Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 210 The Paper-Sealed Building
Some doors will lead you forward.
Some doors are just there to keep you from ever leaving.

The Lost One's ship lights finally turned completely crimson, with blood-red halos spreading along the metal edges, like the last rays of sunset before the Sea of ​​Dreams returned to port.

The entire ghost ship trembled deeply, like a sleeping beast about to turn over, gently waking all the passengers and sending them back to the shore of reality.

As everyone passed through the fog-sealed gate once again, the air suddenly changed.

The gentleness of dreams is gone, replaced by the sharp edge of reality, slashing down like a blade—carrying a chilling sense of clarity.

They returned to the original four-door room.

That familiar yet unsettling gray stone floor, that ancient wall that remained silent like an oracle...

The three silent, solemn doors—all unchanged—except for the water mirror door that once led to the "Lost One," which was now completely closed.

The door frame was embedded empty in the wall, without cracks or marks, as if it had never existed, merely a "tidal stop" in their collective illusion.

"Is it over?" Mu Sisi stood by the door and asked in a low voice, her voice hiding a hope she was reluctant to express.

“For now.” Si Ming stood in front of the door, gazing at the undried watermark on the stone surface—like a tear left behind when a dream landed.

Just as he finished speaking, a familiar figure entered everyone's field of vision.

He stood there, still dressed in that gray-blue clothes, with that same indifferent and calm expression, as if time had stood still for him. That person was—Xu Jinxiao.

"Xu Jinxiao?" Vera was the first to react, her tone carrying a hint of barely perceptible surprise.

Everyone then realized that the man, who was so quiet he was almost invisible, was still standing there, motionless.

He seemed to have neither witnessed their departure nor realized their return.

"You...you're still here?" Rudolf blurted out, a hint of doubt and complexity in his eyes.

Xu Jinxiao slowly turned her head and nodded gently: "...I didn't leave."

"...You didn't leave?" Eileen murmured incredulously.

“I remember telling him to wait where he is.” Si Ming walked over, patted his shoulder, and said in a flat but ambiguous tone, “You’re quite obedient, aren’t you?”

“I…I wasn’t being obedient.” Xu Jinxiao’s voice was dry and weak, like a piece of paper pulled out of an old wooden box. “I…I dare not leave.”

One sentence silenced the air once more.

That wasn't fear, nor was it weakness; it was a self-imposed blockade deep within one's bones.

The God of Fate did not pursue the matter further.

He glanced at Xu Jinxiao indifferently, then turned to look at the three still-closed doors.

On the left is a heavy door made of rusted iron, mottled and heavy, as if every inch of it is sealed off from some kind of repression and pain;
In the middle was a black door like a bottomless abyss, so black it almost swallowed the gaze; there were no totems, no boundaries, only darkness.
To the right is an ancient bronze door engraved with a golden sun pattern. The totem is like fire, and the door ring is like the sun. When it trembles slightly, it seems as if you can hear the low hum of light.

"Where are we going this time?" Mu Sisi asked subconsciously, like a student waiting for the verdict in an exam.

Vera walked to the door, pressed her fingers to the astrological chart on her chest, closed her eyes, and concentrated. The card floated up, its golden light trembling slightly, as if she were touching the boundary of some kind of rule.

A moment later, she opened her eyes and said calmly but firmly, "The middle one, the Sun Gate."

"Are you sure?" Zhuang Yege asked from behind.

“I can’t be sure,” Vera replied softly, “but I ‘sensed’ that it was the closest to a ‘regular’ structure among the three—a structure we could understand.”

“Then we can’t drag this out,” Si Ming said. “If we give up the initiative again in this round, then the madman will regain control of the narrative.”

“That makes sense.” Zhuang Yege nodded. “Entering the node ahead of schedule is our only option right now.”

No one objected anymore.

Si Ming stepped forward and raised his hand to touch the door knocker of the Sun Gate.

The door knocker was extremely hot, with strands of golden light emerging from the gaps, blazing like the sun—but this was not the heat of fire, but rather the response of the rhythm of space itself.

Click——

The door lock rotates automatically.

Ancient runes lit up in circles, and a sun pattern rotated half a circle on the door, as if a star was awakening.

Behind the door, there was a stream of burning light—but it wasn't scorching.

It was a passage constructed from the rules themselves, like a river of time, like veins of light, like blood. Every runic component whispered: "Welcome, Paper-Sealed Tower."

Siming turned around: "Ready?"

The door opened, and there was no sound.

One by one, they stepped into the crack woven with flowing light.

The next second, the door closed, and the world switched.

The curtain of night quietly rose beneath their feet over the Paper-Sealed Building.

Behind the door, there was only silent darkness.

As the group passed through the door that seemed to have been forgotten by time, the world beneath their feet instantly changed. It was as if they had fallen from a floating dream into a dream within a dream that had long since collapsed.

Beneath my feet are cold, hard obsidian tiles, their edges worn smooth by time, with narrow gaps between each tile, like unspoken words between lips.

The walls soar into the dome, their blackened surfaces peeling away to reveal a mottled copper skeleton structure.

Each exposed copper pipe is covered with eerie rune markings, as if the entire corridor were not a passageway, but the spine of an ancient creature.

On the dome, rows of iron-rod chandeliers hang down from the darkness.

The light was dim and so faint that it seemed as if it might go out at any moment. With each gust of air, the shadow of the light would twist and turn, stretching into a strange human figure hanging obliquely in the corner of the wall, like a ghost peering down from the ceiling.

“…This place…” Wang Yichen swallowed, looked around, and said in a low voice as if afraid of disturbing something, “It feels like…a locked room in a horror movie where you can never reach the end.”

“It’s not a horror movie.” Vera’s tone was calm, but her steps subtly quickened. “It’s a domain.”

What's truly unsettling are the oil paintings hanging on both sides of the corridor.

There are twelve paintings in total.

Each painting depicts a half-length portrait of a person—but these "people" don't quite look human.

The painting depicts a tall, thin nobleman draped in a golden royal robe, and a young girl with a wide smile peeking out from behind a veil.

There are warriors with empty pupils beneath their armor, and "prayer" with hands clasped together but no eyes or mouth.

Each mouth was sealed with a yellowed strip of paper.

The paper was covered with swirling red lines, like insects or curses, seemingly a strange language that could not be swallowed whole.

“These are…” Fujimiya Sumi asked in a low voice, her voice trembling.

"The one sealed in paper," Zhuang Yege answered in a deep voice, his gaze slowly moving across the portrait.

“They are neither human nor ghost. They are ‘echoes of words,’ a kind of will forced into silence.”

“They are… watching us.” Mu Sisi said this almost in one breath.

As soon as she finished speaking, an invisible chill swept across everyone's back.

Because they saw it—the eyes of some of the "people" in the portrait moved slightly.

It is so subtle that it is almost imperceptible, but it is definitely not a visual illusion.

"We don't have time for small talk."

Si Ming suddenly spoke. He stood in the middle of the group, a calm and composed light flashing in his eyes.

He pointed to the ground, "Look at this."

Rudolf looked in that direction and saw a white chalk line marked on the corner of the paving stones—the very line he had drawn to avoid getting lost when they entered the area.

"Isn't this... the starting point we just drew?" Mu Sisi's eyes widened. "But we've only been walking for five minutes!"

“No,” Vera said softly, her tone grave. “It’s not that we’ve returned—it’s that space itself is swirling and folding, 'folding' us back into the origin.”

“This is not a simple maze,” Zhuang Yege said slowly, looking up at the increasingly clear portrait.
"It's a seal. It seals something, and it also filters us—who is strong enough to be allowed to 'hear'."

"The images are getting clearer!" Rudolf exclaimed. "They're becoming clearer and clearer!"

“With each step we take, they can see more clearly,” Zhuang Yege added. “And we… are getting closer to them.”

"So you still suggest we keep going?" Wang Yichen sneered. "We'll be back at the starting point in five minutes. This place is a trap with no way out."

“It’s not unsolvable,” Si Ming said calmly. “It’s just that we haven’t chosen the right way to ‘see’ yet.”

"What do you mean?" Mu Sisi asked anxiously.

"These 'paper sealers' have their mouths sealed, but their eyes are moving." Siming slowly paced around.
“They cannot speak, they can only see. But they are not looking at us, but at the ‘path’ we are walking. Their gaze is the echo of our journey.”

"You mean... they record every 'choice' we make?" Rudolf gasped.

“In other words—” Si Ming’s voice was deep yet penetrating, “in each round, we are not walking through corridors, but rather through their ‘pre-set narrative trajectories’.”

"It is not our walking that forms the route, but the route that forms us."

“They are the judges,” Vera’s voice fell like a bell, “and also the playwrights.”

"And we—are merely the dialogue bubbles in their writings."

The air stood still for three seconds.

Then came the creaking sound of the chandelier swaying, as if the entire space itself felt uneasy because they had discovered it.

“We can’t split up,” Zhuang Yege confirmed again. “Unless you want to become a ‘side story’ in their writing.”

"What do we do then?" Eileen's voice trembled, as if the script itself had lowered her voice several notches. "We can't get out like this, and we can't stop. We're being 'watched' all the time..."

“We—” Si Ming smiled lightly, a cold glint appearing deep in his eyes, “let them ‘see enough’.”

"Watch how we rewrite their script."

At that moment, a sudden sound broke the delicate silence.

"Perhaps... we don't necessarily have to listen to your script."

Wang Yichen stood at the back of the group, his tone calm yet revealing an barely suppressed sharpness. His eyes gleamed faintly in the firelight, like a glass bead that had not yet been completely shattered—fragile, yet stubborn.

Si Ming narrowed his eyes and turned to look at him.

"What do you want to say?"

Wang Yichen stepped forward, his gaze unwavering.

"You said we can't split up, you said we're characters in a pre-written play."

"But if we are really characters in a play, why would we be aware that we are 'a character'?"

“This means—” he emphasized, “that the script is open-ended; we can choose, we can rewrite it.”

“You’re right, we are indeed being watched.” Wang Yichen glanced at the unseen sky. “But if we always stay on the main path they want us to see, that’s true compliance.”

"And I want to try—to jump out of this line."

These words silenced everyone for a moment.

"What do you want to try?" Si Ming's tone remained unchanged, but a hint of dangerous coldness had crept into his voice.

“Look over there,” Wang Yichen raised his hand and pointed to the black fork in the corridor at the right end. “It’s appeared there more than once, but you always skipped it because it was ‘not in the mirror structure.’”

"But precisely because it's not in the mirror image, it might be the 'annotation' of the entire structure."

"I want to see it."

"Are you sure?" Zhuang Yege said in a low voice. "You know, being 'seen' is one thing, but being 'out of the script' is often another."

“I know,” Wang Yichen said, emphasizing each word, “but I’m not willing to just be a background character in your stage play.”

"I have to ask myself who we are supporting characters in."

Si Ming did not respond immediately, but slowly lowered his eyes, as if he was thinking about something.

At that moment, a slightly hoarse voice broke in. "I'll go with him." Duan Xingzhou's voice wasn't loud, but it was firm enough.

He glanced at Si Ming and said, "I believe in your plan, but sometimes, it's not that there's not enough 'trust,' but that the path is too narrow."

"What if we manage to get out?"

After hesitating for a moment, Eileen stepped forward. "I...I want to try. I've been following you guys for too long. I need to learn to judge the direction for myself."

Wang Yichen glanced at them, a complex emotion flashing in his eyes, but he quickly concealed it.

Si Ming nodded slightly, his tone eerily calm: "You can try. Just don't forget that in the maze, making choices is also a form of narrative."

"The system will record the 'necessity' of whichever route you take."

“And once you are identified as ‘side characters who can trigger events independently,’ your ‘survival value’—” he paused, “will no longer be bound to the protection of the main storyline.”

“We understand,” Wang Yichen replied.

The three walked slowly toward the dark fork in the road.

They didn't say goodbye, nor did they look back much.

Stepping in is like entering a script with a deliberately left blank page.

next second.

"Click."

Suddenly, the wall at the end of the fork in the road began to rotate silently. The moment the three of them stepped in, several strange red lines shot out from the cracks in the floor tiles, "cutting off" the path beneath their feet!
"—A trap!" Si Ming suddenly exclaimed!
"Watch out! Back off!" Vera rushed forward, but it was too late.

The walls were reassembled and reshaped, and the passageway completely disappeared.

"They...disappeared?" Eileen's voice still echoed in the air, but she was no longer there.

Only a wisp of clothing remained, swaying in the air for a few seconds, as if symbolizing that this "side character" had once existed in this scene.

The air fell into a heavy silence once again.

The creaking sound of the chandelier swaying rang out once again—

It seemed to be mocking, yet also like recording.

—The side quest has been confirmed to have been generated.

—Sample numbers: Wang Yichen, Duan Xingzhou, Ai Lin.

Si Ming remained silent.

He simply stood there quietly, gazing at the end of the erased path, his eyes slightly somber.

There was no regret, nor anger.

But a deeper level of vigilance.

Because he knew that the script had indeed been "rewritten".

But what they didn't know was that the "hand" that wrote this new paragraph might not have been their own.

The corridor fell into a deathly silence.

The old oil paintings on the walls seemed to have frozen again into static masks of pretense, the canvases cracked, the paint mottled, and the eyes returning to silence.

However, no one can forget that just now, they moved, and the eyes of those "figures" simultaneously turned to the three people who had gone astray, with the indifference, greed, and precision of someone looking at a sacrifice.

The moment Wang Yichen, Eileen, and Duan Xingzhou "opened their eyes" in the Paper-Sealed Building, they were swallowed alive and sent to the lower level.

It's not about falling into a room, nor entering a new instance—it's about being devoured.

The space did not simply collapse at that moment, but rather, like a giant organism, it "swept the fork in the road into its stomach" and buried it back into nothingness.

The texture on the wall was still trembling slightly, as if some kind of chewing was not yet finished.

“This is a spatial displacement, not a mechanism,” Rudolf said in a low voice, his fingers still pressed against the wall, his knuckles white.

"Should we save them?" Mu Sisi's voice trembled as she anxiously scanned her surroundings. "Or...are they already gone?"

"Alive." Vera crouched down, her palm pressed against the edge of the floor tiles, a faint golden light emanating from her, resonating with the earth's veins.

“I can sense that they are still in the living coordinate system, just… on a different ‘layer’.”

“They’ve been assigned to another path.” Zhuang Yege put away the bronze bell and assessed the situation expressionlessly. “As for us, we’ve been left on the original chessboard.”

“So this isn’t a divergent choice.” Si Ming stood against the wall, his voice calm and unhurried. “It’s a forced move.”

He gazed at the fading runes on the wall, his tone as if reading a chess manual: "Player selects, chessboard responds, space sinks, image gazes, move complete."

“This isn’t a copy,” he said softly. “This is a game of chess.”

The air instantly grew heavy after those words were spoken. Even Fujimiya Sumi understood the underlying meaning.
She covered her mouth and gasped softly, "Then...then what we've been experiencing all along wasn't a game...but..."

"It was put on the table." Si Ming smiled slightly, but there was no smile in his eyes.

"They placed bets in batches, calculated, and filtered them."

He raised his head, looking at the fork in the road that had just swallowed the three people, his voice low and hoarse but extremely clear:
"The madman has already started making his move."

Everyone was silent.

Vera slowly stood up and readjusted her gloves: "What we should do now is not panic, but—don't move around."

She looked at everyone: "Who still remembers the sentence written on the wall outside the door?"

Mu Sisi hesitated before speaking, "Please choose... your next performance segment?"

“Yes.” Vera nodded. “We’re not choosing a copy, we’re ‘choosing a scenario.’”

"And now, Wang Yichen and the others have been sent to perform in another show." She turned to look at Si Ming.

"And we... will stay here and see which way this clue leads."

"Will they come back?" Rudolf asked in a hoarse voice.

Si Ming gazed at the end of the corridor, which had been "chewed clean" by the space itself. After a moment of silence, a subtle, enigmatic smile appeared on his lips:

"If they survive to see the next scene, they will come back."

"But they back then—may not be the same people they are now."

He turned around and gently patted an unopened door on the other side of the corridor.

"The next scene is about to begin," he said, his tone carrying a calm that was a mixture of fate and defiance. "It's our turn to 'position up.'"

The corridor trembled slightly, like a chessboard automatically rotating, preparing to welcome the next move.

The entire paper-sealed building fell back into that nerve-wracking silence that had preceded the distortion—that silence,
Like the silence before the start of a game of chess, the air was filled not with dust, but with the smell of blood and scraps of paper.

The direction from which Wang Yichen and the others fell had quietly closed off; the wall seemed to have swallowed up a section of air, leaving not even a crack.

It's like a set of rules has been finalized and is waiting for the next round.

"But? We still have to save them, right?" Fujimiya Sumi's voice trembled, but her tone was unexpectedly firm. She gripped the hem of her clothes tightly with both hands, and the sense of powerlessness made her almost unable to stand.

"Saving people—not now." Zhuang Yege spoke slowly, her gaze no longer fixed on the vanished path, but instead raising her head.
I gaze at the portraits hanging haphazardly on the walls on both sides of the corridor.

Those seemingly forgotten portraits are silently watching them.

“We haven’t figured out the rules of this space yet. Going in again will only send more people in.” His voice was so calm it sent chills down your spine.

Vera nodded solemnly: "This building is not a trap, but a trial. It's playing out a cyclical drama, and we may be both audience members and actors."

Her gaze was focused, and a faint golden life line quietly appeared on her palm.

Si Ming crouched down and examined a portrait closely, his fingertips tracing the mottled border.

“These portraits…are all incomplete,” he said in a low voice.

"Where is it incomplete?" Mu Sisi blinked, trying to find some commonality in the art style.

“This one.” Si Ming raised his hand and pointed to one of them.

It was a man wearing a gold-trimmed suit, his face was indistinct, but he was clearly holding a pocket watch in his hand, and the hands on the watch face were pointing to the "two o'clock position".

The next image shows a woman holding a wine glass, with a clock face faintly visible in the background, stopped at "five o'clock".

"Time?" Rudolf whispered, his brow furrowed. "Or...location?"

“It could also be a guide.” Zhuang Yege’s eyes narrowed. “If each of the twelve portraits points to a point in time—this building could very well be a clockwork device with a circular structure.”

Vera's eyes lit up: "You mean, we can choose the correct direction at each fork in the road based on the time the 'hand' in the portrait points to?"

“If we can arrange them in order and complete a full cycle,” Mu Sisi suddenly realized, “we can break out of this ‘time reset loop’.”

“It makes sense in theory.” Rudolf began to flip through the manuscript and quickly took notes. “Moreover, it matches the tension distribution of the spatial structure.”

Si Ming looked at the faint light at the end and squinted: "Then let's try arranging them clockwise."

“Using ‘12 o’clock’ as the origin, and selecting the time shown in each painting in sequence to simulate the passage of a clock—perhaps, this can break the closed loop of this ‘dream time’.”

Zhuang Yege nodded: "The question is—which painting is number one?"

The air seemed to freeze for a moment.

Vera pondered for a moment, then flipped her hand and drew a Fate-type card, a faint light shimmering in her palm.

"I'll give it a try." She closed her eyes and began to chant an ancient prayer of destiny in a low, gentle voice. The runes on the cards in her hand trembled slightly as she chanted, as if responding to her call.

The air seemed to vibrate slightly at her fingertips, as if time itself was being gently manipulated by her.

Suddenly, she opened her eyes and pointed to the far left.

It was a portrait of a blindfolded nun, with a clock in the background pointing to 1 o'clock.

“It’s her,” Vera whispered. “The starting point of the clock of fate—it’s from her ‘pendulum’ that it’s striking.”

Without further hesitation, the group began to pass through the passage indicated by the portrait in order.

As Si Ming passed each painting, he would stop and carefully observe the light patterns on the wall edges and the curvature of the folded space.
Rudolf continued to add to the hand-drawn sketches, marking each turn and change on the "abstract clock face";

With each stroke of her pen, Mu Sisi distinguished each node with different colors, gradually creating a "Dream Clock Face".

The first one, the second one, the third one...

The water stains on the wall gradually dried, the incantation behind them dimmed, and even the ever-turning pupils of the portrait stopped their probing intent.

“We’re on the right track,” Zhuang Yege said in a low voice. “We are entering the path of domain structure recognition.”

“It’s ‘letting us through,’” Vera said.

When they came to the twelfth painting, it was a portrait of a man wearing a crown but with a festering face.
He knelt before a pile of talismans, with layers of paper seals at his feet, as if waiting for someone.

At the far end of the portrait stood a silver-white door, with red paper tags wrapped around it. Whenever someone approached,
The paper tags trembled gently like wind chimes, making a crisp "click-clack" sound, as if counting down something.

"Behind this door," Zhuang Yege's voice was more composed than ever before, "lies the Lord of Paper Seals—the core of this Puppet and Magical Dream Tower's domain."

He drew out the Soul-Guiding Card; the broken copper bell still carried a lingering resonance.

"I will try to summon the soul—to awaken the afterimage."

Vera's expression changed drastically: "You want to—make direct contact with the 'rule-makers' of this building?"

“That’s right.” Zhuang Yege nodded coldly.

Si Ming smiled gently and stood beside him: "Then I'll knock on the door for you."

They are ready to confront the root of the nightmare.

"The end of the seal is not silence."

We are waiting for the next person to ask a question.
A person who dares to write their real name on paper.

(End of this chapter)