Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 247 Gray Star Omen: Before the Whispers of the Plague
"Stars fall into the blood,"
The lesion is no longer an organ—

It's not just the world.

The White Night Medical Records Room was as quiet as a frozen tomb.

The light shone on the long glass table, casting distorted shadows, but it couldn't penetrate the deeper layers of the yellowed yet still slightly undulating medical records.

It's as if what's sealed within isn't a record, but a whisper that hasn't completely died.

Nicholas stood before the table, his figure as cold and hard as surgical forceps.

He was wearing the standard surgical gown of the White Night Research Institute, so white it was almost blinding, with the word "life" sewn upside down on the collar.

Originally a symbol of doctors saving lives, it now resembles a kind of pre-operative atonement mark.

His left arm was no longer flesh and blood, but a prosthetic limb made of sixteen transparent optical fiber blood vessels intertwined. There was no longer any temperature between the knuckles, only pulses and data flowing silently.

At the end of each optical fiber is the breathing-like data storage center behind him—dozens of medical records are suspended there, like soul pathology slices floating in the surgical fluid.

He perused them again, like a priest organizing his will.

[Case ID: E-060 Duan Xingzhou]

Stress mode: PTSD lingering in the battlefield, right-side alertness prioritized.

Behavioral prediction: When hallucinations invade, there is a high probability of "protective misidentification attack" against teammates.

【E-061 Lynn】

It exhibits high stability and good inhibition of the emotional center.

Prediction of abnormal reactions: a tendency to parasitize the memories of others, and a tendency to lose personal boundaries in collective illusions.

【E-062 Siming】

The personality structure is highly fluid, exhibiting a high-level tendency to manipulate narrative domains.

Pathological prediction: Depriving the main narrative perspective will construct a "false personality substitute body", which may cause script jump disorder.

【E-063 Lin Wanqing】

It has a complete logic and strong self-construction dependency.

High-risk node: Core semantic deprivation will trigger the "personality collapse protection mechanism", entering a blank state.

【E-000 Gregory】

Fate identification error level: Extremely high.

Status: An early remnant of the Cataclysm, carrying an unknown astronomical catalyst.

If resonance is triggered, the warning level is Ω.

He wrote these not for the purpose of "diagnosis and treatment".
Rather, it's about screening.

Plan the infection trajectory.

Construct a "lesion transmission curve".

His voice was as light as dust falling on ice, yet every word pierced to the bone:
"Not killing."

"It's purification."

The next moment, he flipped open a medical record sheet that was glowing with a bluish-purple light.

The paper didn't have a patient number, only a string of "special access" credentials:
【N-13 / White Night Survivor Chief Healer】

Symptoms: Language structure stripping, identity misplacement, reversal of day and night perception, and residual self-infection of astral language.

Note: Gray star synchronization has been completed.

He slowly extended his right hand and took out a "starfall crystal fragment" from the silver plate.

The fragment resembled a solidified teardrop, with starlight-like textures floating in its dark gray color—not a crystal, but a crystallization of a "residual will."

The meteorite crystals pulsated slightly, as if waiting for their divinity to be awakened.

He whispered:
"Everyone says that only madmen are extraordinary."

"But the madman only knew the symptoms of the world too early."

He then inserted the crystal into the injection valve in his left arm, and the subcutaneous fluid gently rippled outwards.

The moment the needle entered, he didn't frown; only his back slowly arched.

It was like some kind of cold consciousness, climbing up the neural tree, reaching the visual cortex and auditory center.

Crystallization and dissolution.

No, it's turned on.

The gray light of the falling star began to flow in the blood, weaving through every fiber optic cable, every neural interface, and every unclosed gap in thought.

His world began to tilt.

The monitoring screen on the console gradually blurred, and the halo turned into eyeballs, peering out from the four corners of the screen.

Behind every shot, it's as if some kind of tentacle is reaching out, trying to look at him from the opposite direction.

He heard it.

The sound came from the inside of his eardrums—no vocal cords, no mouth, only the logical suppression of language itself, like a razor slicing his throat.

"It's not you who cleans up the world."

"It is the world... that will cleanse you."

"You are a language that has been rejected."

His eyes suddenly narrowed.

This is not an illusion, but an echo. It is the entire city's language mechanism "feedback" on its own construct—a refusal to respond.

"Who... who's talking?"

He struggled, only to find that he could no longer utter the word "I".

That wasn't a ban, but rather—

His "subject" has been stripped away.

The word "Nicholas" decomposed into a string of characters in his mind:
【N-Log-Eye】

Controlling entity: Deactivated
Language weight: Zero

Identity reconstruction is underway...

He instinctively leaned against the wall, his ceramic mask shattering, and a cluster of gray nerves slowly emerged, like a virus trying to bloom in the ruins.

The calamity planted more than just information within him—

It is a definition.

"You are not the attending physician."

"You are the patient's case."

Inside the control room, divinity is shattered, and words become self-indulgent.

And his pen is still moving.

At that moment, he felt his skin begin to burn intensely deep inside his body.

It wasn't the high temperature from the outside, but an inner burning sensation, as if language itself ignited a fire in his veins.

He opened his right palm, and a dense network of gray-black star-shaped marks appeared in his palm. They resembled neither wounds nor magical markings.

It is more like a pathological "transmission trajectory map"—complex and intertwined, like a viral map of infection at the level of consciousness, extending like a spider web to the fingertips.

These lines are not imprints, but a kind of "cognitive pathology chain" that is constantly spreading from his body, each line representing the trajectory of the collapse of a certain language structure.

His once spotless surgical gown began to show mottled gray spots, but these were not contaminations.

Rather, it is a “semantic stain” seeping from the depths of the body—as if the entire self-structure is being corroded by an invisible linguistic epidemic.

Blood swelled under the fingernails, each finger bulging as if hiding a "language tumor" about to burst.

He opened his mouth, only to find that he couldn't control the coordination between his tongue and vocal cords; they began to operate on their own.
"diagnosis……"

"Target group identification in progress..."

"The cause of the illness is identified as: excessive language density leading to redundant consciousness..."

"In the process of transferring the main consciousness center... Target mapping: Mentor of the Sick Spirit [Secondary Personality - Bound]".

—That voice finally had a "name".

"Mentor of the Sick Souls".

A hunched figure dressed in a gray robe slowly emerged from the shadows beside him.
The head was completely covered by a sealed metal mask and medical sutures, like a remnant that had not been removed from some abandoned surgery.

It has no facial features, yet it utters a voice so clear it's chilling:
"The patient is now awake."

"The source of infection has been awakened."

"Next task: Establish a 'language infection field'."

"No need to kill."

"Just—make them cough together."

Nicholas's throat tightened, and a mouthful of thick liquid spurted from his throat, splashing onto the table with a thud.

That's not blood.

Instead, it was a miasma of meteorite color—a dark gray with faint starlight-like glimmers, like divine fragments scattered from cracks in the zenith after failed observations.

It is not a fluid, but the "discourse ash" left after the cognitive structure has burned.

He slumped down beside the medical table, his shoulders heaving violently, his knuckles gripping the edge of the table tightly, as if trying to maintain "some remaining human posture." Yet, his eyes were clearer than ever before.

“Illness…” he began in a low voice, as if explaining to someone, or perhaps mocking himself.

"Being sick is not a mistake."

"They're just too scared."

"I'm afraid I'll lose control of my health."

That's why all instability is called "illness".

"But I know I'm not wrong."

“I am not ‘infected’.”

"I am the one who received the mandate from the stars."

“I am—the Plague Envoy.” The moment he uttered those words, he ceased to be an observer.

He is a communicator.

The shadow of plague began to spread—not from the ground, nor through gas, but from "language" itself.

He reached out, took out a specimen finger bone stained with meteorite ash, and slowly embedded it into the main port of the semantic circuit.

The specimen's joints were already deformed, and its surface was covered with fine, gray runes, like the nerves of some kind of dead but not yet decaying virus.

Starlight, sharp as a knife, slowly spread from the bottom of the pipe.

It's not poison gas.

Not an illusion.

Instead, they are fragments of "residual morphemes recorded millions of times"—repeated words, old incantations, and unspoken words from dreams, which are reawakened and infused into the deep structure of the language world.

[Epidemic Initiation: Sequence XA / Catalyst "Gray Marks" Loading]

Activation path: Observation structure → Time feedback node → Subject jump body → Cognitive lock core
Infected objects: Semantic referencing system → Self-naming module → Memory time synchronization mechanism

Each glowing line in the data corridor is like a wound torn open from the grammar, and lines of grammatical documents that should have been standardized begin to garble, be rewritten, and collapse.

This is not about infecting any one person.

This is—infecting "language itself".

And Nicholas stood in the center.

The lights in the control room began to dim, and the layers of techniques on the wall gradually emerged. One by one, the "naming lists" slowly peeled off, and one by one, the "identity construction blueprints" were rewritten.

He smiled.

He was no longer the recorder, nor the chief administrator.

He is a redefiner.

He no longer uses medical texts to describe symptoms, but instead uses lesions to describe humanity.

The original name, the words of the celestial calamity, will ultimately redefine the City of White Nights on this night.

Meanwhile, in the corridor on the fifth floor leading to the mental rehabilitation area, footsteps gradually fell silent, as if the entire hospital was holding its breath, waiting for some kind of linguistic disaster to officially descend.

Lynn suddenly stopped, his brow furrowing slightly: "This place... seems familiar."

Duan Xingzhou looked around, his expression grave: "The damaged first aid poster on the wall... is still in its original place."

"Even though we were going straight, it felt like we were going in a circle."

Lin Wanqing spoke rapidly: "The corridor lights—the frequency and brightness have shifted."

"This is not a visual illusion; it is a manipulation of subjective time perception."

Gregory's voice was deep: "Language infection activated."

Lynn paused, a hint of unsettling coldness in his voice: "How do you determine that?"

“The first wave of symptoms doesn’t inflict physical pain,” Gregory’s voice was like a razor blade scraping sandpaper, “but rather infects cognition—changing how people understand their own existence.”

"Let the group doubt the repetition of paths, doubt the overlapping of identities... and ultimately, doubt—who is thinking inside?"

—

Ahead, mist appeared. A gray mist sphere, like a bubbling blood bubble, floated out, silent and invisible, yet its low-frequency fluctuations, almost like breathing, covered the entire passage.

The Gray Mark Sensor has appeared.

It has no physical form, no facial features, only a constantly deforming, neuroma-shaped bubble that spews out layers upon layers of fragmented incantations from its center:

"Time repeats itself, you and I..."

“Speak, I can hear you.”

"You didn't choose the name; someone else put it on you."

"The first cry you utter is no longer your own."

Lin Wanqing's fingers trembled as she tried to speak, but only a fragmented phrase came out: "This...no—"

Before he could finish speaking, his tongue tightened, and his breath became blocked in his chest.

Si Ming approached, his tone calm yet flat: "Maintain semantic boundaries."

"Abandon the nominative descriptive body".

"Switch to a structural external narrative."

Lin Wanqing nodded, but found it difficult to write—the words on the page moved on their own, as if digesting the intentions she wanted to express.

The shadow of the pandemic has infiltrated the very fabric of language. It doesn't attack the mind, but rather devours words.

Duan Xingzhou suddenly blurted out, "My sister—is still at the station—"

The next instant, his pupils trembled, his whole body convulsed, and his voice began to echo and repeat:
"Sister...sister...whose?"

"Who...who is speaking?"

Lynn rushed forward and forcefully grabbed Duan Xingzhou's shoulder: "Stop! What's speaking isn't consciousness, it's a corrupted language structure!"

—

The pandemic has completed the first phase of "language-identity binding." The corridor structure has begun to distort.

The department names on the wall have disappeared, leaving only absurd labels:
"The place beyond names"

The Hall of Silence

"The Clinic for Unspoken Memories"

The sense of space began to collapse, and memories spread in disarray. Lynn turned around and saw Si Ming standing behind her, his expression calm.

"Shouldn't the pioneers be at the front?" The question was tinged with surprise and doubt.

Si Ming replied calmly, "I haven't moved."

—

“The Cataclysm has infiltrated.” Gregory’s voice settled like dust.

“Here, ‘speaking’ has become a pathology.”

“Every utterance is a dedication to feeding the source of the epidemic.”

—

At this moment, atop the White Night Hospital, Nicholas ascended the Star Calamity Altar.

The helipad that originally belonged to emergency helicopters has now been transformed into a platform for a blood and flesh stitching procedure.

Damaged medical instruments were embedded in the edge of the altar, forming a chain of symbols.

The six-pointed lamp ignited with the brilliance of falling stars.

The body is no longer a vessel, but a container for language itself.

His laughter was no longer an emotion, but an "unstoppable cough".

He raised his hands, revealing the three mysterious fragments on his chest—

Life, destiny, and the world—entwined in a spiral, intertwined at the heart's core, like a divine construct of the "Trinity of Meaning."

Stardust crystals run through it, and with each pulse, it is a "cough of celestial disaster".

He whispered, his syllables torn apart, like fragments ripped from an unfinished incantation:

"The rescuer failed... simply because he cared too much about humanity."

Therefore, it was abandoned.

“Those who abandon others will gain God.”

“Abandoning words leads to infection.”

—

At the edge of the platform, six talisman slots slowly unfolded.

The names of six "patients" are engraved on it:
Duan Xingzhou: A Person with Loaded Memory

Lynn: The Remnant of the Gray Tower

Gregory: The Cataclysmic Carrier

[Lin Wanqing: A Cognitive Distortion]

[Si Ming: The Speech-Maker]

[Serian: Blood Abnormality]

He wrote these names into his "postoperative guidance notes" word by word.

"They are the fuel."

"It's a call sign."

"It is a ladder to advancement."

Nicholas turned around and looked at the crowd in the main projection.

That wasn't staring.

That's "naming".

There was no longer any emotion in his eyes.

Only the reflection of the decaying gray star.

When he spoke, his voice was no longer speech, but a syllable structure gnawed away by disease:
"Patient, take your position."

"The pandemic has begun."

"The Starscramble do not offer healing."

"The Cataclysm - It only talks about reinfection."

The doctor tore off his gloves.

他 说:

Treatment ended.

Next—it's time for the world to start coughing.

(End of this chapter)