Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

Chapter 182: Regression?

The Imperial Palace of the Tian Yuan Empire, a structure that mirrored the majesty of the cosmos, stood as the pinnacle of architectural ambition.

Yet, tucked away in its deepest, most forgotten corner lay the Cold Palace.

The air here was perpetually thin and frigid, a stark contrast to the opulence found within the inner courts.

Within a small, dimly lit room, Xu Xiansu sat cross-legged on her hard wooden bed, her eyes, which had been closed in deep meditation for the past six hours, suddenly snapped open.

In that instant, a faint, golden-orange shimmer pulsed within her pupils before receding into the depths of her soul.

She exhaled a long, thin breath that condensed into a white mist in the freezing air, and then she stood up, feeling the newfound power coursing through her meridians.

"Peak Foundation Establishment realm," Xu Xiansu muttered, her voice sounding older and more weary than her young body should allow. "It took me one whole year... this is way too slow."

To any other cultivator in the world, such a statement would be considered a delusional insult.

Breaking from the depths of mortality to the peak of the Foundation Establishment realm in a single year, while living in a destitute prison with no resources, was a feat that defied the laws of nature.

It was faster than the recorded progress of Shen Haoran or any other known genius in the history of the Prime Origin Realm!

This miraculous progress was due entirely to her knowledge of the future.

In her past life, she had spent her youth as a powerless servant, listening with a heavy heart to the wandering stories of lucky commoners who stumbled upon ancient treasures and became peerless geniuses overnight.

Back then, she could only dream that one day she might become like them, escaping her wretched fate through a stroke of divine luck.

Now, in this life, those "lucky treasures" were no longer myths that can only dream of.

During the past year, she had taken several trips to sneak out of the Cold Palace to plunder those treasures.

She had went to the sewers in some corner of the Imperial Capital where a beggar found a stone containing water from ancient era.

That water can wash away one’s impurities and strengthen the muscles, blood, and bones, which was perfect for the incredibly malnourished woman like her.

In her past life, the beggar became a genius and joined a sect because of it.

She had even taken a work in the stables, where in her past life, a stable boy found a gem eaten by one of the beasts kept by the Imperial Family in a pile of poop while he was cleaning.

That gem actually purify Qi in the air, allowing the practitioner near it to absorb Qi much easier and smoother.

In her past life, that gem was taken by her older half brother, Xu Xiaojun.

And those weren’t just the examples, she had systematically plundered almost every opportunities intended for others that she can, and yet, she remained deeply unsatisfied.

For her, this progress was agonizingly sluggish, after all, there were only a few months left before the Imperial Academy opened its gates to the public.

If she wanted to grow strong enough to protect her mother and exact her revenge, she needed to be in the center of the storm.

She needed to go there!

And the minimum cultivation level required to attend is Golden Core Realm, and she is incredibly far from that level.

She took a deep breath, calming her racing heart, and began to tidy up her sparse bed.

After smoothing the thin, ragged blanket, she walked out of her room to prepare breakfast.

Truthfully, she had spent many nights over the past year planning to take her mother and escape this gilded cage forever.

With her knowledge, she could find a hundred places to hide where no one would ever find them.

But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She knew the nature of the Empress all too well, and once the bitch found out that the neglected concubine and the "useless" princess had escaped her grasp, there was no telling what psychotic, petty schemes she would unleash.

The Empress was the type to burn down an entire province just to smoke out a single enemy.

At least here, within the walls of the Cold Palace, they were still technically under the shield of the Imperial name.

No matter how much they were bullied or starved by the servants, no one actually dared to commit a cold-blooded murder.

Because at the end of the day, she was still the biological daughter of the Emperor, and her mother, no matter how unfavored or broken, remained a consecrated Imperial Concubine.

Of course, if she wanted to, she has so many ways using her future knowledge to hide her mother away from everything, but she still refused to leave.

That is because during the past year, she had found out that this world was actually so weird!

According to her memories, Shen Tao, the future Martial Emperor and the revolutionary creator of the Internal Energy Cultivation system, was supposed to be a hunted fugitive at this time.

He was meant to be chased into a corner by that mad woman Feng Yuyan, forced to see his grandfather die to protect him.

But in this life, the rumors were completely different.

Shen Tao had been officially recognized by the Shen Clan’s main line and was being praised as a once-in-a-generation genius!

Furthermore, she had heard whispered gossip from passing palace servants about a man named Ye Feng, the husband of the Fourth Crown, Shen Xinye.

In her past life, Ye Feng was destined to become the Cloud Watching Leisure Emperor, a man known for his incredible laziness who eventually became powerful enough to fight the demon Shen Haoran to a standstill, a battle so fierce that the maps of the Central Region had to be redrawn.

But in this life? He had been branded a spy and dragged off to the dungeons.

How did a future Emperor suddenly become a low-level spy?

Xu Xiansu had spent months agonizing over these discrepancies and wondered just what went wrong with this world.

Soon, she did eventually come up with several theories, but the most plausible one was a bitter pill to swallow: she might not have "regressed" at all.

Instead, she might have simply received the memories of an alternate, future version of herself.

Of course, she had evidence for this.

In her "past life," she remembered having a distinct mole on the left side of her breast, but in this life, the mole was on the right.

It was a small detail, but in the world of high-level cultivation, such physical deviations were significant.

Of course, there was a chance she had truly regressed and was simply in an alternate timeline, but that seemed unlikely.

After all, in her previous life, she had reached the rank of Supreme Emperor, and the soul of a Supreme, no matter how fragmented or weakened by the journey through time, should possess enough inherent soul-power to crush a Nirvana Rebirth expert with a single thought.

Yet, her soul felt ordinary, constrained by her current Foundation Establishment shell.

Of course, it be because her soul was so incredibly weakened and fragmented that she couldn’t exert that much power.

But if her soul was so fragmented and weak, then she shouldn’t have such a complete set of memories.

Thus, she had reached the conclusion that her "regression" was likely a mental transmission of knowledge from another "Xu Xiansu" who had already lived through the darkness.

She shook her head, trying to clear the dizzying thoughts of timelines and paradoxes.

After all, it didn’t matter how she knew, it only mattered that she knew.

With that, she began the familiar routine of preparing a meager breakfast of grain porridge for her mother.

Although she was unsatisfied with her current strength, the Peak Foundation Establishment realm was enough for her to survive the first phase of her plan.

Based on her memories, it should be about now that the Emperor would finally take notice of the rising chaos in the Eastern Region.

He wouldn’t send the Imperial Guard to help, of course, and instead he would view the barbarian invasion as a convenient "tempering ground" for the younger generation of the Imperial City.

He would soon gather the pampered geniuses of the Central Region and issue a decree for them to head east and "slaughter the savages" to earn merit.

In her past life, or in her alternate future memory, but she’s just going to call it past life, the Imperial geniuses had arrived far too late.

By the time they reached the border, the trio of the future Flame Empress Huo Yue, her husband Shen Ming, and the desert queen and future Rainbow Scaled Empress Medusa had already taken care of the barbarians.

Unfortunately for them, the geniuses of the Central Region actually took credit of this and they even humiliated the three.

This time, Xu Xiansu planned to be there first.

She wouldn’t just watch the history of the Eastern Region from a distance, she would be the one to claim the Golden Crow’s blood.

"Whether this is regression or not," she whispered, looking out toward the horizon beyond the palace walls. "I am thankful for this opportunity."

Because with this, she finally had the chance to turn her fate around.