"Boom—"
Another violent collision between fiendish qi and plague completely leveled the last intact manor in the inner city district.
This fratricidal slaughter, born from the same source, had lasted the entire night.
Lantao City's inner city no longer resembled the luxury of yesterday; as far as the eye could see, there was only purgatory.
Overnight, not a single soul among the nobles and cultivators who resided here remained alive.
Half the area was covered in pitch-black corpse water left behind by the corrosion of the Plague Rat's fiendish qi, pungent and foul-smelling, while the other half was rotting flesh spawned by the Plague-Eating Stove, covering the ground like a carpet of fungi.
A faint streak of white appeared on the horizon.
The Plague Rat knelt on one knee, his chest heaving violently. His black robes were long since glued to his skin by fiendish blood and pus.
He was covered in wounds. The deepest one had nearly sliced him in half at the waist, and new human-face sores were constantly sprouting from the edges, only to be forcibly corroded away by his even more domineering fiendish qi.
He wiped the bloody froth from the corner of his mouth and grinned.
Not far away, the condition of the Plague-Eating Stove was no better.
The humanoid form, gathered from rotting meat, was now in tatters.
Large swaths of its flesh had been corroded by the Plague Rat, and its volume had shrunk by nearly half. The remaining flesh struggled to maintain a stable humanoid shape, constantly sloughing off as if it might collapse entirely at any moment.
For the Plague Rat, this was the first time since his birth.
The first time he could fight the Plague-Eating Stove on equal footing, even faintly holding the upper hand.
"The sky... is brightening," the Plague Rat wheezed, his crimson eyes burning with an unprecedented fighting spirit.
The Plague-Eating Stove also looked toward the horizon. "Damn it, the dream is actually failing?"
"What are those idiots from Sukhavati doing? How could they lose their grip so quickly?"
He snapped his gaze back to the Plague Rat; this cursed rat was right.
To respond to Sukhavati's summons and forcibly cross the realm barrier from that hellhole of Tianchi Province, he had paid an unimaginable price.
He had discarded his ten-thousand-year-old physical body, descending into this realm only as a primordial avatar within the dream.
He had expected to harvest flesh and blood at will on this fertile land, quickly recovering or even surpassing his peak.
But he never expected to run into this ghost of a rat here!
This cursed rat!
Back in Tianchi Province, this was a lowly demon he could have crushed with a wave of his hand, something that could only survive by hiding!
Now, he had actually been wounded to this extent by this rat!
'I can't drag this out any longer.'
The Plague-Eating Stove could clearly feel that as the dawn broke, the dream he relied on for existence was rapidly collapsing.
He had already abandoned his physical shell; once the dream completely shattered, there would be nowhere left for him to dwell.
"Rat from the gutter," the Plague-Eating Stove's bloated body suddenly contracted, focusing all its power into a single point.
"You lowly demon, die!"
All the rotting meat transformed into a beam of blood-colored light, carrying hundreds of millions of human-face sores as it tore through the air, aimed straight for the Plague Rat's heart.
The Plague Rat's pupils shrank. With a roar, he didn't retreat but instead charged forward, exploding all the fiendish qi around him into a dark-green meteor that collided head-on with the blood-colored beam.
The best defense was an all-out attack.
"Hahahaha!"
"You go to hell too, for your Lord Rat!"
Two sources of plague, identical in origin yet mutually exclusive, collided. Ultimately, the blood-colored beam was superior, instantly piercing through the hastily condensed fiendish qi and skewering the Plague Rat's body.
Agony swept over him; the Plague Rat could even feel his internal organs being instantly corroded by the plague.
However, just as he thought his soul and form were about to be extinguished, an extremely subtle sensation surfaced.
The attack that should have directly pulverized his fiendish core seemed to have shifted... by just a fraction?
Though the entry wound was horrific, it had miraculously avoided his most vital spot.
Was it an illusion?
The Plague Rat had no time to think. Driven by an obsession for revenge and using the momentum of being impaled, he channeled the last sliver of fiendish qi in his body through the channel opened by the blood-colored beam, manically pouring it into the Plague-Eating Stove's core.
"No—!"
The Plague-Eating Stove was in disbelief. He felt the corrosive fiendish qi instantly spreading within his true body.
At this moment, time seemed to stand still.
The Plague-Eating Stove's expression froze.
"You..."
The Plague Rat lowered his head, looking at his own pierced abdomen, then looked up, revealing a blood-stained smile.
"I told you!"
"Everything you owe me... I'm taking it back, with interest!"
The Plague-Eating Stove howled in despair.
"I am the purity-cleansing fire! I am the pinnacle of the plague! How could you... corrode my origin?"
"No, I curse you! I curse you, you cursed rat—!!"
Under the Plague Rat's gratified gaze, the Plague-Eating Stove's massive body twitched violently. The human-face sores cursed and shrieked in unison before rapidly dissolving from the inside out.
All his power, all his malice, and all his resentment turned into corpse water under the corrosion of the fiendish qi.
A moment later, the cursing abruptly stopped.
In mid-air, only a glowing orb remained, floating quietly.
"Heh... hehe... hahahaha!"
The Plague Rat could no longer hold himself up. He fell to his knees as blood gushed from the gaping wound in his chest.
He could clearly feel his body rapidly ulcerating and breaking out in sores.
The Plague-Eating Stove's final strike had completely destroyed his life force.
But he didn't care.
He had won.
This nemesis who had haunted his entire life, bringing him endless pain and humiliation, had finally died by his hand.
The sheer catharsis of vengeance being served drowned out all agony.
The Plague Rat swayed as he stood up, staggering toward the glowing orb.
His hands were powerless, so he could only open his mouth and bite down on it.
【Broken divinity — ulceration】
He raised his head, looking at the dawn that had now fully broken on the horizon. Using his last bit of strength, he mumbled indistinctly.
"You're the fucking lowly demon..."
"Lord Rat... is an auspice!"
As soon as the words left his mouth, with a thud, the Plague Rat fell backward, crashing heavily into the toxic mire of corpse water and rotting flesh.
It was cold and foul-smelling.
He squinted his eyes, watching the dawn, knowing he likely wouldn't survive this.
The wound in his abdomen had spiraled out of control. The power of the Plague-Eating Stove's plague was running riot inside him, and his flesh was transforming into new human-face sores.
Yet, in his heart, he was unusually calm.
The Plague Rat had always hated Tianchi Province.
That hellhole where the weak were prey for the strong, where you had to be careful even while breathing.
He had also always hated his weak self.
He had always been just the lowest grade of rat demon. Even though he had been lucky enough to obtain a fragment of the plague origin scattered by the True Lord of Purity and Filth and had fallen into the fiendish path to cultivate a fiendish body.
His limited potential had ultimately kept him a step below the Plague-Eating Stove.
If the Plague-Eating Stove hadn't paid such a heavy price to cross the realm barrier, the one dying today would most likely still have been him.
The Plague Rat chuckled self-mockingly.
He always called himself Lord Rat, as if saying it enough would actually make him a lord.
What he had desired most in the past was to shed this rat body.
He often wondered: if he wasn't a rat demon, but a stronger fiend, or even a natural evil spirit, would he have been able to reign supreme in Tianchi Province and never have to hide again?
The Plague Rat gasped for air, feeling his body continue to rot, merging with the puddle of corpse water left by the Plague-Eating Stove.
With a hard bite, he completely crushed the 【broken divinity】 in his mouth and swallowed it.
'If I had a choice...'
He clicked his tongue.
'Forget it... I'd still be a rat.'
If he had been anything else, how would he have been hunted by the Plague-Eating Stove? How would he have spent his life hiding? And how would he, at the brink of death, have been chosen by the General-Summoning Platform...
How would he have become a divine messenger under the Lord's command?
The Plague Rat calmly closed his eyes, letting his body rot away rapidly.
As his consciousness faded, he thought hazily.
In the end, he never did find out what those twelve zodiac signs the Lord talked about actually were.
Maybe the Lord was just teasing him.
If there really were twelve auspices in this world...
The Plague Rat's consciousness plunged into darkness.
How could they ever put a lowly rat first?
Rate on N.U.
