Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 205 The Scapegoat and the Spirit of the Paper Umbrella
The rules never require you to sacrifice others.

You're just afraid that the final moment will fall on you.

The fourth round had not yet begun, and the puppet in the center of the theater was still softly humming the nursery rhyme.
The melody is like an old-fashioned music box cassette tape from kindergarten, sweet but full of cracked notes, like a rusty nail wrapped in sugar.

The entire hall felt as if it had been pulled into an ice well.

The scene of Duan Xingzhou collapsing to the ground was still vivid in her mind. The bloodstains on the floor were not yet dry, seeping into the dark edges of the red carpet, becoming a focal point that tore through reason.

The silence in the air grew heavier, and everyone breathed cautiously, as if afraid of disturbing some kind of death lurking in the shadows.

Just as this oppressive atmosphere was about to explode—

Si Ming spoke slowly.

His voice wasn't loud, but it was like a slash of a blade, precisely cutting through everyone's tense nerves.

Have you noticed—

Everyone was startled and looked up in unison.

“In each round, the one who is penalized is the ‘last person to move’.”

Si Ming stood with his hands behind his back, his gaze indifferent, as if casually describing the weather.

"It wasn't a violation of the rules, nor was it an overzealous move. It was just the 'last time'."

Rudolf looked up abruptly, his face filled with shock. He murmured, "...It's not a violation, it's the order..."

“This means,” Si Ming continued, his tone gentle yet carrying a highly authoritative logical progression,

"We only need to determine one person to 'move last' in each round, and the rest of the people will have completely free time to explore."

He blinked slightly, as if stating an incredibly simple fact.

The hall fell silent once again.

Fujimiya Sumire covered her mouth, her eyes showing hesitation and instinctive resistance.

Eileen took a small step back, looking like a kite with a broken string on the verge of breaking.

Mu Sisi even subconsciously shook her head, as if rejecting the proposal itself.

Just then, Wang Yichen made a move.

He took a sudden step, as if a broken string had finally bounced back.

He stared at Si Ming, his voice suppressed yet increasingly sharp, and gritted his teeth as he said:
So you mean...we take turns dying once?

"Sending one person to their death each round, in exchange for you few 'watching the show' mystery masters having more time to crack the game?"

His voice suddenly rose, almost bursting out of his chest with anger:

"So you really have been using us as expendable resources for trial and error! We risked our lives to test and experiment, and in the end, you just throw out a bunch of 'sequential logic' and decide to sacrifice us?"

The temperature in the air dropped several degrees.

Eileen's face turned deathly pale, Fujimiya Sumire was on the verge of tears, and Lin Wan'er lowered her head, not daring to speak.

Zhuang Yege frowned slightly, but his gaze remained calm, as if he were assessing the deeper intentions behind those emotions.

Wang Yichen seemed to have found a breakthrough. His eyes flashed, and he suddenly pointed at Celian, his voice rising again:
"That woman!"

"Isn't she incredibly strong?! She's impervious to food, toxins, and hallucinations, and she can even heal herself! Didn't you summon her as a token?"

He looked at Si Ming, his eyes forcing him to admit something, "Isn't she just a tool for you 'ability users' to fight with?"

"Then let her take the blame!" Wang Yichen gritted his teeth, nearly losing control. "Aren't you the best at gambling? Go ahead and gamble with her!!"

The air seemed to freeze instantly.

All eyes turned to the girl who was squatting on the red carpet, licking a piece of brown sugar.

Seria, a vampire girl.

Her red dress rippled like flames in the dim light, her eyes were scarlet, and in the blink of an eye, she revealed a set of small fangs and slowly licked the edge of the candy.

Just when everyone thought she was about to have an outburst—

"Oh?" Siming suddenly laughed.

The smile was gentle and soft, so gentle that it didn't seem like a response to an interrogation.
Instead, it was as if we were watching a pitiful creature, mustering its courage to let out a roar before still trying to escape into its cave.

He looked up at Wang Yichen, his gaze relaxed, yet like a thin, sharp blade piercing every nerve in the other's body.

"To sacrifice our ace as consumables?" he repeated softly, his tone as if he were chewing on some nauseating suggestion.

He slowly patted his cuffs and straightened his collar, as if preparing to attend a banquet.

"Do you really think I 'won' every game because of Selene?"

Si Ming raised his chin, his gaze sweeping over the crowd. "I can stand here because I've always known that the card you should never play is the last one."

“That’s not a tool for gambling with your life.” He pointed at Celian. “That’s a chip I won’t allow anyone else to touch.”

Selene licked her fangs, gracefully stood up, and patted her skirt.
She chuckled softly, "Hmph, that's easy to say. When we get back, you'll have to buy me two servings of sweet wine and ice cream."

Wang Yichen gritted his teeth, but couldn't utter a single word in rebuttal.

He knew that he had lost this round of confrontation. Not because of his stance, but because of the issue of "trust" itself.

He always believed that he relied on memory, skills, and oratory techniques.

But at this moment, he saw for the first time that those three mystery masters had never entrusted their lives to luck.

They only trust their own "cards".

In the fourth round, the lights slowly came on.

The puppet chuckled, raised its silver rod, and began to sing the next distorted nursery rhyme.

The stage is still up for the curtain call.

"Let me do it."

The sound was deep as iron and slow as a bell, yet it struck the air with an unavoidable thud.

Everyone instinctively looked toward the source of the sound.

It was a silent silhouette, standing in the center of the ballroom, tall and slender, with a black robe trailing to the ground, as if a figure carved from a temple stele had suddenly stepped into reality.

Zhuang Yege.

His expression remained completely unchanged; not even his eyelashes trembled.

But he stood there like a monument—inscribed with ancient, unquestionable rules.

“Si Ming is right.” His tone was calm and unhurried, yet it was like ice water slowly seeping into his chest. “High-level life forms are the core of the battle. They should be protected.”

His gaze swept across the crowd, lingering on Selrian for a second. In that instant,
The vampire girl's arrogant squatting posture stiffened slightly, as if she had sensed a whisper from one of her kind.

“And I—” Zhuang Yege turned her head, slowly raising her finger, “Just so happens, I have a life that I can use.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he flipped his right palm over, revealing a dark black iron ring.

The ring's surface is engraved with fine inscriptions, and a small bronze plaque is inlaid in the center.
The card is mottled, but in the very center is a paper umbrella that is open, and under the umbrella is a line of very small seal script characters - "Crossing the Child".

He read it softly:
"The Mysterious Contract of the Lost Life System: Paper Umbrella Spirit Slave".

"Yan Chuan · Xiao Du".

"Appear."

The moment the sound faded, the air fell silent.

Then, a gust of wind rose from behind him.

It wasn't an ordinary wind, but a wind that flowed against the current, carrying moisture and the smell of mud, like a river flowing backward, like the gray mist of an old ferry crossing rising from the River of Oblivion.

For a moment, everyone's vision blurred. Zhuang Yege flipped his palm, and a gray shadow silently fell from his fingers, like a tear, into the abyss of this theater, which was entangled in repression and rules.

That was a... little girl.

He was small and thin, less than 1.2 meters tall, and covered with tattered paper cloth, like a theatrical costume or a shroud.

Several tattered talismans were pasted on his ankles; the writing on the paper was already blurred, but the red ink was still wet.

She held up a tattered oil-paper umbrella, the surface of which was already torn to shreds, and the rain could no longer be kept out.

Two yellowish glass beads were embedded in her eye sockets; they had no pupils, yet they were always "staring" at you and smiling.

His mouth stretched from ear to ear, his smile resembling a painted children's mask.

The air suddenly turned three degrees colder.

Mu Sisi instinctively covered her mouth: "This...this is what he summoned?...The child? She can really...?"

Eileen's face turned pale, and she even forgot to back away, only able to stammer and repeat, "No, no, we shouldn't have let the child go up there..."

"She's not a child," Zhuang Yege's voice rang out slowly.
“She is a ‘folded ferry child,’ not a life form as we understand it.”

"She is the soul of a child who drowned, and a beacon that will never return to shore."

With a flick of his sleeve, the girl with the tattered umbrella walked out lightly, each step like wading through water in the rain, yet not a drop of water got on her.

Silk threads automatically extended, wrapped around her limbs, and marked her as a player in this round.

The puppet's silver rod hadn't moved yet, but suddenly stopped for a moment.

It seemed to have sensed something... different.

The grin slowly widened, and a sweet laugh rang out from the speaker:
"new?"

"Okay... let's begin."

Si Ming stood behind the crowd, his eyebrows raised, a slight smile playing on his lips, and he chuckled softly:

"Now, this is interesting."

The theater lights remained a blood-red hue. The puppet, holding aloft its silver club, stood stiffly in the center of the stage, its form as rigid as a broken statue.
The figure cast a distorted human-shaped shadow under the spotlight, covering the entire hall floor tiles.

It hummed a nursery rhyme softly, its tongue sounds muffled, like a music box out of tune.

The air seemed to thicken with the eerie melody.

"Three paper figures can dance... four..."

"I'm turning around now—"

"Click!"

Its head suddenly rotated to its limit with an almost dislocated range, turning its "face" towards everyone in an instant.

At that moment, the smile on its face, stretching to its ears, seemed to come alive.

The mask's structure rubbed together, producing a low, rattling sound, like bones and rubber bands twisting and breaking apart.

Everyone held their breath.

Then, it opened its mouth.

"Number... Nickname 'Little Paper Umbrella', slowest!"

The air suddenly froze.

The puppet pointed a finger, issuing the next crimson command without hesitation:
"Please perform 'The First of the Disconnected'."

Snapped--!
Before anyone could react, Yan Chuan Xiaodu's head spun around once.
With a series of cracking sounds, it snapped off from the neck and shoulder fracture with a "crack"!
The head, dripping with grayish-white liquid, traced an arc in mid-air before landing with a thud at the puppet's feet.

The familiar childlike smile still lingered on his face, his eyes were yellowish and lifeless, but the corners of his mouth seemed to be asking—"Was it fun?"

On the ground, what gushed from the severed neck was not blood, but an ink-like liquid of ash, carrying the smell of burnt paper ash.
A few faint patterns lightly spread across the red carpet, like a seal.

Everyone's eyes widened in surprise. For a moment, the entire theater seemed to be pulled into a vacuum, all sound disappeared, and even the air seemed to freeze into amber.

Fujimiya Sumi screamed, her whole body like a glass doll plunged into a deep sea of ​​fear;

Rudolf's pupils contracted sharply, his throat tightened, and a sentence stuck on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't utter it.

"Is he... dead?" Eileen whispered subconsciously.

But the next second——

The head that had rolled off the ground suddenly leaped up!
It was as if an invisible hand of thread descended from the sky, lifted it up, and snapped it back onto the severed neck.

"Crack."

She rubbed her neck, casually straightened her paper umbrella, and smiled as sweetly as ever, her lips curving upwards, yet as cold as moonlight on a frozen river:

"Fun."

She tilted her head slightly, grinned at the puppet, and stared blankly at the center of the stage with her two glass bead-like "eyes".

"Want to come again? I can... be played with three more times, okay?"

The tone was like a nursery rhyme, or a murmur coming from a crack in the ground, sending chills down everyone's spine.

The puppet paused for a moment, its neck tilted slightly, and the smile on its face faltered briefly, as if a small part of its internal logic chip had just exploded.

"She...she..."

The puppet emitted a discordant "uh-uh" sound from its throat, a mechanical noise.

Before the astonishment on everyone's faces had faded, Siming clapped his hands. The sound wasn't loud, but it was like a bone needle piercing the suffocating bubble:

"Alright, is that shocking enough?"

His tone was languid, as if he had just watched a halftime show, yet his words carried an undisguised sarcasm.

"Now we know... not every round necessarily means death."

He looked at everyone, but the smile on his lips had already turned cold: "Then it's time to take action."

His gaze swept across the entire theater, finally settling on the corners and edges surrounding the stage.
It's like gradually outlining the border of a blueprint.

"The core of this game must be hidden somewhere on this stage. Clues, mechanisms, and solutions won't crawl to your feet on their own."

"so--"

He looked at the crowd, his voice steady yet carrying an unyielding coldness:
"While our 'paper doll sister' can still hold out for a few more rounds, you should go find her as soon as possible."

“Of course.” He smiled, his tone as fluid as mercury, “Once she’s finished using it, if you still haven’t found it—”

He paused, as if considering his next word.

"Then it's your turn to take the stage yourselves."

In that instant, Wang Yichen's face turned ashen, his throat bobbed slightly as if he wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

Rudolf was the first to step forward, and said in a deep voice, "Find clues."

Mu Sisi, Fujimiya Sumi, Eileen and others followed closely behind, huddled together like travelers driven into the wind and snow.

They no longer hesitated, even though their hearts were still filled with fear, they knew that waiting would only make them the next puppet to be chosen.

In a secluded corner, behind an old picture frame, a faint rune mark was quietly flickering.

Like an eye slowly opening in the depths of a stage.

You didn't escape the rules.
You've just found someone to take the punishment for you.

But what if that person disappears?
In this play—who should take their final bow?

(End of this chapter)