Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 281 The Corridor of Illusion
"You ask who I am?"

Then tell me first—who gave it a name? Who defined its existence?

If your identity is part of a script written by someone else,
Then I refuse to sign this page of dialogue.

Blood mist billowed.

The pursuers, like a red storm scorching the sky, swept in like a tidal wave. With each landing, they tore new umbilical cord patterns and explosive cracks into the ground, turning the already dilapidated ruins into a placenta that was being repeatedly scraped and eroded.

Their footsteps were silent, yet chilling.

The breathing of those numbered individuals was subtle yet rhythmic, like the heartbeat of a program starting up in a loop—devoid of emotion, carrying only instructions, execution, and efficiency.

The Z-217 "door remnant anchor point" is still over a kilometer away.

The team has been running at its limit for twenty minutes.

Physical strength, spiritual energy, and divine consciousness are all being depleted to near the warning threshold.

Mu Sisi turned back several times, her shoulders trembling from her heavy breathing, her eyes filled with panic and disbelief: "They...they caught up too fast!"

The magical aura in Shinobu Misaki's hands had begun to shatter, and the multidimensional refraction barrier laid out in front of her showed obvious cracks, peeling away like shards of ice. Duan Xingzhou gritted his teeth, protecting the nearly exhausted Lin Wanqing with one hand. The latter's breathing became increasingly disordered, and her gaze began to dart away.

"Faster!" Vera commanded sharply, her voice sharp and resolute. "Hold on for another seven minutes!"

But the next moment.

A voice suddenly disrupted everyone's rhythm.

“…Stop.”

The sound wasn't loud, but it was like a sharp knife slowly slicing across a steel surface, producing an undeniable metallic friction.

It’s Sima Ming.

He stopped at the back of the line and did not move forward.

He turned around alone, facing the numbered soldiers of the Destiny Seed Army rushing towards him from the blood mist.

The crimson blood continued to churn, while the howling wind gradually subsided. At that moment, even time seemed to stand still.

Red eyes lit up one by one in the fog, like a group of meteors about to land, coldly watching the "sample escapees" on the ground.

On their foreheads, numbers floated like movable type.

【Destiny Number: L-03】

【Destiny Number: G-17】

【Destiny Number H-06】

[Destiny Seed Number: X-19]...

Each number is a tombstone for a name.

The God of Fate did not move.

He simply stood there, like a silent screenwriter, watching those "old characters" gradually transform into new chapter errors, step by step emerging from the memories he had written himself.

He heard it—that familiar yet indistinct whisper, echoing softly in his mind:

What kind of story do you want to tell?

Irostia's voice was as light as the wind, yet it pierced to the bone.

Si Ming smiled faintly, as if he had already written the answer.

“Tell them what they shouldn’t remember, and what they can’t forget.”

"Are you crazy?!"

Natasha was the first to react, abruptly stopping and turning around, her tone carrying a hint of barely suppressed anger.

She saw Si Ming standing there, all alone, his right hand slowly pressing onto the slot on his waist.

His expression showed neither anger nor sorrow.

There is only a poetic and calm certainty.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to hold off these monsters all by yourself.” Natasha’s voice was laced with a twisted laugh. “That’s not a stage, it’s an altar.”

“I know,” Si Ming replied calmly, his eyes reflecting the ever-approaching tide of numbers ahead.

“So I don’t need lights,” he said softly, “nor do I need an audience.”

Selene suddenly took a step forward, blocking his way, her voice almost a shout:
"...No, I'll go with you."

Si Ming looked at her, a fleeting ripple in his eyes.

He smiled slightly, but did not respond.

Zhuang Yege also stepped forward, the soul bell ringing softly, as if playing a mourning tune for the sacrifice that had not yet taken place.

“If it’s just stalling for time, I have three substitute spirits,” he said calmly. “If it’s just disrupting the array, I have the Ash Soul Ash Array.”

"Tell me, how many do you want us to keep?"

“You can’t stand alone,” Vera said in a deep voice. “Don’t be reckless; you’re not invincible.”

Si Ming listened to their voices, and for a moment, he closed his eyes.

I took a deep breath.

one second.

two seconds.

He opened his eyes.

Those eyes held neither sorrow nor joy, only a cold, sharp light like the morning blade.

"I know I'm not invincible."

He turned around, facing them, his tone neither fast nor slow, yet it silenced everyone:
"But you must hurry."

His gaze fell on his fingertips as he gently flipped out that familiar card.

[Empty Corridor]

On the card, the pattern of a chessboard quietly emerges, and the geometric grid of black and white intersecting flashes with spiritual energy.

“This area…” Si Ming looked at the card, his voice so low it was almost a whisper, “is not suitable for others to stay in.”

"It makes people...forget who they are."

The sound of the wind seemed to stop completely at that moment.

He slowly raised the card, pointing it at the ground beneath his feet.

Finally, he looked at each person in the group.

Mu Sisi, Lin Wanqing, Eileen, Xin Nai, Zhuang Yege, Vera, Natasha—

Their eyes were different, but they all conveyed the same meaning:
Don't go and get yourself killed.

Si Ming only whispered a sentence.

"It's not that I want to die."

He smiled slightly, like a ripple spreading quietly across the surface of water:
"I asked them... but they didn't dare come."

"This is the story I told."

"Let me finish speaking by myself."

Card release.

The Hall of Illusions —

Unfold.

In that instant, the earth seemed to sink into a dream.

The "Corridor of Illusion" slowly unfolded from Siming's hand, the cards floating in the air, rotating to form a hanging mirror curtain.

It's like tearing a crack in reality, allowing "another world" to pour out.

The mirror shattered in mid-air, as if the entire sky had collapsed into thousands of sharp fragments.

The chessboard rises from the ground, like ancient rules summoned forth, forcefully pulling clear boundaries from chaos.

All the colors in the world faded away in an instant. The red mist disappeared, the bloodstains faded, and the lime and firelight vanished, leaving only the two most primitive and indifferent colors—black and white.

Beneath the feet of the God of Fate, the earth had transformed into an endless chessboard array.

Black and white squares spread outwards from his feet, laid out at equal intervals, crisscrossing like a net, folding like rings, one square at a time swallowing and reconstructing the entire ruins.

Ruins and remains are cut into “rules”, and bloodstains are washed away and reshaped into a clean but inhuman symmetrical pattern.

Space itself began to collapse, like "layers of superimposed images" projected onto a two-dimensional screen.

This is the territory of Elostia.

It is the "Palace of Illusion".

And the Fate Master, standing at the very center of this chessboard, is no longer a fugitive, nor a weaver.

He is—the master of illusion.

The surrounding temperature plummeted, not from the physical cooling of cold air, but from a sudden halt in perception, freezing thought.

The earth seemed to be sucked in, and the power of the domain pressed down completely.

Space is stripped into countless intersecting pieces, the black and white chessboard like a discarded chess game by the gods, crisscrossing heaven and earth, extending infinitely into the distance.

The moment a numbered character steps onto the chessboard, the patterns under their feet begin to shift.

Their originally stable identification bar marks began to malfunction, like ink drops falling into water, suddenly exploding and turning into blurry image afterimages in their own vision, which began to fall off, slide, and dissipate.

Before they could react, a figure silently appeared.

It’s Sima Ming.

Then, the second one.

The third way.

The tenth one.

The hundredth.

On the entire chessboard, countless phantoms of "Destiny Master" rose up one after another, like misaligned projections growing from a crack in time, covering every corner of the chessboard.

These "fate-controlling" figures each had a different expression—

Some smiled with their eyes closed, as if they were still asleep;
Some stood there, their faces covered in blood and coughing up blood;

Some looked serene, like the portraits in eulogies;
Some were holding cards; others were reaching out, as if to grab someone.

Each illusory figure seemed to represent a possible "past" or "future".

Each shadow is like both the God of Fate and someone who once believed in him and dreamed of him—the imagination of "him" in their heart.

They moved silently, slowly circling the seed of destiny.

There was no wind, yet it was as if the air itself had been sliced ​​into layers of transparent ice crystals.

The numbered target immediately attempts to initiate the attack program and tries to identify friend or foe targets.

[Target Match: 99.99% Similarity]

No identification number

[Invincible Me Tag]

[No attack capability detected]

The system alerts started to malfunction.

They looked at each other, trying to confirm from each other's eyes whether their reflections were still there, whether they still "existed," and whether they were still recognized as "individuals" by the system.

Cracks appeared above the chessboard.

Like a mirror shattering, numerous cracks burst forth from above the domain, reflecting not the sky, but the lingering echoes of the consciousness of the "other."

At that moment, one of the Fates finally lost control and suddenly swung his blade at one of the phantoms.

The shadow collapsed, turning into scattered black and white light fragments.

At the same time, the serial number on his own body began to bleed, and the barcode lines twisted and turned as if alive, painfully rolling back from his skin into his body.

His recognition module began to self-destruct.

More and more destiny seeds rushed chaotically toward those "most familiar" Fate Masters—

They rushed into the embrace of some phantom.

The next second, they heard the man whisper:
"I forgive you."

Her voice was extremely soft, so gentle it was almost tearful, like the last dream she didn't want to wake up from.

The life-sustaining figure froze on the spot, its movements stiff, its body began to tremble violently, and then shattered into pieces like a glass sculpture.

It transformed into wisps of faint light and data, dissipating onto the chessboard.

Another life form stumbled and tried to escape, but accidentally bumped into the chest of another phantom.

The man gently hugged him and whispered in his ear:

"Where are you going? We're still together."

As the sound faded, the air suddenly became viscous like water, and the echoes piled up, like a drowning person hearing the call of the underwater world.

No one knows anymore whether they are themselves.

No one is now certain whether their so-called "naming" is still valid.

At this moment, the battle was already over.

The chessboard we're on now is not a battlefield.

It's an identity museum—

It is they, for themselves, who are mourning "who they once were".

Si Ming stood alone amidst the millions of shadows, like a still anchor.

He neither moved nor spoke.

It's just telling a story.

A story about "forgetting who you are".

It was also the page he himself wanted to finish telling.

He did not make a move.

Because he doesn't need to lift a finger.

His very existence is the end of a pen, a manuscript, and a clue.

“You have names, which she gave you.”

His voice was so soft it seemed to drift from the depths of time, yet it landed within the systems of every life form, causing waves of recognition disorder.

“And what I’m taking away from you is ‘definition’.”

He slowly took a step forward, and the black and white chessboard beneath his feet quietly expanded, each square unfolding like a curtain of fate.

"You are the numbers."

"And I am the narrator."

He spoke these words in a gentle tone, almost with the regret and pity of a storyteller, yet they were more powerful than any battle cry.

He raised one hand, his fingertips slowly lifting.

"—The handwriting of an anonymous person."

At that moment, the void was silently torn apart.

There was no loud noise, no flash of light.

Only a single, silent crack, like a sheet of paper being torn, extended from his palm and slowly disappeared into nothingness.

Within that tear, in the "collective memory" of every species, their "starting point" was—deleted.

He personally erased their birth page.

In their vast chain of identification, the node that was originally called "who one is" was cut off, torn apart, and left empty.

Their attack system, pursuit path, logical assessment, and tactical control all depend on that one point—

"Who are you."

"Who do you identify?"

But now, that point no longer exists.

The chessboard continues to expand slowly, its grids intertwining like an endless spiral, devouring time, position, and identity.

And the army of the Fated Ones—

Fall into chaos.

They no longer know who to attack.

They no longer know who the "target" is.

They even began to doubt—who they were.

The moment the illusionary corridor unfolded, Vera hesitated for almost a second.

She turned sharply and shouted, "Move! Everyone, follow me!"

The voice, like a military order, cut off any hesitation.

"Shina, the path ahead is open. Clear the obstacles—maximize your escape speed!"

She was the first to realize—

The God of Fate is not "blocking the enemy".

He's making plans.

He didn't just use domain blockade.

He was unfolding a tactical scenario.

She knew that the cards from the Fate Master weren't the kind of design that left the outcome to "luck".

He is not a gambler. He is an author.

Every card he plays, every path he takes, every second he unfolds is a "predetermined structure in the narrative."

She led Mu Sisi, Lin Wanqing, Eileen, and others to quickly withdraw from the "domain of influence."
Lin En, Zhuang Yege, and Duan Xingzhou were positioned on the flanks and rear, forming a double encirclement to prevent the chaotic attack of the Life Seeds.

Everyone is taking action.

The only thing that didn't catch up was—

Celian.

She stood at the edge of the chessboard, the black and white checkered light wandering along the edge of her boots, but never reaching her.

She did not go in.

She simply stood there, her gaze fixed quietly on the center of the chessboard.

She saw—the person who had almost overlapped with the chessboard. The Fate Master.

He seemed to have merged with the chessboard. His shadow fell on every square, and every breath resonated with the virtual image.

His face was superimposed, swallowed, and diluted by hundreds of illusory images, yet it remained clearly standing in the center of his heart.

"I'm not going in."

She didn't look up, she just looked at him.

He whispered to Vera:

"I stayed."

Vera glanced back at her, a complex emotion flashing in her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but ultimately held back.

Because she knows.

Some people stay not because of rational tactical choices.

It's because someone in my heart has never gone far away.

Serian stood outside the domain, motionless.

The wind whipped her long hair, but it couldn't move her steps.

She was once an attendant of the God of Fate.

But at this moment——

She is a “witness”.

One of her duties is—

"For him, to see clearly the story he continues to tell."

Domain Center.

The illusory chessboard trembled violently, like a heartbeat pulsating beneath the squares.

The entire space seemed to be forcibly embedded with two conflicting programs, the rules of black and white like tides, repeatedly pulling and tugging within the dimensional boundaries.

In that instant, hundreds of life forms completely lost control.

Unable to distinguish friend from foe, their identification logic layers were invaded by "narrative pseudo-writing," and the numbering began to self-correct, self-overwrite, and self-rollback.

In the chaos, a Fate Seed suddenly clutched its head and roared to the sky:
Am I... X-17?

"Did you cut me? Or did I think it was me?!"

His voice was filled with a tearing despair, like an algorithm questioning its own definition function.

The next second, amidst the light and shadow, the life seeds began to fight each other.

Swords flashed and shadows danced on the colorless chessboard.

One of the Fated Ones drew his sword and, without hesitation, slashed at a "Fate Master" in front of him—

But before he could even land, another figure behind him pierced his spine.

The life-giving seed leaned close to his ear and whispered:
"You killed the wrong person."

"I am the image whose number you are."

"And you just... committed suicide."

This sentence is like a logical poison injected into neurons.

His retina flickered violently, the core program trembled, and then his entire body began to mutate into cracks of light, like a broken simulated organism burning in the program blank.

The life-seed programs began to collectively crash, issuing a system self-destruct warning sound:
"Initiate number clearing..."

"Start number template calibration..."

They are fighting while simultaneously erasing their own existence.

The numbering system collapsed within itself before they even reached their target.

At that moment, a voice finally rang out from within the blood mist.

It was not a piercing scream that seemed to tear through space.

It is a kind of embedded whisper—injected directly from the umbilical cord information layer into the deep command network of every life implanted in the body.

Angela spoke.

Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried a sticky, tender quality unique to the womb, like the first humming heard while still in the placenta.

Her tone was almost sacred, like a hymn flowing in her blood:
"My children..."

"Don't worry about the number being wrong."

"What you should remember is not 'who you are'—"

"It's about 'who am I'."

Her words flowed slowly like a tide into the spine, nerve roots, and data core of the life-stem, each word like a recursive restart of a closed named function.

"I am your womb."

"I am your root code."

"I used a scalpel to carve your identity during your embryonic stage."

"Come back, L-03."

"Respond to me, X-19."

"Location reconnection, G-17."

She called out each name, as if summoning lost items back to their place, like a mother calling for her lost child.

Meanwhile, the army of life seeds seemed to be slowly coming back to their senses.

Their chests glowed, their numbers flashed, and they began to try to synchronize.

The numbered modules began attempting to reconnect—as if they were about to be reconnected to the main link of the parent system.

The moment the numbering was reorganized.

—Si Ming opened his eyes.

Standing at the very center of the domain, on the chessboard, he seemed to have been waiting for this moment for a long time.

He slowly straightened up, his gaze calm yet tinged with regret, as if looking at a group of people who once had names but had given up on themselves.

His voice wasn't loud, but it pierced clearly through every crack and echo, landing in the tiny gap where the life-seed's nervous system hadn't yet been fully connected:

"You think you gave them names."

"But you don't know."

“I crossed them out a long time ago.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he slowly raised his finger.

His fingertips touched the ground, and a grayish-white ink streak meandered out from beside his feet.

It is neither like blood nor like flames.

It was a texture that did not exist in the physical world, as if a deity had used a feather brush dipped in ash to personally write a mark of ending on a chessboard.

A stroke, a sweep.

The numbers on the surface of all life forms, from physical entities to illusions, were extinguished one by one, like strings of words that were not allowed to exist, being crossed out stroke by stroke from the book of destiny.

The number is no longer valid.

Identity invalid.

The moment they lost their sense of friend and foe, they also lost their own meaning.

Angela is still trying to enter commands.

Her voice was no longer as composed as it had been at the beginning, but began to carry subtle fluctuations of unease, each number sounding like an attempt to hold onto a severed umbilical cord.

"L-03, respond."

"X-19, connect."

"G-17, synchronize."

Her tone remained gentle, like a soothing murmur to lull a baby to sleep, but the implanted module's feedback system gradually lost its responsiveness, as if the doors of a closed womb were being welded shut.

Her response was a series of blanks.

Empty finger.

Empty name.

Interval.

An empty echo.

Her voice fell into the chessboard, like a fallen leaf sinking to the bottom of a dried-up well, and what responded to her was not the loyalty of destiny, but a kind of complete and utter denial:
"No such person exists."

No serial number found.

"Never existed."

It wasn't a mechanical error message; it was more like the world itself echoing and repelling her intentions.

Every piece of feedback was like a knife, cutting into the family tree she had personally named.

The life form, like an autopilot that has lost its core access signal, becomes chaotic and disorderly on the chessboard.

They collided, spun, stopped, and collapsed, like biochemical remains that could not be calibrated and positioned, falling, annihilating, and decomposing in the "identity erasure zone" at the edge of the rules.

Their steps were disordered, their eyes were vacant, their numbers were faded, and their voices were out of tune, like a group of ants that had been aborted in the womb but were still forcibly revived, scattering and colliding in all directions.

At this moment, Si Ming still did not draw his sword.

There was no starting move.

He didn't lift a single finger.

He simply stood at the focal point of that chessboard, like a nail driven into the center of this chaotic and crumbling world.

He watched all this without pity or ecstasy.

Only indifference.

他 说:

"You gave me the name."

"And I simply crossed it out."

His tone was gentle to the point of restraint, yet more destructive than any sharp weapon.

"What you love is their number."

"But they now—have no names."

He smiled slightly, a smile as gentle as the wind, brushing across the burned-out cemetery.

Then, he turned around, his back to the battlefield.

"Therefore, they cannot—listen to you."

He trailed off.

The chessboard fell silent for three seconds.

It was as if heaven and earth were holding their breath, listening intently.

Then came the crackling sound of the system completely collapsing.

The thought modules, recognition protocols, and execution logic of hundreds of life forms collapsed in an instant—like hundreds of planets falling into the void in the same second.

What collapsed was not the code, but the identity structure; what exploded was not flesh and blood, but meaning itself.

Those "people" shaped by their numbers are, at this moment, deregistered from the "records," erased from "cognition," and completely stripped from "existence."

Si Ming stood alone in the center of that chessboard that resembled a graveyard.

He knew this step would come.

He just waited.

Wind blows.

The grayish-white ink still lingered slowly behind him, like the end of a book of the dead, turning this silent massacre into a silent elegy.

It's as if it's writing an epitaph for every broken life.

"They don't have names."

"Therefore, they will no longer obey your orders."

And their story—

"I'll finish speaking."

At the edge of the chessboard, the wind suddenly reversed direction.

It was no longer the wind of natural rhythm, but rather like the lingering echo of a memory that had traveled back from the cracks of time, pouring into this fragmented dimension.

Gray lines silently traced the final layer of the identification system within the life form.

Just like data terminals being forcibly formatted, their programs begin to go out of order, and identification tags peel away layer by layer.

The numbering broke into scattered fragments, and consciousness poured out like mercury, squeezed out of the bones, and dissipated into a phantom.

Their movements ceased; they stopped struggling and attacking, and merely procedurally tried to identify themselves.

"I am……"

"My number is..."

"I'm not myself anymore..."

But even they themselves couldn't understand their own voices.

There was no blood splattering.

There was no screaming or tearing.

They vanished in silence, like a piece of data that was mistakenly deleted and then "reclaimed," leaving only a faint echo of their identity.
The lingering echoes between the cracks in the chessboard resembled the lingering regret of a deity deleting files.

One by one, they twisted and struggled, falling into the unfocused cracks at the edge of the chessboard.

And standing at the center of this storm—Si Ming.
At this moment, it was no longer a complete human form.

His outline was blurred like a fleeting shadow, his boundaries sometimes clear and sometimes disappearing, like a set of variable images reflected on a myriad of mirrors, or like a "shadow man" in some kind of future memory.

Is it a reflection in a mirror, or a projection of reality?
At this moment, is he "the God of Fate himself," or "the God of Fate he speaks of"?
no one knows.

Even he himself no longer cares.

Because he has finished narrating this round.

That wasn't a defeat.

That was a silenced event.

In the distance, Villa's home team finally arrived at the Z-217 "Gate Remnant Anchor Point".

Without uttering a word, Nobunaga immediately unleashed the secret technique of the Demon King, setting up a defensive barrier.

Lynn released a gray mist to once again obscure the thermal and mental scanning channels, and then quickly led Mu Sisi, Eileen, and the others into the final defensive array as ordered.

Everyone knows that—

The “battle” we just fought was never a “defense” from the beginning.

That was a persuasion.

A mental invasion that uses "identity stripping" as its main theme is a narrative-driven attack that causes the enemy to doubt themselves, break down, and delete themselves.

He didn't defeat them.

It is to let them walk into "anonymity" on their own.

At the edge of the chessboard, the only one who hadn't left was Celian.

She remained standing quietly, like a snow-covered stone monument, motionless.

Until she finally saw—

The God of Fate slowly emerged from the deepest part of the chessboard.

He seemed to emerge from between the black and white squares, stepping out of the edge of illusion step by step. First, countless illusions shattered, and finally the only real him was revealed.

He exhaled softly, the breath seeming to pass through the gap between the ruins and the soul, carrying a sense of relief after deep exhaustion.

The sound was extremely soft, yet clear.

"It's noisy."

Selene smiled slightly, stepped forward, and without saying much, simply extended her hand naturally.

Si Ming raised his hand and grasped her palm.

Her fingertips were icy cold, while his palms remained burning hot—as if the entire war without flames had burned through his very bones, not the outside world.

"Are you done talking?" she asked.

The sound wasn't loud, but it was like slowly lowering the entire space from a high-tension state.

"This is just a preface," Si Ming replied in a low voice, slightly hoarse but with an undeniable sense of stability.

"The main character hasn't appeared yet."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the Red Sea in the distance trembled once more.

A low-frequency vibration, like the beating of a heart, spread from deep within the blood navel.

Angela's figure slowly rose from the thick, swollen blood plasma, her eyes cold. She had already sensed the collapse of the domain and the loss of the system link, which required recalibration.

And at this moment, the God of Fate—

He has rejoined the team.

The wind blows again.

The chessboard has been destroyed.

But that battle of “telling false narratives” has left a deeper mark on people’s hearts than the truth itself.

That's not a skill-casting area.

It was a story, a narrative, a "renaming" of fate by dismantling it into words.

It will not be forgotten.

It will grow its own unique truth in everyone's mind.

They returned with their numbers.

He used fabrication to erase the serial number.

This is a draft page from the theater of fate.
Yet, it was an anonymous person who wrote the story of everyone's escape.

(End of this chapter)