Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 289 Before the Mother Goddess, the Stars Return to Their Seats

Some battlefields aren't on the map, they're just in the beat;

Some gatherings don't rely on commands, but only on intentions.

They returned from different ruins, victories, wounds, and silences.
Yet they stood still before the shadow of the same god.

They did not speak.

Because they know—

The time for speaking is reserved for the last winner.

—The gray fog began to dissipate.

The embers were still warm when a gust of wind lifted the sleeve of a trench coat, revealing a closed pocket watch.
There were still some bloodstains and soot on the edge of the silver casing.

Hermann stood up, squinting slightly, as if still trying to discern the overlapping boundary between reality and memory.

He exhaled deeply and stubbed out the last cigarette into a crevice in the rock beside him.

The fire went out.

"I've finished recalling."

He didn't look back.

He simply strode forward, his steps loose yet firm, as if he had finally finished writing, reading, and closing a piece of old poetry hidden deep in his mind.

—The fire was extinguished.

Before the molten marks had cooled, a spent cartridge rolled down onto the scorched earth, striking the edge of the rock layer with a crisp "clang".

Natasha stopped, sheathed her two guns, and her shoulders trembled slightly.

She raised her hand, and the second hand of her pocket watch slowly returned to zero.

A silvery-white metal shell covered her heart, and she quietly pressed it back in without saying a word.

She turned around, following the trajectory of her last bullet, against the flash of light, and walked step by step back to the "line of return".

silent.

But its accuracy was as sharp as a gunshot.

—The book is closed.

Lynn put away the star chart and pocket watch together, the slight tremor of the time anchor point still lingering on his fingertips.

She took a deep breath and gently ran her fingers over the scorched, torn page of the experimental manuscript, which she had still recorded completely.

Her gaze was as calm as a pendulum returning to center.

She knew that the Grey Tower had not been rebuilt.

She also knew that the light of the tower was not in the building itself—but in every word she wrote.

She took a step and walked in the direction the light indicated.

Not to remember, but to move forward.

—The Book of Fate is archived.

Nobuna lowered her head and slowly closed the Book of Fate.

The last wisp of soul thread coiled and spun around her fingertips before being quietly taken away by Hou Gui and dissipated in the wind.

The demon knelt down, sheathed his giant blade, and gradually tightened the seal on the card.

She did not cry.

There was no prayer.

Because there are eight million gods, she has no need to pity them.

All they need is her—keep writing.

Her steps were steady, as if she were going to God's presence, or as if she were leaving an altar.

The bloodstains underfoot are no longer traces of sacrifice, but ink marks acknowledged by fate.

—The illusion dissipates.

Si Ming slowly emerged from that three-hundred-second "dream of lies".

He still held the brush in his hand, the remaining gray light at the tip slowly dissipating into the air.

He didn't look up immediately.

Because he knew that this page did not belong to him alone.

This page is a collaborative work written by everyone, through battle, through breath, and through sacrifice.

This is not the story he told.

Rather, it's the point where the paragraphs they wrote together intersect.

The camera slowly zooms out.

Six figures emerged from three battlefronts—

Hermann, with blood still wet on his shoulder, closed his pocket watch like a seal on a tombstone;

Natasha, her trench coat still stained with gunpowder, but her eyes never looked back;
Lynn walked with a calm and steady gait, like data being burned into the core of the gray tower after recording.
Xin Nai, with the Book of Fate hanging from her wrist and the divine markings still visible, could still write down a thousand names with her pen;

The God of Fate, his pen slightly lowered, his illusions still unclosed, has just returned from a story, yet he is already preparing to write the next line.

And always by his side, shoulder to shoulder, was Selene.

She didn't speak, she just stood there, like a title page that hadn't been turned yet had always been read to the end.

In the distance, there was a figure still kneeling within the domain—Zhuang Yege.

He did not move.

Because he is still holding up the "gate of return" of the bridge.

Seven people.

They returned to their positions simultaneously from three fronts and five battlefields.

Beneath their feet lay the shattered city of secret remains.

Ahead of them stood Angela Herrington, who was still not silent.

They stood side by side in silence.

A silent assembly.

Like a living array of seals.

No longer relying on cards.

No more spells.

And by virtue of their will and their names that stand here.

this moment.

It's a passage where the protagonist is absent, a chapter where the hero has not yet returned.

But on that blank page, before any words were even written, they had already inscribed "living"—

We are still here.

Starbridge remained silent.

It was as if the entire City of Bones was holding its breath for this moment.

And then, she finally moved.

Angela Herrington, the being no longer referred to as "humanoid," slowly raised her body.

That's not a person's body.

It is a composite organ formed from the mixture of temple ruins and reproductive sacs, a structured "maternal will" that has transcended the boundaries of language, biology, and race.

From her main body, which resembled a ritual vessel, countless umbilical cords, uterine vessels, and fetal tentacles slowly unfolded like nerves flowing in the mist.

Red mist formed clusters of spores on her body, each cluster displaying the afterimages of remains with different numbers, as if some unfinished life seed was circulating within her body.

Her lower body did not touch the ground.

Instead, it is integrated into the Earth's core, deeply embedded in a "nest of embryonic discs" forged from flesh and blood—an extension of the core organ beneath the City of Mysteries, like her navel, connecting to the fertile source of the entire world.

She no longer "walks".

She was pulsating slowly, like the swelling of a star, or the rhythmic contractions of the uterus before childbirth.

Her "hair" had long since transformed into dozens of umbilical cords, stretching for several meters, hanging in mid-air, each strand of red silk moving slowly.
It was as if the soul was wandering through a network of nerves, accompanied by low-frequency breathing sounds, like a mother murmuring in a dream.

And her face—

It was still that dignified, kind, and smiling face.

That was a mother's face.

It is neither a threatening god nor a howling monster.

Instead, she looked at the seven people with all her tenderness.

She looked at them as if they were her own seven children whose umbilical cords had been cut.

It tried to escape before it was even born.

Unwilling to return to its nest, yet still bearing the marks of her gestation.

She didn't roar.

There was no loud rebuke.

She simply smiled, her eyes crinkling slightly, her voice so gentle it was heart-fluttering:

“You’re all standing here.”

“I thought—you were still struggling, crying out, begging.”

She slowly raised her fingertips, her fingers still long and elegant, like a mother calling roll.

She first pointed to Si Ming:

“You… were supposed to be my best star-seed vessel.”

"You are designed as the logical shell of language, capable of telling stories and also importing paragraphs I have written for you."

Then, she looked at Nobuna.

His tone was slightly slower, but still as gentle and soothing as amniotic fluid:
"You are my most perfect reverse organ."

“You can purify me, and you can also give birth to a ‘clearer divine signal’ in the process of reversal.”

She looked at Lynn again, a silent approval in her eyes:
“You are the ‘Time Embryo Chain’ that I selected from the Gray Tower.”

"If you do not exist, the logic of destiny will never be able to 'remember the past'."

Her fingertips turned toward Natasha, her tone becoming subtle, with a rhythmic attempt to "tune" her voice:

"You are the 'metronome' I plan to incorporate into the hunting engine."

“Every shot is a ‘corrective signal for the behavior of the fugitive’.”

Finally, her gaze settled on Herman.

Her voice was the softest.

Yet it seemed to fall into everyone's heart:
"And you—are an 'empty page' that I can never write any number on."

"You are not in the formula, yet you repeatedly appear in paragraphs that I cannot see."

Each word felt like liquid, flowing down my spine and into my ears.

Every single one of them heard it.

What we hear is not just sound, but a kind of "touch" on an existential level:
Like the peristalsis of the uterine wall;
Like being enveloped by amniotic fluid;

Like the sound of a soul slowly wandering in the blank space before it is named.

"You rejected me."

She smiled, her eyes still carrying a mother's tenderness.

"Therefore, you are no longer human."

Her tone shifted abruptly, and for the first time, her voice revealed an extremely cold and judgmental tone.

"You are—anti-pregnancy bodies."

She smiled.

She was genuinely laughing.

That smile was like the morning light piercing through a milky white curtain, or like a ray of light before a scalpel cuts through a nerve ending.

Quiet.

Accurate.

Horrible.

Like the final, gentle contraction before bursting.

Angela slowly opened her arms.

The movement was not hasty, but rather elegant, like the final moment of lifting the curtain in an ancient god's ritual.

Her abdomen suddenly split open, revealing a "starburst pregnancy mark" on her body, deep and intense, like a primordial crack in the universe.

Inside the crack was a crystal-clear, cracked star embryo core, embedded in the center of her uterus.

That was the "core embryo" of the City of Life Seeds.

Starlight flows in the blood, and countless unfinished numbered structures writhe on the outer wall of the crystal core, like a prayer that has not yet awakened in the depths of a dream and a distorted desire for birth.

She whispered:
"You want to end me?"

"Then you must first go through everything I have conceived."

“I will reshape the process of ‘birth’ for you.”

"Start with pain."

The words fell.

She opened her arms, and the entire sky swirled around her, as if the structure of a womb were undergoing a reverse collapse in a higher dimension. The clouds turned red, and the sunlight transformed into the color of placenta, spreading across the earth.

Mother Goddess, descend.

Angela unfolds her star-shaped embryo.

That's not a domain.

It is not an energy body.

Rather, it is a conceptual reproductive structure.

Countless wriggling patterns appeared around the star embryo crystal core, each one like a biological blood vessel, yet constantly releasing mysterious projections of failure.

They are discarded fragments of destiny, broken cursed tools, and "card fragments" after consciousness has been fragmented.

It is a “regeneration matrix” woven from victims, abandoned pawns, out-of-control individuals, and heterogeneous entities.

She opened her mouth and whispered, her voice penetrating every nerve structure of the umbilical cord, like the sound of a fetus, into the depths of everyone's soul:

"Next, you will experience the process of being reborn."

"You are no longer hunters."

"You are the ones I am about to give birth to."

—

Hermann's cigarette burned out in the wind.

He glanced at the battlefield, then looked up, his voice hoarse:

"...I hate being born."

The twin demons of Nobunaga reawaken, divine runes appear, and the Book of Fate unfolds.

Her eyes were as cold as flames:
"She wants to treat us as her new organs."

Natasha stood still, dual pistols in hand, her eyes as cold as frost.

Lynn lowered his head and gently opened his pocket watch. The hands returned to their original positions. His lips moved slightly, but he only uttered one sentence:
"Grandpa, now we'll see—whether we can keep writing."

—

Siming slowly walked to the front of the seven people.

He did not remove the card.

He simply raised his right hand.

In his palm, a rarely used, mysterious term appeared:

【The Thousand-Faced Master of Destiny】

He read the second entry in a low voice:
"The favor of fate."

An invisible hand emerged from the star map structure, its outline blurred, its fingers transparent as feathers, slowly tracing across the core of the seven people's soul recognition.

There was no fire, no light.

But everyone felt a slight shift in their heart rate—not an increase in strength.

It's not about enhancing or increasing the power of the amplification.

Instead, it's a "survivor segment hint," like a script being subtly modified.

Lynn's pocket watch suddenly slowed by 0.7 seconds—in that instant, she dodged a fiery slash that was falling diagonally from above.

Natasha's gun barrel spontaneously adjusted itself as it lost its balance, striking the core of the attack's identification.

When Hermann landed, he should have missed a step, but instead a protruding rock slab collapsed and steadily supported him.

Nobuna's ghostly silk should have snapped, but an extra strand broke off and accurately wrapped around the enemy's throat.

They didn't know if it was a coincidence.

Yet I felt a sense of being allowed to live by the story.

But the God of Fate knew.

This is the script he wrote for the seven characters, in which "the protagonist will not die from the first blow."

He said softly:

"Favor is not protection."

"Favor is what allows the story to continue."

He looked up at Angela, who was transforming into the red Mother Nest universe, his gaze fearless.

"You treat them like organs."

"But we're standing here—not to be your next batch of material."

He gripped the pen tightly in his other hand, and a faint starlight flashed from the tip.

His gaze was calm, yet it seemed like the look of someone checking the title one last time before putting pen to paper.

"We are here to tell you—the Matrix is not God."

"And your starseed will also—die because of its name."

He turned around and looked at everyone behind him.

None of the seven men retreated.

he asks:

"Are you ready?"

The seven stood side by side, the star bridge beneath their feet trembling.

They were facing the womb of God, which sought to conceive, devour, and name them.

boom--

The first burst of light was released from the depths of Angela's astral core.

That wasn't a simple burst of energy; it wasn't fire, thunder, or magic.

That was—"the cry of a newborn."

It wasn't the lament of a single being, but rather the cry of hundreds of "unfinished numbered" half-life embryos.

After being forcibly created, it was thrown onto the battlefield in the form of "fuzzy entities".

They do not have a stable shape.

It's like a "story beginning" pieced together from flesh and blood, glass, fragments of star charts, remnants of language, the breath of the mother, and the spell of oblivion.

Incomplete, yet it possesses an unstoppable urge to grow.

They twisted, expanded, and shrieked in mid-air, burning like distorted signals as they landed, as if "a new manuscript had its page number twisted wrong" all at once.

Each "descending entity" carries fragments of an unformed card structure:

—A damaged low-tier fire-type life card;

—A piece of flawed logic from a cursed blade that failed to be pieced together;

—A chaotic, incoherent world-system law;

—A fate variable that has been rewritten three times but still cannot function.

They are "anthropomorphic entities that have not yet become characters".

They should not exist on the battlefield.

However, during Angela's "pregnancy boom," they swarmed in like illegitimate children after rain.

—

Lynn was the first to respond, decisively activating the retrospective anchor point. Silver light leaped from the pocket watch, and the gray mist suddenly twisted, diverting the first wave of "star tide" out of its straight impact path.

Natasha didn't wait for confirmation. Hermina and Lucia loaded their twin guns in a crossfire. The first shot pierced the curse core, and the second shot severed the consciousness core, with precision as if hunting down a celestial executioner.

Herman activated the "Amnesia Pointer," pointing it diagonally. Three seconds after being generated, the seven lifelike beings fell into a "birth cause identification error," becoming lost on the spot and beginning to attack and self-destruct each other.

Nobuna unfolds the Book of Fate.

Those "divine possessions" whose incantations were not yet complete were labeled by her as "pseudo-divine monstrous bodies." With a stroke of her pen, the incantation seals became ineffective, and the bodies exploded and self-destructed.

But this is just the beginning.

The next second, Angela opened the second layer of the star embryo's structure.

Deep within her body cavity, a writhing triple uterine matrix slowly unfolded, like the layers of a star's nest peeling away, radiating a light that was almost divinely inspired.

The first layer: the numbering center, which gathers the identification structure fragments of the three deceased geniuses to form a "twin decision-making body" with battlefield dispatch logic;
The second layer: the incubation cavity, with an embedded adaptive system that can cope with wind, fire, corrosion, and anti-magic environments, forming a "life-growth shell";
The third layer: the spark core—three “divine consciousnesses” that have been intercepted, compiled, and compressed: Wang Yichen, Minako, and Leo.

They are "failed children".

It was the most painful yet closest attempt at creating a "complete" pregnancy in her past.

Now, it has been rewritten as a "pregnancy factor" and injected into the neurogenic nucleus.

Now, their "echoes" have become the three-core main brain of the Destiny Tide.

—

“She’s not launching an attack.” Herman looked up, his voice low and hoarse.

She is giving birth.

Natasha gritted her teeth and uttered coldly:

"That's disgusting."

Lynn's fingers hovered over the edge of the pocket watch, his cold gaze reflecting the shimmering light of the red nest.

"She wants us to die before the birth line."

The twin demons of Nobunaga reawakened, and the Eight-Headed Serpent Mark leaped beneath his feet, as if a divine power had been activated.

—

Si Ming slowly stepped to the front of the seven people.

He did not remove the card.

He simply held up his pen, his hand bowed.

His gaze fell on the nest that pulsated like the nerves of a star, where sparks pulsed, each movement like the womb of the entire city preparing to give birth.

He whispered:

"She is not a god."

"She's just a... failed story of someone who misspoke."

The roar, like the sound waves of a womb bursting, echoed through the heavens and earth.

The peristalsis of the triple star embryo finally reached its peak.

More than ten "unfinished" life seed shells broke out of the body, like the shadows of newly born gods, falling from the body fluids.

Their limbs were not fully developed, and they were barely recognizable, but each one possessed some indescribable, compelling urge to be born.

They did not come to fight.

They are fighting for existence itself.

This is Angela's will:

"I don't need to win."

"All I need is—to let you live again."

"Inside me."

She opened her arms, transforming into a womb-like dome of flesh and blood, with the umbilical cord falling like a torrential rain and blood mist rising in reverse.

The landscape of the central region of the City of Bones was forcibly rewritten during her "Life Pregnancy Expansion"—

This area became the birthing area.

—

Behind the Star Bridge, space trembled slightly.

Ruoli's mental projection trembled slightly in the higher-dimensional interface; she had already sensed the crisis approaching the star-level critical point.

At this moment, the seven people stood side by side, forming a line.

They are the final seal.

It was also the first and foremost wall of will that refused to be reborn.

Nobuna walked to the front.

The Book of Fate hung in the air, its pages unfolding like divine pronouncements; before the vermilion brush touched the paper, the tip trembled slightly.

Her gaze remained calm as ever, yet a deeper layer of divine rage emanated from it.

She gazed at the writhing mother star nest as if looking at the dark scripture behind a blasphemous god.

"She gave birth to a false god."

"I—reclaim my divine name."

The pen tip falls, a touch of vermilion, like a crack in fate, splitting the sky in the light.

Hermann stood on the left wing, smoke curling around his shoulders, his pocket watch ticking as it opened and closed, each tick seeming to shatter the very bones of memory.

He squinted, his expression casual yet as if waiting for an old poem to flow out from the clock again.

"She creates the serial numbers."

“I made them—forget why they came here.”

The second hand slipped down, leaving a trail of blank spaces in the air—the lingering echo of countless recognition paths being cleared.

Lynn raised his hand and activated the Gray Tower ritual array. The star map beneath his feet slowly unfolded, coinciding with the gray gear array, and the temporal sequence rotated rhythmically.

Her gaze seemed to still linger on an unfinished experimental manuscript, yet she had already thrown her pen into battle.

"She wants to use us as material."

"And I—will write our own conclusions."

Each syllable is like a gear meshing, and each word or phrase is like something about crushing a fabricated "description of life".

Natasha raised her gun.

The muzzle was no longer hot, but it remained accurate.

The stopwatch in front of her went to zero, and Hermina and Lucia's twin pistols slowly spun in her hands, converging into a cross-shaped line of fire.

"She counted the baby's movements."

"I'll count the bullets."

She gave a cold laugh and whispered:
"This time, I'm fighting for myself."

Her eyes were like a hunter looking up at the dawn—not waiting for salvation, but the moment she resolved to let go of her hesitation.

Selene stood to the right of Si Ming.

Blood flames burned at her fingertips, and nine tails swayed gracefully behind her like fire serpents, reflecting her stunningly beautiful yet bewitching face.

A glint of greed appeared in her eyes. It wasn't madness, but longing—the naked desire of a vampire for life, for love, and for battle.

She lightly licked the corner of her lips, her smile chilling:

"She wanted to carry me."

"But I—have already been written into his book."

She wasn't trying to break free; rather, she had already chosen her own destiny, the one to be "written" by whom.

Zhuang Yege is still behind the bridge.

He raised his head, his face pale and blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, but his tone was not weak, only full of entrustment.

He exhaled his last breath, as if entrusting his life to the end of a sentence.

"The door is still there."

He smiled:

"You, go and lock her up."

He does not need to participate in the final narration.

Because he had already finished writing his own chapter.

Finally, there is the God of Fate.

He stood at the center of the formation.

The wind swirled around his robes, and with a flick of his pen, the void instantly darkened.

Starlight flows from the tip of the pen, illusion and destiny intertwine into a scroll, and the shadows of thousands of cards unfold around you like feathers.

He didn't say much.

It's just a single stroke.

These five simple words are as profound as the pages of a thousand ancient scriptures.

"That's all for now."

The voice wasn't loud, yet it drowned out the blood waves and star tides, entering the consciousness of everyone present.

This sentence is a declaration.

It is the act of putting pen to paper.

It is a denial of the gods' "control over life".

The seven formed a battle formation.

The life lines rolled back, the domain lines were reassembled, the seams of the remaining pages closed, and the structural instructions took shape.

They are no longer resisters.

They are the writers.

On the other side, the Mother Goddess spoke.

The star embryo fully opened, its light like a blood cavity tearing apart, and more than ten life-seed spirit shells roared to life. The red mist was like amniotic fluid returning, and the heavens and earth shook like a womb breaking open.

This is no longer a simple battle.

This is a scene where the protagonists reject a flawed ending.

It is not destruction.

It's a rewrite.

Not killing.

It is writing.

Her childbirth was a sequel to a mistake.

And their pens finally reached the end, just before the period.

When the Mother Goddess opened her womb
They stood as a doorway.

It wasn't to escape.
Rather, it's so that they will never be born again.

Someone needs to survive.

They—simply to make death worthy of being written about.