The purple figure tried to break free, but it felt as though his body had been clamped down by tremendous force. No matter what he did, he could not move in the slightest.
He tried to draw upon the power within the frenzied "deep sea" around him, but the tranquil depths swiftly surged with turbulent undercurrents before being suppressed by an even greater force in the next instant.
The purple figure lowered his head. His body trembled like a flickering image on an old television screen, and his hoarse voice echoed through the abyssal sea. "You maintained your humanity? Why? Those anchors of fate should never have been enough to preserve your sanity."
The confusion in his voice grew heavier. "I weakened every connection of fate that could serve as your anchor. I erased the 'friends' you cared about and did everything I could to weaken your memories. Why can you still maintain your humanity?"
"Yes," He Ao sighed softly behind him. "Why indeed?"
In his field of vision, he could still see those blurred phantoms.
Beyond the indistinct figures of Lin Chichi, Li Cheng, Liu Zhengyun, and Yang De, overlapping silhouettes gradually emerged.
Invisible lines, like intertwined threads of fate, connected him to those phantoms.
Those lines intertwined with the lines from the Main World, barely holding on beneath the onslaught of angelic madness and power.
Each individual line might have been fragile, but gathered together, they became ropes amid the storm.
Those ropes bound together He Ao's soul and will, and they also bound together his memories.
Combined, they were his "humanity."
Those memories and fates were his "anchors," allowing him to preserve his self and humanity under the impact of mythical power and endless madness.
In fact, He Ao had speculated about this long ago.
When he