The Villainous Dad

Chapter 5: 5. Here Comes a Protagonist

The heavy bronze doors did not just open. They slammed against the ancient stone walls with a crash that rattled the very pillars of the grand structure.

The impact swallowed Ye Chen’s voice mid-sentence. The self-righteous words he had been spouting to the sect’s highest leadership died in his throat.

Silence fell.

This was the absolute apex of authority within the Myriad Sovereign Sect. Seated in an elevated semi-circle were the nine Grand Elders, titans ruling over their respective fields, from the sharp-eyed Master of the Sword Hall to the strict head of Law Enforcement. Their ancient faces hardened in unison, attention torn from the stage.

Above them all, on the central supreme throne, sat the Sect Leader. Her figure remained perfectly still, shrouded in swirling celestial qi that obscured her face while radiating an unfathomable pressure.

Every pair of eyes locked on the entrance.

I stood in the grand archway, framed by open sky and the rolling blue mist of Dragon Peak. My white robes, embroidered with silver dragons, fluttered without effort. No cheap liquor on my breath. No broken spirit. I looked immaculate and entirely unbothered.

I took one slow step forward. The click of my jade boots cut cleanly through the silence.

My gaze swept past the staggered core disciples and anchored onto the center of the hall.

Leng Qingxue.

My wife.

She sat like frost given form in a high-backed chair reserved exclusively for the elders, a slender sword resting silently across her lap. Her gown was a cascade of pure white, so brilliantly immaculate it rendered the grand architecture around her pallid and dull by comparison. An intricately patterned ice crown rested upon her head, looking as though it were its divine birthright to grace her brow for eternity.

A year. I had not seen her face in a full year.

Beneath that ice crown, her ethereal face carried its usual aloof indifference to the mortal world. But I had spent enough time studying that face to know the difference between genuine calm and controlled stillness. Right now, it was the latter. Her fingers, resting lightly on the flat of her sword, had not moved since I entered.

She had noticed me immediately.

Right beside her sat another elder, offering a stark contrast to Leng Qingxue’s frigid demeanor.

She possessed a graceful, warm beauty that felt lively and unguarded. The moment I stepped through the gates, her gaze locked onto me, bright eyes wide and completely transfixed, entirely forgetting the scene Ye Chen had been trying to create.

Her blatant admiration did not go unnoticed. Just beside her sat a middle-aged man, her husband. His face had darkened into a deep scowl, eyes narrowing with sharp annoyance and a bitter, unmistakable hatred.

The silence stretched until I decided to break it.

A slow smirk curved my lips. I raised one hand and pointed directly at the trembling, red-faced man standing in the center of the hall.

"I heard some rather fascinating tales on my way up the mountain," I said.

My voice was smooth, resonant, and dripping with effortless mockery.

"Stories of a completely shattered foundation. Whispers of a broken man drinking himself senseless night after night just to drown his miserable sorrows."

I tilted my head, locking eyes with Ye Chen as my smirk widened into something openly contemptuous.

"So, tell me," I chuckled softly. "Where is this cripple? Because the only pathetic joke I see standing in this grand hall is you."

The words dropped like a stone. Ye Chen’s face flushed dark crimson. His knuckles turned bone-white around the hilt of his rusted iron sword. With the Grand Elders and the Sect Leader watching, however, he forced himself to swallow his rage and kept his feet rooted to the floor.

I did not give him the respect of bracing for an attack. I simply watched him choke down his humiliation with mild, detached amusement.

’Lucy,’ I commanded internally. ’Scan him.’

A soft chime echoed in my mind. A translucent blue interface materialized across my vision.

[TARGET EVALUATION: EYE OF DESTINY]

Name: Ye Chen

Role: Protagonist / Child of Fate (Lower Realm)

Karmic Luck Value: 10,000 [EARLY-STAGE ANOMALY DETECTED]

Current State: Deeply Humiliated / Enraged / Forcing Restraint

Hidden Cheat: Ancient Ring Spirit (Soul Transformation Realm Remnant)

Current Plot Armor Status: ACTIVE (Triggers automatic spatial escape if life is fatally threatened)

The interface faded just as a heavy, resonant cough echoed from the elevated semi-circle.

It was the Grand Elder of the Alchemy Pavilion. His white hair cascaded over his shoulders like a waterfall of snow. As he leaned forward, the suffocating pressure of a Void Integration Realm cultivator washed over the hall. Not an attack. A reminder. His ancient eyes narrowed as he scrutinized my stable, surging qi.

"Lu Jianxiao," the old master rumbled.

"Rumors have spread that your foundation was severely damaged. You have been absent for months. What exactly have you been doing all this time?"

I flicked my sleeve and let my hands rest behind my back, my gaze shifting briefly to the swirling celestial mist of the supreme throne.

Damaged? Only these out-of-touch elders believed that nonsense. My master had visited my peak during my seclusion and knew the exact truth. But these old fossils needed a performance.

"Damaged, Grand Elder? You jest," I replied smoothly. "I was merely in deep seclusion. The rumors were greatly exaggerated by those too eager to see me fail. Breaking down and reforming my qi was the painful but necessary first step to building a flawless foundation."

The Alchemy Master’s eyebrows shot up. He opened his mouth to respond but never got the chance.

"An epiphany, you say?"

The words drifted down from the central supreme throne, carrying the faintest trace of knowing amusement.

It was my master. The Sect Leader.

A crystalline chime that bypassed the ears entirely and resonated within the depths of the soul. Impossibly beautiful, carrying a hypnotic cadence that commanded absolute obedience while sounding as gentle as a spring breeze while it sounded a little modified.

The moment she spoke, a collective shiver ran through the grand hall. Every elder strained toward the supreme throne, desperate for the celestial mist to part just a fraction.

Even Ye Chen’s grip on his rusted sword slackened. His rage, so fierce a moment ago, simply drowned.

I could not help but chuckle inwardly.

’Master is really good at awakening desire,’ I thought. ’Lucy, I think she could give you a run for your money if it came down to pure hypnotic allure.’

’Hmph. Keep dreaming, Jianxiao,’ Lucy replied, a distinct flare of pride threading through her tone. ’A mortal woman’s charms cannot compare to a divine soul bound to the cosmic order.’

As I stared up at the swirling mist, her voice pulled a memory loose. It surfaced without effort, settling over my mind like smoke.

The second night she had secretly descended upon my peak.

There had been no grand throne or defensive mist that night. She had bypassed all my defensive arrays without triggering a single rune, stepping through the heavy doors of my crimson estate as silently as moonlight. She had worn a simple white robe that still could not conceal her breathtaking grace. Without the celestial qi hiding her features, her face had been fully visible, and it was the kind of face that made the grandeur around it feel suddenly irrelevant.

She had not come to inspect my cultivation. She had come because she knew. The news of my mother’s passing had reached her before it reached anyone else in the sect, and she had descended the supreme peak in silence,

carrying nothing but that quiet, private warmth she reserved for no one else.

She had sat beside me within the stillness of my private quarters, close enough that the sleeve of her white robe brushed against mine, and said nothing for a long while.

"Grief is not weakness, Jianxiao," she had finally murmured, her voice stripped of all commanding authority, carrying only a low, private gentleness. "You are allowed to simply feel it."

The memory dissolved, snapping me back to the hall.

I offered a respectful bow toward the supreme throne. "Disciple greets Master. I apologize for my prolonged absence. I have been negligent, causing Master to worry and visit my peak unnecessarily while I was focused entirely on my breakthrough."

To the room it sounded like standard protocol. To my master on the throne, it was a quiet, playful reminder of our private late-night meetings, a secret shared in plain sight.

I straightened, pivoted, and let my gaze fall back onto Ye Chen.

"Actually," I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the silence. "There is a more pressing matter. Who exactly are you, and what business does a mere inner disciple have standing in the center of a high-level sect council?"

The Sword Master’s hawk-like eyes flicked between us. "He is Ye Chen, an inner disciple of the outer peaks. He possesses the complete map to the Heavenly Sovereign Ruins, which open at the next full moon. He came to negotiate, offering to guide our forces in exchange for a Sect Elder accompanying him inside for protection."

To the Grand Elders, this was a clean transaction. A lucky junior leveraging sect strength to secure a treasure he could not take alone.

My mind worked faster.

The Heavenly Sovereign Ruins. A fractured spatial domain whose entry threshold collapsed instantly if any cultivator above the Nascent Soul realm crossed it. Every Grand Elder present was at Void Integration or higher. My master existed in a realm entirely her own.

None of them could enter.

Which meant the sect needed a Peak Nascent Soul elder. And within the entire hierarchy of the Myriad Sovereign Sect, exactly two elders fit that description.

Me and Leng Qingxue.

For twelve months the sect had believed my foundation was destroyed. They thought I was a broken man hiding on my peak, removed entirely from the board.

Which had left only one candidate.

I turned my head slowly toward the elder’s chair.

Leng Qingxue sat there, her white gown cascading around her, the ice crown resting upon her head, her ethereal face giving nothing away.

The pieces locked into place. And the cold amusement died.

The Heavenly Sovereign Ruins housed a suppression array deep within its core that specifically neutralized Nascent Soul qi. This man was banking on his ring spirit keeping him immune while my wife’s guard was rendered completely powerless inside.

He planned to violate her and use the blackmail to break her mind entirely.

And it did not end there. The outer rim of the ruins served as a trial ground for the younger generation. Leading the junior faction this year was our daughter. If he broke Qingxue below, our daughter would be left isolated on the surface with no protection.

I took a slow breath and buried every trace of that rage behind a smooth facade. You do not scare a rat with plot armor. You bleed it dry, one step at a time.

When I looked back at Ye Chen, there was no murderous glare. A warm, almost benevolent smile settled across my face instead.

"A map to the Heavenly Sovereign Ruins and a request for a personal escort," I said pleasantly. "How remarkably convenient. Sect Leader, Grand Elders, my newly reformed foundation requires immediate tempering through genuine combat to fully solidify. An expedition of this nature would serve that purpose perfectly."

The Sword Master’s eyes narrowed. "You are volunteering, Lu Jianxiao?"

"I am." I turned just enough to meet Leng Qingxue’s gaze. Her composure faltered for a fraction of a second, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly. I held her gaze and offered a faint, steady smile before turning back to the room. "Elder Leng’s strengths are better applied here overseeing the martial pavilion. I am perfectly available to ensure our sect secures its rightful share of the ruins."

The Grand Elders nodded. Clean. Logical. Settled.

In the center of the hall, Ye Chen looked as though the ground had opened beneath him. He had constructed this entire scenario to isolate Leng Qingxue, accounting for every variable, perfectly exploiting the gap in available Nascent Soul elders.

He had not accounted for the crippled husband walking back through the door.

A chime rang through my sea of consciousness.

[SYSTEM ALERT: DESTINY INTERCEPTED]

Target: Ye Chen (Early-Stage Child of Fate)

Karmic Luck: 10,000

[Action]: Orchestrated plot derailed. Destined encounter with "Leng Qingxue" denied.

[Villain Points Awarded]: +1,500

[Action]: Public humiliation before sect’s supreme leadership. Protagonist aura degraded.

[Villain Points Awarded]: +500

Total Villain Points Earned: +2,000

Current Villain Point Balance: 2,000

Two thousand points in a single morning. He really was just an early-game clown.

’Lucy, what is the conversion rate between Villain Points and Love Points? I have a wife behind me who has not spoken to me in a year and I will need every resource available.’

’Three Villain Points to one Love Point, Jianxiao,’ she replied, smug and unhurried.

’Your current balance converts to 666 Love Points. Fitting, given the source.’

Ye Chen was not merely a rat to be crushed. He was a treasure trove waiting for me to be claimed dry.

"You have done the sect a genuine service, Junior Ye," I said aloud, my tone wrapped in polite, suffocating warmth.

I crossed to him in a single unhurried step and placed a firm hand on his trembling shoulder. The weight of my cultivation pressed down through that contact, subtle and absolute, rooting his feet to the stone floor. He could not step back. He could not run. He had walked willingly into the highest hall in the sect and sealed himself inside his own trap.

I leaned in slightly and let my smile hold just long enough for him to see what was living behind it.

"Rest assured," I said quietly, the words meant only for him. "I will accompany you personally into the depths of the ruins. I will keep you very, very safe."