Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 266 Dream Back to the Parliament: The Star Diamond Contract
The wheel of fortune slowly turns.
You think you're a traveler?
But they had already walked in the footsteps they had laid out for themselves.

The battle is over.

The wind swept across the rubble amidst the ruins, the lingering warmth still present, and the bitter taste of gunpowder smoke still lingering in the nostrils.

In the center of the battlefield, only the charred and torn steel remains and a quietly formed "Gate of Return"—a void gate inscribed with life runes.

With a dim, grayish-gold glow, it floated silently behind the collapsed pit, like a key embedded in a crack in reality.

Si Ming stood before the scorched earth, his gaze calm, looking toward the road home.

The wind blew through his tattered clothes, stirring up a wisp of dust.

Behind him, Celian sat on a piece of steam core debris, impatiently crossing her arms as she shook the last severed metal nerve she had just ripped from her arm.

"Are you planning to just stand there and stare for ages before you even get inside?"

Her voice carried its usual languidness, yet it couldn't hide her concern.

Si Ming turned around, his expression solemn and complex.

"I need to reply to a message first."

"Which side?" Celian squinted.

"In my dreams." He gave a bitter laugh.

"Oh." Celian seemed to understand, and pursed her lips. "Your friends who are even more difficult to deal with than me?"

She waved her hand, her tone almost spitting out bitterness: "Go, but come back soon. If you don't come back, I'll be watching your... corpse."

"...Could you please stop cursing me?"

"I'm just worried that you'll pretend to be dead again to make me cry, like you did before." She snorted, put her hands on her hips, and puffed out her chest. "You haven't delivered on your promise of strawberry ice cream yet."

Si Ming smiled helplessly and shook his head. Then, he slowly took out the mysterious card from his robes—

Truth and Lies: The Thousand Faces Weaving Destiny.

It was a card that was never quiet; it seemed to be whispering, or perhaps complaining about the hypocritical script of the world.
More like an eternal storyteller, silently observing this drama destined for reincarnation.

"If what you're saying is true—then I do need those answers from my dream now."

He finished speaking in a low voice and closed his eyes.

The card at my fingertip trembled slightly, as if my heart was responding to some kind of call.

The next moment—a surge of light, and the gates of the dream suddenly opened.

Si Ming—once again stepped into the Eye of Silence.

A beam of eerie blue light emerged from the darkness, and a massive, ancient stone table encircled the heart of the endless void, like a slumbering theater of the gods.

The seats were empty, with only the sound of the wind drifting among the old incantations.

—Except for the first seat on the right.

There sat a man dressed in a black robe.

He stood quietly, and the faint traces of star patterns could be seen flowing through the folds of his robe, each star seemingly breathing slowly, like an echo of the universe.

The man slowly rose, his figure tall and steady, his movements seemingly trailing the tail flames of a dying universe.

“Under the Lord of Fate, the Supreme No. 8—the Faceless Prophet, Sebato, greets you, Lord Fate.”

His voice was gentle, yet carried an undeniable authority, like a confession unearthed from the torrent of fate.

Si Ming stood in the center of the council chamber, his eyes alert and suppressed: "Why did you call me back?"

“Please don’t worry,” Sebato nodded slightly. “The Silent Eyes are the dream we have built together. Here, no one can hurt each other.”

"I have come only on your orders."

Si Ming was slightly taken aback: "My order?"

"More accurately—it was the command of 'you' who stood before the end."

Sebato slowly raised his hand, the pale golden light of life-pattern circuits swirling around his finger bones.
A hexagonal crystal floated in his palm, resembling a miniature, pulsating starry heart.

That is not a physical entity.

It was an unlit "star of reason".

The moment Si Ming touched it, he heard its name.

No, it was "perceived"—a symbol that cannot be conveyed in words, a vibration etched into the very fabric of the soul.

Like the whisper of the Milky Way.

It's as if a deity from the depths of cause and effect is looking down.

A deep, strange light flashed in Si Ming's eyes.

He had dreamed about it.

In a forgotten dream, he once embedded this star diamond into the chest of a broken girl, giving her a second life.

On another dead end, he smashed the entire star chart of destiny, using it as the core to ignite the last spark of gambling with all his reason.

And now, it dances before him, like a crystallization formed from the convergence of countless destinies—an answer sheet from the past, and also belonging to the future.

"These are... the materials needed for star-level advancement," Siming murmured softly.

"It is also the key to unlocking the secondary mystery." Sebato nodded, his tone solemn: "You are standing at a turning point in your life. Nine Stars is a threshold. And this Star Diamond is a spark that you yourself sent back from the future."

"You said... I saved you?"

Sebato nodded slightly, his smile like the glimmer of light as the morning mist dissipates.

"You sealed away all the time you had left in that moment, in exchange for my chance to live."

"You didn't ask me for anything in return, nor did you demand anything back; you only said one thing—"

He looked up, his gaze unfocused, yet solemn as a vow:

"Remember to tell me who saved me without hesitation during my most confused time."

"So you're here today because of that order," Si Ming said in a low voice.

“Yes,” Sebato nodded.

“Write down the instructions and cover my soul with the runes of destiny. As long as I live, once you arrive at this moment of the council, return the Star Diamond.”

"This is not a reward." He looked into Si Ming's eyes, his voice like the tolling of a bell in the depths of night:

"This is an echo."

“You have left behind countless echoes, Sir Fate. You do not know how many timelines you have traversed, nor how many times you have failed.”

"But each time, you tell those who come after you how to live in different ways."

"but me--"

"Just one of the people you saved."

Si Ming slowly put away the unlit star diamond, his knuckles turning slightly white from the excessive force.

He didn't speak immediately, but lowered his head, feeling the heat pulsating in his palm, as if responding to some indescribable call. It was an almost suffocating sense of destiny.

It was as if every step he took had already been trodden by countless "him"s, paving a corridor leading to the end.
And every choice he makes now may be a footnote left by a failed version of "him," waiting for him to read it, to try and fail, and to bear the consequences.

"So I'm this...busy," he murmured to himself, his voice so soft it was almost lost in the wind.

The voice of the Thousand Faces, however, sounded gratingly mocking in his mind, like a cold sneer as the next page of a script was turned:

"You can't even calculate your own debts, Si Ming."

"Leaving behind a pile of bad debts, and still expecting others to pay them for you? You are a 'failed example of self-financial risk control' in the world of fate."

Si Ming did not respond.

He simply raised his head slowly and looked into the depths of the Silent Eyes at the twelve empty stone chairs.

They are gray, cold, and silent like forgotten ruins.

But he knew that on the right side of that empty seat symbolizing the "Lord of Destiny," on every fragment of time of that chair of destiny's power, perhaps he himself had once sat.

Perhaps it is that version of myself who once rushed to the brink of a catastrophic disaster, but fell due to the exhaustion of my reason.

Perhaps it is the same self who once tore up the entire destiny chart to exchange for a chance for a companion to be reborn.

Or perhaps it is someone who has long forgotten their name and identity, transformed into a remnant of the world's structure, leaving only whispers of "him".

“I really am—” Si Ming began, a self-deprecating smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “quite good at organizing things for myself.”

"But the arrangements weren't very good."

His smile carried a hint of weariness, but no bitterness. It was the composure of someone who had long been accustomed to the game of fate, shrugging after seeing a bad hand in their hand.

"But it's alright."

"Every step I took to survive, even if I don't remember it myself."

"But they still remember."

"I... I remember."

He stood up, and at that moment his shadow was stretched extremely long by the void, as if it overlapped with the countless empty shadows.

"And that is enough reason to continue."

He turned and left, and the silent council behind him began to quietly collapse.

The ancient stone steps sank into the void one by one, and the twelve stone chairs slowly disappeared like a giant tower in a dream, leaving only the remaining life patterns in the void burning slowly.

At the last second, Sebato stood up and bowed:

May the whispers of destiny never be extinguished beneath the stars.

Si Ming nodded in return and turned to step into the dream's exit.

The sound of the wind swept in like a tidal wave, and consciousness began to detach from the dream dimension. Behind that door, a figure emerged—

Celian.

She was sitting on a pile of rubble at the edge of the scorched earth, hugging her knees, her long hair disheveled and being blown about by the wind, her face buried in her arms, like a child waiting for someone to return home.

Her figure waited quietly in the wind, without anxiety or tears, as if she knew he would eventually return—only wondering if it would be too late by then.

"You think you're ahead of fate, but you're just chasing the echo you left behind."

The dream fades, reality returns.

Si Ming slowly opened his eyes. The Star Diamond was still warm in his palm, emitting a faint glow, like a promise and gift from the future.

As he took his final step through the gate, the wind rose the moment he landed.

The world before my eyes remains broken.

The smoke of battle had not yet dissipated, and the scorched earth still carried the lingering smell of burning.

Meanwhile, Celian sat on the edge of the scorched earth, listlessly swinging a dismantled metal skeleton. Her expression was extremely bored, but there was a hint of weariness in the corner of her eyes that she could not hide.

She lazily looked up at him, and her first words weren't "Are you alright?" or "What happened?", but rather—

"You're too slow!"

"I almost thought you were going to fake your death again to make me cry."

Si Ming approached, a slight smile playing on his lips:
There was a slight traffic jam.

"Is that tired look on your face fake?"

“No, it’s a side effect of the dream.” He rubbed his temples, his voice low and hoarse. “But I brought back something…something important.”

Celian raised an eyebrow: "What is it?"

Si Ming didn't answer, but simply tucked the star diamond into his pocket.

He gazed at the closing gate in the distance.

"It's time for us to come back."

"If we don't leave now, Crazy Thirteen will start ringing the bell again."

The portal began to vibrate, like a teleportation array about to shut down.

Selene pursed her lips and went inside first.

Si Ming stood still, looking back at the scorched earth brewed from cards and blood.

A shattered chessboard, an extinguished furnace of rules, and that name—

The man he remembered.

Tang Kejian.

A person who, at the end of time, only wants to reunite with their loved one.

He left no body.

Only one last sentence remained, a message that sank deep into the heart of the God of Fate:

"Please correct this mistake."

Si Ming took a deep breath, turned around, and walked into the gate that was bathed in a sea of ​​light.

In the last second of the teleportation, he heard the Thousand-Faced One chuckle softly:

"The wheel of fate turns, and destiny is controlled."

"Every path you've walked—"

"These are all letters you wrote to yourself."

"Picking up a name from fragments of time"
Not for the purpose of remembering,

Rather, it's so that we won't forget those things.

A person who goes crazy for love.

(End of this chapter)