A stick of incense’s time passed.
Only Cangming remained on the ice platform, struggling to hold on.
But he was like a single tree trying to support a collapsing house; the black spots that the ice could not seal away were still gushing out in a continuous stream.
Lord Rat’s body had rotted to its limit.
His legs had already turned into pus, leaving only his upper body floating within the fiendish qi, and even his vision had begun to blur.
A deep sense of powerlessness welled up in his heart.
"Damn it, I’m still not strong enough..."
Lord Rat laughed miserably.
"Purity and Filth... Purity and Filth..."
"These damn black spots are everywhere, endless. How exactly am I supposed to cleanse them?"
"Heh, it makes sense..."
"I was originally a rat born in a plague. How could I ever truly be compared to those auspicious ones blessed by heaven?"
"Master... this time... this little rat might let you down..."
Just as Lord Rat’s consciousness was about to sink into darkness.
Suddenly, a majestic power descended directly upon him.
A divine mark lit up in his sea of consciousness.
It was a Faith Conferment from his lord!
Boom—
His originally withered meridians were instantly filled with divine power. His rotting body reconstructed rapidly within that power, and his new flesh and blood were tougher than before, surging with explosive force.
Lord Rat’s expression froze, and he snapped his eyes open.
"It’s Master’s power!"
"Master is watching me!"
At this moment, his cultivation soared wildly, directly breaking through his bottleneck and temporarily stepping into the seventh-stage realm!
Lord Rat clenched his fist, feeling the power rushing through him, but he soon frowned.
Something was wrong.
It wasn’t just the Faith Conferment given by his master.
There was another power.
It was greasy and disgusting, smelling of rot, yet it carried a bizarre sense of familiarity.
It did not conflict with his master’s divine power, nor did it cause any harm to his body.
Lord Rat felt his festering divinity sublimating, undergoing a qualitative change.
This power did not belong to his master.
Nor was it his own.
What on earth was this?
Lord Rat became alert, turning his divine sense inward, trying to find the source of this power.
Just then.
A light laugh, tinged with a bit of mockery, abruptly sounded in the depths of his mind.
"Hehe..."
"It’s mine."
"Who is it?!"
Lord Rat felt as if he were facing a formidable enemy, the hair on his body standing on end.
This voice came too eerily, appearing directly in his sea of consciousness as if... it had always lived there.
"What kind of thing are you?!"
"You dare show up in this lord's head? Get out!"
Lord Rat barked sharply, simultaneously mobilizing the seventh-stage power he had just acquired, attempting to strangle the foreign object in his mind.
The person was not flustered at all; instead, they laughed even harder.
"You little rat, you certainly have a sharp tongue."
"You just called for this seat so many times."
"What?"
"Now that we’ve actually met, you don't recognize me?"
Before the voice finished, a surge of inexplicably emerging power actually took the initiative to spout out along with Lord Rat’s fiendish qi.
The fiendish qi was dominated by this mysterious power, sweeping across a large area of the black-spot monsters in front of him.
Within a few breaths, all the black spots were corroded together, slowly dissolving and disintegrating. Finally, they turned into wisps of black airflow that followed the fiendish qi and flowed back into Lord Rat’s body.
Lord Rat’s pupils shrank violently.
This method... this aura...
The voice in his mind rang out again, carrying a bit of a testing tone.
"You said just now, what should an auspicious one be like?"
Lord Rat answered subconsciously, "Drive out evil, avoid disaster, bestow blessings, and cleanse filth!"
The person seemed to be clapping and laughing. "Correct. That is precisely this seat."
Lord Rat froze, his brain feeling as if it had been struck by lightning, instantly stalling.
"Purity and Filth... Purity and Filth?"
"You... you are the True Lord of Purity and Filth?!"
That legendary devil who spread a peerless plague in Tianchi Province, causing the land to be strewn with corpses, and who eventually went mad and perished?
"Heh, not bad. You’re not too stupid for a little rat," the voice in his mind lazily admitted.
Lord Rat turned pale with fright, nearly falling out of the air.
"Haven't you been dead for ages, you old geezer? Even your ashes were scattered a thousand years ago! How did you get into my head?!"
"Get out for this lord! Stop playing tricks!"
The True Lord of Purity and Filth didn’t seem to care about Lord Rat’s offense; his tone remained indifferent.
"Indeed, this seat did die."
"Dead as can be."
"But after this seat perished, the origin of the plague I left behind was scattered across heaven and earth."
"You little rat sneakily took this seat’s origin and refined it into your body."
"Tell me, since you ate this seat’s things, why can’t this seat be in your head?"
When Lord Rat heard this, his fur immediately bristled.
"Bullshit!"
"What do you mean 'sneakily'?"
"This lord grabbed this opportunity through my own ability."
"The treasures of heaven and earth belong to those with merit."
"Since it was refined by me, it belongs to me!"
"What do you want, you old fart?"
"A possession?"
A fierce light appeared in Lord Rat’s eyes. The fiendish qi in his body surged madly, constructing layers of defenses within his sea of consciousness.
"I’m warning you, this is Gloomlight Province, the territory of my master!"
"It’s not your Tianchi Province!"
"Back then, you were the one who made Tianchi Province a land of plagues and corpses, where even the underground water was pus and blood."
"You want Gloomlight Province to repeat that mistake?"
"In your dreams!"
"If Master finds out, he’ll definitely crush this remnant soul of yours to pieces!"
Facing Lord Rat’s blustering threat, the True Lord of Purity and Filth was unfazed and didn't bother explaining the truth of the past.
He simply asked calmly, "Little rat, do you want to be an auspicious one?"
Lord Rat reflexively snapped back, "What do you mean 'want to be'?"
"I already am!"
Purity and Filth laughed softly, his tone becoming somewhat cold.
"No, you are not."
"What you are now is nothing more than a rat demon who has cultivated a fiendish body and mastered a few scraps of plague techniques."
"You only know how to destroy and corrode. You only make things worse."
"Look at the mess in front of you. Does this deserve to be called 'auspicious'?"
These few sentences were like a sharp knife, stabbing straight into Lord Rat’s heart.
This was what he cared about most.
Lord Rat’s eyes instantly turned red, and he craned his neck to roar.
"This lord doesn't need your recognition!"
"My master said I am one, so I definitely am!"
Purity and Filth seemed a bit surprised. "Oh?"
"An arrogant demon like you actually acknowledges a master?"
"It seems the master you speak of has quite the methods."
Lord Rat grew anxious and cursed, "You think everyone is like you?"
"A lonely soul with no one to bury you when you died."
"My master is a true god of heaven and earth who protects an entire region!"
"A real deity!"
"The deity personally named this lord as the head of the twelve auspicious ones. On what basis am I not an auspicious one?"
"You old fart don't know shit!"
Upon hearing this, Purity and Filth fell silent for a moment.
Then, he let out a long sigh. "Oh?"
"Between heaven and earth... does a true god actually still exist?"
His tone was filled with doubt, and a trace of undetectable loneliness.
Rate on N.U.
