Chapter 523 | Demonic Beings? Obviously Auspicious Omens!

Plague Rat flexed his wrists. Having been bound by those green threads for so long, his limbs felt a bit stiff.

He scrambled up and immediately began cursing, “Shit! You dared to tie up Lord Rat for so long? Do you even know who Lord Rat is?”

“Lord Rat is the head of the twelve zodiac signs in the City of the Wrongfully Dead, the apple of Master’s eye, you—”

Plague Rat spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and wanted to continue cursing, but seeing Chen Zhou’s solemn gaze, he forced himself to swallow the remaining profanities.

“Help me hold them off for a while. I need to quickly recover my death qi.”

Jian Huaishuang nodded. “Understood.”

Lian quickly added, “I will protect Master!”

Chen Zhou said no more, immediately sitting cross-legged and closing his eyes.

In his sea of consciousness, he instantly established a connection with the Myriad Herbs Life-Death Realm.

A phantom of the Myriad Herbs Life-Death Realm emerged behind him, and emerald light seeped out from the phantom, flowing along the edges of the Ghost Domain.

“Su Xue,” Chen Zhou called out in his sea of consciousness.

Su Xue, who was far away in the stone forest taking care of the unconscious Nie Chaoxi and the weakened Purity and Filth, trembled when she heard Chen Zhou’s voice.

“Master? What is wrong?”

“I need a massive amount of death qi. Right now.”

Su Xue heard the gravity in Chen Zhou’s tone and didn't ask further. She immediately sat cross-legged, her hands forming seals as she also connected to the Myriad Herbs Life-Death Realm to use the Life-Death Transformation.

The emerald light began to dim, turning into a layer of gray-white mist.

The mist surged out from the phantom, flowing through the connection of faith and continuously pouring into Chen Zhou’s body.

Chen Zhou let out a muffled groan as the death qi within him began to slowly recover.

Jian Huaishuang drew his sword and stood before Chen Zhou, the tip pointing downward in a defensive posture.

Plague Rat hopped over to Jiao Mu Jiao’s side while cursing, then showered a cluster of human-face sores onto the massive Purity and Filth’s beetle corpse.

“Old man, look here!”

The human-face sores transformed into a blood-colored stream, lunging straight for the beetle corpse’s head.

The beetle corpse slowly turned its head and kicked off with its six legs. Its ten-zhang-long body bore down like a small mountain, while a thick, foul stench of decay erupted from within it.

Plague Rat let out a strange cry and turned to run. He felt that the moment his human-face sores touched the beetle corpse, they were actually absorbed by the opponent.

The foul stench surging from the beetle corpse acted like a massive plague domain, suppressing all plague-related powers within its range.

Plague Rat, unwilling to back down, threw out another cluster of human-face sores.

The result was the same. The human-face sores were swallowed up as soon as they got close to the beetle corpse, without even causing a ripple.

“Dammit!” Plague Rat cursed loudly. “What is this thing? How is it shutting Lord Rat down so completely!”

Jian Huaishuang spoke calmly while swinging his sword to deflect the beetle corpse’s lunging forelimbs, “It is the True Lord of Purity and Filth.”

Plague Rat froze, his expression turning even uglier.

To think it was actually Purity and Filth’s original body. No wonder. The old man had mastered the Great Plague Heaven and could absorb all plagues into his body. In life, he had been at the half-step Siming level, and his plague techniques were peerless.

Who would have thought that even after being dead for so long, his corpse could still retain his abilities from when he was alive?

Tsk, what a headache.

The beetle corpse’s forelimbs lunged again with incredible speed, bringing with them a gust of rank wind.

Jian Huaishuang sidestepped to dodge. His greatsword left a shallow mark on the beetle corpse’s carapace, but it failed to break through the defense.

Watching anxiously from behind, Lian mobilized the black spots within her and summoned five black-spot monsters.

The monsters were pitch-black and had no fixed form, looking like clumps of flowing ink. As soon as they rose from the ground, they charged at the beetle corpse with howling cries.

Then, they were flattened into meat paste by a single blow from the beetle corpse’s forelimb.

The five black-spot monsters didn't even last a single breath. They turned into black water that seeped into the ground and began to slowly reform.

Lian’s face turned pale. She gritted her teeth and summoned five more.

The situation on Jiao Mu Jiao’s side was also not optimistic.

The black jiao and Tianyou’s Corpse were locked in combat, but the jiao was clearly at a disadvantage.

Every punch from Tianyou’s Corpse carried ten-thousand-jin of force. When they slammed into Jiao Mu Jiao, they shattered its scales and sent black blood flying.

Jiao Mu Jiao fought back desperately. Black vines surged from its body to entangle Tianyou’s Corpse’s arms and legs, but the moment the opponent exerted force, the vines snapped inch by inch.

The battle between Wing-Fire Snake and the Red Banded Snake Corpse, however, was evenly matched.

The two giant snakes rolled and bit each other within the ley line. Transparent flames and crimson flames intertwined, melting the surrounding rocks.

But Wing-Fire Snake was clearly holding back.

Every time it opened its mouth to breathe fire, its flames would intentionally veer slightly off course, avoiding the demon beast corpses that were still struggling on the Red Banded Snake Corpse’s body.

Some of those corpses were still moving, some were crying out, and some were even shedding tears.

The more Plague Rat fought, the more frustrated he became.

His Ghost Domain, human-face sores, and even his Great Plague Heaven were completely ineffective against the beetle corpse, being suppressed every time he used them.

Jian Huaishuang’s fighting style made him even angrier. This deadpan face was purely defensive throughout the entire fight, blocking every strike without counterattacking. He wouldn't even charge his highest-damage Hidden Sword, nor would he open his Lie Sword Domain.

“Fucking fight already!” Plague Rat cursed while dodging the beetle corpse’s attacks. “You’re just taking hits without hitting back. Do you think you’re a punching bag?”

Jian Huaishuang didn't answer, merely continuing to defend.

The beetle corpse’s forelimb lunged again. He sidestepped, and his greatsword scraped across the carapace, once again leaving only a shallow mark.

Plague Rat hopped with rage. “Are you just tickling it?”

Lian wanted to command Jiao Mu Jiao to come help, but Jiao Mu Jiao was being suppressed by Tianyou’s Corpse and couldn't break away at all.

“This can’t go on!” Plague Rat dodged an attack from the beetle corpse, a patch of his fur having been scorched. “Dammit, Lord Rat is going to go out with a bang!”

He was an immortal body now at the seventh-stage first symbiosis contract level. If he exhausted all his death qi to self-destruct, he should at least be able to heavily injure one hundred corpse patchwork.

As he spoke, he prepared to charge out of Chen Zhou’s Ghost Domain.

Jian Huaishuang grabbed him by the tail and pulled him back.

“Wait.”

Plague Rat frowned. “Wait for what? For Master to finish recovering?”

He felt that something was wrong.

Previously, after he had broken through the stone door guarded by Wing-Fire Snake, he had followed the resonance of his origin all the way here. He had encountered a vast number of hundred corpse patchworks, as well as Jian Huaishuang and a group of little demons who had been captured by Tao Tuantuan.

Back then, he hadn't thought much of it, only wanting to save his colleagues, so he had just gone all out.

But for some reason, Tao Tuantuan had used some secret technique—a little demon only at the third transformation of Eerification had actually managed to make him lose consciousness directly.