Shadow Guard, along with the now unconscious and shackled Ye Feng, vanished into the shifting shadows of the city.