I’m the Real Villain

"How dare you!" Yong Chun, the village chief's son-in-law, rushed out to put himself between his wife and the approaching cultivators. "She's my wife! You can't just take her away like this!"

"So what if she was your wife? She's my concubine now. You can either divorce her or I'll make her a widow." Yun Jian Ren paused for a moment, then grinned. "Nah, the whole divorce process is too troublesome. Kill him and take Chun Li back."

"You…!" Chun Li bristled, clutching her husband's arm and trying to pull him back. "I'll rather die than follow you back, you scum!"

A vein twitched in Yun Jian Ren's temple. "You think I'll allow you to die? You don't have permission to die…your life belongs to me, bitch!" then he nodded to his entourage. "Kill her husband right in front of her eyes. Slowly and painfully."

The group of cultivators exchanged glances hesitantly, but Yun Jian Ren stomped his foot impatiently.

"What are you waiting for? My family pays you to obey my orders!"

"Um, your family pays us to protect you, but we are not your servants. You can't order us around."

"Just do it, or I'll tell my father to kill all of you!"

The cultivators looked at each other again, not sure what to say. They looked at the defiant villagers, and they shook their heads.

"What say you if we make it look like an accident?"

"You crazy? If anything happens to the young master, Master Yun will kill all of us! He's not the kind who accepts excuses."

"Yeah…with the father being such a tyrant, no wonder the son is also so brazen and audacious. They evidently think they are above the rules."

"What the hell are you all chattering about?! Stop wasting time and kill Yong Chun!" Yun Jian Ren shouted, gesturing wildly. The cultivators sighed heavily and stepped forward, their weapons gleaming. Then they suddenly froze.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." I emerged from the shadows, shielding Yong Chun and his wife from the cultivators. They stopped and stared at me, dumbfounded, but they immediately drew back cautiously, noting the black qi that swirled around me.

"Who are you?!" Yun Jian Ren demanded. "And how dare you ruin my good things?"

"Ruin my good things" – another silly Chinese phrase that made no sense in English but was used all the time in stupid cultivation stories. I didn't know how to translate it properly, but whatever.

"Um, I'm Hei Ye, and you're basically committing a crime. You can't just murder people as you please, or intimidate them into stealing votes. Or kidnap women. Or issue death threats. That's all against the law."

"Don't you know who I am?!"

"Not really," I admitted.

"I'm the young master of the Yun family! The future castellan! I make the rules! The laws aren't applicable to me anyway! Who lives and dies is at my own discretion!" he then pointed at me dramatically. "Kill him!"

The cultivators buried their faces in their palms. They appeared to be aware that if they tried to attack me, they would be the ones getting killed instead. Yun Jian Ren turned on them, yelling and issuing threats, but come on…between confirmed death from provoking me and empty threats from some moron who couldn't fight on his own, it wasn't much of a decision to make.

They were saved from his angry tirade when another voice broke through the ranting of Yun Jian Ren.

"Who says you're the future castellan? I don't think you have even taken the trials yet?"

Yun Jian Ren jolted and looked toward the direction of the voice. Lan Bei Er was approaching him, her arms folded and her expression glowering and disapproving.

"Right now my father is the castellan. Yet you're threatening and attempting to murder and kidnap the citizens under his charge? Not on my watch."

"Lady Lan…!" Yun Jian Ren was flustered. "Why are you here?"

"Why shouldn't I be here? This is the city my father is entrusted with. And you're pretty bold, trying to kill my husband?"

"What? This trash is your husband?"

"If he's trash, then what are you?" One of his cultivator bodyguards grumbled, rolling his eyes. "Are you blind?"

"He's worse than trash," another of the cultivators muttered. "And he's not just blind, he's also deluded."

I sympathized with the bunch of cultivators who were stuck guarding an idiot who was going to get them killed one way or another. If they didn't get slain by me, then they would be slaughtered by his father for not protecting him or failing to obey his instructions.

"So you're the famous trash son-in-law of the Lan family?" Yun Jian Ren was laughing, having totally no self-awareness. I wasn't sure if I should be amused or exasperated. "If I kill you, then Lan Bei Er will be mine!"

"…uh, no?" Lan Bei Er threw her hands up into the air. "How did you even come to such a conclusion?! Also, if you kill my husband, you'll be sentenced to death. Of course, that's assuming you can kill him in the first place."

"I'm from the Yun family! Do you think your petty laws apply to major families like ours? And of course I can kill trash like him with a single finger!"

"Oh?" I was suddenly in front of him, causing him to be startled. "Which finger?"

Snap.

Yun Jian Ren screamed in pain when I broke one of his fingers. He fell onto his rump, flailing about as tears spilled from his eyes.

"What are you waiting for?!" he screamed at his bodyguards. "Did my father pay you to stand around and watch!? Kill him!"

"Sorry, sir. We apologize for having to offend you." The lead cultivator cupped his hands and lowered his head toward me. I nodded understandingly, knowing that he had no choice. The lead cultivator sighed, and then he led his group to attack me. Their swords, sabers and spears gleamed with qi as they charged, swirling violently.

Shadow swords rained down on them from above, impaling their limbs and pinning them to the ground. Their blood splashed across the grass. Chun Li and a few of the other villagers screamed, backing away instinctively. The cultivators cursed and cried out in pain, but none of them had been killed. I had been careful not to hit their vitals.

They had no intention of killing me, and they were simply doing their job. I could sympathize with them, so I didn't take their lives. The poor dudes were stuck in a predicament. I wasn't some ruthless, coldhearted psychotic murderer who killed just to entertain the existences beyond the fourth wall. I had my own code of morals, even if I was a villain.

Speaking of villain…

"How…?! Impossible?! Aren't you supposed to be trash?! Jian Shen and the other Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion disciples were telling everyone how you're a weak, useless trash who can only eat soft rice and hide behind your wife…"

Yun Jian Ren was spluttering. I shook my head, inwardly cursing Jian Shen. Wasn't that bastard the guy who was one of the two prime suspects who hired that Night Raid assassin to kill me? There was a reckoning once I found the evidence for that.

For now, I glared at the so-called villain. Maybe people called me a failure of a villain, and their expectations of what a villain should be fell in line with Yun Jian Ren's personality. Minus the cheats and godlike strength, of course. But I didn't have any cheats, yet I could defeat him and Long Ao Tian.

People wanted villains like him? Ruthless, no morals, went around killing and raping people for no reason other than because he was evil? What a joke.

Such characters were one dimensional. They were evil for the sake of being evil, probably an almost blank slate for those edgelords and keyboard warriors to self-insert themselves into, so that they could imagine themselves slaughtering everybody in this world that they were so bitter about. Maybe they had been hurt by people in real life, whether it was family, classmates or colleagues, and they wanted some space where they could lash out at humanity as a whole.

But these one-dimensional failures couldn't even be called characters. They were caricatures. Blank pieces of canvases created solely for the protagonist to slaughter. They were designed to be the most evil, vilest, piece of s trashes to ever exist just so the protagonist could be justified in killing them, and so that the readers wouldn't feel bad over their deaths. No, they would celebrate their deaths.

Unfortunately, reality was a lot more complex than that. Too many people indulged in the idea of black and white, that people are either good or evil. They failed to realize that somebody capable of atrocities and despicable acts of evil aren't some one-dimensional mustache twirling caricature who kicks puppies for no reason.

Perhaps Yun Jian Ren had more depth to him, but I wasn't going to launch into some flashback arc to justify his awful behavior.

"You're a failure as a villain," I said.

"Huh?" His jaw dropped.

"Villains shouldn't be evil for the sake of being evil. They shouldn't be totally black. The best villains are the morally grey ones, those with depth. All these modern cultivation web novels, they just churn out mobs after mobs of black, one-dimensional villains who simply exist for the protagonist to kill them. Nobody remembers their names. None of these villains are memorable or even thought-provoking. They just provoke the main character, then get slaughtered a few chapters later. How is that a good villain? You know what they say, the protagonist is only as good as the antagonists he fights against." I leaned closer and grinned. "I'll show you what it means to be a villain."

"No, husband, wait…!" Lan Bei Er protested, but she was too late.

I obliterated Yun Jian Ren with a single stomp. He couldn't even respond. I doubted he was anywhere above Core Formation stage, he was weaker than Lan Bei Er in terms of cultivation realm. Yet he had the audacity to strut about arrogantly and call other people trash or look down on others. I wasn't sure where he had gotten his confidence from.

The villagers shrank back, but I raised a hand and turned back to them.

"You don't have to worry. I've taken care of the tyrant for you."

"The Yun family…" Lan Bei Er began, trembling. "They won't stand for it."

"So should I stand for them?" I asked coldly, turning to her. I jabbed my thumb at the mauled but still alive bodyguards. "They tried to kill me first. And this Yun fella tried to murder this village. Everyone here can be my witnesses."

"The Yun family doesn't care about that. They…"

"They think they're above the law?" I scoffed, and my expression darkened. "If that's the case, do they really want to discuss law with me?"

I would be more than happy to embrace my role as a villain and destroy the entire Yun family in one night. What, if they didn't care about the law, then why should I?

Lan Bei Er fell silent, remembering that I was a demonic cultivator. She sighed and shook her head, wondering what sort of disasters would befall Azure cloud City in the near future.

"Y…you…" The village chief spluttered, unable to understand what was happening. He gritted his teeth and pointed a trembling finger at me. "Even if you saved us now, the Yun family will surely visit their wrath upon us. You might think you're trying to help us, but you've only brought more trouble to us!"

"Oh?" I cocked my head at him. "You're afraid of the Yun family, but you're not terrified of me?"

At that, the village chief turned pale and he dropped to his knees, quaking in horror. He immediately pressed his forehead to the soil.

"No…no! Please forgive me, great lord! Spare me, great lord! Please don't destroy our village!"

"Get up. I have no intention of destroying your village. In fact, I'll help protect you from the Yun family." I pushed my glasses up my nose, surveying the village with a smile. The lenses gleamed under the sunlight. "But of course, I'm not doing all this for free. I hope you understand what I want in return."

"T…the votes?" The village chief, Chun Liu, asked, lifting his head up wearily. "I understand. We will…"

"No, no, no." I wagged my fingers at him. "The votes are only part of it. No, I simply want your loyalty." Then I stepped to the side and placed my hands on Lan Bei Er's shoulders. "Please don't misunderstand, not to me. I want you to be loyal to my wife."