He Ao stared fixedly at the illusory figure in the sky. He tried to open his mouth, only to find that some invisible force had pressed it shut, making it impossible for him to speak.
After a brief pause, he tried to gather the chaotic power throughout his body and bring it to his lips. The chaotic power stirred everything around him. Blood seeped from He Ao's lips, finally prying open a gap in that invisible pressure.
He slowly opened his mouth. His hoarse, weak voice echoed beneath the silent night sky. "Then what about you? You received these 'gifts' and such care from a god. What was the price?"
"This has nothing to do with a price, child."
The glowing figure quietly watched the person before him, watched He Ao's body almost entirely covered in bloodstains and scabs. His body trembled as his indifferent voice sounded. "This is simply what one should receive after pledging oneself to a god."
He raised his head and glanced at the inverted phantom of the city overhead before continuing,
"You need not worry about the difficulties of advancement or the horrors you may encounter. You need not use all sorts of messy methods to anchor your sanity. You need not be burdened by this concern or that concern, binding yourself like a mouse forever afraid of being caught by a cat. Besides that, there is one greatest benefit to pledging yourself to a god."
He lowered his head, looked at the puzzled He Ao, and said slowly,
"An angel protected by a god will never need to worry about the encroachment of madness. He will be immune to this greatest disaster. Yuluns and the others, constrained by the dangers of the path they themselves walked, are unwilling to let others take a more