Summary 3

This page contains an original arc analysis written for readers of the English translation.

Arc Three: Minor Characters in the Wuxia World — When Background People Refuse to Stay Background

Arc Three is where I Am the Villain’s Father stops pretending it’s only about family drama and calmly walks into the martial arts world, looks around, and says: this place is rotten, and I’m not playing by your rules.

Ji Xiu enters this world as a son-in-law married into the Shen family, a declining martial clan clinging to old prestige while rotting from the inside. On the surface, this looks like a standard wuxia setup: scheming stepmothers, useless heirs, suppressed concubine children, and elders who talk about “family honor” while letting crimes slide as long as the right person commits them.

Underneath, this arc is about power—who deserves it, who abuses it, and what happens when someone who actually knows how to use power steps in.

The immediate conflict centers on Madame Shen and her precious eldest son. Madame Shen has spent decades killing concubines, suppressing rivals, and grooming her son into a perfect example of inherited arrogance. Her son, in turn, is spectacularly unworthy. He openly sleeps with concubines while his father’s coffin isn’t even cold yet, insults clan elders, and believes that birth alone entitles him to rule.

In most stories, this kind of character survives far longer than he should. Ji Xiu ends that tradition in about five minutes.

What makes this arc delicious is that Ji Xiu doesn’t present himself as a righteous hero swinging swords and shouting slogans. He presents himself as calm, polite, and utterly merciless in logic. When he beats the eldest son in public, he doesn’t frame it as revenge for his wife’s suffering. He frames it as filial piety. After all, if a son disgraces his deceased father, shouldn’t someone step in to discipline him?

This logic is so clean, so impossible to refute within the martial world’s own moral code, that everyone just… accepts it. Even the so-called righteous heroes nod along. Ji Xiu turns the rules against the people who rely on them most.

That’s the first big theme of Arc Three: systems rot because people stop challenging them from the inside. Ji Xiu doesn’t reject the martial world’s values outright. He weaponizes them.

Once the elders are sufficiently offended by Madame Shen’s son—thanks to his own loud mouth—the question of leadership explodes. And here the arc does something unexpected. Instead of promoting a hidden male genius or restoring some lost bloodline, Ji Xiu suggests something radical: let a woman lead the family.

The suggestion hits the elders like a slap.

Shen Lang, the Sixth Miss, has spent her life surviving quietly. She endured humiliation, the death of her mother, and constant pressure to remain invisible. She was never meant to rule. That’s exactly why Ji Xiu chooses her.

This is the moment where Arc Three truly earns its title. It’s not about famous heroes or legendary sects. It’s about minor characters—people who were never meant to matter—being handed power and asked what they will do with it.

Shen Lang says yes.

And that single word changes everything.

With Ji Xiu’s backing, the elders fold. Not because they suddenly believe in equality, but because they believe in strength. Ji Xiu’s martial aura alone makes it clear that resisting this decision would be unhealthy for one’s bones. The Shen family crown passes to Shen Lang, and overnight, a household that thrived on backroom murder and nepotism is forced into order.

Shen Lang’s character growth is quiet but decisive. She doesn’t become cruel. She becomes efficient. She replaces corrupt managers, hires professionals, audits accounts, and sends embezzlers straight to the authorities. There are no emotional speeches. Just results. The Shen household transforms from a nest of vipers into a functioning power structure.

Meanwhile, Ji Xiu’s relationship with his son, Ji Zian, deepens in this arc in ways that matter later. Ji Zian is terrifyingly talented, but he’s no longer a cold, bloodthirsty child. He protects his mother. He obeys his father. He sulks when insulted and pouts when ignored like a normal child, which somehow makes him even more dangerous.

Their journey north with the Martial Arts Alliance becomes the arc’s turning point. Fu Luoyang, the Alliance’s young master, represents the “main character” type—righteous, brave, and painfully naïve. In the original timeline, he dies young. Here, Ji Xiu follows him, not for glory, but to repay a debt.

The ambush on the northern plains is where masks finally fall.

Fu Luoyang nearly dies, surrounded by assassins. Ji Xiu steps in and ends the fight in seconds, revealing that the so-called “frail scholar” is actually a walking catastrophe. Then he does something far more important: he lets Ji Zian fight.

This is not indulgence. It’s trust.

Ji Zian defeats trained killers at the age of nine. He is calm, precise, and emotionally stable. Ji Xiu realizes something crucial here: the reason Ji Zian became a monster in the original timeline wasn’t power. It was loneliness. Suppressing him forever would have been cruelty disguised as caution.

This arc also reintroduces fate as an antagonist.

Despite all of Ji Xiu’s efforts, the Demonic Sect resurfaces. Despite all the changes, Ji Zian still ends up standing at its center. When Ji Xiu kills the Demonic Sect Leader, the rules of the underworld declare him the successor. Ji Xiu refuses.

Ji Zian doesn’t.

And here is the arc’s most uncomfortable truth: sometimes fate can’t be erased, only reshaped. Ji Zian becomes the Demonic Sect Leader not as a feral child craving destruction, but as a protected son who understands responsibility. He takes control to prevent chaos, not to create it.

By the end of Arc Three, the world is unrecognizable compared to its original path. The “hero” isn’t the main protagonist. The “villain” isn’t evil. The supposed background characters have stable lives, families, and futures.

This arc matters because it proves the novel’s deepest point: the story was never broken because of destiny. It was broken because no one stepped in when it mattered.

Ji Xiu does.

And once he does, even the minor characters refuse to stay minor.