Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 288 God’s Name and Empty Page

Some people fight to remember.

Some people fight so that you will forget.

She held up the Book of Fate, and he adjusted his pocket watch—

One writes the name, the other marks it;
One gives life, the other erases.

Then, together they erased the superfluous stroke of ink from the world.

Left-wing war zone.

The fourth echelon of the numbered army slowly approached.

Their steps were heavy and orderly, like a ritual procession choreographed by death. Their iron boots pounded the ground, each step sounding like a funeral dirge for a world about to perish.

This team is not the strongest.

But it is the purest.

They showed no emotional fluctuations, no tactical variations, and no independent judgment.

They are merely extensions of the commands, combat shells stitched together by the system's algorithms, and passive echoes of Wang Yichen's remaining will.

Each numbered individual has a pre-set spell module implanted in their body—every fifteen seconds, a hybrid skill will be automatically triggered:
Flame tides, bone shattering, afterimage splitting, life linking, and sensory suppression.

A jumbled combination.

The release of machinery.

They are data, numbers, and the embodiment of commands.

At this moment, their opponents are not tactical units in the traditional sense.

They are the successors of the gods.

They emerged from the void, the apostles.

—

Nobuna stood at the forefront of the line, her white robes fluttering slightly, the corners of her robes with the Eight-Headed Serpent God pattern unfolding quietly in the wind like a spell painting.

She did not draw her sword.

She simply took out two ancient vermilion cards.

"Front ghost."

"The Ghost After."

The talisman burned, and the incantation flames rose.

A star map appeared, stars converged into a ring, and a "Yin-Yang double gate" emerged between heaven and earth, slowly opening behind her.

Those who step out from the left gate are the Fiery War Demons.

He wore chainmail, wielded a large blade, and his steps were as steady as a mountain collapsing and thunder roaring.

The one who appeared at the right gate was the Red-Veil Ghost.

She held the Book of Fate, her soul coiled around her, her figure like a shadow, her mouth whispering as if reciting Buddhist scriptures backwards, chanting curses in reverse order.

Nobuna's eyes were like mirrors, and his voice was like a deity speaking directly to your ear.

"I am Nobuna Mijinin."

"In the name of all the gods—the moment of slaughter begins."

[Mysterious Entry Activated]

Former Demon - Annihilation Fang (Practical Battle Type)
Hougui·Duming Mingguang (spiritual support)
The wind suddenly stopped.

The demon stomped on the ground, causing it to crack violently. The giant blade swept across, slicing through the air like a mountain-crushing axe.

Destiny type T-27 attempted to unleash a skeletal shockwave, but was cut in half at the waist half a second before the action could begin.

Before his spiritual core could dissipate and his soul power fluctuations had even begun to rise, he was caught by the soul threads flung out by Hou Gui and dragged into the Book of Fate.

With a slight movement of her fingers, Nobunai slowly crossed out the string of numbers on the Book of Fate.

"Those who are numbered should not be recorded by name."

The next second, the T-27's body exploded.

There was no blood, and no information flowed back.

Only the quietly drifting fragments of data seem to have been "forgotten" by the world.

—

Meanwhile, Herman leaned lazily against a broken stone pillar, his legs crossed, in a relaxed posture, like an observer, or more like... an unofficial narrator.

His left eye was covered with a black cloth, and his right eye was half-open, like a veteran who had just woken up, or a drunkard who would never wake up.

He had a cigarette dangling from his lips, yawned, and said something that seemed almost unrelated:

"Who did you just attack?"

Among the swarm, three numbered scouts abruptly stopped halfway through their assault.

They turned sharply to look at each other, then at the ground—the first layer of fear began to appear in their eyes:
They...don't remember who they locked onto.

Hermann smiled slightly and gently turned the second hand of his pocket watch with his left hand.

"Time flies too fast, so let memories—slow down a bit."

[Mysterious Entry Activated: Amnesia Pointer]

Centered on Hermann, all units within a 20-meter radius enter a zone of disordered memory logic.

The six numbered entities "identify priority conflicts" in the next second, and the target is misplaced.

They began attacking each other.

Number E-14 swung his sword at Number B-07, who mistook him for an enemy soldier and retaliated by severing E-14's left arm, sending blood mist flying.

The entire battlefield instantly resembled a simulated exercise triggered by a program misoperation.

Chaos arises from itself.

Hermann exhaled a puff of smoke, his trench coat fluttering slightly, his voice calm yet like a curse:
"I didn't make a move."

"But they forgot who they were supposed to kill."

The wind finally started to blow.

But for three seconds after Herman turned the pocket watch, the battle line was as still as a mirror-like lake.

It was as if both enemy and comrade had momentarily forgotten why they were standing there.

—

The divine markings in Xin Nai's eyes trembled slightly, and the vermilion talisman between her brows flickered faintly.

She sensed a certain fluctuation.

That was neither a numbering system nor an enemy redeployment.

Rather, it was a deep, viscous, fiery vibration carrying the "sound of conception."

She spoke softly, her voice low:

"coming."

She wasn't talking about destiny.

Rather, it is the mother.

Angela Herrington slowly emerges from the abyss of blood.

She did not fully descend onto the battlefield, but only released a set of "long-range uterine tentacles" structures.

It was an "incubation umbilical cord" woven from hundreds of biological neural notochords and high-order metal spinal chains.

Each one was covered in the undifferentiated life essence, and each segment pulsed with a faint but undeniable divine pulse, like an immature stellar heart beating continuously within the womb.

They didn't fly past, they pierced through.

In the instant it pierced through space, the sky seemed to be ripped open, twisted, and collapsed by the "umbilical cord breathing."

In the distance, the blood-coffin girl Helena suddenly looked up.

She is not a combat unit.

However, it possesses an extremely rare "resistance to maternal feelings".

She knew—it was the will of the source of the life seed system, the "originating entity".

She immediately stood in front of Herman, deploying the blood coffin defensive structure.

But it was too late.

Angela's tentacles, carrying ultra-high frequency divine suppression waves, had already pierced through the distance.

It pierced through Herman's left shoulder, tore through the protective rune array at the front of the blood coffin, and emitted a mournful sonic boom like the breaking of a uterus.

Hermann's pupils contracted sharply, and four wounds burst open in his abdomen in an instant, the flesh and blood rolled up, like the torn interior of a clock.

He was thrown out like an old pocket watch, crashing hard into the broken wall behind him, sending dust and bricks flying.

He coughed up a mouthful of black blood, his consciousness blurred, and his pupils trembled slightly, but his right hand was still tightly gripping the pocket watch that had not yet been returned to its place.

The blood-red coffin shattered, and Herman knelt silently.

The girl in the blood coffin showed no pain, only deep regret and tenderness.

She slowly collapsed to Herman's side, her blood as black as ink, flowing slowly and tightly enveloping his body like a gentle shell, offering her last warmth.

—

"Hermann!!"

For the first time, Nobuna shouted out her comrade's name on the battlefield.

She knew Hermann's "moment of rebirth"—it was thirty seconds away.

At this moment, the blood coffin shattered, and Helena was unable to protect him into the safe recovery zone. At this moment, he was just a "fragile mortal".

The enemy, however, is still closing in.

The third wave of the numbered troops has advanced into the left flank of the main battle line.

They sensed an "enhanced mastermind signal," identified Xinnai as the current highest combat node, and began rapidly reconstructing the attack formation and target identification sequence.

She did not back down.

She summoned the ghost back to her back, clasped her hands together, and the Book of Fate slowly appeared behind her.

On the star map, rows of numbers jumped and flipped, like a list of the dead being set ablaze, leaping one by one in her consciousness.

She closed her eyes and uttered a spell.

Each word is like a knife piercing flesh:
"Gojinin Nobuna."

"In the name of the descendants of the clan leader."

"By the vow of a priestess."

"By the covenant of eight hundred gods."

"Stay with him."

The divine runes reappeared, and the divine talisman burned.

She activated the dual-demon combined form.

Compensation through blood and flesh

【Soul-Destroying Fang】

[Soul Book renamed]

The three skills are used in succession, and the spell reconstructs to a high load.

Her figure, like a sword drawn from its sheath, slashed and spun amidst the torrent of life seeds.

The giant blade of the demon in front was as sharp as a mountain, while the ghostly threads behind were as if guiding a spirit.

With the two demons combined, her silhouette resembled a projection of a divine sorcerer, transforming into a "Shadow of Name Slayer" that roamed the battlefield.

With each stroke of the blade, a number is crossed off the register of fate.

She was not killing anyone.

She is deregistering those categories that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Number G-21, Number X-19, Number E-07...

Line after line—the names of the deprived—were ignited in her hands, turning into sparks that dissipated in the wind.

She knew her body was nearing its limit.

With her shoulder bone shattered and the cursed runes backfiring, every time she uttered a name, it felt like a piece of flesh and blood was being ripped from her soul.

But she still keeps thinking about it.

Because she—is still waiting.

She was waiting for that person.

The person who once told her, "I'll make you forget who you are."

The person who once said he was not a savior, not a name, not a number, not a myth—just an “empty page of existence.”

She was waiting for him to come back.

Hermann's body still lay in a pool of blood.

But the blood no longer flows outward.

It is flowing back.

From the shattered blood coffin and Helena's remaining body, thin, thread-like streaks of blood-red light slowly emerged.

It was as if the world had summoned him back from the end of time, and entered his body—his spine, his heart, and his eye sockets.

They are not liquids.

It is memory.

It's fate.

It is his unbroken connection with this world.

A familiar voice gently rang out between death and life.

Herena's voice was as gentle as ever, carrying a certain maternal quality, as if she were smiling and forgiving someone.

"You still owe the world a page."

“You said it yourself—'I haven’t finished that journey yet.'”

So, now—

“Let’s go through it again.”

[Mysterious Entry Activated: Moment of Rebirth]

The last wisp of runes on the blood coffin extinguished, transforming into a soft light that gently fell into Herman's chest.

A crisp "click" rang out in the air.

That wasn't a gunshot.

It was the sound of the pocket watch closing.

Herman opened his eyes.

His gaze was calm, with a faint red glint in his right eye, like a mechanical clock that had just been rewound, ticking and restarting in his eyes.

He slowly sat up, raised his hand to touch the bloody hole in his left shoulder, and sighed softly.

He reached out, picked up his half-crushed tobacco from the dust, put it in his mouth, and skillfully lit it.

Mars leaps up.

He grinned:
"I'm back." He stood up and walked back to the battlefield, his steps slow but steady, as if he were stepping on the line of a sentence he was meant to complete.

A gray wind swept up, lifting the hem of his trench coat, like pages of an old story that refused to fall silent.

The entire group of destiny-seed numbered individuals turned to look at him in an instant, causing a momentary delay in the identification chain—

They didn't know when he "came back".

It was as if he had never truly left.

—

Nobuna suddenly turned her head, before the vermilion brush had even touched the paper.

She saw Herman.

He walked step by step, tilting his head slightly, looking at the shattered light above the battlefield, as if watching a belated rain.

"Did you hold on?"

he asks.

Shinobu gritted her teeth, her wrist trembling slightly:
"I'm still studying it."

Hermann smiled gently, a smile that contained no weariness, only a sense of calm and contentment as he returned to his place.

"Then I'll help you—forget."

With a wave of his hand, the second hand of his pocket watch spun rapidly, and the domain recognition function quickly unfolded.

【Mysterious Entry: The Amnesiac】

Hermann lock-numbered main unit - number E-51.

Track identification complete.

He slowly walked forward, turning his pocket watch.

"Number E-51".

His tone was gentle, as if he were calling the name of an old friend.

The person who was numbered was startled and tried to respond, but the identification system suddenly malfunctioned, with data being redirected and logical chains being broken.

Hermann smiled slightly and flicked the second hand with his fingertips.

"you do not need to know."

"I don't need it either."

He narrowed his eyes, a slight smile playing on his lips, like the last sigh upon waking from a dream:
"Then I'll wipe you off."

next moment.

The aircraft, serial number E-51, suddenly stiffened, and the system displayed the following messages: "[Identification chain broken]", "[Command execution failed]", and "[Semantic drive failure]".

If he falls into a narrative blind spot, he collapses to the ground, like a line that has been "cut out" from the text.

Herman turned his head, his gaze sweeping over the remaining life seeds.

He exhaled a puff of smoke and spoke casually:
"Who's next?"

He stood beside Nobuna as if nothing had happened.

Smoke curled from his lips, and he looked as if he had just woken from a nap, or as if he had just walked slowly back into the crowd from the brink of death.

He shrugged, stretched, and the pocket watch in his hand continued to turn slowly.

Nobuna remained silent.

She simply turned a page slowly in the Book of Fate.

The vermilion brush hovers in the air, the fingertips move slightly, and light floats on the paper.

They just stood there.

One person—to make the enemy "forget".

One person—"writes down" the enemy.

They did not make loud oaths or adopt an arrogant attitude.

But at that moment.

They are the timekeepers and namers at the heart of the battlefield.

The third wave of advancing troops, numbered and assigned to specific military units, were re-equipped, their system hierarchy reorganized, their artifact cores activated synchronously, and the identification network began refreshing battlefield parameters.

This echelon is a new round of assault reorganization, possessing some adaptive learning capabilities, and can make algorithmic compensations for losses in upper-level combat.

Its logic modules have just completed their progressive deployment and are ready to push forward again to the front lines.

however--

The F-17, which had just taken its first step, suddenly stopped.

The moment he paused in mid-air, the surrounding wind seemed to freeze.

What appeared before his eyes was not Hermann's fighting stance.

Instead, it is a blurry, distorted, and undefinable gray image, like a "data afterimage" left after time has been repeatedly recorded and then failed to be altered.

"Recognition failed".

Hermann stood beneath the broken wall, a smile playing on his lips, his right hand still gently turning the dial on his pocket watch.

His voice was unhurried, as if he were asking a lost child for directions:

"Do you know who you are?"

The number F-17 trembled slightly, and its movements stiffened.

Hermann tapped his fingertip lightly, and the second hand ticked, like the echo of destiny returning to its rightful place.

"You've already—forgotten why you came here."

As soon as the words were spoken, F-17 suddenly shuddered.

The identification chain broke instantly, and the system fell into an "empty instruction loop".

His skills failed, his logic reversed, and his self-identification became incorrect, with the number E-06, which in turn led him to identify the other party as an "enemy unit".

The next second, he turned around and launched an attack without warning.

The long blade swept horizontally, directly slashing at the fellow warriors in the same battle column.

The frontline of the numbered army was instantly thrown into turmoil, its formation shattered, its sentry posts in disarray, and its execution chain delayed.

—

And the other side.

Nobuna slowly opened the Book of Fate and turned to the next page.

Fingertips hovered in mid-air, while the vermilion brush fell.

Her voice remained deep and clear amidst the chaos, slowly proclaiming like the judgment of an ancient god:
"Number E-42".

“You are the ‘Bone-Burning Feather’ in my remaining divine blood.”

"Today, I will accept your name."

As the words fell, the ghost silently rose from behind the red veil, its figure as thin as mist, its soul threads gently extending in its palm, like threads drawn from the long river of fate.

It moved silently forward, traversing the battlefield and circling behind number E-42.

The soul thread transformed into an inscribed rune, quietly wrapping around the core identification node in its chest.

E-42 detected the intrusion and was about to activate the defense program when its body suddenly froze.

On the Book of Fate, that number was crossed out by Shinnai with a single stroke.

It's like deleting "his existence" from the world's archive.

E-42 let out a very short mournful cry, and before it could be fully uttered, it turned into ashes.

It is not death.

It means "recycling".

Some are marked as "completed" and automatically included in the wind.

—

The identification chain of the Destiny Seed Army began to fall into complete chaos.

—Yes, when the command source is lost, the system oscillates in place, constantly trying to restart the "combat scenario," but due to the lack of a target, it falls into a self-circulation and keeps shaking.

—Some, in the chaos, "misjudge" each other, the logic trees are mixed with errors, and they judge their own teammates as priority enemy targets, resulting in them killing each other.

—Even more so, some have completely lost the ability to construct logic, falling into a "loop of empty actions".
Repeatedly unleashing meaningless skills causes the sanity bar to collapse at an irreversible rate.

The skill failed to trigger, the number flashed red, the execution status was chaotic, and the battlefield was like a swirling quagmire.

In this battlefield constructed of "memory ambiguity" and "naming fragmentation," Hermann and Shinnai are one still and one active, one deleting and one remembering.

One person makes the enemy "forget who he is".

One person made them "never remembered".

They remained silent.

But it caused the enemy to crumble from existence, inch by inch.

Hermann, a cigarette dangling from his lips, smiled with a mixture of weariness and amusement, his eyes growing increasingly deep with amusement.

“I just made seven people forget themselves.”

He turned his head, and through the swirling smoke, his gaze fell on Nobuna beside him.

“You just killed nine—people who shouldn’t have names.”

Nobuna nodded, her tone as calm as a referee's pen:

"Eight are left."

Hermann gently turned the second hand of his pocket watch, the gears ticking as if adding a countdown thread to the rhythm.

"Okay, then we'll each take four."

Nobuna picked up the vermilion brush, and the Book of Fate slowly turned in the wind, the corners of the pages fluttering as if waiting for the next line to be deleted.

"You remember."

she says.

"Then I will—cross it out."

The two said no more.

The demon blade suddenly slashed down, flames surged, the ground cracked, and a temporary fate seal composed of divine particles appeared in the air.

The ghostly threads intertwined, like a loom of fate winding forward, precisely binding the chest and spinal nerves of each numbered individual "identified and locked" by Hermann.

Hermann's trench coat billowed in the burst of wind, the black fabric fluttering slightly, a glimpse of tobacco in the air.

In that instant, the clock and the Book of Fate fell simultaneously.

Memory stripping, divine name erasure, logical backlash, recognition reset.

This is not just killing.

This is a systematic identity formatting process.

It is a deletion protocol jointly written by the namer and the forgetter.

Under their combined attack, the numbered army collapsed like a tidal wave, those with confused identifications killed each other, and those whose logic was out of control spontaneously combusted.

On the left wing, in this seemingly silent but actually thunderous "literary storm," the defensive posture quietly transformed into an offensive one.

The gray fog has not yet dissipated.

But the corpse has no form, and its name has nowhere to go.

The left wing of the numbered army has been wiped out completely.

The battlefield fell silent.

It wasn't the kind of celebration that comes with victory.

It is the calm that comes after clearing away the remnants of tactical logic.

The only sound was the Book of Fate slowly closing between Nobuna's fingers, the corners of the pages turning gently in the wind, as if still searching for the next being—someone who could be named or erased.

Hermann emerged from the ruins, his trench coat tattered and stained with blood, yet his steps were calm and steady.

He stood there for a moment, raised his hand to gently brush the dust off his shoulder, turned his neck, and then snapped his pocket watch shut.

"I'll remember you today."

He turned around, his tone smiling, but unusually serious.

Nobuna closed the Book of Fate and looked up at him.

"I'll remember you too."

"Hermann".

Hermann raised an eyebrow, a half-smile playing on his lips:

"You actually remembered my name?"

Nobuna looked at him, her tone soft, yet surprisingly earnest:

"It's not that you don't want to be remembered."

"You just haven't been properly remembered yet."

Herman paused for a moment.

This time, he didn't talk back.

He lowered his head, retie his shoelaces and the corner of his coat, and turned around while straightening his trench coat.

"Let's go."

He said.

"We're not dead yet."

Nobuna followed closely behind.

One person picks up a pen, the other adjusts a needle.

The Book of Fate and the Pocket Watch, the Ghost Before and the Ghost After, the Blood Coffin and the Fog.

Different rhythms, yet miraculously—a perfect concerto.

This battle is not about the protagonist showing off his skills.

It was not the beginning of a legend.

Instead, it was a profound and quiet process of editing the battlefield workflow.

They are not the main characters.

They are the kind of people who clean up the grid and remove the redundancy before the story unfolds.

This page doesn't need to be loudly proclaimed.

All it needs to do is be remembered.

The name wasn't given to me by anyone.
It wasn't stolen by anyone.

It was either sacrificed back to the temple.

Or it will be buried in the empty pages of the pocket watch.

Remembering someone is the beginning of destiny.

Forgetting someone is the end of fate.

(End of this chapter)