Chen Xinjie's voice choked with sobs, carrying the agony of having everything he had once believed utterly overturned.
"I grew up listening to your legends. Throughout my cultivation, I looked to you as my goal countless times. Even when I was driven to the brink, struggling on the edge of life and death, the thought of your protection gave me the courage to keep going..."
"I thought that was the power of faith..."
His voice abruptly rose, carrying a heart-rending accusation, as though he wanted to roar his very soul out of his body:
"But now you're telling me! It was all a lie?"
"The so-called peak powerhouses of every generation of our family did not rely on their own talent and countless days and nights of arduous cultivation, nor on our family's ten thousand years of accumulation and inheritance. It was merely because... because you occasionally tossed down a trace of Divine Power, as if giving alms to beggars?"
"I once believed that the Sea God was just and selfless, compassionate toward all living beings, a lofty existence worth defending with one's life!"
Chen Xinjie's voice was filled with bitter, self-mocking grief.
"So when I broke through to Limit Douluo and sensed that faint, almost imperceptible pull of Divine Power within me, as though it came from an endless ocean, I thought it was your recognition, the reward finally granted for my family's ten thousand years of faith!"
"I was proud of it! It made me even more resolute in my determination to protect my family and protect Douluo Continent!"
"But now you say that our faith was worthless?"
"That our existence was nothing more than insignificant ants and tools in the eyes of a Deity like you, things you could crush to death at will?"
Chen Xinjie's consciousness