Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 360 Blood Moon Ritual: Gods Awaken from the Flesh
"When life is no longer a journey, but merely the fuel of destiny, we call it a sacrifice."

And the ultimate sacrifice is the mouth of God.

—Quoted from "Forbidden Texts of the Church of Our Lady, Bloodstained Rank, Page Thirteen"

The bells of Notre-Dame Basilica had never tolled so slowly, as if some inexplicable spell were hidden within the bell tower.
It slowly seeps into people's blood and quietly erodes the fate of the entire city.

Medici sat serenely atop the clock tower, her slender, eerie figure completely enveloped in a crimson robe.

The layers of life-patterned robes, like fresh blood that has never dried, seeped into the stone slabs, eroding the purity of this world.

She closed her eyes and remained motionless, as if listening to some whisper beyond reality, a mysterious revelation seeping from the deep stars.

Suddenly, she opened her eyes.

Her pair of deep red eyes were unfathomable, and starlight-like life lines appeared on her palms, shimmering with an eerie light that symbolized destruction and rebirth.

"...It started to fall off."

Her soft voice was like falling dust, yet it carried an irresistible majesty, instantly piercing through the entire church's star-like ridges.

She keenly sensed that Henrian VII's destiny was already in jeopardy—

The seal of the curse that had plagued her for years, the life cage constructed by the "Azure Lion Battle Spirit," finally showed signs of cracks and decay.

Even the World System Power Card "The Thirteenth Quiet Island," which had always unsettled her deepest feelings, was slowly sliding into chaos.

Everything was proclaiming that the aging king had finally reached the end of his life.

Medici rose slowly, her steps silent, as if crossing the boundary between dreams and reality, and stepping into the center of the altar.

That was the core of an ancient, dormant life array, with twelve crisscrossing life runes, like the bloodline of sleeping stars, waiting to be awakened.

Floating above the altar was a slender yet sharp ritual blade, forged by her own hand from her own life runes. Its cold, eerie light seemed to yearn to devour the essence of fate.

Medusa remained expressionless as she pressed the blade against her chest and gently down.

No blood flowed; instead, life lines, like silk threads, seeped into the blade.
Trembling slightly, like strands of silk from the sea of ​​stars, it rapidly wove together a vortex-like star map, slowly rotating and swallowing the surrounding light.

She raised her hands, as if drawing upon the light of destiny:

"The old king will pass away, and a new god will rise."

"Twelve dioceses, let your life lines guide you, let your bloodlines fuel you, and ignite the torch of your destiny."

In an instant, the entire star map of the capital city seemed to be burned by invisible flames.
Her lifeline was ripped from the star veins buried deep underground, surging toward an indescribable center—the very core of the stellar calamity that intertwined her fate.

Medici, daughter of the former king, is slowly initiating a massive blood-related celestial calamity by sacrificing her own bloodline and the millions of lives in the capital.

And every living being in the city began to sense something amiss:

"I... am fading away."

Their skin was unbroken, their blood was not spilled, but what disappeared was the fate that should have been theirs, and all the possibilities that would have allowed them to continue living.

Deep within the Basilica of Our Lady, above the main array of life, crimson life lines quietly emerged.
Like blood heated by an ancient curse, it slowly flows between the stone bricks, exhibiting a chillingly viscous texture.

Medici stood at the center of the formation, the seven crescent-shaped statues behind her seemingly watching silently.
She slowly spread her arms, and the destiny diagram behind her suddenly bloomed, transforming into a rotating scarlet wheel.

First parish, ignited.

A crimson beam of light bearing life patterns suddenly rose from the East Tower clock tower, shooting straight into the sky and carving a star pattern node as ferocious as a demonic eye in the dark sky.

"Synchronization confirmed." Medici's deep voice, like the whisper of a ferryman of the River Styx, contained an unfathomable chill and majesty.

Second parish, ignited.

Inside the church's interrogation room, nine sacrificed individuals collapsed to the ground, their life lines forcibly stripped away, struggling to detach from their bodies like desperate vines.

A young girl murmured softly, her voice echoing through the darkness:
"I had a dream... In the dream, I became someone else."

The Third Diocese, ignited.

In the market, a statue of the Virgin Mary has pale red tears streaming from its eyes. These are not water droplets, but liquid life, flowing down its cheeks and into the mysterious sacrificial mouth hidden below.

Fourth Parish, Ignite—

Fifth Parish, Ignite—

With each node lit, Medusa's body trembled slightly.

Her fair and cold face began to show an otherworldly, chilling glow, and tiny, mysterious star-shaped cracks crawled up her skin, as if revealing the "divine essence" hidden beneath her flesh.

A whisper sounded in her ear, a voice from the deepest recesses of her heart, yet also from the distant and untouchable abyss of the universe:

"You are a cup."

"You are the instrument."

"You will eventually be adorned as a star."

Meanwhile, everyone in the entire capital, whether noble or servant, soldier or commoner, sorcerer or apprentice, was simultaneously plunged into the same inexplicable and bizarre predicament:

"My life... no longer belongs to me."

They experienced dizziness, nausea, vomiting, or suddenly forgot their own names.
Some people were even horrified to find a “strange memory” that had never belonged to them appear in their minds, as if they had already experienced death.

A teacher pointed at the textbook in horror and screamed, "Why does it say 'You are dead' here?!"

A sergeant's World-type card suddenly burned out, and he was gripped by hysterical terror: "This isn't my destiny map... Who am I?!"

The entire capital city has been transformed into a theater where the flames of destiny burn.
All beings are sinking into this—sacrificing their future in ignorance, and facing the inevitable judgment of fate in confusion.

As the Seventh Parish was ablaze, Medusa's body slowly floated up.

Her deep red skirt seemed to defy gravity, blooming slowly and mysteriously like a blood lotus brimming with a strange life force.

Beneath her feet, a crimson-silver light, indescribable in worldly language, surged forth, twisted and mysterious, neither blood nor fire, yet it sent shivers down the spines of those who witnessed it.

Medici slightly twisted her body, her eyes covered with translucent divine patterns, reflecting an indescribable otherworldly celestial phenomenon.

She ceased uttering mundane words and began chanting ancient whispers, voices that pierced through matter and consciousness, as if the very god of destiny herself had come to proclaim:

"Life has never belonged to you; the pen of destiny is forever in the hands of the gods."

"You are who you are simply because I haven't yet decided whether you should exist."

The prelude to the Blood Moon Star Calamity officially resounded across the sky above the royal capital, like a vast sonata of destiny, each note slowly drawing away humanity's self-awareness.

However, there are still four unlit nodes on the parish star map.

Like a trump card yet to be revealed by the hand of fate, it is the final human check in Medici's plan—a hidden node that can affect the very lifeline of the entire capital.

These three key locations, seemingly insignificant, are all situated deep within the underground veins of the royal palace.

Marked by Medici herself as "Severed Pulse Points": the Offset Energy Concentration Platform in the King's Tower Star Pulse Chamber, and the Spell Excretion Node outside the Side Gate of the Thirteenth Quiet Island.

And the warehouse in the Imperial Guard where royal ceremonial armor and armor were stored.

These three locations are the key intersections leading to the mysterious power of the royal palace.

At this moment, three Red Singers—ceremonial attendants sent to the court by the Church of Our Lady—had already dedicated their souls to the secret messengers of "Blood Life" and were silently carrying out their mission.

A cultivator slowly stepped into the King Tower Star Vein Chamber, the energy flow around him swinging like a tranquil pendulum.

He took out the life-patterned harp he had prepared beforehand, solemnly placed it at the intersection of his life meridians, and poured crimson blood from his palm into it as if offering a sacrifice. His voice was low and solemn, filled with an ominous piety:
"The names of the stars are sung in blood."

In an instant, a blinding crimson beam burst forth from the center of the star vein, the King Tower trembled slightly, and the outer guards became alert instantly, but it was too late—the contract of fate had already been fulfilled.

The second cultivator silently stepped into the corner of the thirteenth quiet island's secret chamber. Without any unnecessary movements, he calmly lay down, facing the ancient cursed gate with his chest.

In an instant, a whispered incantation ignited within his body, and his flesh instantly transformed into a blood-red mist, slowly seeping into the incantation gate lock, triggering a violent backflow of the incantation meridians hidden within.

The defensive array surrounding the Thirteenth Quiet Island began to tremble, and for the first time, the power trapping the entire island experienced an extremely subtle yet fatal pause.

The third monk slowly lit the life-mark candle in the armor storeroom and placed it on the pedestal of the coronation ceremony armor.

In an instant, a deep, ancient hymn-like chanting resounded from inside the warehouse. Inhuman voices seeped from the dusty armor, whispering like resurrected ghosts: "The king's glory has faded, the coronation of death is about to begin."

These armors, once symbols of the king's authority, now solemnly and somberly proclaim the inevitable end of the dynasty.

At the same time, inside the royal palace, everyone—from the attendants, the secret guards, and the personal guards to Ian standing in the center of the Wind Whisper Array—deeply felt that the entire destiny chart structure was undergoing a violent reversal.

Ian stood there, lost in thought, when suddenly a strange sound rang in his ears. It wasn't the whisper of the wind, but something far darker and colder:

"You are nothing but a pointless illusion; this city is already tired of your existence."

In a secluded corner of the church, Rex looked up at the sky, where the star chart of his destiny was twisting and shifting. A deep fear and awe welled up in his eyes.
"She... has begun to redefine the fate of this world."

Liseria felt the Lion King's spirit tremble slightly in her chest. The silver lion, which symbolized the power of the old era, revealed its ferocious fangs for the first time, as if foreshadowing its determination to ultimately defy fate.

At this moment, Medici's body had transcended the human realm; it began to become ethereal and informational.
The life lines beneath her skin flickered with inhuman light like nerves, and her voice no longer emanated from her throat, but materialized out of thin air beneath the church dome:
"I am the destiny chart of all of you."

She floated above the dome of the Cathedral of Our Lady, issuing her first divine declaration to the entire capital, officially taking her first step toward the realm of the gods.

In an instant, the air in the capital became thick and sticky, flowing through the air like a mixture of blood and oil.

The sky was shrouded in a layer of scarlet mist, which was not clouds, but rather some indescribable veil of life.

Chaos erupted in the city, consciousness blurred, and language became strange and incomprehensible. They murmured in terror about a reality they could no longer recognize:

"Who am I...? Why am I so sure I've died once before?"

“My son should still be in school, but just now I saw him age by decades in an instant.”

"My hands... my destiny chart... why are they completely unfamiliar?"

The entire capital city has now become a stage where fate and bloodshed intertwine.
All living beings are caught in the control of the god of fate, struggling and fearing, yet unable to escape this completely defined theater.

Above the dome of the Basilica of Our Lady, Medici has already shed her "princess" persona.

At this moment, she floated in the void, her ten fingers spread out like claws of fate, pulling at the veins of the twelve parish star charts, trembling subtly and fatally like nerves.

Her long, jet-black hair was straightened by an invisible force field and the power of her life runes, floating upwards like thorns in a bizarre way, piercing into the abyss of the void.

Her face can no longer be clearly defined—

At times, her pure and innocent girlish appearance would reappear.

Sometimes she transforms into a shy and bewildered girl in the choir.

At other times, it is the solemn and indifferent face of the Mother Goddess statue on the church altar.

Sometimes it even reverts to a primordial form that never truly existed, which is both frightening and indescribable.

She is on the borderline between "divine invasion" and "self-annihilation," on the verge of becoming pure divinity.

She grinned, but she never actually had real lips—

It was a smile formed from an invisible incantation and blood mist.

The silent song that the whole world sang for her echoed in her ears; it was not language, but the rhythm of countless lives vibrating in the air.

All the living souls in the world have become arias in the symphony of her destiny.

"I love you all deeply, because you will eventually be completely mine."

With the arrival of the phantom blood moon, the entire capital was plunged into a complete mess of fate.

Within the military, the fates of the soldiers began to malfunction. Some seemed to have lost five years of memories, unable to hold their weapons, staring blankly at their empty palms.
Within the academic area, the scholars of the mysterious suddenly developed "phantom limb syndrome," experiencing the sensation of having many limbs that never existed before.
Those ethereal bodies wriggled wildly in their minds, driving them to oscillate madly between fear and excitement;
The mid-level priests within the church collectively fell into auditory hallucinations, mistaking Medusa's distorted and psychedelic chanting for the gospel of the Mother Goddess herself, and devoutly offered their lives.

In the civilian district, an even more complete chaos erupted over the life lines. Many people suddenly saw false life lines in each other's eyes and fell into a frenzied argument: "You are not you, your life line has been tampered with!"

An elderly woman on the street looked up at the sky in terror. Three overlapping, hazy moons appeared in her vision. She murmured in a trembling voice:
“That…that’s not the moon at all, that’s the eye of a god, looking down upon us…”

Medici herself was completely afflicted with the even more bizarre advanced stellar symptom, Blood Syndrome.

Her divinity has come to regard all living beings in the capital as part of her own lifeblood, and whenever someone dies, the star map behind her bursts forth with a scarlet flash.

However, as countless sacrificial bloods surged in, she gradually became unable to withstand the overwhelming energy. Her body began to disintegrate, her destiny chart spontaneously combusted, and she transformed into a pure "chanting framework".

Her shoulder blades slowly tore apart, sprouting wings formed from a destiny diagram; the crimson runes writhed incessantly as if alive.

That was not decoration, nor a totem, but a real, entirely new divine organ.

In a secluded chamber outside the church, Rex stared coldly at the dilapidated shrine, his voice low and icy:
"She is no longer a queen, nor a deity."

"That was nothing more than a bloody torrent that desperately needed a vessel."

At that moment, the life rune array of the Eighth Diocese trembled slightly, and although the star veins showed abnormal feedback, it did not completely collapse.
It was as if an invisible hand had attempted to interfere, but was ruthlessly erased by some higher-dimensional force before reaching the critical point.

The Blood Sacrifice Diagram has not failed—it has just entered the true "trial phase."

At the highest point of the Basilica of Our Lady, Medusa spread her arms, and the Destiny Chart behind her slowly rotated, like a giant stellar machine embedded at the boundary between reality and the void.

Her body had long since transcended the definition of a mortal creature, and each heartbeat became a new incantation.

In the sky, the previously illusory image of the blood moon was gradually solidifying—

It was not a real star, but an independent and living entity.
It is gazing at the world in its own way.

Not through light, not through words, and certainly not through thought.

It simply exists—and this pure existence itself is the greatest pollution to the structure of the real world.

Meanwhile, on the bridge of the Lost One, Siming gazed at the core of the star map, opened a thick, weathered ancient scroll of destiny patterns: "The Path of Star Calamity," and murmured:

"The Trial of the Stars begins the moment the rift in the Gate of Blood takes shape."

"If the container fails to complete the 'Divine Echo Seal' within the time limit, the sacrifice will be reversed, the divinity will overflow, and the celestial calamity will backfire."

Calvino frowned, his tone slightly puzzled: "Who set this rule?"

Si Ming closed the book, his eyes deep and his tone carrying a sharp, oppressive quality:

"It is neither a mortal nor a deity. This rule originates from 'it' itself—that 'He' who is hiding behind the blood moon, looking down upon all living beings."

"This is not a human ritual, but a gift from something that existed long ago."

He raised his head, gazing at the blood moon that was steadily eroding the distance, and slowly said:
“If we fail to stop her, she will no longer be human, nor will she ever become a god.”

"She will become a rift that devours everything."

The entire capital city has fallen into an eerie stillness, and people seem to live on the timeline of their own shadows:
On the streets, hallucinations of the dead frequently appear; mothers cannot recognize their children; and soldiers, in their fear, frantically disfigure themselves.
Inside the church, sacred objects spontaneously combusted, and the mysterious world-themed cards went out of control, displaying unrecognizable and eerie incantations: "Neither you nor I, but Him."
In the central square of the city, a statue of the Virgin Mary suddenly opened its stone mouth and silently uttered a string of meaningless letter spells, while the scribe, in copying them, forgot why he was writing them in the first place.

Medici no longer needed words; her very existence was an absolute command.

Wherever her gaze fell, the mirror stained crimson; where she stood, the runes of fate automatically arranged into a strange yet solemn prayer pattern.

Her star chart is gradually being replaced by divine echoes.

Meanwhile, Rex, drenched in cold sweat in the dark corridor, gripped his magical implements and whispered:

"We are not trying to prevent a woman from becoming a goddess."

“We are preventing ‘God’ from entering the world through her.”

The God of Fate stared at the blood moon, his tone as firm as iron:

"The door has been opened, and He has come."

"We have only one night to destroy her throne of destiny."

"The descent of the gods is not light, not fire, not sound. It is when you forget who you are, when you remember the fate of others who lived out your time."

And you have already entered the third version of that destiny chart.

—Excerpt from "Path of the Star Calamity: Blood Trial Chapter - Time Trial"

(End of this chapter)