Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 388 The Council of the Supreme Beings Under the Stars

"The stars are silent, and the vessel walls are as thin as skin."

Behind the door lies an abyss, and the script is written with an omniscient eye, in the name of omnipotence.

Anyone who uses "I" as the first person is a prisoner.

—From the preface to *The Book of the Silent*, "The Whispers of the Most High (Fragment)"

Consciousness fell first, and then the name was peeled away.

The God of Fate floated in the silent darkness, tossed lightly but unable to land, like a footnote that had been moved many times between the pages of a book—the original context had long been lost.

He tried to open his eyes, but the light, like the smoke from an old oil lamp, dissipated slowly and settled coldly. Faint sparks appeared in the distance, not illuminating each other, only confirming each other's cooling with their own eyes.

"...The Council of the Silent Ones?"

Memories swirl within the body, like shattered mirrors underwater—each time they are pieced back together, a piece of the edge is lost.

The darkness suddenly shuddered, revealing a starry hall: a round, black table, like a cross-section of the night, covered with an excess of symbols and diagrams—not to be seen, but to write the viewer into annotations.

Twelve chairs were arranged around the table, their shapes mutually exclusive, like twelve opposing laws of nature. The empty chairs were not silent; they observed all those present with their emptiness.

Behind his seat hung a dynamic star map: countless white masks slowly opened and closed—sorrow, joy, anger, silence—each telling a different abridged version of the same story of fate.

On the table lay a wordless script and a faintly glowing pen; the ink was unseen, yet life seemed to surge forth. The pages bulged slightly, as if breathing.

He looked around, his true appearance blurred into an intention to observe.

Those "wills" pressed the weight of their gaze upon him, like an unnamed body temperature, forcing his bones to adapt to its weight.

On the left, a gray-robed man sits upright—his hood conceals not a face, but a verb that is hidden, unbound by tense.

A chill emanated from where he was; it wasn't cold, but rather the very presence of the power to define itself.

Silence precedes the taking of a seat, only then does time dare to sit down.

There was no wind in the Starry Sky Hall, but each breath felt like an invisible hand turning the pages of a book. The air was slow and heavy, as if every molecule was waiting to be named.

The distance between the twelve seats is farther than what can be measured in space—it's the gap between rules, and once you fall in, you no longer belong to any world.

When the gray-robed man spoke, there was no movement of his vocal organs; his voice sounded as if it were being translated from somewhere behind your ear.

"You are him; yet you are not."

This is not a judgment, but a footnote when archiving.

Disdain is not sharp, like a grain of salt in cold water—it dissolves, but always carries a fishy smell.

Si Ming leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped together, his movements so slow they seemed to be tapping out a beat for his own shadow.

"Which card should we use to communicate?" he asked calmly. "Dream weaver? Creation? Or—fate?"

The man in the gray robe did not answer immediately.

His body leaned forward—not that his body moved, but that the coordinate system tilted an inch toward him.

The pressure then silently intensified, as if someone had written an even larger "door" in the air, the strokes of which were sculpted from space itself.

“You’re interesting.” The gray-robed man’s tone was as gentle as if he were reading an unimportant letter. “But you’re overrated. Those who get close to the truth shrink until their names no longer need to be written.”

Si Ming did not move an inch.

The gray-robed man's hand emerged from beneath his robe—long, pale, with knuckles like a row of keys that had been struck countless times.

He glided lightly through the void.

The void cracked open, like a sheet of mercury being pushed aside by a fingertip.

Countless doors emerge in overlapping shadows, and behind each door lies a moment when the world is "looking on".

—The city-state is burning, and the streets are like sliced ​​blood oranges;
—The tide is receding, revealing a forgotten temple with eyes that cannot close carved on its walls;

The statue slowly lowered its head, its stone eyelids blinked once, and blinked away the memories of an entire generation.

There are no corridors between the doors, only gaps, and these gaps do not lead anywhere—that is the mood of judgment.

Si Ming's pupils contracted slightly, but he didn't let his panic show on his face: "Master of the Gate".

The gray-robed man laughed, his laughter like a needle stirring in icy water: "Guardians are myths; the gate itself is the title."

At that moment, the light in the Starry Sky Hall seemed to be wiped by fingertips—flickering and dimming, as if someone was repeatedly checking whether the ink was completely dry.

The gray-robed man's tone was like an old legal statute being read aloud again:
"The Twelve Supreme Beings are led by the World System. You—the Third Seat, the Lord of Destiny."

Above you, life is still within my grasp; you, however, are still being evaluated.

The God of Fate ignored the assessment and instead asked a flat question: "If I am insignificant, why are you testing me so thoroughly?"

The brief silence was as sharp as a knife's edge.

The man in the gray robe raised his hand and tapped the table once lightly—the star map on the round table surface immediately changed its layout: several possible causal lines were covered by dark ink, like paragraphs crossed out by a reviewer with a black pen.

The light beneath the ink blot struggled slightly, as if unwilling to be erased, but ultimately sank into the darkness.

“I see one of your ‘futures’,” the gray-robed man said calmly. “That line is against me. My curiosity is a form of precaution.”

Si Ming tapped his fingertips on the armrest of the chair, as if defying the other person's rhythm: "So, this is why you appeared?"

The gray-robed man's lips twitched almost imperceptibly.

"Appear? No." He used a more archaic verb, "contain."

The place you are in is not a conference hall, but a sphere where you are permitted to exist.

Our 'conversation' was merely a marginal note on the page.

His words, like fine silk threads, lingered behind Siming's ears, carrying an inescapable chill.

Si Ming could sense that they were not only stating the facts, but also trying to replace the way he understood the facts.

"What are you thinking about?" the gray-robed man suddenly asked, his tone carrying a leisurely air of toying with his prey.

Are you trying to guess my identity? Or are you questioning your own fate, wondering if it is truly predetermined?

Si Ming's lips curled up slightly, revealing a smile that even he himself wasn't sure of: "Your identity isn't hard to guess."

Those who can sit here must be—one of the legendary 'Supreme Ones'.

The gray-robed man let out a short laugh, a laugh as sharp as a blade grazing bone: "The guess isn't too far off. But do you understand the meaning of 'Supreme'? And do you know what kind of power each person sitting at this table wields?"

He didn't wait for Si Ming's reply, lowering his voice slightly—not to keep it a secret, but to make his voice sound more like an internal tremor:
"At the 12th High School, I was the top student in the world."

The doors between countless worlds are in my hands.

Your existence is but a particle of fate, falling onto my threshold.

As he spoke, he extended his finger and gently touched it.

In the void, the arrangement of the gates was instantly reconstructed—some were overlapped, some were rotated, and some were folded in reverse into a thin thread, which he then casually put into his pocket.

That's not a display of power, but rather like a homeowner tidying up fallen leaves in their own yard.

“Every possibility of yours has passed through here,” the gray-robed man said slowly. “You think you are walking, but you have been lingering under my porch all along.”

The light in the starry sky hall began to turn white, as if it had been bleached, and the details faded little by little, leaving only the skeleton and shadows.

Si Ming suddenly realized that the "realism" of this space was being taken away by the other party—turning it into a blueprint that could be folded and put away.

“You are weakening it,” Si Ming said calmly.

The gray-robed man's gaze peeked out from the shadow of his hood, like two non-reflective lenses: "No, this place never existed."

Your arrival made it temporarily possible—and I am merely retracting this superfluous definition.

At that moment, Si Ming felt for the first time that the other party was not trying to persuade him, but rather rewriting the reality he was in.

Every word the gray-robed man spoke was not an answer, but a substitution.

This makes the oppressive feeling in the air feel less like weight and more like a lack of oxygen—the more you talk, the more diluted it becomes.

"Your so-called mastery of fate is nothing more than a few lines that are allowed to be written," the gray-robed man said in a low voice. "And those lines can be crossed out by me when necessary."

He waved his hand gently, and the outlines of the twelve seats blurred for a moment.

For a fleeting second, Si Ming felt uncertain about their location, quantity, and even existence itself—as if he had misremembered the numbers.

But then, the chairs went back to their original positions as if nothing had happened.

The only thing left was the discomfort he felt from being "reformed once."

The gray-robed man seemed satisfied with this reaction, leaning back again, his voice carrying a barely perceptible hint of amusement:

"Keep sitting. You'll find that the chair doesn't belong to you, but you can't live without it."

The air around the round table suddenly became thick.

It wasn't filled in, but rather rearranged—the font size increased, the line spacing compressed, as if the actual page needed to squeeze out space for another voice.

The wordless script on the table began to turn its pages on its own.

The sound of the pages turning wasn't crisp; it was more like breathing underwater, as if separated by some organic membrane, with a sticky feel.

With each page turned, Si Ming felt as if an invisible fingertip was pressing against his heart.

White light seeped through the paper, not very bright, but it made the shadows reveal the underlying color like a faded oil painting.

That light wasn't for illumination, but for reviewing—it was scrutinizing every line, every object, and even every moment of silence in this hall of stars.

In the center of the light, a pure white mask slowly rose up.

It lacks the protrusion of a nose bridge and the detail of lip lines; only the emptiness of its eyes resembles two deep wells.

The mask hovered in front of Si Ming, not as a choice for him to wear it, but as if it were a text, directly covering his face—rewriting the definition of "whose face is this?"

cold.

It's not the temperature of ice, but the coldness of "touch being forbidden".

The rhythm of his breathing became unfamiliar in that instant—Si Ming knew that his right to breathe was being taken over by another piece of code.

The voice sounded.

It didn't come from the mouth, but rather overflowed from the narration of the story into the realm of reality:

"The fact that the master of the gate has been hiding until now seems unnecessary."

The One with a Thousand Faces.

The interface of fate itself.

His tone of voice lacked any emotional nuance—sadness, joy, anger, and pity were merely templates he could readily use and replace at any time.

The gray-robed man's smile faded slightly, like the tide receding from a stone: "Possibility... fate's most viscous addiction. The end is still the end."

The Thousand Faces tilted its head slightly, as if admiring a line of deleted poetry: "You treat the end as a recycle bin. But I—treat it as stellar wind."

The gray-robed man tapped his fingertips on the table, slowly creating a rhythm.

An area on the star map darkened, the colors were stripped away, leaving only a dry skeleton—meaning was emptied out, like a discarded negative.

The Man of a Thousand Faces chuckled softly, his voice so low it seemed to whisper in someone's ear: "You are destroying their endings, I am writing their continuation. Neither of us will stop."

Their conversation no longer resembled a debate, but rather a clash between two writing paradigms.

The gray-robed man was the kind of editor who repeatedly revised the manuscript until only the "final chapter" remained;

A thousand-faced author is the kind of author who would rather let the story rot than let every subplot run dry.

The gray-robed man said calmly, "You think infinite possibilities can delay numbness? Father's gaze could only be drawn back by the shock of reincarnation."

"Father?" The Thousand-Faced One's tone carried a hint of uncertain laughter, a laughter like a knife tip slicing through silk—almost inaudible, yet capable of cutting through thoughts.

"You think he's still watching us? You think he hasn't already looked away, leaving us to fend for ourselves in a theater where the curtain can't be closed?"

The gray-robed man's voice suddenly turned cold: "Naive. Our existence has never belonged to ourselves. If we don't end it ourselves, everything will only perish in decay."

The Thousand-Faced One did not rush to respond, but instead leaned down slightly—not to get closer to the gray-robed man, but to get closer to the entire scene.

Suddenly, countless tiny images appeared on the surface of the round table, as if someone had scattered hundreds of thousands of fragments with different endings:
In one ending, Si Ming is killed by himself;
In another passage, the world transforms into a blank sheet of paper before he closes his eyes;
More often than not, he never left a certain corridor—the light in that corridor was always broken at the twenty-third lamp.

The Thousand Faces' hand gently brushed among these fragments.

Those endings moved like chess pieces, rearranging themselves into a new pattern—a face.

That face belonged to the god of fate, but it displayed countless expressions simultaneously.

"Do you see that?" The Thousand-Faced One's tone suddenly softened, as if speaking to a child. "Joy and sorrow are illusions, life and death are false. Every step you take, I can replace with another. The freedom you think you have is just a layout of options I've given you." The gray-robed man sneered: "Is this your control? Giving him illusions, making him believe he's making choices?"

"Illusions are also part of fate." The Thousand-Faced One's voice suddenly rose and then quickly fell back, like a piece of music that had been artificially compressed. "You destroy the grammar of the story, I control the readers of the story."

At this moment, Si Ming felt that she was no longer "listening" to this conversation, but rather that it was being written directly into the page—

Each heartbeat is like typing a period on a piece of paper; each breath is like adding a space after a comma.

The gray-robed man looked at the Thousand-Faced One, his voice as calm as a footnote on the last page: "You cannot protect your pawn forever. When all possibilities have seen the end, he will come to me on his own."

On the mask of the Thousand Faces, a fleeting smile seemed to appear—a smile that was both victory and burial.

"Perhaps. But before that, every move he made was mine."

The masked figure's gaze suddenly shifted to Si Ming.

"Including now."

Si Ming couldn't breathe for a moment.

That wasn't suffocation, but rather his right to breathe being taken away—like having his editing permissions locked.

The voice of the Thousand Faces rang in his ears, brooking no refusal: "Say what you're about to say."

Si Ming's lips moved on their own, uttering words that were both familiar and strange: "I will explore all these possibilities until you tire of them."

The gray-robed man's eyes narrowed slightly—not in response to the God of Fate, but in response to the Thousand-Faced One's words.

"Weary?" the gray-robed man repeated slowly, "Even fate can grow weary?"

The Thousand-Faced One seemed not to hear, lightly touching the table with his fingers, and the wordless script closed by itself, the light from the mask gradually fading.

"That's all for today," he said. "The next chapter won't begin here."

The weight of the mask disappeared from Si Ming's face, and the right to breathe was restored.

He gasped for breath, as if he had been pulled back from underwater.

The gray-robed man's eyes flickered slightly beneath his hood, as if he were reassessing the value of the chess piece before him.

—And Si Ming, for the first time, understood just how terrifying the Thousand-Faced One's desire for control could be:
That's not guidance, not manipulation, but simply writing directly into the line you think belongs to you.

With a flick of his finger, the gray-robed man caused the round table and the edge of the hall to recede as if splashed with ink.

The starry sky folded, and the twelve seats and the star map collapsed together into a thin crack.

“Come on,” the Lord of the Gate said in a deep voice, with the calmness of a guardian guiding a patient through the ward, “take a look at the place I’ve prepared for you.”

Behind the crack lies a space without direction.

The ceiling, floor, and walls breathe simultaneously; with each pulse, countless doors contract and expand like pupils.

It is not a building, but more like the internal organs of a giant beast—and this entire internal organ belongs to the Lord of the Gate.

Si Ming stepped in, the soles of his boots landing on a transparent and warm texture.

Looking down, beneath the transparency, were countless human-shaped shadows, fixed in some semi-fluid medium.

Their faces were blurred, but Si Ming recognized every single one of them.

That is himself.

All of him.

The master of the gate walked forward slowly, his tone as if reciting a pre-determined document:

"The back room isn't for locking up other people. It's your—private recycling bin. Every prisoner here is you."

Si Ming's gaze swept over those shadows.

Some knelt in the endless corridor, their eyes vacant, as if waiting for a door that would never open;

Some lay in pools of blood, their bodies covered with patterns and tentacles that were not human.
Some were suspended in wire mesh from the ceiling, constantly uttering meaningless characters;
Others sit quietly on stone benches, staring blankly at an invisible wall, as if waiting for themselves to disappear.

"Who are they?" Si Ming's voice was calm to the point of being polite.

"The you of the past." The sect leader's smile was faintly visible in the shadows of his hood.

Every one who has stepped onto the planet of disaster

Every one of you who has fought against the Supreme Being, the Cataclysm, and Destiny itself in the Land of the End—

They all lost.

They lost their reason, their past, present, and future; they lost their freedom.

They are no longer 'human', and are not even worthy of being called 'existence'.

They're just failed versions, and this is my repository for storing these failures for you.

A door slowly opened beside them.

Si Ming saw—another "self" being dragged into this space:
His face was contorted with despair, and his hands clawed at the air, but it was as if his voice had been cut off, and he could not shout.

A moment later, his figure was pressed into that transparent layer, standing alongside countless "Fate Masters".

“Every time you try to defy fate, every time you lose in the game of stars, you come here.”

The gatekeeper's tone carried an almost pitying disdain.
“I will not destroy them—because they are your proof. Proof that you will eventually get here.”

Sima Ming smiled slightly.

That smile wasn't a denial, but rather like savoring a glass of wine that was already known to have been poisoned.

"You went to such lengths to collect these things just to scare me away?"

The sect leader stopped and faced him, his tone carrying a slow, penetrating coldness:

No. I never expect you to back down. What I expect is—

When you've seen all your failures

When you know how many ways you will die
Can you still hold up your pen?

Si Ming's boot heel tapped lightly twice on the transparent material, as if finding the rhythm for a sentence.

His gaze swept past his past failures, and he said calmly:

What you see is your collection.

What I saw—was my material.

The smile of the gatekeeper froze slightly.

"material?"

"Yes." Si Ming's voice was low and slow, yet carried an unsettling confidence.
"You call them failures, I call them drafts."

With each fall, I learn a new sentence;
Every time I'm locked up here, I steal a piece of a story that you didn't delete.

He looked up at the master of the gate, his gaze so calm it was almost ritualistic.

"You can imprison my corpse, but you can't imprison my next words."

A moment of silence.

The Lord of the Gate smiled again, a smile that held a mixture of annoyance and interest, like that of a judge seeing the defendant still holding his head high.

“Very good. Then I’ll make sure this recycling bin is fuller.”

He raised his hand, and the doors around him trembled simultaneously, as if countless futures were knocking on the eardrums of the God of Fate.

"Once you've personally submitted every possible version of yourself, we can move on to the next chapter."

Si Ming merely bowed slightly, as if exchanging places with an opponent at a ball that had not yet ended.

"We'll meet again once you've collected them all."

The Lord of the Gate's laughter echoed through the surrounding transparent layer, like low-frequency pulses, striking the chests of the imprisoned "Fate Masters".

They moved their lips silently, as if mimicking his speech—

It's not a repetition, it's a falsification.

“Remember, the master of fate,” the Gate Master’s voice became very soft.
"I can lock the door before you take every step."

He raised his hand, and the surrounding light rapidly contracted into an extremely thin line.
The figures of the losers were covered by a thick layer of darkness, like a sealed negative.

Those half-open eyes and half-open mouths eventually faded into complete darkness.

Only a faint light remained, watching Si Ming from the deepest darkness.

The light seemed to be saying: There's a place for you here, it's only a matter of time.

The God of Fate did not turn around.

He merely raised his chin slightly, focusing his gaze on the sole source of light.
She uttered softly, "When you've waited long enough, remember to tell me if there's ever a day when you've filled this place to the brim."

The man in the gray robe did not answer.

He simply raised his finger and made a light sweeping motion in the air—

Space is like a curtain that has been cut open, split in the middle.

The intense feeling of falling immediately engulfed Si Ming.

The sounds around me became both indistinct and clear, like someone reading a prayer through water:
"The next time we meet will be when you make your final decision."

Behind the curtain, there is not light, not the starry sky, but—

—That labyrinthine, deathly silent corridor.

Cold, gray, and boundless.

The walls were damp with stains and unidentified yellow marks, and the flickering of the ceiling lights was amplified infinitely in the deathly silence.

Corridors intertwine, with the same corner after the same corner, and the same door after the same door.

A faint musty smell permeated the air, mixed with an indistinguishable metallic odor.

"The back room."

Si Ming uttered those two words in a low voice.

That was what the Lord of the Gate himself had said—his own prison.
It was also the storage room where he was ultimately abandoned after all his failures.

He could sense that the place was not still.

The corridor seemed to breathe slowly, the lights pulsed.

And those "himself" who were locked in countless rooms.
He waits silently—waiting for his next failure to drag him here, to stand alongside them.

There were footsteps behind me.

Selene emerged from the shadows at the end of the corridor, her eyes filled with an uneasy search.

“You seemed to be having a nightmare just now,” she said, her hand gently resting on his shoulder.

No matter how I call you, you don't respond.

Lynn rushed over, her expression grave: "We thought you... were gone."

Sima Ming did not answer immediately.

He simply turned slowly and gazed at the end of the corridor—

The lights there were gradually dimming, as if deliberately hiding something.

After a moment, he chuckled softly.
“I’m still here. It’s just that someone took me to see an exhibition that was tailor-made for me.”

"What exhibition?" Celian asked, puzzled.

Siming slowly exhaled, his gaze becoming sharp and profound:
"My graveyard."

"All schools are connected by silence, and all of us recognize each other by failure."

When fate hands the script to the door, the door hands despair to fate.

If there is an ending, it is only when the Almighty finally admits:
He was never the author.

—The Book of the Silent Ones, Final Chapter: The Annihilation of the Stars

(End of this chapter)