Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 280 It wasn't them who returned.

They once walked side by side.

He later died at night and was quietly buried in the cracks of the City of Bones.

They have no tombstones, they are not remembered.

So they came back.

It wasn't for revenge.

It was just to have a new name.

afternoon.

Sunlight slanted across the mottled ruins, like lingering warmth seeping from the ashes, tinging this half-collapsed city with a final touch of hypocritical warmth.

Si Ming and his party slowly advanced along the abandoned path leading to the "gate remnant zone" of Z-217.

The team advanced in a three-tiered formation—Vera and Duan Xingzhou served as scouts, Herman and Selian covered the rear, and the rest formed the central core for stable advance.

This stretch of road was surprisingly peaceful.

The wind was gentle, the light was warm, and even the pebbles underfoot seemed unusually still.

All senses seemed to relax temporarily, as if we were in some rare ceasefire zone.

"Will we be able to reach the center in another hour or so?"

Fujimiya Sumire lowered her head, holding the map projection in her hands, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, her voice carrying a hint of unspoken expectation.

“Yes,” Lin Wanqing nodded, her eyes softening slightly, “if there are no distractions.”

“I’ve been thinking…” Eileen suddenly spoke up, her voice tinged with a hint of caution, “If the passage can really be built, I want to be the first to go.”

She paused, a slight smile playing on her lips. "I want to go back to school, to that library where the pipes are always broken, and borrow books with my card that's already folded in the corner."

She smiled softly, with a childlike determination.

Mu Sisi, holding her sketchbook, lowered her head and began sketching. "I want to hold an exhibition... to draw everyone I met in the City of Bones."

Her voice was soft, but sincere: "Then tell their families—your children, friends, loved ones—that they were here and that they were brave."

The wind passed between them, scattering their words as if sowing hope among the scorched earth.

No one interrupted.

Even Zhuang Yege listened quietly, the Soul Bell hanging from her fingertips without uttering a sound, as if this moment truly did not belong to war.

"I want to open a cake shop," Lin Wanqing suddenly said in a low voice, her voice so crisp it seemed as if it might break at any moment.

Everyone was stunned.

“Right next to the hospital,” she added softly, “to give people being discharged… a sweeter reason.”

Si Ming walked in the middle of the procession, listening to them one by one express their unspoken wishes. He suddenly realized that this moment was so real it was almost unreal.

It's so real it doesn't feel like the City of Corpses.

Unlike Crazy Thirteen's stage play.

He remembered Elostia whispering:
"What is most real is often the most illusory."

A vague unease rose in my heart, like a taut string, quietly trembling.

In the distance, the building, like a dissected bone, lay across the end of the road, sunlight streaming through the collapsed dome, like the silent gaze of a deity.

"Wait." Nobuna Mishinin suddenly raised her hand, and a spell mark appeared between her brows.

“The spatial flow ahead is unstable.” Her pupils contracted slightly, and her magical runes began to fluctuate. “The angle of reflection from the ground… is not right.”

Duan Xingzhou had already drawn his twin blades, a cold glint flashing in his eyes: "The horizon to the left is fake... it looks like—"

The words are not finished yet.

"Click——"

A faint sound came from ahead.

It wasn't an explosion, nor was it an impact.

That was the sound of metal rubbing against bone, sharp and harsh, like the sound of a corpse's spine cracking as it struggles to stand up.

A figure slowly crawled out from the depths of the ruins.

Sunlight shone on its face, reflecting an eerie soft light. It was a finger that was not yet completely rotten, white and familiar, but stitched with a foreign object.

The group suddenly froze.

Lin Wanqing's pupils contracted sharply, her voice hoarse as if she were talking in a dream: "...Liu Jingyu?"

The monster slowly raised its head, its facial muscles twitching like a dead fish, its eye sockets sunken, its features blurred and fragmented, yet the outline of Liu Jingyu's face still vaguely remained.

Her skin looked like a tattered cloth sewn together with blood vessels and sewing needles and thread, and her eyes were empty and lifeless.

She opened her mouth and uttered broken, dry whispers:
"Lin... Wanqing... it's been so long... since I've seen her..."

"This... is impossible..." Lin Wanqing staggered back a step, her face turning deathly pale.

But she wasn't the only one who was shocked.

Another figure staggered out from behind.

He was a middle-aged man wearing a tattered military uniform, his eyes as fierce as ever—

Xiao Lianyin's eyes widened suddenly: "...He Chengxun?!"

He had died the night before trying to save her.

But now, his entire body has been reshaped by bio-alloy, his left arm has become a sharp bone blade, and several mechanical umbilical cords are inserted into his waist and back, each flashing with cold blue electric light.

He approached, looked up at her, and spoke in a cold, emotionless voice:
"I will fight for you, my master."

Mu Sisi's face turned deathly pale, and she covered her mouth as if she was about to vomit blood.

Then the third monster appeared.

That's Hernan.

The fitness instructor, who had his head chopped off on his first night of recklessness, now has only a single, rotating, red-glowing mechanical eye remaining, with the left half of his face stripped of metal.

He approached, still telling jokes:

Why don't dead people like to dance?

"Because they... will only fall to the ground."

The team briefly lost control.

Lin Wanqing was on the verge of collapse when Zhuang Yege immediately pulled her back.

“It wasn’t them,” he said in a deep voice, his eyes as cold as ice.

"Shut up!" Lin Wanqing struggled, tears streaming down her face. "You never lived with them!"

“So I know how they should die.” Zhuang Yege’s tone was as cold as a blade. “Not like this, not like this.”

Those "returnees" are still closing in.

Clearly identified light spots appeared on their bodies:
【Destiny Number: L-03】

【Destiny Number: G-17】

【Destiny Number H-06】

They are not themselves anymore.

Those familiar faces are now nothing more than shells of life forms forcibly pieced together and infused with false memories and controlling consciousness.

The tactical system issued a red alert, the signal pulsed wildly, and all personnel were activated into combat mode.

But no one made a move immediately.

They hesitated.

Because of those approaching figures—

They are people who bled, cried, and fought alongside them.

It is their memory, their unfinished farewell.

But now, it is being used as a tool to walk again under the sunlight.

Their steps were synchronized, yet each step trembled subtly, like out-of-control puppets trying to mimic the rhythm of their lives.

The air was frozen solid, like a gel.

They can't even breathe normally.

Suddenly, a voice slowly rang out from the high platform above the ruins.

The sound wasn't loud, but it carried a penetrating echo, as if it didn't come from a human voice, but rather a sharp gust of air falling from the sky, brushing against the eardrums like a knife.

"see that?"

The voice was clear and cold, yet at the end it carried a familiar frivolity and malice, like a smile carved by the wind—extremely soft, yet extremely sharp.

“They’re back. Not the way you remember them, but… a more ‘perfect’ version.”

The source of the sound has been identified.

Wang Yichen slowly walked out from the pile of stones.

He wore a neatly tailored black robe, the hem of which billowed in the wind like the wings of night.

His eyes were clear and bright, like stars reflected in a morbid belief.

A barely suppressed joy played on his lips, an expression reserved only for those who have "completed an artistic puzzle"—elegant, smug, even gentle.

It's like a craftsman who has personally completed a "murderous jigsaw puzzle" and is admiring his most prized masterpiece.

Siming slowly raised his head, his gaze as sharp as a sword, carrying a hint of murderous intent in the wind.

"you."

When Wang Yichen saw him, his expression became even more composed.

He smiled at Si Ming, then slowly raised a long, slender finger and gently traced a point in the air, as if outlining a unique symbol in his mind, or a certain interface in the structure of fate.

Do you know why they were able to come back?

His voice was deep, yet carried an undeniable presence.

He looked down at the crowd, as if preaching, or as if issuing a final declaration before the curtain falls on a theater of death:
"Because they—are like me."

"It is a creation of destiny."

His tone was firm, filled with religious confidence.

He turned, pointing at the approaching monsters, his gaze like that of a judge directed at a group of "unawakened heretics".

“You call them Liu Jingyu, He Chengxun, and Hernan…”

"But their real names are L-03, G-17, and H-06."

"You think death is the end?"

He chuckled softly, his voice like ice slowly melting in the nerves.

"No, death is just an archive."

"Archived into the parent database, awaiting restart, awaiting reshaping."

At that moment, Mu Sisi's body trembled slightly. She clutched the sketchbook tightly in her arms, her voice sounding like blood being squeezed from her throat:

"You're talking nonsense... How could they possibly..."

Wang Yichen slowly turned his head, his gaze falling on her, a nauseating tenderness appearing in his eyes.

"What you drew is their corpses."

"What I painted was their rebirth."

That gentleness is not pity, but deconstruction.

Lin Wanqing could no longer hold back, and suddenly rushed forward, her voice breaking completely:

"What do you take them for?!"

"They are human beings! They are human beings!!!"

Wang Yichen looked at her as if comforting a child who had misunderstood the truth. He gently shook his head, but his voice remained unwavering:

"No, they are just outdated data, old carriers with decaying structures."

"In the womb of the Mother Goddess of Fate, they were purified, nameless, and devoid of emotion—so that they could be reconstructed as the embryos of the 'Star Calamity Clan'."

His gaze gradually turned fervent, as if he had entered a period of intense faith, and every word seemed to burn out from within him.

"You are afraid because you still believe that 'life' means hope."

"But you are wrong."

"True hope is to be used even after death."

"It is about allowing life to be regenerated through recombination."

"The Mother Goddess of Destiny is calling you."

"The physical body is not the end."

A name is not an identity.

"You will eventually be included in the gene pool of Thirteen."

"Numbered, conceived, transformed, and rewritten."

As he finished speaking, he opened his arms wide, as if waiting for a god to descend or to welcome the great will he worshipped.

It was as if at that moment he could truly hear holy light descending from the sky.

But behind him...

It's not light.

is blood.

It's rotting.

It is the cold light of interlaced numbers flashing, the sound of new life forms emerging from filthy slime, writhing, and breaking free of their cocoons. It is the child of calamity gnawing at the past, altering memories, and replacing reality.

Numbers, devoid of emotion.

But they are gradually moving towards humanity, where hearts still beat.

Their arrival needs no explanation.

The earth began to tremble the moment Wang Yichen opened his arms.

It wasn't an earthquake.

Instead, it was a low-frequency rhythm—like the beating of a heart—that was strangely distributed beneath the ruins.

Each pulse was like a giant organ awakening underground, the life waves it transmitted striking everyone's ankles, knees, spine, and even soul.

Immediately afterwards, a blood mist slowly rose from the ground, its color dark red and its thickness like deep blood plasma that had never been exposed to air, turning into warm, misty clouds in the wind.

The ground suddenly cracked open, and countless wriggling umbilical cords slowly emerged from the cracks, each one moist like the skin of a newborn baby, with petals at the ends curling like nerve tendrils.

They crawled, entangled, and resonated along the broken rocks, rusted steel bars, and remaining mechanical debris like living things.

They are being pieced together.

To piece together an unprecedented structure.

It is neither a high platform nor a sacred altar.

It is an altar.

It is the bone pool.

It is the birthplace of the mother.

An indescribable odor then spread through the air—

It smells like the caramelized aroma of liquefied fat during high-temperature baking, and also like the humid, sweet, and bloody mixed smell of a freshly cut, uncooked embryo—nauseating yet impossible to ignore.

Under the incredulous gaze of the crowd, a massive structure fused together from flesh, metal, and nerve fibers slowly rose up, like an evil fetus being lifted high by an unseen hand.

She was suspended in this newborn maternal center.

is her.

It's Angela Herrington.

Dozens of umbilical cords extended from her back, lumbar spine, and deep into her chest cavity.

The end was connected to a series of life-seed numbered tokens floating around her, the tokens shimmering with a cold and orderly red light in the blood mist.

Her abdominal cavity was a translucent incubation sac. Through the warm, glistening embryonic membrane, one could clearly see inside—several unformed life-seed embryos twisting, throbbing, and wriggling within, emitting a slippery and suppressed trembling sound.

She has no feet.

Her entire lower body had been completely integrated into the embryonic bed structure at the core of the altar.

She floats, she is part of the whole structure.

No, it's the uterus, the core of the entire structure.

It is the organism itself.

She opened her eyes, her pupils gleaming with a sacred light like biological code. Her voice didn't come from her mouth, but resonated directly in everyone's consciousness:

"I am Angela."

“I’m Herrington too.”

"I am the first to submit a lab report."

"It was also the last uterus."

She slowly opened her arms, the umbilical cord hanging down from her sides like a cloak, blood silently seeping from her skin, forming hanging curtains of blood in the air.

The voice was soft, yet carried an irresistible authority, like the tides under the moon, silently altering the direction of gravity across the entire continent.

"I created thirteen."

“I am the womb, the original vessel before he became God.”

“You feel fear… that is the instinctive fear that humans have of the unborn.”

She smiled slightly, and what slid down her cheeks were not tears, but thick, transparent umbilical cord fluid, still warm from when the embryo was first born.

“Every dead person is a failed embryo.”

"Each number is your redefined birth name."

"Your existence... was designed to be conceived."

She slowly turned her gaze to Si Ming.

That's not hostility.

It is an assessment.

It is a kind of maternal observation that transcends morality and ethics.

"You are excellent too."

"The primary secret is destiny, the secondary secret is illusion."

"Your structure... possesses extremely high reproductive potential."

"If you are willing to enter me, I will arrange the most suitable embryonic position for you."

"You don't need to fight."

"All you need to do is be used."

As soon as he finished speaking, Wang Yichen knelt down, pressing one knee into his blood, as if he were making a pilgrimage to a sacred altar.

His voice trembled, yet it was filled with utmost devotion:

"Mother, please give your command."

Angela looked at him, her smile slowly spreading, and uttered a command more weighty than a summons:
"So--"

"Let's take back those bastards who escaped from the womb."

As she finished speaking, the surrounding blood mist began to spiral and rotate, like the violent contraction of the uterine wall.

The next second—

More than twenty numbered seedlings emerged from the blood pool, peeling off from the embryonic sac like rebellious beings breaking through the water.

Their forms vary; some are deformed, some are perfect, some are incomplete, and some are radiant.

But each one is engraved with a clear number:

【L-03】

G-17

【H-06】

……

Each number represents a tombstone.

Once belonging to those who died, they have now become the identity markers of those who have been resurrected.

The air was filled with the smell of mutated embryonic pulp.

That's not fog.

There are hundreds of placentas, breathing.

It is wriggling.

Waiting for a new "birth cycle".

Sima Ming did not move.

He simply lowered his head slowly and glanced at the data interface flashing on his wrist device.

“Thirty-seven minutes left,” he whispered, as if to himself, or as if to pronounce judgment on the battlefield itself, “to reach the shortest estimated window for Z-217.”

His tone was calm, yet it was as if a timer that had been dormant for a long time had been switched on to begin its countdown.

"The team is in good condition. There are two injured and four non-combatants. The rear defense firepower can support two rounds of bursts."

As he spoke, he had already quickly completed a round of fine-tuning tactical rehearsals in his mind.

Then, he looked up.

His gaze pierced through the churning blood mist, landing on the army of life-seedlings that was slowly approaching.

His eyes were like a knife, silent yet sharp.

"...This is the 'sample recovery program'."

He made a definitive statement, his tone as cold as if he were reciting a lab report word for word.

He had already figured out Angela's logic.

This is not a complete purge.

This was a precise harvest.

She doesn't need to "win," she only needs to capture, recycle, number, and reprocess.

This is not a war; it is a structural-level "data reclamation mission."

Vera stood beside him with perfect understanding, a cold glint in her eyes, and her fingertips quietly touched the edge of the card slot.

"You're planning to... fight head-on?" Her voice was low and hoarse.

Si Ming shook his head, a barely perceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“I plan to retreat head-on,” he replied softly, his tone surprisingly light.

Zhuang Yege also stepped forward, the paper bell in his hand making a soft sound, like the low hum of the gears of fate striking the edge of time.

“I can hold out for ten seconds,” he said. “Within a range of fifty meters, the dimensions in the fog can disrupt perception.”

Si Ming turned to look at Lin En.

Without waiting for a question, she slid the card into her palm, and a gray-silver matte card slowly appeared at her fingertips.
It depicts dozens of overlapping spatial boundaries, like a labyrinth, with each edge slowly twisting like a fluid.

【No. 6138 "Boundary Barriers and Misty Paths: A Microscopic Maze"】

The covenant entry: Releases a large area of ​​fog, continuously interfering with the enemy's identification and command systems, and can obscure tactical perception for three minutes.

While confirming the tactical layers, Si Ming quickly made adjustments:
"After the fog came in, we split into three groups to charge."

"Vera leads the way, Musisi leads the non-combatant members to the right flank, and Xinnai leads Lin Wanqing and others along the central axis."

"Zhuang Yege and I will cover the rear and carry out the elimination and deception."

He paused, his eyes sharpening, and then spoke even faster:
"Wang Yichen doesn't need to respond; he'll just 'observe.'"

“Angela…leave her to me.”

No one raised any questions, and no one asked, "Why not fight?"

Because they all knew that they had no chance of winning this battle.

It wasn't because of insufficient firepower or poor strategy, but because the logic of winning or losing this battle was stripped away from the very beginning.

They are not participants, but rather "samples".

It was a failed embryo, the raw material before it was numbered.

This is not a battle; it is a game of survival to escape from the numbering system.

"Lynn."

The voice of the God of Fate rang out again, lighter than the wind, yet it pierced through the entire ruins.

"Release them."

The next instant, the gray fog rose up like a surging wave and swept out.

The fog, like layers of reality, engulfed the entire ruins. Every inch of space within the fog was refracting, splitting, and recombining, and the visual hierarchy was stripped away into several unstable dimensions.

The army of Fate Seeds screamed in unison.

That wasn't a roar, but rather the distorted noise caused by interference with the uterine recognition system.
It's as if millions of severed nerve fibers are simultaneously transmitting incorrect signals, weaving together in the blood mist to create a shrill and piercing "wailing".

Zhuang Yege's fingers suddenly trembled, and three paper talismans flew out, each landing close to the ground and instantly transforming into three blurry figures:
——The Substitute Paper Spirit · Fake Lin Wanqing (blurred face, crossed pistols)
——The Substitute Paper Spirit, the Fake Mu Sisi (holding a picture book, dragging an umbilical cord)
——Substitute Paper Spirit · False Fate Master (Wears a mask, and his appearance is almost indistinguishable from the real thing)
"Delay for ten seconds," Zhuang Yege said in a low voice, his gaze as still as water.

"Give me ten seconds, and I'll make them lose their bearings."

Si Ming nodded, and uttered a single word the moment the mist swept in:

"withdraw."

Everyone started running.

It wasn't a rout.

Instead, it was a precise and orderly tactical retreat.

In the churning fog, those familiar-looking creatures are desperately chasing after them, recognizing faces, identifying scents, and imitating sounds, but ultimately failing time and time again.

They weren't a step behind.

Rather, it's that they no longer recognize these people.

I no longer know Mu Sisi, I no longer know Lin Wanqing, I no longer know Si Ming.

Because the "name" in the system has been replaced with a number.

This time, it's not a matter of "death".

It is an algorithm-level misidentification.

They were once human beings.

Now it's just a number.

You knew each other by name.
Now they are numbered.

But you who remember them,
Do you still remember who you are?
(End of this chapter)