Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 265 The Nameless Bell: Witness of Time

"If you can call out a name at the end,
He never truly disappeared.

Ashes from the collapse of the Secret Relic still lingered in the air, and the steam was slowly cooling. The gears scattered among the wreckage burned silently, like the bones of a mechanical beast that had lost its roar.

But time did not flow.

The wind stopped.

The fire—froze.

Even Selene's leaping posture was frozen in mid-air, her long hair flowing like flames, suspended in the instant of freezing, her whole person as if sculpted into a silent mural.

Si Ming still clutched his chest with one hand, while the other hand tightly gripped "The Gambler's Lament," the bloodstains still wet.

He was covered in wounds, but he did not fall down.

On the contrary, at the edge of this still time and space, his eyes were clearer than ever before.

At the edge of this frozen world, a silhouette slowly emerged from a spacetime rift.

It was the figure of a human.

Dressed in a dark gray gentleman's deacon robe, with gentle features and unhurried steps, he seemed as if the bloodshed that had just occurred had never happened, but was merely the echo of a distant tea party.

He walked on the edge of a broken world, each step like stepping between the gears of a clock, perfectly avoiding the ticking of fate.

He gave a slight bow, smiled with his head bowed, and his voice was like a babbling brook on an autumn night:

"The Lord of a Thousand Faces, the Dream Weaver of Fate, the Traveler of Time... Finally, we meet."

Si Ming narrowed his eyes, his hand quietly sliding towards the card belt, not letting up at all.

The man raised his hand, still smiling: "Don't be nervous. I'm not an enemy—at least not at this moment."

He opened his palm, and a golden card slowly spun at his fingertips, engraved with cryptic text resembling cracks on a clock face.

"The Eternal Judgment: The Law of the Bell, My World is Mysterious and Unpredictable."

"It can pause time for a moment, and in that moment, freeze a moment of 'existence'."

He gazed toward the frozen space beyond, his gaze piercing through the walls of time.

"The me you see now is the 'former me' preserved by that card."

His tone was calm yet firm:
"I know I will die. So I left myself here—in front of you in the future."

"Because I know that only you can fix all of this."

He turned around and looked at Si Ming, his tone unhurried, as if he were telling a story that should have been written on the back cover of an old book.

"You want to ask me, how do I know you?"

"Because—I do not belong to this world."

His gaze fell into the ashes, as if he were looking at a memory that had been burned away.

"I was originally an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Donglin University, teaching Hegel, Kant, and symbolic logic. I never had anything to do with the mysterious or bizarre in my entire life."

“Until—she died.”

His voice suddenly became low and hoarse at this moment, concealing a sharp edge of deep sorrow.

"Her name is Tao Yan, and she was one of my students. She was intelligent, gentle, and spoke very softly. I always wanted to get closer to hear every word she said."

“I taught her Heidegger, and she taught me what life tastes like.”

"Can you imagine that an old scholar, who has spent half his life buried in piles of philosophy books, is gently drawn out of the pages by the laughter of a young girl, revealing a landscape beyond the pages?"

His voice trembled slightly.

"But love always comes too late, or leaves too early."

"She died in a car accident. That day was my birthday."

"The front of the car looked like a broken pen, her neck was pierced with broken glass and flowers, and I stood outside the operating room, reading the handwritten letter she had prepared for me."

The letter said—

'You ask me, can time be folded?'
If I could, I would stay forever on every one of your birthdays.

He looked up, his eyes reddening, but he managed a smile.

“The word ‘言’ at the end of that letter was written very slowly. I later learned that the numbness in her right hand was the first sign of that accident.”

"I failed to protect her."

"I'm just a piece of trash."

As soon as he finished speaking, he actually chuckled softly, a bitter smile on his face.

"After she died, I frantically searched through all the theories about 'residual consciousness'—idealism, science fiction, Buddhist reincarnation, and even mysticism."

"Finally, in the most secluded corner of an old bookstore, I found that notebook."

He gazed at the God of Fate, as if seeing an old ally in his eyes.

"The cover is damaged, but you can still vaguely see four words: 'Time Traveler'."

The author's name is listed as "Si Ming".

"I initially thought this was some kind of cringey philosophical essay written by someone. But it's too much like... some kind of sealed, secret knowledge system."

"Dimensional folding, causal entanglement, the script of fate, the overlay of projections... I don't understand."

“But I recognized one of them: ‘Destiny Chart’.”

“A symbol of the world’s periphery.”

"So I began to search, to search if it existed."

He exhaled slowly.

"You know what happened next. I became a mystery master."

"My first mystery card was the ink necklace she wore when she was alive."

“In the moonlight, incantations emerged.”

“It was never bound to me, but in my dreams, it whispered her name.”

"And so, I burned my rationality and embarked on the path of promotion step by step."

"Just so that one day I can become an 'eternal witness'."

"Then, travel to the world where she is still alive—and tell her not to walk down that street."

His voice choked with emotion, yet he remained as restrained as the summary on the last page of an academic lecture.

“But I failed.”

He lowered his head and remained silent for a moment.

"But I don't regret it."

“I have seen a thousand futures in which she died, and I have searched through all the timelines without her.”

"Even if I can't find the script for her to live in the end, I will tear up the script for the entire universe."

"Then—write it by hand."

'She should live.'

He looked up again, his eyes no longer filled with grief, but with a calm, stubbornly persistent tenderness.

"So when I saw your manuscript in the ruins, I knew—you and I are the same kind of people."

"You weave the world with destiny."

"I will use the whole world to chase after one person."

He paused, as if reminding someone, or perhaps delivering a message:
"Dimension".

"The first sentence you wrote on the title page of your notebook."

"Multidimensionality is the possibility of an infinite number of monkeys writing Shakespeare over infinite time."

"Even a monkey can do it."

His tone suddenly became solemn.

"And you, Si Ming—"

"You have left countless footprints on the steps of time."

"But...do you truly understand it?"

The air freezes.

It was as if his words themselves possessed the power to freeze time.

He looked intently at Si Ming, like a professor on a lecture platform, posing a question that could change a person's life.

"do you know?"

“In our three-dimensional world, every ‘shadow’ is essentially a projection of a higher dimension.”

"For example, when a three-dimensional object is projected onto a two-dimensional plane, it casts a shadow."

"And you now—"

He raised his hand and pointed to the shadow beneath Si Ming's feet.

"It is a projection of a higher-dimensional 'you' onto this three-dimensional world."

"You are not a solitary being."

"You are the shadow of time."

The God of Fate was stunned.

"Am I... a shadow?"

"--more than."

Tang Kejian walked forward lightly, the frozen ashes of time dancing with his steps, like pages of memory turning in the wind.

"The 'past-present-future' we see is just a line."

"But for a four-dimensional being, it is a whole map."

“They can circumvent fate, or even rewrite destiny from another angle.”

He smiled:
"You've seen them."

"Or rather—you are them."

Si Ming was startled.

In his dream, there was a never-ending staircase that he climbed repeatedly, only to fall down again and again.

He was torn apart, reassembled, and questioned within the Council of the Silent Eyes...

All the broken fragments, pieced together at this moment, form a trajectory—belonging to the "traveler".

The air was still filled with the stench of ashes from the collapse of the Secret Relic, and the remaining steam was frozen in the rift of time, like an eternally solidified painting.

The shattered armor burned, like a mechanical beast with its eyes closed, yet unwilling to sleep.

But at this moment, there is no wind. There is no flow of time.

Only for a moment of lockdown.

Only these two people stand at the crossroads where fate and failure intertwine.

Tang Kejian still stood in the ashes frozen in time, his deacon robes stained with non-existent firelight.

He looked at Si Ming, his voice like a whisper in a valley, calm yet undeniable:
"In the cosmic catastrophe structure of the mysterious world, the 'Time Walker' is a fourth-dimensional transcendent."

“They walk on time, looking back at cause and effect non-linearly.”

“The ‘eternal witness’ is someone who chooses an anchor point on the four-dimensional timeline, freezes themselves at that moment, and becomes an eternal recorder.”

He paused, his gaze piercing deep into Si Ming's eyes:

"They cannot escape time, but they can—freeze time."

“And the more terrifying, and also the greater, existence is the ‘Dream Weaver of Destiny’.”

His gaze was intense, almost reverent.
"The Dream Weaver of Destiny is a five-dimensional being."

"They no longer simply see time, or remain in time."

"They have the ability to alter causal logic."

"When a five-dimensional being looks down on the world, what he sees is not the events themselves, but the entire script structure."

"He can rewrite the cause of an event, thereby changing its outcome."

"He can erase a person's name, and that person will then be as if they never existed on the entire timeline."

He looked at Si Ming, his tone solemn and respectful:
"This is exactly the state you will reach in some future."

"But you fail time and time again."

The air seemed to tremble slightly for a moment, as if time itself was pulsating at the pronouncement.

"Have you ever thought about those scenes that keep recurring in your dreams, those moments when you don't remember them but already know the answers...?"

"Actually, it is yourself—the 'afterimage' from the fifth-dimensional world—that is echoing back to your three-dimensional memory along the Star Calamity Structure."

Si Ming suddenly opened his eyes wide.

The nightmares that had plagued him time and time again surfaced in his mind:

In his dream, he stood on an endless staircase.

Every climb, every fall, restart, repetition, tearing, reconstruction—the pain was crystal clear. He once thought it was just a crack in his mind, but now he finally understood that it was not an "illusion."

Rather, it is an "echo".

It is myself, the self that once existed and failed countless times, quietly returning to the self in this moment along the causal aftermath of the celestial disaster.

Tang Kejian continued:
"He never truly succeeded in becoming a god."

"But every failure leaves a causal trace in the structure of the world."

"And I, at a certain point in time... found these remnants."

He spoke in a low voice, as if reciting an eternally echoing lament.

"I have looked through the manuscripts you left behind."

"On it, I saw you wrote a sentence—"

You can't rewrite the world unless you rewrite who you are first.

Tang Kejian took a deep breath, as if he had engraved those words into the deepest part of his soul forever.

"It was at that moment that I realized—destiny is not written in the future."

"It's hidden in all the past versions of 'who you were'."

“And you, Si Ming, are the only person I have ever seen who is qualified to step into the ‘Five-Dimensional Dream Weaver’ structure.”

He smiled softly, a smile that conveyed endless melancholy and tenderness:
"But you don't know it yet."

At this moment, the tremor in Si Ming's heart was beyond words.

The whispers of the Thousand Faces exploded in my ears, like a priest chanting in an ancient temple of a phantom god:
"You have already woven dreams, yet you have never known what dreams are."

"You've already rewritten the script, yet you're still playing the role."

"You are the King of Fate, the God of Destiny."

"It's just that I haven't thought of it yet."

Tang Kejian continued, his voice low but each word sharp and clear:

"And I, too, once dreamed of stepping into a celestial disaster like you."

"Therefore, I have gathered twelve geniuses from the field of mystery and mystery."

"I poured our deepest longing and yearning into that irreversible line of fire."

"So, I started the research on the Mysterious Remains."

"And so—I died."

This sentence was spoken very softly.

But it's like a traveler who, after running his whole life, finally admits that he has reached the end, and sighs softly to the wind.

Si Ming's Adam's apple bobbed slightly. He finally asked the question that had been buried in his heart for so long, his voice low and tinged with confusion and resentment:

"Whose fault is this tragedy?"

"Is it me?"

He thought of the manuscript of "The Time Traveler," the tattered page of the script that had fallen into the hands of "Project Remains."

Those names and broken threads that are repeatedly ruminated on by the wheel of fate.

Tang Kejian shook his head gently, his smile undiminished—a kind of relief unique to the deceased.

"Do not."

"It's us."

"It's our generation—overly curious about fate."

"Excessive fanaticism regarding the Cataclysm."

He slowly raised his hand, pointing to the still-burning, still-ruined battlefield abyss outside the frozen spacetime:

"So, we created 'Madman Thirteen' with our own desires."

"We wager time and reason on the table of fate."

"We treat the world as a chessboard, but forget that we are just pieces."

"We thought we could peek into the gods."

"But in the end, among countless failed versions, it became a footnote and a specimen of someone else's remains."

He looked at Si Ming one last time, his eyes bright, his tone both earnest and weary:

"And you, Si Ming."

"We are the repairers chosen by fate in the mess we left behind."

Si Ming closed his eyes and slowly clenched his fist.

He finally understood.

One's own destiny is never a choice one makes.

But he finally realized that he was standing on a bridge.

That bridge was built by countless failures of our own.

Behind him lay hundreds and thousands of collapsed worlds, and countless pasts that "he" had tried to save but ultimately failed.

And at this moment, he is, for the only time, still moving forward in the "now".

"And what about him?" Si Ming asked in a low voice, his voice filled with a long-lost sense of suppression and calm.

"Processing Core Number Thirteen... Where is it now?"

"You're saying he's starting to head towards a catastrophic disaster?"

Tang Kejian's fingertips twitched slightly, and a thin beam of light unfolded in the void, creating a suspended light and shadow projection.

In the projection, a colossal, mysterious skeleton, enveloped in gears, molten starlight, and enigmatic structures, is slowly rising.

It hovers atop the core tower in the center of the City of Bones, as if it were slowly "taking its place" on a throne born from a mixture of data and flesh, replacing the gods.

"He chose the 'Creator of Destiny'."

Tang Kejian's voice deepened, his eyes gleaming with a profound light:
"A catastrophic path where fate is the script, the world is the stage, and life is the paintbrush."

He wanted to use this city... as an incubator.

“Using each and every one of your data, choices, flesh and blood, and mysterious cards, he constructed his ideal ‘Star Calamity Race’.”

"A truly extraordinary being born for the catastrophic event, and fundamentally logically adapted to a higher-dimensional world."

"That will no longer be human."

“That is a ‘creator’ who is outside of the gods…”

Tang Kejian's voice trembled slightly as he said this, a rare occurrence for him.

"He crushed fate into mud, writing every bit of will, pain, and failure into the roots of the tree structure."

"His goal is not domination."

"It's about transcending."

The God of Fate was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked:
"how about you?"

"Did you... see her in the end?"

This question completely softened Tang Kejian's expression.

He was no longer the madman who led the research on the mysterious remains, nor the ascendant who stepped into the mysteries, but rather an old man who still cherished old dreams at the end of his life.

He nodded slowly.

“I once saw her smile in that lifetime in a four-dimensional image.”

He looked up, gazing beyond the frozen space and time, his voice as soft as the wind, yet as sincere as blood.

"In that fragment of time, she stood on a path where the first snow had not yet melted, wearing the gray-blue scarf I picked out for her that year."

"She didn't see me."

She simply looked up and gently blew away the snowflakes.

"His smile is like the gentlest dream I can remember."

He closed his eyes, as if sealing that moment into the deepest part of his soul.

"I think that's enough."

Even if I can never hold her hand again.

"At least I know that, on one timeline, she is still alive and well."

He spoke gently, as if whispering a reconciliation with fate.

His footsteps slowly stepped onto the edge of shattered time, and the frozen dust around him crumbled away.

His figure resembled a statue gradually weathering away, slowly being stripped away by fate and sent to the other side of time.

"I am not a great god."

"I am not worthy of having a planetary disaster."

"But I think..."

He sighed softly, his voice as if he were hiding his lifelong obsession in the wind of this moment:

"If at the end of time, I can still fall into her dream as a person—"

"Then my life is over."

The wind is moving.

The world is silent.

The silent ticking of the clock quietly came to a halt at the end of time.

Tang Kejian's figure eventually turned into countless specks of dust in the gaps of fragmented time, as if he had not burned out, but returned to that vast and eternal river.

He left no remains.

All that remains are memories and a kind of...unforgettable obsession.

After that, the voice of the Thousand-Faced One rang in Si Ming's ears.

The sarcasm remained as sharp as ever, but with an unusual somber undertone.

Those who fool time will ultimately leave nothing behind, not even the past.

"He will eventually become nameless."

Si Ming slowly shook his head.

He gazed at that invisible place in the wind, yet forever present in his heart, and softly responded:

“But I remembered him.”

"Tang Kejian".

"Did you hear that, you thousand-faced one?"

"I remembered him."

This time, he spoke softly, yet his words fell upon the world's ears with the weight of a tombstone.

It's as if we're inscribing an epitaph for a deceased prophet of celestial calamity, for a soul that has lost love but refuses to forget.

The next moment, time resumed flowing.

The sound of the wind suddenly echoed.

The frozen flames flickered again, the sound of gears hitting the ground rang out once more, steam rose, and the shattered reality began to resume its course.

"Bang!" Celian fell to the ground, her face full of confusion.

"Ouch—that hurts... What just happened?"

She sat on a patch of shattered floor tiles, her long hair disheveled, looking disheveled but full of life.

Si Ming turned to look at her, a weary smile appearing on his lips:
"nothing."

"But your crying scene just now—"

"It was as bad as an improvisational performance in a small theater."

"Huh?!" Selene jumped up abruptly, her eyes wide. "I acted so realistically, okay?!"

"You stinky master!"

"I even prepared my tears—and you still dare to say my acting is bad?"

She pouted angrily, patted the dust off her clothes, unaware that the redness at the corners of her eyes had not yet faded.

Si Ming smiled, said nothing, and simply reached out a hand to pat the top of her head.

Amidst ruins and embers, after all rules have broken down, on the verge of collapse for both fate and the world—they still remain.

We still remember each other.

I still believe that there is something worth going forward.

When a name emerges in the river of fate
That was someone trying to witness eternity.

A single tear was left behind.

(End of this chapter)