Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 317 The Windtalker and the Name of Revolution
They stole my name by using my number.
I returned to the world through the sound of the wind.

—From *Windtalkers: Ian's Secret Commentary*, page zero

Evening in the foggy city, on the basement floor of the Morning Star newspaper office.

The metal printing plate clicked, the sound monotonous and deep, like a kind of silence being squeezed out word by word from the mechanical gears.

The water stains on the wall were not yet completely dry and were slowly sinking along the cracks in the old bricks.

The air was filled with the bitter smell of cold ink, the dusty scent of old paper, and a hint of flint powder aroused by moisture, like a deep well that was emitting steam in its slumber.

Ian stood in front of the photographic mercury slide, his posture upright, his fingers touching his temples in a ceremonial salute, his gaze fixed.

He didn't speak, but his eyes held an indescribable solemnity.

Si Ming stood behind him, holding a newly printed draft of an identity card in her left hand. Faintly shimmering rune lines appeared on the paper.

It was as if ink was slowly seeping into the paper, embedding itself into Ian's card print.

"Does this name suit your taste?" Si Ming asked casually, as if it were just a routine handover.

“I don’t care about names,” Ian said softly. “As long as the wind can still call me by my real name, that’s enough.”

Si Ming chuckled, folded the fate card into a neatly folded identity page, and handed it over:

"From today onwards, your name is Ian Glass-Navier. Retirement number βR-11, Third Fleet, participated in Operation Whale Graveyard, confirmed as a surviving member of the Dream Lantern, and officially returned to civilian status by the military."

Ian reached out and took the "officially forged" identity page. His fingertips touched it, and the paper trembled slightly, like a feather being lifted by the wind, before it merged into the mysterious binding in his hand.

[Already bound to: Virtual Identity - Last Words Page]

Beneath the card, a line of very faint gray text appeared:

"A person cannot be reborn, but can be named."

Rex's shout came from upstairs: "The headline is ready, the second printing is about to roll off the line!"

Without turning his head, Si Ming replied calmly, "Add Ian's new identity and submit the version to the Ministry of the Interior's Printing and Printing Department for filing."

"Record it?" Rex paused slightly. "You really want the military to know?"

“Of course.” Si Ming’s expression remained unchanged. “The more alias it is, the more it should be written into their files.”

Ian didn't say anything, just stood there quietly.

The Wind Whisper Mystery in his palm trembled slightly, as if it were being summoned from some direction. A very subtle breeze was seeping out from the crack in the iron pipes in the ceiling, landing in his ear and whispering.

“The wind outside is starting to change.” He looked up at the old ventilation duct, his voice softer than before, but more resolute.

“The numberers started speaking. The common people also started saying in the night market: We set the fire, it wasn’t a gift from God.”

Si Ming glanced at him sideways, his smile not deep, but revealing a certain certainty:

"That wind is one you must guide."

"Let the wind blow through the market, through the square, through the blacksmith's workshop and the water tower street—"

"Let them begin to believe that mystery is not just a privilege held by nobles."

“The wind is theirs,” Ian whispered in response. “I’m just an ear.”

He turned and left the printing room, donned the dark blue cloak issued by the Morning Star newspaper, clutched the identity page in his hand, and stepped into the night.

From this moment forward, he is a returned numbered individual, a legally certified survivor of the Dream Lantern of the Empire, and a user of the Mysterious Tales—

What he wanted to do was to let ordinary people who had never been responded to by fate patterns and had never used secret techniques hear the sound of the wind for the first time.

-

The entrance to Jiushengqiao Street in the Eighth District of Wudu.

The night was like an indelible ash, clinging to every brick wall, heavily suppressing the breath of the entire street.

Ian leaned against an old chimney made of broken bricks, his gaze fixed on the blacksmith shop on the street corner.

The firelight flickered in the twilight, its red glow dancing among the ironwork. A dark-skinned, muscular man was sweating profusely as he pressed a red-hot iron bar into a water trough.
The steam burst forth, like an old war drum returning from the battlefield, being struck once more at this moment.

He is number βT-7, real name—Cam Rosar.

In the eighth round of the Whale Tomb Arena, he removed the flag of the seventh-ranked soldier on the armored soldier leaderboard.

Now, he is the owner of this blacksmith shop.

Ian stepped forward and whispered, "I heard you're blacksmithing now."

Kam looked up, the firelight reflecting a crimson hue onto his forehead. He recognized the person who had approached him, a familiar look appearing on his face.

“The Wind Whisperer?” he asked tentatively.

“That name can’t be used.” Ian shook his head and lowered his voice. “I am Ian Neville, ID number βR-11.”

The two looked at each other for a moment, then nodded slightly.

"You came here for that?" Kam wiped his hands and patted the iron filings off his chest.

“I came to see—whether fire can be used to forge things.” Ian’s gaze swept across the room, pointing to a stone table at the back: “What’s that?”

On the stone table, a brown card with tattered edges lay quietly, radiating a pale blue glow unique to the old and mysterious.

Cam explained in a low voice: "This morning, an old military family member brought it, saying it was the last card her husband sent back before he died at Whale Grave."

It took me three hours to wake it up.

"Do you have a secret?" Ian asked.

Cam walked to the hearth, pulled out a heavy iron hammer, and tossed it aside.

“I remember the rhythm of this hammer,” he said. “I used it to kill a Roaring Fang on the sixth level of the Whale Tomb.”

Ian caught the hammer and felt a deep resonance emanating from within the metal.

He stood still, the whispering wind already responding; a gust of wind slipped into his ear from between the bricks, murmuring like words:
"This card awoke once during the forging process. It spoke a name."

"What's your name?" Ian asked.

Kam pointed to the wall next to the stone table that was blackened by smoke.

Someone wrote a sentence with charcoal:

“My real name is Cam Rossal, not Numberer.”

Ian said softly:
"The name has awakened."

He watched the blue light on the card intensify and added in a low voice:
"The mystery is also responding."

He looked up, his gaze piercing through the mist, towards the distant night street.

"Did you hear that?"

Cam paused for a moment, then nodded, his voice low and deep:

"The wind spoke."

Their conversation was interrupted by a child's exclamation outside the door.

"He's cooking with fire! Mom, look—he's burned the roof down!"

Across the street, a boy who looked no more than fifteen years old jumped excitedly, pointing to the rooftops at the far end of the alley. There, a stove fire was burning with a bright orange flame.

A numbered veteran who was once the world's most mysterious creature holder is bringing to life the mysterious rule "Ember Summoning" that he learned on the battlefield in his early years.

The flame was small but steady, and under his precise control, it floated at the bottom of the iron pot, bubbling and cooking a pot of rice porridge even though there was no firewood.

He became the most popular free kitchen on the street.

His neighbor, γN-02, was a former World System quartermaster and is now the "steam room manager" of the neighborhood bathhouse.
He uses an outdated breathing technique to remedy rheumatism in the neighborhood. Children love to gather around him, watching him draw a paper bird with his breath.

“They’re ‘coming back’,” Ian said in a low voice.

Kam nodded, his eyes no longer showing the focus he had when forging iron, but with a hint of worry.

“But we used to belong to the army,” he said, “now we belong to the people.”

Ian looked into the distance, where the silhouettes of the old man, the child, and the returning migrants overlapped and intertwined in the firelight, like city walls forcibly glued together after the wars of the old era.

“That was the first opportunity,” he said.

He pulled out an unpublished page from the Morning Star Times from his pocket, which Si Ming had personally handed to him—the corners still bore carbon marks left by the hot pressing rollers.

"When the mystery first fell into the corner of the street, when the name first drowned out the number, this revolution was already irreversible."

The afternoon fog was heavy, and the residents of the Rope Bridge Street area were slowly getting used to a new kind of light.

It is not the candlelight atop a church, nor the magic lamp under the eaves of a nobleman's house.

Rather, it was a mysteriously ignited spark of livelihood.

Ian sat on the corner of the street, tapping his fingers lightly on the rusty edge of an old mailbox. Beside him, a veteran with a bandage on his elbow and a cut on his lip was adjusting a rusty teardrop pocket watch.

His name is Sikor, his serial number is βL-06. He used to be a fleet engineer and now makes a living by repairing watches.

“I’ll adjust the ship’s clock from the front,” Sikor said, while unscrewing the watch cover with a small screwdriver.

"Now we'll switch to this. I heard it's called a 'non-binding arcane energy trigger valve.' I don't understand the technical terms, but I can use it."

In the wooden box beside him lay a faintly glowing fragment of a light blue card. The card was mottled, with only the upper right corner still shimmering.

"It still works?" Ian asked.

“Look,” Sikor said, pointing to a small groove on the back of the pocket watch. “I’ve embedded a fragment in it, so the watch can spin twice a day.”

"You mean, you used the Mysterious Card to adjust the clock?"

Sikor grinned: "It's not about adjusting the clock, it's about letting people know what time to wake up and what time to go to sleep."

"This is 'time discipline.' On the ship, this is fate."

A soft sound came from the street corner; it was several children surrounding an old numberer.

The old man smiled and repurposed his old mystery cards, turning them into a street magic trick:
Fallen leaves soar into the air, dust swirls, and raindrops freeze.

The children were captivated by every demonstration. "He's the card reader," someone whispered nearby.

“The card reader?” Ian turned around.

A gentle-looking middle-aged man approached and handed him a thin, self-printed book. The cover was made of coarse paper and had the following written on it:

"Mysteries and Us: The First Lesson in Card Playing for Ordinary People"

“We’ve formed a club,” the man said. “In the old church’s underground classroom. We don’t bind people, we don’t use magic, we just tell stories.”

"We hope that everyone whose destiny lines have not yet been opened can also understand that mystery is not just divine revelation—it is knowledge."

Ian opened the book; the first page was an illustration: a numbered person, carrying a worn-out military bag, stood on the street, with freshly painted graffiti on the wall behind him that read:

“Life lines are not just marks, they are tools.”

"Where did you learn that from?" Ian asked.

The man spread his hands, smiling serenely.
"It was told by the soldiers who returned from the Whale Tomb, and it was written by the Morning Star. We read it, and then we made it up ourselves."

"Is this your 'revolution'?"

“No,” the man said seriously, “this is our own dictionary.”

-

As night falls, the lights on the old street corners gradually come on.

But this time, it's no longer a centralized power supply from the Magic Orbit.

Instead, the world-type "Heart Flame" was activated, and the Mysterious Ghost directly summoned a small patch of fire.

A woman stood by the roadside, conjuring a steady flame to cook porridge in an iron pot. As she stirred, she showed passersby the faint life mark on her palm:
“This is a card left by my son. He died on the whale grave, but his life mark is still there, so I will use it for him.”

"Are you scared?" someone asked.

She shook her head, her eyes clear and resolute.

"They said it was mysterious and dangerous."

"But all I know is that this fire is how he came back."

Ian wrote down the sentence on the pages of the Wind Whisperer he always carried with him.

He knew that all of this was not yet a system, and much of it was still just spontaneous interaction and vague attempts.

But he knew—

"This is the first enlightenment."

he whispered.

"It's not about power, it's about naming."

Behind him, the first batch of "common people's card-playing clubs" is quietly taking shape.

They neither fight nor pledge allegiance to any power.

They only tell the stories of those who are numbered.

By using "deconstruction, memory, and resonance," the mysterious becomes a common language for mortals for the first time.

The night in the foggy city is very quiet.

The streetlights were not yet fully lit, but in the old town, at the end of Morning Star Alley, at the corner of Stone Pagoda Street, and along the shore of Fog Shadow Harbor, some things lit up even earlier than the streetlights.

They are not fire.

It's a card.

Mysterious Card.

The Mysterious Cards, once reserved solely for the nobility, are now being used by a group of "unbound individuals" gathered in a civilian clubhouse converted from an abandoned armory.
Spread out in the center of a wooden table that has been repaired countless times, the light shimmers, illuminating earnest yet unfamiliar faces.

"Welcome to the first card game lesson."

The voice is from Ian.

He was not wearing a naval uniform, nor was he wearing the necklace that symbolized the Windtalker.

He was only wearing an old sailor's cloak from the foggy city, the cuffs stained with ink from the Morning Star newspaper's printing press, and one corner was torn.

"I won't teach you how to fight."

He glanced around, his gaze calm yet unwavering.
"I only want to say one thing—this is not something you stole."

He unfolded a yellowed card in his hand, the light on the card surface flickering, gently revealing an image of a sea monster skeleton with a pattern of coiled tides.

[Mysterious Card - Life Type - Tide-Singing Sea Claw]

"This card once belonged to a numbered player. In the tenth round of the Whale Grave Arena, he killed seven people just to keep this fragment."

"After he fell into a deep sleep, he was sent to a noble estate to train hunting dogs—but he didn't lose the card."

Ian placed the cards flat on the table, his voice low but resonating throughout the room:
He said, "What I gained by dying once should not belong to anyone else."

A brief silence followed.

At that moment, there was no longer any awe in the lamplight, only a silence that could almost be described as "reclaiming".

A dignity that gathers like a surging tide.

-

After the divination session, many people who had never had a lifeline surrounded Ian with questions.

"Can we use the card too? Even if it's not linked?"

"The Mysterious Society says that non-nobles with licenses need to register. Will we get arrested?"

“Our family didn’t even have a serial number before… does that mean we shouldn’t even mention it?”

Ian smiled, walked to the wall, and took down a note that was stuck there.

The paper read:

“Number αF-14, previous owner unknown, went into hibernation after rescuing two civilians.”

He held up the piece of paper, his voice soft, yet carrying a firmness carried on the sea breeze:
"The person who talks about him doesn't need cards, they just need to remember his name."

"If you can speak, you can possess."

"Owning is not the right to use, but the right to understand."

-

After that night, the first "nameplate walls" appeared in Chongqing.

They are not as solemn and heavy as the Dream Lantern Monument, nor as majestic as a monument; they are simply a few lines of words written on the blank space of a repainted corner of the city wall.

Some only say:

"Numbered Person's Storytelling - Today's Card Teller: 'Ian'"

Below are several sets of numbers, card codes, brief descriptions, and user stories.

There was no military seal, no insignia, and no rank number.

But these walls were quickly copied, reproduced, and disseminated, from the dilapidated sheds of the fish market to the bookstore alley behind the church, and even the back wall of the tea stall at the Fengxin Well.

The mysterious name was not first learned by people from military newspapers or church sermons.

Instead, they gradually learned from word-of-mouth accounts, from neighbors' stories, from their older brothers' recollections, and from the lamplight before their children went to sleep:

Mystery is not just a code name for divine magic.

It is a card that represents someone who once bled, someone who remembers, and someone who honors it with their name.

It was only after being stripped of their power that they realized what true "ownership" really meant.

Ian sat on the top floor of the Morning Star newspaper building, gazing at the ever-growing lights in the distance.

Rex was teaching the numbered soldiers how to shoot in the yard, his posture steady and his voice booming.
Baroque brought back a group of wounded soldiers and their families, who were being housed in the back shed of the newspaper office, covered with old blankets.

Si Ming did not appear, leaving only a newly formatted draft of the supplement.

The title is:
Mysteries and the Streets: The Card Dealer's Weekly Plan

First issue signed: Ian.

Ian's fingertips slowly traced the still-scented ink on the paper, and he read aloud a passage in a low voice:
"If future children hear 'mystery' for the first time not from prayers, not from the mouths of nobles, but from—"

“From a fisherman’s story, from a newspaper boy’s mother, from a crack in an old card.”

"Then the revolution is halfway complete."

"Because—this is no longer their miracle."

"They are our tools."

He closed the supplement and looked up at the sky.

The fog lingers, the night is deep, and the starlight has yet to pierce the curtain of the empire.

But he knew that the names hidden in the old cards had begun to be read aloud again.

And this is the starting point for language to break free from fear.

"A mysterious revolution does not begin with iron and fire."

"It began with a naming, a story, and the act of putting a card on a street corner."

"They say fire can burn down a city, but they just added an extra key to every door."

—From "The First Night's Poems" by the Card Game Club

(End of this chapter)