Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 249 High Temperatures in the White Night: A Body Amidst Plague vs. Fate

You think his cough is an illness.

But one day you'll find out—

The world is feverish.

"White Plague Chamber - Closed."

As Nicholas's barely audible murmur faded, the entire Plague Factory collapsed as if the air had been sucked out.

The light went out.

It's not simply darkness, but the stripping away of the "definition" itself.

All surfaces in the space lost their color and reflection—as if they had never existed in the composition of "reality".

The air began to thicken, like flowing pus; the floor ceased to be solid, but rather a slowly writhing "breathing flesh."
The vascular patterns bulge and pulsate on its surface, as if they were standing inside a giant "living organ".

The walls were covered with festering veins like spreading inflammation; runes were peeling off and steel was crumbling, turning the entire space into a giant "surgical prison".

[Combat ban rules in effect]

Do not look up
Left hand disabled
You are forbidden to say "I".

No jumping allowed
Expressing pain (including groaning and shouting) is prohibited.
Every rule is no longer a restriction, but a "technical slit"—once triggered, it is equivalent to a death injection.

Nicholas slowly walked into the theater he had designed.

He stood on the decaying altar of the corpse-walkers, his silver boots sinking into the bubbling plague liquid, each step making a sound, yet not a single drop spilled.

He wore a priest's robe constructed from the "Plague Codex," which was not fabric—but a "cognitive curse woven from pages of medical records and death incantations."
Every inch of his clothing seemed to be softly humming pathological terms, proclaiming his "medical divine duty".

"welcome."

He raised his right hand, his five fingers wrapped with silver thread, and slipped out of his palm a bone needle with a medical record number embedded in it.

"Preoperative notification has been completed."

He smiled, his teeth white, but the corners of his mouth were taut like the stitches on a corpse.

"—Now, please keep quiet."

-

Si Ming struck first!

Three playing cards slid from his fingertips, transforming into flaming blades that cleaved through the deathly silence, slashing towards Nicholas's throat with a slicing rhythm.

[The Gambler's Lament - Shattering Effect]

The card traced three burning streaks of starlight in the air.

Nicholas didn't move, only tilted his head slightly and whispered two words:

“Rib probing – reverse bend”.

boom--!
The playing cards were torn apart in mid-air as if by invisible language, their surfaces reversed, and the blades suddenly turned around, slashing back at Si Ming at an even faster speed!
In that instant, it was as if the cards weren't played by him, but rather a severed piece of fate that he himself had "bitten off."

Si Ming reacted extremely quickly, spinning his feet and dodging to the side, but was still torn open by the sharp horn, leaving a bloody gash.

“…He’s not manipulating the cards.” He muttered through gritted teeth, “He’s rewriting the cards’ ‘execution language’.”

-

Lynn roared and threw out the Grey Wolf card!
The Grey Wolf of Fog Valley leaped out of the fog and pounced straight at Nicholas!
Nicholas's eyelids didn't move, his tone gentle yet icy:

"Wolf's Swiftness - Bites its Master."

The gray wolf stopped abruptly, its eyes flashing with silver language, and the next moment its claws turned and pounced on Lynn!

Lynn's pupils contracted sharply, he rolled to the side, and as he staggered, he quickly threw out [Silent Gray Mist] to forcibly cancel the summon!

-

“Your cards,” Nicholas laughed like a doctor tidying up instruments before an autopsy, “are too obedient.”

“A true patient doesn’t rely on rules, but on ‘pain’.”

"And you, you haven't felt enough pain."

He raised his left hand, and the third entry of the World System appeared in his palm:
[World Structure Control]

With a single finger raised, the "direction of gravity" in the entire space instantly flips!
The five of them suddenly lost their balance!

No, it's "falling upwards"—the ceiling is no longer a ceiling, but a writhing mass of plague-infested sludge!

They were like broken strings, thrown into a swamp of flesh and blood, the entire space at that moment resembling an open "surgical throat".

—

"Preoperative drainage completed."

Like a surgical director slowly putting down his scalpel, Nicholas watched as several patients were plunged into the "preoperative anesthesia pool" like specimens.

But it's not over yet.

The Cataclysmic Atlas unfolded behind him, rotating slowly like a dark blue star disk, with scorching stripes twisting like blood vessels to form a "disordered path".

With each step he took, the diagram trembled.

—

Si Ming was the first to escape!
He used playing cards to cut through the mud binding him, leaped out, and pulled Lin Wanqing out of the "pharyngeal cavity" soft wall with his backhand.

Lynn and Duan Xingzhou then escaped, protected by gray mist, and helped Gregory stabilize his life runes.

But the situation on the battlefield did not improve in the slightest.

Nicholas remained standing in the center, uttering no incantation, while behind him, the incantation diagrams flowed like the curves of a germ epidemic, gradually eroding the definition of space.

He is not a fighter.

He is a "god of doctors who stands at the center of disease and manipulates all terms and structures".

"Struggle," he whispered.

"Preoperative preparations are complete."

"Next—begin stripping away your 'names'."

"He didn't wave, he didn't move the card." Lin Wanqing's voice was as low as a needle in the mist, yet every word pierced to the bone.

“It’s the word in the card.”

Her pupils constricted as she stared intently at Nicholas's lips, which were twisted into an almost elegant shape—not words, but an "instruction."

"He treated words as the control center."

"It must be interrupted."

Si Ming knelt halfway in the swampy mud of the Star Plague, his right hand pressing down on his still trembling shoulder, blood dripping from between his fingers.

He was breathing heavily, his voice tinged with sarcasm:
"Can you interrupt?"

Lin Wanqing didn't answer, but simply raised the notebook she had been clutching tightly.
My fingertips suddenly flipped the last page, revealing a densely packed draft of technical diagrams and semantic modules.

“The next injection,” she said, her gaze sharp as a blade, “will be injected into your ‘memory structure’.”

She crouched low at the edge of the mist, her breath taut to the limit, as if some kind of psychological control system was being activated.

“Remember,” her voice trembled slightly, but was unusually clear, “he wasn’t chanting a spell.”

Si Ming had just freed himself from the mud when he heard this, and his movements paused slightly, his eyes narrowing.

Lin Wanqing grabbed his sleeve, leaned close to his ear, and whispered urgently:
"He doesn't rely on card activation abilities... but on language structure. His words are 'catalyst' and 'guide source'."

"What?" Si Ming whispered.

"You know what conceptual psychological manipulation suggestion is, right?" She lowered her voice, her gaze quickly sweeping over the semantic ripples on Nicholas's body.

“But he goes to extremes. He uses language to build ‘chains of instructions’, and as long as a complete sentence structure is completed—such as ‘instruction + structure + goal’—it can affect the environment and even the rules themselves.”

"So he didn't win by playing cards one by one."

“It is word by word that ‘builds a world’.”

Si Ming understood, his pupils contracted slightly, and the playing card between his fingers instantly stopped spinning.

"What needs to be interrupted is the semantic flow itself."

Lin Wanqing nodded: "Create logical paradoxes and inject semantic confusion."

Make him unable to complete sentences or maintain a closed word order—even if you can't silence him, make him 'explode in his own speech.'

"It's like planting a paradoxical countdown timer in his heart."

“Let him collapse on his own in language.”

Si Ming's eyes flickered slightly. He slowly exhaled a breath of blood, wiped the bloodstain from the corner of his mouth, and a long-lost gambler's smile appeared on his lips.

"You provide the words."

He chuckled softly and said:
"—I'll write the script."

He drew a playing card, the face of which flipped in the fog, revealing not a term, but a blank surface.

The God of Fate erected it, as if it were an unfinished sentence standing between heaven and earth—and that sentence would be "his" "failure commentary" written for the other party.

Nicholas was just opening his mouth when the next term reached his throat: "—Word Tracking, Body Projection..."

The next moment, Si Ming seemed to become a completely different person.

He turned to look at Nicholas, a slow smile curving his lips, sharp as a blade.

He was no longer just a gambler walking on the edge of the cards, but rather a screenwriter standing in the center of a divine theater, ready to reveal the cards.

Three stars of reason ignited instantly, dark red flames swirling and churning within his life lines, illuminating the small yet precise mystical inscription on his forehead:

[A true lie].

He tossed out a spade playing card, its edge crackling with static electricity and sharpness, tracing a strange swirling light in the air, like a "truth that has been cut off".

At the same time, he opened his mouth and whispered, the voice was very soft, but it had a strange, nested structure.

That wasn't something he said spontaneously, but rather a paradoxical phrase that Lin Wanqing whispered close to his ear:
"Those who are silent are still speaking."

"The silent ones are the only ones who make a fuss."

Just as Nicholas was about to speak, he quietly initiated the next structural command.
But just as he uttered the first syllable, there was a "click" sound inside his mouth, like gears meshing together, and the speech chain broke.

"No...no diagnosis...the patient...talking to himself...negative images reappear..."

"Sentence backflow...backflow...back—"

His speech broke down, like the rhythmic beating of a sorcerer's heart.

His voice plummeted from a coherent structure to fragmented syllables, like a medical printer spitting out scrambled medical records, words twisted and distorted.

The God of Fate seized the opportunity and threw out a second playing card.

This time, it was an "explosion".

The playing cards blazed brightly in the air, engulfed in flames, before exploding at Nicholas's feet, instantly igniting the plague-infested sludge.

The decaying flower bloomed like a pseudo-divine blood lotus, tearing space apart in an instant and creating a shockwave. That was the first time Nicholas had suffered "real damage" since the start of this battle.

He staggered backward, no longer uttering precise structural incantations, but rather clumps of scorched semantic fragments—as if ruptured linguistic nerves were being torn from his throat.

"Language disconnect..."

"Output fragmentation..."

"The secondary consciousness needs to be supplemented..."

His voice was no longer that of an "attending physician," but rather like the lament of some twisted lord, devoid of its core structure, leaving only fragmented echoes.

But Si Ming knew that this was far from enough.

He turned around and called out in a low voice, "Wanqing!"

Lin Wanqing looked up, a cold light flashing in her eyes.

She knew that this linguistic disconnect was only a temporary buffer, and Nicholas could use the term "fate" to forcibly reconstruct semantic logic at any time, reversing the situation with a deeper layer of "meaning deception."

“He will try to reverse the wound into a pathway, swallow the previous failure, and ‘materialize’ the infection itself into a language tool.” She spoke very quickly, lowering her voice so that only Si Ming could hear her.

“Then—place your bets in advance,” Si Ming replied softly.

At that very moment, Nicholas approached step by step, the star mark on his chest reuniting, and a new combination of terms bloomed from the gray light spiral:
【Fate Entry 1: Deadly Words】

[Life Entry 1: Reshaping Understanding Through the Pandemic]

His eyes were ashen and calm, but his lips made a sharp clicking sound.

With his left hand slightly outstretched, a series of "throat spasms" echoed through the air. It wasn't magic—it was a resonance of physiological infection, as if the air itself was being "coughed out" by his pathological language.

“You’re not talking.”

"You are coughing."

As soon as he finished speaking, Duan Xingzhou froze. He was about to warn them when he suddenly collapsed to the ground as if he had been filled with cement, his face as pale as paper.

Lynn exclaimed in alarm and was about to rush out to help when Nicholas spoke again:

"Joint illusion, broken will."

The Star Mark Curse was activated, and a distorted light streak spread out from him, like electrical sparks flowing through neurons.

"Lynn, watch out!" Si Ming cried out, but before he could finish speaking, Nicholas's command had already reached the target.

A beam of starlight transformed into a sharp slash, hurtling straight at Lynn's face!
At this critical moment, a golden ripple spread out like a shield!

Gregory silently stood in front of Lynn, his right hand gripping the old-fashioned stopwatch worn by time.

The trembling star in the destiny chart lit up with a faint light.

[Mysterious: Irreversible Scale] - Activate!
Rewind five seconds.

The attack path was forced to shift, and starlight tore through the empty ground.

Lynn collapsed to the ground, his body covered in cold sweat.

Nicholas's eyes narrowed slightly as he gently licked his dry lips.

“...Old man.”

"He's not dead yet."

He chuckled, the star marks intensifying, resembling the black core of a star, and in his words, he slowly uttered the next grammatically incorrect sentence.

"You are not the god of fate."

When Si Ming spoke for the first time, his voice was not loud, but it was like a flash of white lightning cutting through the dark clouds in the night.

"You're just a hospital broadcaster."

As soon as he finished speaking, he flicked a playing card between his fingers; the spade spun, slicing through the stagnant air.
A streak of flame, sharp as an arc of electricity, flashed out, aimed directly at Nicholas's throat.

[A True Lie] - Ignite the flames.

The playing cards exploded in mid-air; it wasn't flames, but the echo of a "semantic explosion."

Behind Nicholas, rows of clinic room signs appeared, like a looping illusion of a public address system—

"Next patient."

"Next one, please."

"Next one—"

Each broadcast sounded like a hallucinatory echo emanating from his body, emptying the semantic structure behind him, and lines of text peeled off his body like spider silk being torn apart.

Nicholas jolted violently, the nerve chains at the back of his neck shattered inch by inch, and his terminology center flashed with astonishingly disordered sparks.

He wasn't injured, but rather suffered from a "logical error in his language center."

Si Ming murmured softly, "Language is not a curse."

"It's a knife."

"If you cut it right, you'll forget what you're saying."

Nicholas's body trembled violently, and his usually calm and composed face finally showed a slight movement.

It's not anger, it's not pain, but rather a "cognitive lag" resulting from having one's internal structure forcibly exposed.

click!
A section of the "throat structure" inside the body completely collapsed, and a sound that should not exist escaped—like a choking cough forced to pronounce an unfinished incantation.

Like a desperate attempt to devour something, a screech stuck in the middle of the throat, ultimately ending with coughing up blood.

This cut is not to cut flesh, but to cut the "language structure".

The next second, Lynn darted out from the flank, his body shrouded in gray mist, and threw a silver blade. The throwing knife broke through the mist and accurately pierced Nicholas's left rib, heading straight for his star-marked core.

The gray wolf pounced simultaneously, tearing apart his plague power supply line from his lower back, causing the plague fluid to gush out and stain the edge of the area red.

The "White Epidemic Chamber" has begun to tremble.

The domain walls flickered, and runes peeled away layer by layer.

Like a surgical sac that is "over-swollen," finally revealing the necrotic tissue at its bottom.

Nicholas staggered to his knees, his knees hitting the ground, the star mark shattering as if a star had fallen, blood spreading across the plague altar behind him.

He looked up, staring at Si Ming, and the corners of his mouth slowly turned up—the smile was no longer sickly.

On the contrary, there was a sense of... relief.

He said softly:

"...You did a great job."

He coughed up a mouthful of blood, but it wasn't red; instead, it contained pale gray bubbles floating with mottled starlight—the remnants of the "disintegration of semantic structure."

"It hurts a lot... but I'm conscious."

“You... defeated 'me'.”

This statement is like a final clinical summary before a period of lucidity.

Everyone held their breath.

Then--

"But that was only 'me' before the planetary calamity."

The air fell silent instantly.

At that moment, the space seemed to activate like an operating table, vibrating and roaring!

A deep, thunderous rumble echoed from the very depths of the plague factory:
[Core Star Plague Breeding Furnace - Activated]

[Star Calamity Metabolic Circuit: Synchronization Phase → Fragmentation Phase]

The walls cracked, and bulging fleshy membranes slowly opened from deep within the cavity.

From those decaying "speech cells," one after another, the "plague-like afterimages" of Nicholas emerged—

Some were as thin as a rake, with protruding bones, muttering to themselves in the long-abandoned language of stars;
Some were bloated like corpses, staggering as they walked, with starlight-like pus flowing from their bodies;

Some wore tattered holy robes and spoke in poems that coughed up blood, each verse a prayer of curses and depravity.

"A clone!" Lin Wanqing gasped.

“It’s not a copy.” Gregory’s voice was hoarse, like an old bell in the wind. He slowly stood up and looked at the true outline rising above the Plague Furnace.

That's Nicholas.

No longer human, no longer a mysterious remains—

His entire body was woven from a dense network of starlight virus and memory codes, embedded in a prosthetic skeleton.

Every inch of skin seemed to bear the marks of failed treatments and endless coughing; every organ resembled an anatomical specimen from a speech surgery.

He stood with his arms outstretched in the center of the Star Calamity Altar, like a pathological deity stitched together by plague and time.

Gregory's throat tightened, his breath caught in his throat, and he murmured softly:

"...I've seen this before."

"On the night the Gray Tower fell."

"The man under the dark sun."

Si Ming turned his head, his voice cold and deep:
"You mean..."

"—The Devourer of Time?"

Gregory shook his head, his fingers trembling slightly:
No. He is not that one.

"But he is... the second one."

Nicholas slowly raised his arms, which were no longer human.

He made an elegant and restrained gesture toward them—to this group of "patients" who had shattered his language center.

It's not an attack.

It's actually a gesture from the doctor inviting the patient to the stage.

He smiled gently, his tone soft as if he were guiding you to cooperate with the treatment:

"Please cooperate with the surgery."

You thought he had collapsed,

That was him yesterday.

The real him

It's an illness.

"It's a world where coughing will continue tomorrow."

(End of this chapter)