Azure Depths watched Chu Mo with a dark, lingering gaze, waiting for an explanation.
"You're treating me like an outsider, fellow Daoist."
Unhurried, Chu Mo smiled. "We both belong to the human race, and we both stand against dragonkind. Why draw a line between us? If we succeed this time, your contribution will be immense. How could a few casualties among your disciples possibly measure up to that?"
Azure Depths scoffed at his words. "Du You, don't fob me off with that. Every disciple of my school was painstakingly nurtured and carefully taught by This Venerable."
Chu Mo raised an eyebrow and asked a question whose answer he already knew. "Then what do you propose, fellow Daoist?"
"One more condition." Azure Depths was brisk and decisive, raising a single finger.
"After this succeeds, you must guarantee that the Eastern Sea's population flourishes for three hundred years. And throughout those three hundred years, the Eastern Sea's living beings must reincarnate only within the Eastern Sea."
"That's all?" Chu Mo paused, seemingly surprised.
He had expected the other man to open his lion's maw and demand the sky, waiting for him to bargain the price back down to earth. Instead, it turned out to be something he could accomplish with a mere lift of his hand.
After a moment's consideration, he understood what Azure Depths was planning-the All Beings Dao. The Eastern Sea bordered dragonkind's territory and suffered endless floods, with countless deaths among its people. And people were precisely what the All Beings Dao required.
Thus, Azure Depths was asking him, the lord of the Netherworld, for people.
Chu Mo glanced above Azure Depths' head. Level 76, little different from someone who had just entered the middle stage of Dao Integration. Then he chuckled. "In that case, it's a deal."
Only