Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 246 White Night Log, Symptom Assessment Phase

"Words are the outline of the self."
Silence is a knife.

If your tongue were sewn up
Do you still remember—

Is someone breathing?

Inside the monitoring room at night, the technology matrix, like a neural network, coiled and intertwined, deeply embedded in the thick steel walls.

It was like a calm yet never-sleeping central nervous system, constantly operating and pulsating—like a formatted mechanical brainstem.

Thirty-six soul observation windows hang silently behind a semi-transparent glass wall, emitting a pale blue refracted light, connecting to high-speed thought pathways.

Each window holds within it a personality undergoing deconstruction.

They are not as if people are being observed, but as if souls are being automatically dissected—in a digital way.

Nicholas stood motionless in the center of the control panel, like a white stitch pinned to a cross-section of fate.

He was dressed in the old-fashioned priest's robe of the White Night Church. The robe was pale, almost a cold gray-white, and the hem of the robe slightly brushed against the ground. The magic marks on the fabric could be vaguely seen reflecting light like ice scales.

Behind his spine, a heavy metal back brace was firmly embedded in his body, extending from his shoulder blades to the back of his head—like an inverted cross.

He is no longer a human being in the full sense.

His face was reduced to half flesh and blood, the other half a smooth, cold porcelain plaster.

Reflecting the scrolling spell projections on the control panel, his entire face resembled a perpetually expressionless dogma.

The left eye is connected to a surgical monitoring system for precise identification. Its shape resembles a medical magnifying glass, which is unfocused, lightless, and transparent yet hollow.

A thick book of patient notes lay open in front of him.

The cover, made of parchment, was torn at the edges and had a dull, blackish hue. On it were six familiar numbers:
【E-060】：Duan Xingzhou

【E-061】：Lynn
【E-062】：The Fate Master
【E-063】：Lin Wanqing

【E-000】：Gregory
【E-099】: The Unnumberable One (Cerian)
He turned the pages of the book, like a pathologist reading the records of a still-warm corpse.

A deep, emotionless voice emanated from a magical module within his body:

"Fifth treatment course, starting now."

He pressed the Light Stone in the upper left corner of the console, and it clicked like a ritual of hammering.

[Rule Update: First-person subjects are prohibited]

[Synchronous Language Control Mechanism: Activated]

[Risk Warning: Semantic rebound may lead to personality fragmentation]

Treatment Space
Six trainees slowly entered the "Language Rehabilitation Department".

The room was like a kind of theatrical theater, with the air filtered and carrying the scent of disinfectant and herbal residue.

Hanging from the ceiling are inverted text devices, like word clocks, rotating in circles.

The walls were as smooth as a mirror, covered with yellowed, semantically guiding papers, as if awaiting some kind of command for collective hypnosis.

In a corner of the room, a "speech therapist" dressed in a white coat stood quietly.

That's not human.

Its name is—【The Seamstitcher】.

It has no facial features.

The mask features a closed zipper made of gears in the center, forming the "mouth" structure.

When it opens, it emits a series of fragmented syllables, like a patchwork of linguistic remnants.

It wore an old medical nameplate around its neck that read:

Language correction experimental subject type A

Simulated semantic reconstruction auxiliary module
Behind the wall, a graffiti wall made of hundreds of stitched human tongues was suddenly unveiled.

The entire wall had only one word written on it:

This character was stitched up hundreds of times, wrapped layer upon layer, repeatedly written, stitched, and rewritten, until it bulged up like a sore, repeating itself in a bloody and mangled manner.

It is no longer a pronoun.

It is a "source of language infection".

The control system then issued a warning tone, gentle yet chilling:

"Welcome to the Language Rehabilitation Center."

"Please omit the subject."

"Please forget who you are."

Si Ming was the first to enter the room.

He stopped, his gaze fixed on the wall, his tone sharp as a knife:

"This is not a recovery."

"This is the first step in the division."

Lin Wanqing stood to his side and slightly behind, gazing at the wall of whispered messages, her brows furrowed, her voice low yet calm:
These sentences are 'incomplete sentences'.

"They removed the subject, leaving only the emotion."

She paused:

"This is semantic manipulation, which attacks the subject dependency feature in the structure of human language."

"Once you subconsciously fill in these sentence structures in your mind, the subject will automatically be filled in as 'I'."

"You are not stating a fact."

"You are admitting it."

No one said anything.

Everyone realized that this was no ordinary language trial.

This was a deliberate "self-stripping experiment".

monitoring room

Nicholas calmly recorded the parameters of each trial participant: breathing rate, fluctuating speech speed, and eye contact.

When he read the entry for "Lin Wanqing", he nodded slightly:

"Knowledge-based defense response. Stress is manageable."

But the next moment, his tongue abruptly stopped while he was making a sound.

He whispered, "The Observer..."

then:

"It's... 'me'..."

The tone of voice was halting.

In front of the mirror, a fine crack suddenly appeared on the surface of the ceramic prosthetic face on half of his face.

He heard a system notification tone:

[Subject overload: Logical backtracking in progress]

Then he heard another voice:
"You are not a doctor."

"You are the patient's case."

He froze.

It wasn't someone else who said it, but rather—his body itself was saying it.

My fingers started recording uncontrollably:

"I'm observing."

"I am being observed."

"I am the designer."

"I am the sample."

"Number, not archived".

With a "click," the ceramic prosthesis shattered, and a wisp of grayish-white nerve tissue slowly crawled out from the crack, like a consciousness entity corrupted by language.

He looked up one last time at his reflection in the mirror.

That was no longer a doctor's face.

Instead—it was a page of medical records. He staggered backward, leaning against the wall, his consciousness lost among the technical terms.

"Astral Calamity, this shouldn't be happening."

But it came.

He whispered slowly:
"The madman eventually forgets how to speak."

"But what's even more terrifying—"

"He was talking about his madness,"

"But I thought it was something someone else said."

The light in the mirror went out.

Language, end.

—The fifth course of treatment begins.

The door to the examination room slowly closed behind me.

A very soft click, like a bone falling from deep in the throat.

The space seemed to have been instantly emptied of all sound.

Si Ming, Lin En, Lin Wanqing, Gregory, and Selene—the five of them stood quietly in the center of the square ward.

The room's walls were a stark white, and magical light tracks hung from the ceiling, illuminating the floor in circles like slices, yet failing to reflect each other's images.

The character "I" on the wall is still stitched up layer by layer, as if gazing at every silent soul.

The Seward stood in the farthest corner, like some kind of out-of-control prosthetic doctor.

He wore a doctor's robe stained with blood and stitches, and a tattered "language discipline certificate" hung on his chest.
His face was covered by a mask made of tightly fitted gears and zippers, and where his eyes were, there was only a hollow metal plate with flashing signal halos.

It didn't speak.

However, an almost imperceptible sound wave had already spread out from its body, turning into a low-frequency echo that vibrated every nerve in the six people's bodies.

—Language suppression has taken effect.

Everyone understands that if they dare to speak and utter the word "I," it will trigger a semantic breakdown.

So they didn't say anything.

The operation began quietly.

The one who spoke first made the move.

Its body trembled slightly, its feet remained still, yet its entire body seemed to "flow" along the wall like a syllable defying gravity.

It's like a piece of language, extending from the end of a sentence to the beginning.

It moved like a spider's shadow, crawling between the walls, its joints making a soft "crackling" sound like turning pages, yet without making a sound at all.

The next second, it disappeared.

The faint waveform of speech could be heard throughout the room.

That's not human speech.

It's not that everyone's "inner thoughts" are being eavesdropped on.

Lin Wanqing instantly squatted down, pulled out a protective spell page, formed hand seals, and a thin mist of blue light emanated from the entire wall.

Si Ming then tossed out a "Lament of the Fated Gambler" card. The playing card unfolded, spun in the air in an arc, and the diamond pattern gently fell down.

【Illusion · Cube 3】

A faint illusion appeared in the corner of the room.

A false image of a dictator appears out of nowhere, its semantic structure is "disguised," and it induces the interpreter to make incorrect judgments.

At the same time, Lynn lowered his head, his fingertips touching the ground, and the gray mist spread rapidly.

【Gray Fog Domain - Auditory Barrier】—Activate.

The sound was muffled, the vision was broken, and the entire space was filled with fog and disorientation.

The Seamstress reappears.

It suddenly slammed down from the ceiling, its sharp, surgical-instrument-like claws cutting into the gray mist.

Lin Wanqing retreated without hesitation, while simultaneously using spell marks to launch rebound paper pieces, further expanding the illusion layer on the wall.

boom--!
The playing cards exploded automatically, the 3 of squares was activated, triggering a semantic confusion: the sound waves bounced off the wall, and the Speaker was momentarily stunned.

Lynn coordinated his attack, and the gray mist, like a net, wrapped around a corner of the Seamstress's body, restraining him near the wall.

Gregory retreated, his body heavy and his steps slow, yet he remained remarkably calm.

His palm gently stroked his cane, and the faint pulse of the Star Calamity Remnant within him seemed to be intercepting some kind of cognitive contamination that had not yet taken shape.

The Seamstress disappeared again.

It climbed up the wall silently—this time, it was smarter.

Instead of attacking from the front, it quietly reverses its sound wave structure, integrating itself into a "semantic waveform" and lurking inside the wall.

The surrounding walls trembled slightly.

A faint, low-frequency syllable seemed to be repeating on every wall: "Who are you...who are you..."

Si Ming stood still, drew three cards, and twirled them between his fingers.

He quickly threw two more cards, one into the gray fog and the other into the corner of the illusion.

"Click."

The sound waves surged for a moment, and finally a crack appeared in the wall.

—The Seamstresses Rise Up!
It attacked from behind, its target not being the strongest fighter, but the slowest one in the crowd—Gregory.

The bionic healer's body twisted like a folded page, its arms merging into a "throat slit," with gears and zippers opening, biting at the old man's back.

At this moment——

A blood-red afterimage erupted from the shadow behind Gregory!

Celian.

She remained quietly hidden in the shadows behind Gregory, already poised to strike.

Bloodshot eyes gleamed, and claws like knives pierced through the Spellcaster's chest in an instant!
"Feel sorry."

She chuckled softly, her breath as cold as a knife, "Siming had long anticipated that you would use guerrilla tactics and feints."

"These little tricks are too easy to see through."

As her voice faded, the blood claws twisted violently.

—The Seamstress explodes!
The gray-white language module shattered into dozens of text fragments in the air, eventually coalescing into a judgment statement:

[Language carrier - discontinued]

Its body completely collapsed, the remains of its prosthetic body turned into silent ashes, and the remaining fragments of language were swallowed up by the gray fog domain.

Selene flicked the claw marks off her claws and turned to look at the surveillance camera above the examination room.

She slowly raised her hand and defiantly made a "shh" gesture towards the camera.

—A silent victory.

Everyone stood in the center of the battlefield, slightly out of breath. The gray fog gradually dissipated, and speech returned, but no one was in a hurry to speak.

Silence was the most important camouflage for this night.

The God of Fate slowly approached.

He raised his hand and put away the last playing card, the entire deck of "The Gambler's Lament" closing at his fingertips, its soft light subdued.

He walked up to Celian.

Before she could speak, Si Ming had already raised his hand and gently patted her head.

"Well done."

He turned his head to look at the crowd, his eyes showing a lazy yet composed expression.

"Let's go."

He looked down the corridor toward the door that was still closed.

"There are still many games to play tonight."

A slight smile played on his lips, his eyes deep and thoughtful.

"We'll take our time."