Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 242 The Second Treatment: The Priest's Silhouette
"Close your eyes and undergo the examination."
But they forgot,
Those who truly open their eyes,
It's a memory.

When the broadcast started, the air was already cold and heavy, as if the pulse of the entire building had stopped.

"Patient E-059, please proceed to the brain CT scan room during the second course of treatment."

"Current ban updated: To ensure stable identification of regional neural signals, 'head up' is prohibited."

"Please comply with the no-entry rule; violators will trigger the internal error correction mechanism."

The broadcast at the end of the corridor sounded like a verdict being read aloud, each word sharp and piercing.

"Can't look up?" Duan Xingzhou repeated in a low voice, his voice revealing an unconscious vigilance.

His Adam's apple bobbed, as if he were suppressing a question that was about to come out.

Si Ming opened the medical record book and, sure enough, saw a newly added prohibition line on the second page:
[Currently Restricted]:
First: Do not swing your left hand.

Second: Do not look up.

He slowly moved his neck, tilting his chin slightly, and immediately, an indescribable visual feedback surged from deep within his brainstem—

It's not dizziness.

It's the feeling of being forcibly "dragged into another perspective" and losing control.

It was as if someone was looking down at him from above, and then suddenly stuffing "himself" back into his body.

He understood instantly.

“‘Looking up’ is not just the action of looking up,” Si Ming whispered, “it means not looking at the ceiling.”

"Why?" Lynn frowned, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.

Lin Wanqing took a soft breath, bit her lower lip, and uttered a conjecture in an almost inaudible voice that even she herself did not want to believe:
"Because...there is something watching us."

—

"We need to hurry." Si Ming put away the medical record book, his tone as calm as if he were announcing the countdown to a gamble.

"The second round of inspections won't wait until we're ready."

They moved on.

This section of the corridor was longer than before, and the lights were still bright, but the light could no longer be focused—

It's as if each lamp has a pair of eyes; you can't see its light source, but you can feel its "gaze."

All five of them walked with their heads down.

Every step they took was extremely light, as if they were moving through the body of some kind of sleeping giant machine. They weren't walking; they were trying not to wake something.

"Urology", "Prenatal Counseling", "Wound Repair"...

Familiar medical terms appeared one by one on the doorplates on both sides of the corridor. The handwriting was clean and the ink was fresh, as if the doorplates had just been repainted.

But every door is like a "blind eye".

It is tightly sealed, opaque to light, and sound.

We reached the corner.

They saw the door.

A red strip was attached, and the sealing label had been partially torn open, with the edges slightly curled up, as if someone or "some people" had tried to open it before.

The signboard clearly displays the following words:

Brain CT Scan Room

—

Si Ming took a deep breath.

"When you go in this time, pay attention to today's orders."

"Don't look at the ceiling."

"Follow my command."

He counted down in a low voice:

"Five—four—three."

The door opens.

—The air froze.

It's not a "stillness" where flow disappears, but a deathly silence where sound and texture are both stripped away.

A space stripped of all warmth by light, like a cube where time has stopped flowing.

The brain CT scan room was just as they expected.

It was so white it was blinding.

It was clean to the point of being cruel.

In the center stands a brand-new metal scanning chamber, its outer shell bearing a freshly torn disinfection label, like an altar returning to its place after a "divine surgery".

The surroundings were eerily clean.

A row of waiting chairs lined the wall, each with a patient information sheet and a pen on it, all positioned at the same angle.

This is not a display.

This is a ceremony.

"Everyone bow your heads," Lynn said quickly.

They did so immediately.

All five of them lowered their eyes; no one looked at the ceiling, nor did anyone try to "explore the rules."

Because nobody dares to gamble on whether the “ban” is really just a scare tactic.

Si Ming slowly stepped forward, walked to the scanning cabin, and reached out to touch the activation panel.

Snapped--!
A soft sound.

The medical records in the hands of the five people—pages flipped automatically at the same time!
It wasn't the wind blowing, nor were they themselves.

Instead, it's as if an invisible hand pulls up the bottom of the medical record and gently flips it over.

The new page is now prominently displayed:

[Second Treatment Course: Imaging Comparison Record]

"To complete the thought slice sampling, the system will initiate a neuroimaging activation scan."

"Please lie down in the scanning chamber one by one, patients."

“During the scanning process, abnormalities such as memory fragment replay, illusion infection, and subconscious visualization may occur, which are normal reactions.”

Please do not resist.

Duan Xingzhou gritted his teeth, his face turning pale:

"It wants us to go in and have a 'brain scan'."

“This isn’t an inspection,” Lynn continued, his eyes sharp and cold. “This is… an intrusion.”

Gregory stood by the door, breathing heavily, his face growing paler. He raised his hand to steady himself against the wall, but his hand trembled slightly.

"I...I can't go on," he said hoarsely. "You guys go first...I'll go later."

Si Ming turned to look at him and nodded.

"it is good."

He looked back at the scanning chamber—that almost sublime and perfect piece of equipment, like a gaping mechanical maw, waiting for the patient to "lie inside."

Si Ming took a deep breath, his expression unchanged.

His left hand remained firmly pressed against his side, without moving an inch, while his right hand gently pressed a button on the edge of the instrument.

The lights turned up to their maximum brightness in an instant.

"I'll go first."

He said slowly.

It's not a test.

It was a voluntary act of self-sacrifice.

The moment Si Ming lay down in the scanning chamber, that familiar yet strange illusion of "eyes under the mattress" once again enveloped him like a shadow.

The scanning chamber was kept at a constant temperature and had abnormal humidity, as if it were sealed in a calm, silent box under judgment.

He could hear the echo of his own heartbeat—no, who was listening to his heartbeat?

The metal ring scanner started silently; no one pressed a button, and it began to rotate on its own.

The light did not illuminate anything.

But consciousness began to fade.

—

"Scan initiation."

This message did not come from a loudspeaker or a device notification.

It was something that echoed in my mind.

It was like a system command that opened up a completely new pathway in his soul and nerves.

The next instant, Si Ming saw—

Yourself.

—

[Illusion Space - Completed]

He was standing on the ceiling of an upside-down casino.

It was no longer a world controlled by gravity; the entire casino was upside down—the tables floated, the glasses hung in mid-air, and the lights rained down upon the buildings.

Even more bizarrely, all the gamblers were wearing his face.

Everyone sitting at the gambling table, smoking in the corner, or placing bets at the counter was him—Si Ming.

But they are not him.

Their movements varied, their expressions were indistinct; some were laughing wildly, some were looking coldly, some were glaring angrily, and some were chanting softly.

He walked step by step toward the empty seat.

A deck of cards sat quietly there.

He reached out and flipped it over—it was that familiar card.

The Thousand Faces

The design on the card is no longer the original, mysterious structure, but a fragment of a black script.

On the card, several lines of text appeared:
"You're not placing a bet."

"You are the one being bet on."

Snapped!
The card shattered at his fingertips!

Countless playing cards exploded in the air, like shattered pages of a script falling from the sky—but instead of landing, they spun, hovered, and pieced themselves back together in mid-air.

Each one had a sentence written on it:

"You failed a trial in 2026."

"In 2027, you betrayed someone from the past."

"You didn't choose to save her in 2030."

"In 2034, you became a gambler, not a human being."

Si Ming reached out, trying to grab one of the cards.

The card, however, transformed into a sharp blade, slicing a gash on the back of his hand—

There was no bleeding, but the pain was excruciating.

"You're not writing a script."

A voice whispered behind him, like a quiet taunt.

"You are only allowed to take a look."

"You're not the screenwriter, you're the variable."

"And the variable is always the one that is being rewritten."

— “Scan complete”.

I awoke as if I had fallen into water.

Si Ming suddenly opened his eyes, his breathing became rapid, his pupils dilated, and cold sweat almost soaked his entire body.

He lay inside the CT scanner, the robotic scanning arm retracted, the surrounding lights still soft, yet with a suffocating "overly clean" feel.

His right hand was still tightly gripping the playing cards, and they did not fall.

—

Meanwhile, in the monitoring room.

Everything remained as silent as a temple.

The pristine white lights, free of dust and heat, and the thirty-six monitoring screens unfold like pages of the Bible, recording every breath in the hospital.

In the very center, a figure stood upright like a pillar.

He stood in front of the terminal screen, wearing a half-face metal mask with inverted holy light incantations embossed on it.

He is Nicholas the Immortal.

White Night Church - Priest of the Night.

Yes, the Eighth Secret Guardian.

He didn't blink.

But they "saw" it.

On one of the screens—

Gregory sat quietly on the waiting bench outside the brain CT room, his eyes closed, his breathing slow but erratic.

His face was pale, and his fingers gripped his cane tightly. But what was even more terrifying was—

The half-dormant astrological chart on his body silently began to glow faintly.

It wasn't fully lit, but rather—like sparks, flickering.

One way, two ways, three ways...

Grayish-white sparks floated around him, like the echo of a soul that had been "stripped away," or like a heterogeneous divinity that was awakening.

Nicholas remained silent.

He stretched out his right hand and slowly placed it on the old silver pocket watch hanging on his chest.

That pocket watch, its hands are forever stuck at 03:00.

He closed his eyes and whispered slowly in his throat:
"...The smell of a planetary disaster."

—

He showed no excitement or agitation.

There was only a solemnity and clarity that resembled a eulogy.

"It does not belong to any of the paths recorded."

"It is not an 'incarnation,' not a 'creation,' not an 'observation,' and not a 'plague.'"

"This... is not module number 13."

He looked up and stared at the old man sitting quietly on the screen.

A semi-transparent diagram appeared in his hand.

Several celestial calamity paths are marked above: Fallen Star Necromancer, Plague Avatar…

Every path has burned and dissipated.

Only one remains.

nameless.

Unnamed light trails spread from Gregory's chest, extending to the edge of the atlas—

It pierced through the entire "known" framework of the Cataclysm.

Nicholas murmured:

"...Where did you come from?"

"Whose gift is your celestial calamity?"

“I brought him here.”

A voice, both strange and familiar, rang out behind him.

Nicholas turned around, and from the shadows behind the monitoring room, a person slowly walked out.

He was wearing a dark gray trench coat with the collar turned up, half of his face hidden in the shadows.

That face wasn't particularly special, but it was so "ordinary" that it was unforgettable.

That is--

Wang Yichen.

A faint smile played at the corners of his lips; his hands were in his pockets, and his pace was as leisurely as if he were strolling down a street after the rain.

“Your Excellency the Immortal,” he said, his tone as gentle as if he were asking a mentor, “are you satisfied with your recent observations?”

Nicholas did not speak immediately.

He just stared at the other person.

Wang Yichen walked to his side and lightly tapped a monitor on the surveillance wall with his finger.

"Isn't this what you want to know?"

"The stellar calamity emanating from that old man, the data curve that even Number Thirteen couldn't predict—"

"I knew you'd be interested."

Nicholas finally spoke, his voice calm:

"You shouldn't be here."

"You... are no longer an experimental subject."

"You are a variable."

Wang Yichen blinked. "Of course. Only variables qualify for betting. Isn't that right?"

He chuckled softly, his voice so low it seemed to ripple across the metal floor:
"I've always been good at selecting 'high-quality test subjects'."

"And this time—"

"The show I picked is the one you most want to see."

Nicholas didn't say anything more.

However, a very faint "black star pattern" appeared on the palm of his right hand.

A path that had never been recorded in the Destiny Chart database... belonging to no sect, the path that Number Thirteen had been searching for—the Hidden Place—was illuminated in his soul.

Si Ming suddenly opened his eyes.

Inside the gray CT chamber, the light slowly dimmed, as if the dream had finally come to an end.

It took him a full five seconds to get his heartbeat back to normal.

It wasn't because I was tired—it was because the dream was too real, too much like a "memory video that had been pressed into my brain."

But he knew perfectly well that those were not his memories.

Lynn had just climbed out of the scanning chamber, her eyes red and her lips trembling with lingering anger.

She lowered her head and remained silent, as if she had just undergone a soul-searching surgery.

Duan Xingzhou broke out in a cold sweat. His face was deathly pale, and he looked dazed, as if he had seen something he shouldn't have seen in a dream.

Lin Wanqing stood up from the corner, her right hand gripping her left arm tightly until her knuckles turned white. She didn't speak, but unconsciously began to silently recite numbers.

“…2, 4, 6, 8…I still remember…I still remember…”

Gregory sat in the chair, his hands clasped together, his head bowed, as if he had returned to some ancient night. He did not utter a sound, as if the years had stripped away a layer of his soul.

Just now.

--drop.

A mechanical notification sound rang in their minds simultaneously.

The medical record book opens automatically:

[Second Treatment Course: Brain Neuroimaging Analysis - Completed]

[Scanning Report: Acceptance Level is Based on Standard Curve]

[Next round of treatment goal: Breathing exercises - limb coordination training]

The next ban will be issued at 00:30.

"We're alive," Si Ming whispered.

"We passed through the second gate alive."

But there was not a trace of joy in his tone.

Because he knew that there was never just one door.

And at this moment——

The door in front of them opened by itself.

—

That's the door to the brain CT observation room.

The door to a room they had never set foot in slowly opened, and a damp, sticky mist of blood gushed out from it.

The smell was neither bloody nor putrid, but rather a sweet, fishy odor, similar to "nerve fluid"—it gave one a jolt and made one's stomach churn.

“We didn’t open it…” Lynn whispered.

"Yes... it's waiting for the scan to finish."

Snapped--!
The light came on.

From deep within the room, light pierced through the blood mist, illuminating a figure.

That's not human.

It was a medical monster with an extremely distorted appearance.

It wore the white coat of a CT observer, but its body was bloated, like a corpse soaked in liquid, with one side of its head covered by metal sutures and the other side exposing flesh and fibrous brain.

It has no mouth.

Several nerve-like tentacles extend from the top of its head, each ending in a "patient brain model" with a digital identification code prominently displayed on it—all of which are their patient numbers.

“It is…” Duan Xingzhou’s voice became hoarse.

Lynn added in a low voice:

"Observational Physician—it seems to be the mind-eating monster responsible for handling unstable 'mental remnants' after scans at this hospital..."

Si Ming slowly stood up, his fingertips touching the deck of cards.

"It came to 'clean up' us."

The monster floated in the air, its tentacles trembling gently, like willow branches whispering in the night breeze.

There was no shouting.

No warning.

It simply watched them.

He gazed at each person who had just escaped from the deep well of memory.

It had no tongue, yet it "spoke" a sentence during psionic resonance:
"The recording error is too high."

The afterimage was not archived.

...Execute the cleanup procedure.

You thought you had escaped the dream.

But the 'Dream Interpreter'...

Still standing at the door.

(End of this chapter)