Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 248 Plague Theater: The Day of Sacrifice
Doctors no longer write prescriptions.

He just wanted to know—

Can you be swallowed up by the world?

The observation room at White Night Hospital was like a closed surgical theater before surgery, so quiet that even the frequency of the light reflections seemed to be sliced ​​into a surface.

Nicholas stood before the screen, straight as a scalpel, his black and white robe perfectly pressed against every inch of his skin.

He remained motionless, yet his pupils seemed not to be "seeing" but rather "dissecting."

That's not a movement of the gaze, but rather a "layering of the field of vision".

Each frame of the surveillance footage was dissected in his mind like a diagram, reconstructed into a series of precise parameters:
Temperature differences, speech rate changes, pupil contraction frequency, sentence construction lag rate, stride length and the overlap ratio of alert zones... He is drawing a "behavioral tomography" for every living person.

His fingertips glided lightly across the screen, but suddenly paused when they passed over the image of the God of Fate.

It wasn't that he stopped—it was that the entire "layer" froze.

thump—

He could feel the Cataclysm within his body vibrate.

It's not activation, it's awakening.

That heartbeat wasn't accelerating, it was "expanding"—like some deep-seated desire that had been suppressed for too long finally finding an anchor point of resonance.

—"The highest card has not yet been turned over."

—"That man is the key narrative holder in the script."

"He holds answers that have yet to be deciphered."

A trembling sound, almost pleasurable, escaped Nicholas's throat.

He slowly tore a gray rune from his chest—the access fuse for the information absorption spell. No need to burn, just tear it, and it would activate.

“That’s enough,” he murmured, his voice like the handwriting on a surgical consent form.

"Script parameter verification complete."

"Next comes the dissection phase."

Large gray star-like marks appeared on his arm, as if celestial bodies were tracing paths across the surface of his flesh.
Every star trail was writhing, and every flicker of light seemed to announce an outbreak of "defying the naming".

It wasn't madness, it was the doctor's excitement.

He smiled, not frivolously, but with the focused satisfaction of a surgeon facing a perfectly altered case.

"Everyone says that the Mysterious Corpse shouldn't have a 'will'."

"But this one—we'll have to try it."

"Use this vessel to complete the journey of the Star Calamity."

"To reach an end they are unwilling to acknowledge."

At this moment, the Holy Healing Place trembled.

It wasn't the earth's crust rising, but rather a "penetrating low-frequency cough" rippling within the building's framework—it was the gray star's premonition, the first whisper of future lesions.

Meanwhile, in the surveillance footage, Lynn issues a warning, but the corridor lights instantly go out.

The next second, the ground silently disintegrated.

There was no explosion, no misalignment, the floor tiles peeled off silently, as if their skin had been torn away.
It's like the throat of a building slowly opening, revealing a passageway that "does not belong to human beings."

Lin Wanqing was the first to lose her balance, and Si Ming grabbed her by the back of his hand, but they, along with the ground facilities, broken rune cards, and corridor slogans, were swallowed into the abyss.

They fell—not vertically, but by sliding into an internal pipe of unknown construction.

There is no wind pressure, only the perceived "height" is being drained.

The moment it landed, it was soft and sticky, as if it had fallen into some kind of embryonic sac structure.

Lynn was the first to wake up. She pulled her fingers back sharply after they touched the ground. The texture was not brick or mud, but some kind of fibrous structure, like an intermediate form between the skin and medical gauze.

“This isn’t underground,” she whispered.

"This is inside the body."

Behind them, the crack slowly closed, like the closing phase after chewing, and the Holy Place swallowed them completely.

The final broadcast from the Holy Place of Healing followed:

[Currently in: Restricted Deep Trial Phase]

[Rules have been updated]:
[Looking up is prohibited (upper limit of visual range closed)]

[The left hand is prohibited from being used (to control and execute punishments)]

[Jumping is prohibited (space escape blockade)]

[Speaking loudly is prohibited (as a punishment for spreading infection)]

[First-person pronouns are disabled (language stripping penalty)]

“All restrictions… are tightening.” Lin Wanqing’s voice trembled slightly, but she was still able to express herself clearly.

Si Ming stood up, his gaze falling on the end of the writhing, glowing "corridor of flesh and blood".

There, it was glowing.

It wasn't light, but rather "the shimmering of bodily fluids after illness"—like phlegm after a cough, subtly moving with each breath.

"He's here," Si Ming whispered.

"That madman who still retains his sanity."

The space suddenly resonated.

The sound is not coming from a speaker.

It is the walls, the ground, the ceiling, the air, the tongue, the skin... all the "speaking structures" that are uttering language.

That's not a technical term.

That was a "pathological holy book" like a priest's sermon.

"They say that the disaster is the stripping away of emotions and self."

"But the real catastrophic event is admitting that you are no longer who you were."

“You’re using cards as identity tags.”

"But doctors never remember their patients' names."

"Doctors only remember the symptoms."

Nicholas appeared.

Beneath his holy robes trailed tubes, sutures, injection holes, and tattered pages of incantations. Behind him, a row of specimens of plague victims hung like lanterns, their auras cold and silent, observing all of this.

There was no divinity in his eyes.

There is only one type of preoperative calming.

He is not a monster.

He is a doctor.

One, a doctor who finally decided to begin the surgery.

“It’s not the Secret Relic.” Si Ming spoke for the first time, his tone calm, yet it was like a sharp line cutting through the air.

Nicholas smiled, but it wasn't a response; rather, it was a pre-planned reaction already written into the diagnostic record.

“You are not a gambler either.” His voice was like a scalpel cutting through skin. “You are the betting chip.”

The air began to smell sweet. Not the sweetness of blood, but the pungent, lingering smell of pectin decay emanating from the temperature-controlled incubator in the laboratory—damp, persistent, like a belated surgical anesthetic penetrating the mouth.

Nicholas slowly stepped into this theater of lesions, and with each step he took, the light veins beneath his skin vibrated.

It was as if he wasn't entering a battle, but rather stepping into a meticulously planned pre-operative consultation.

A patch of grayish-white marks appeared above the neck, like "clinical guide lines" left on the body by a star map.

His eyes reflected the flowing gray star trails, as if his pupils had long been rewritten by a celestial calamity.

He spread his arms wide, a gesture reminiscent of a clergyman preparing to announce Mass, or a surgeon already in position.

"Welcome to the White Night Critical Care Case Dissection Hall."

His tone was extremely slow and restrained, each word like a precise slash, his calmness chilling.

“Case number S-GP-001, Gambler’s syndrome.”

"Main symptoms: blurred boundaries of multiple personality disorder, fatalistic resistance and paranoia, and addiction to language and logic."

"The five patients with different symptoms are all highly adaptable to rationality."

“You used to think that ‘no travel’ was a restriction.”

"Wrong—that was just anesthesia."

"The real surgery is about to begin."

He slowly raised his hand.

Three embedded card marks emerged from beneath the flesh, like surgical uteruses growing within blood vessels. Each card was welded to the bones, and each beat was like a pulse giving birth to a command.

Star marks spread from beneath his feet, like gray flames climbing the walls of the Plague Theater. Runes on the ground lit up, as if the entire space had become his spellfield.

"Life is the host."

"Fate is the name of a disease."

"The world is the diagnostic standard."

"And I am the disease itself."

He slowly inserted his left hand into his chest cavity and pulled out an instrument that resembled bone but not bone, shaped like a dissecting knife—his core of the World System Mystic Manifestation, the [Plague Codex].

"Your cards will be peeled away one by one on this operating table."

"I want to see—how much of humanity disguised as conviction is hidden inside."

Lynn clenched his fists, his voice barely audible: "He's gone mad."

Lin Wanqing shook her head, her eyes calmer than ever before: "I'm not crazy."

"This is...someone who knows he's gone mad but still insists on making pathology analysis reports."

The God of Fate stared directly at him.

"It's not the Secret Remains."

Nicholas paused slightly, a smile appearing on his lips as if he had anticipated it.

"of course not."

"It was the earliest research sample before you created the Mysterious Remains."

"You want to use the Mysterious Remains to bypass the Cataclysm."

"And I, with the Secret Relic—entered the Star Calamity."

He took a step back, his chest slowly unfolding as if flesh and blood were trying to expel a burst of starlight.

“Each of you will become the first drop of plagued blood when the ritual erupts.”

"And that card—"

His gaze was fixed on the mysterious card at the side of the Fate Master's waist, a card that had never been revealed, like the last drop of ink in the deep well of fate.

"That 'Supreme' card was the igniter for my Star Calamity."

He started to laugh—a broken laugh, like a doctor who had over-prepared for surgery finally seeing his own specimen.

"Let the world cough."

"It's not you who are treating the disease, it's the epidemic that is writing your fate."

The star marks within him were no longer restrained, and the gray patches on his skin burst open, releasing pus and radiance.

Nicholas raised his arms high, like a priest preparing to perform a surgical ritual.

He stomped on the ground—and the space collapsed!
The entire lesion space instantly collapsed, twisted, and sealed off, with the ground, walls, and ceiling merging into one, forming an "infection cage" entwined with gray and white tentacles.

The air has changed.

It didn't become murky—it became "too clean".

That was the smell of disinfectant in the sterile chamber, the sweet and fishy smell of high-concentration ethanol mixed with blood plasma after it decomposed, the familiar "smell of death preparation".

Duan Xingzhou's throat tightened: "They don't want to fight us—they want to dismantle us."

Si Ming whispered, "He never hid this intention."

Lynn activated the Grey Wolf Summoning, but as soon as the summoned creature appeared, it was forcibly suppressed by the "Domain Plague Pressure" to the point of near collapse.

Nicholas walked forward slowly and steadily, but his eyes held a deep thirst for "organ specimens".

He looked at Si Ming and said, word by word:

"forerunner."

He stopped and nodded slightly.

"This isn't your first time here, is it?"

"The 'gambler' who left behind crucial research documents was numbered very early and committed suicide by burning himself in the initial vision of the Cataclysm."

"And he wrote his regrets into a card."

"That card is now on you."

"You are not the master—you are the vessel."

silence.

Si Ming slowly raised his eyes, drew three cards, and spoke in his usual soft tone:

"Have you said enough?"

Nicholas smiled, and his figure ignited with the light of the Star Plague.

"Then start."

Si Ming stood in front of Lin Wanqing and Lin En, the playing cards floating in the air like blades.

"First round, wake him up."

—The battle begins.

"The patient is in position, and the medical supplies are warmed."

The doctor was laughing.

他 说:

Let's dissect—what you call 'self-will'.

(End of this chapter)