"Alright, stop your wailing."
Lord Rat dug his ears in annoyance; the noise was too much.
"I say, old man, how are you still this hot-blooded at your age?"
"Trying to blow yourself up at the drop of a hat?"
"If you really died, you'd be leaving this vast Eastern Region to these little shrimps and small fry."
"Would you really be at peace with that?"
The Sea Emperor's lips parted, but for a moment, he didn't know what to say.
"I... I..."
What was there to say? Should he continue to speak of his own incompetence—how he couldn't guard the sea eye, couldn't protect his people, and how his broken body had to be saved by the Dragon Ancestor's messenger at the cost of the messenger's own life?
Lord Rat interrupted him impatiently.
"Listen. Regardless of whether you can hold on or not, at least wait until the day the Lord deals with the false god and personally visits the Eastern Region."
"At that time, whether you want to live or die is up to you. No one will stop you."
"What, you don't want to see the Lord one last time?"
"You don't want to tell him yourself how you've endured these thousand years, how the sea race survived under your protection, and that the Eastern Region isn't finished yet?"
The Sea Emperor froze, then tremblingly climbed to his feet, old tears streaming down his face.
He wanted to.
How could he not?
That was the Dragon Ancestor, the source of all sea race bloodlines, the only light that had illuminated the eternal night of the deep sea.
He had guarded the sea eye for a thousand years, enduring the pain of the cold spring corroding his body. Every time he was on the brink of collapse, it was that tiny sliver of hope that supported him.
He thought that perhaps one day, the sound of the tide in the Endless Sea would reach the Dragon Ancestor's ears. He thought that his remnant body might last until the Dragon Ancestor returned. He thought of the moment when all living beings in the Eastern Region would see the light of day again and revitalize their scales.
If he died now, it would be like a lamp being extinguished just before the long night turned to dawn.
He wouldn't see the dragon might return, wouldn't see the maritime territory cleared, and wouldn't hear the laughter of his scattered people as they returned home.
Was he willing?
Of course not. He was unwilling to have survived a thousand years of lonely suffering only to fall in the final darkness before the dawn.
"I... I do."
"I want to see the Dragon Ancestor reclaim the East Sea with my own eyes. I want to see this sea area return to how it should be."
Lord Rat sneered.
"Fine. As long as you want to. Little fish, take good care of your old man. It's worrying how troublesome someone his age can be."
Cangming hurriedly stood up and supported the Sea Emperor.
He looked at Lord Rat, his eyes full of shock.
He could feel that the rat before him had changed.
It wasn't just an increase in rank.
If the previous Lord Rat was a poison-dipped dagger, sinister and vicious...
Then the current Lord Rat was like a bottomless swamp—impenetrable and awe-inspiring.
"Lord Rat... You..."
"Mind your own business when it comes to Lord Rat's affairs."
Lord Rat waved him off, then pointed at the black qi leaking from the sea eye.
"So? Your old man is at his limit. Can you still handle it?"
Cangming gritted his teeth and nodded. "No problem. I can still hold on."
Seeing Cangming's pale face, Lord Rat eventually let out a sigh.
"Forget it, forget it. Just seal it as best you can. It doesn't matter if you can't hold it; Lord Rat is terrifyingly strong now."
Lord Rat turned around. Though his tone was arrogant, his movements were extremely steady.
A continuous stream of plague fiendish qi wove into a net, taking over the vast majority of the pressure for Cangming.
Even if the ice seal weakened, Lord Rat could easily deal with the escaping black spots.
While maintaining the operation of Great Plague Heaven, Lord Rat separated a wisp of his divine consciousness and sank it into his sea of consciousness.
Deep within the sea of consciousness, everything was a hazy grey.
"Hey, old geezer? You still there?"
"Did you die again?"
"Don't play dumb!"
"Weren't you quite talkative just now?"
Lord Rat was actually quite puzzled.
He really couldn't figure it out.
The title 'True Lord of Purity and Filth' was something that could scare children into silence at night in Tianchi Province.
Legend had it that this True Lord was capricious and bloodthirsty, leaving a thousand miles of barren land in his wake. Even a dog by the roadside would break out in three poisonous sores just from him passing by.
How could such a wicked villain suddenly have a change of heart, helping him sublimate his festering divinity and even teaching him step-by-step how to use the plague origin?
After he called out for a long time, the True Lord's lazy voice finally echoed in the depths of Lord Rat's mind.
"What's the rush, little rat?"
"This seat just woke up and my bones are weak. Can't I rest for a bit?"
The True Lord of Purity and Filth's voice sounded somewhat ethereal, carrying an obvious sense of weakness.
Lord Rat keenly noticed this. "What's wrong with you?"
"Did that last burst drain you dry?"
"And why are you helping me?"
The True Lord didn't hide it, his tone carrying a hint of playfulness.
"What could happen to this seat?"
"I'm a dead man already; I should have dissipated a thousand years ago."
"Now that I've barely awakened and happen to be in this body of yours—which is somewhat pleasing to the eye—I might as well do a good deed and benefit a junior."
"In any case, this seat will soon vanish completely. There's no point in taking this bit of power into the grave."
Lord Rat frowned as he listened. "Oh? You found your conscience?"
"Is it because you feel Tianchi Province was turned into such a mess by you that no one will burn paper for you after you're gone, so you want to accumulate some secret merit?"
"Tens of millions of lives ended because of you, and the land turned into a poison pit."
"Now you want to brush all those sins away with a light sentence about 'benefitting a junior'?"
"How can it be that easy?"
Lord Rat was only three hundred years old. From the moment he was born, Tianchi Province had been a wasteland ravaged by plague and poison.
There were no blue skies or white clouds there, only toxic miasmas that never dissipated.
The soil was charred black, the rivers were dark red pus and blood, and the air was forever filled with the stench of rot.
Ordinary creatures couldn't survive in such a harsh environment. Those that had lived until now were all mutant venomous insects and beasts, or low-level demons like him who survived by devouring rotten flesh.
In Tianchi Province, Lord Rat lived a harder life than a maggot in a gutter.
He had to hide everywhere, avoiding powerful predators while remaining constantly vigilant against the omnipresent plague poison in the air.
He had heard other old demons who had lived a long time mention that the reason Tianchi Province had become such a living hell was all thanks to that True Lord of Purity and Filth from a thousand years ago.
Legends said that to practice evil arts, he sacrificed the lives of an entire province.
He was naturally tyrannical and committed every imaginable evil. To refine his origin, he hadn't even spared his own kin.
After his death, his terrifying plague origin scattered across the land, completely destroying the foundation of Tianchi Province and turning it into a dead land abandoned by the world.
To survive, Lord Rat had been forced to fuse the plague into his body.
Then, by a stroke of luck, he picked up the plague origin left behind by the True Lord and cultivated a fiendish body.
Lord Rat had never personally seen the True Lord, nor had he been to the ruins where the True Lord lived.
Because that place had always been occupied by that damned Plague-Eating Stove.
All his impressions of the True Lord came from those legends filled with fear and curses.
But at this moment, the weak yet peaceful voice in his head was a world away from the green-faced, fanged villain who wanted to destroy the world that he had imagined.
Rate on N.U.
