Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 416 Yellow-Clad Sneers and True Lies
“When everyone believes it, it is no longer a lie—it becomes history.”

—From *Morning Star Script: Fragments from Gray Pages*

It was still dark in the editor's office on the sixth floor of the Morning Star newspaper.

Outside the window, the fog and the blood moon intertwined to form a deep gray morning, like a cold veil covering the city's face.

The oil lamp crackled, its faint light leaping between the heavy bookshelves, casting trembling shadows from the back of the paper to the corner of the wall, as if ghosts were slowly chewing on the lead type and fibers.

Si Ming sat with his elbows resting on the table, his face buried in his clasped hands.

He couldn't remember the last time he closed his eyes before the bell rang, or rather, he dared not—weariness surged like a tide, seeping back from the very marrow of his bones.

His eyelids felt as heavy as if they were filled with lead, and a rumbling sound of blood rushing through his eardrums echoed deep within his ears. His thoughts were sometimes clear and sometimes fragmented, like a lamp in a gust of wind.

But he still held on, like a believer on the verge of drowning, clinging to the edge of a collapsing altar.

He slowly raised his eyes—the whites of his eyes were covered with blood vessels, and his pupils were momentarily unfocused. The next instant, an unusual light and shadow appeared in his pupils.

That wasn't a room, it wasn't a newspaper office, it wasn't Alleston.

Instead, it was a black sea of ​​stars, with countless invisible towers standing tall.

The tower walls are covered with strange yet neat curves and characters, as if blood vessels are growing on language.

The spire points in an "indeterminate" direction—neither up nor down, neither left nor right, as if a coordinate system had been gently twisted by someone.

A murmur sounded in my ear, neither spoken nor heard, like the information itself describing itself:
Each syllable is like a nail, driving grammar into the nerves, tearing apart the tangles and seams of neurons.

"Who are you...where do you come from...are you weaving? Have you been forgotten?"

Si Ming shuddered violently, feeling as if his neck had been kissed by fire.

He closed his eyes, forcibly pulling his consciousness back from that "ineffable" space;
When I opened my eyes again, the world was restored: the oil lamp, the manuscript paper, and the wooden table were back in their rightful places.

A drop of cold sweat slid down his forehead, down his chin, and onto the manuscript paper, leaving a damp mark.

He slowly reached out his hand, his fingertips still trembling slightly.

His fingernails dug into his palm, the pain shooting back like an anchor hitting the bottom of a deep current. He repeated in a low voice, each word striking the back of his tongue: "You're still here... Si Ming, you're still here."

He repeated this self-calling three times before his heartbeat aligned with his name again.

His handwritten drafts were spread out on the table, each page with a different title:

"The Yellow Dress Theater, Act III: An Ending No One Can Understand," "The Last Prayer Under the Blood Moon," "How to Kill a God That Doesn't Exist"... The handwriting is hurried, the strokes are like knife cuts, and the ink lines leave curled edges on the paper.

He knew he could no longer proofread with the same precision as before—reason was leaking away at a visible rate, like sand through a funnel.

A celestial catastrophe doesn't necessarily burn or explode.

It is the collapse of "information," the alteration of the organic rational system by symbolic logic—when meaning spreads like mold, the mind cracks like a petri dish.

At this moment, he no longer resembled a "person with thoughts," but rather a rune vessel that temporarily used his body to hold cognition;
And all of this began with the resonance of those three cards—the Thousand-Faced One, the Illusory Corridor, and the King in Yellow.

The name "lie weaver" is destined to exist outside of reason.

But he was once human.

He still wanted to leave that little bit of his "true self" on the shore.

The door was pushed open gently.

Selene stood in the doorway, holding a cup of black coffee in one hand and his cloak, which he had forgotten outside, in the other.

Her brows furrowed; she glanced at him first, then looked down at the ground—

"You stayed up late again... Si Ming, your shadow just moved." She lowered her voice.

The God of Fate didn't answer, only turned his head to look out the window. The blood moon appeared and disappeared in the mist, like an eye pressed against glass. "...Look at that moon," he whispered, "doesn't it look like an eye?"

Selene remained silent for a moment, gently placed the coffee on the corner of the table, draped her cloak over her arm, took a step closer, and said no more.

Si Ming lowered his head and slowly carved four characters on the old manuscript paper with his fingertips: —King in Yellow.

The pen tip makes a faint hissing sound as it glides across the paper fibers, like a name trying to grow a spine under the skin.

He carved the words with force, as if trying to press them into the structure of the world.

He knew in his heart that it wasn't his name.

But now, who truly knows who they are?

Selene gently closed the door, as if afraid of startling a night crow.

She stood beside him, falling into the boundary of his shadow.

The shadow seemed "wrong" at that moment: the light shone down from the right, yet the shadow was slightly distorted to the left, its edges like the breathing of a broken spiderweb. She glanced at it only once before looking away.

She gently draped the cloak over his shoulders. That garment, originally meant to shield him from the wind, conceal his identity, and also to hide his illogical, inhuman form when he teetered on the edge of inhumanity...
At this moment, it is more like a symbol: a boundary, a seal—temporarily separating this man from the world.

“You haven’t slept for days,” she said, trying to sound calm but unable to hide her worry.

“It’s not that I don’t want to sleep,” Si Ming finally spoke, his voice low and deep, like a pebble falling to the bottom of a lake, “it’s that I dare not.”

Selene's brow twitched.

"You know, when people close their eyes, they often think the world will turn to darkness."

For me, it wasn't darkness, but rather the opening of another door.

He seemed to be explaining, or perhaps taking notes, "Dreams are not a haven of escape, but another kind of war."

There were no spectators, only those being watched—I was afraid that when I opened my eyes again, it wouldn't be me sitting there anymore.

He looked up at her, his eyes as weary as a crumbling statue, yet as calm as the stone archway behind it.

“I am not afraid of death, Celian. What I fear is that ‘I’ am still alive, but I am no longer myself.”

These words settled softly in the small room, like a nail driven into the heart of wood. Selene remained silent for a long time before replying in a low voice, "I will protect you."

Si Ming smiled, neither confirming nor denying. His smile was as thin as a wisp of mist before dawn—it was hard to tell whether it was warm, cold, or empty.

In the brief silence, the old clock on the wall suddenly made a dull "dong," like an echo coming from the bottom of a well in the distance.

It's time for the morning meeting.

The flame of the oil lamp dipped back and then rose again, casting overlapping shadows on the bookshelf, as if an invisible tower continued to grow beneath the pages.

The fog outside the window did not dissipate—it merely changed its expression, waiting for the city to wake up and continue last night's dream into the daytime.

Si Ming, wearing that large cloak, entered the editorial meeting room of the Morning Star Times.

The smell of ink and cold metal had not yet dissipated in the corridor, and the lead type was quietly arranged on the shelves, forming one unannounced funeral after another.

On one side of the long table, several senior editors were already waiting. Layout sketches, news clippings, and submissions from the public were like open entrails, their textures clear but devoid of warmth.

Everyone stood up to greet them.

"Editor-in-chief, we're going to start today's meeting with the street rumors," Deputy Editor-in-Chief Hatton whispered.
"Someone in the south of the city claims to have seen a figure in yellow near the River Estuary Theater—would you like to…?"

"Write it," Si Ming interrupted, his tone calm and resolute. "But don't treat it as news. Use a column format and categorize it under urban folklore."

The pages rustled, several pens stopped simultaneously, and a brief moment of hesitation hung in the air.

"Yes, editor-in-chief." Hatton wrote, his handwriting trembling slightly.

Next was the "Abnormal Weather" section. A young female editor flipped through the notes:

"Last night, the temperature plummeted, and the blood moon was unusually strong, leading to numerous reports of discomfort among people on the streets… We would like to use the phenomenon of the blood moon on the human physiological cycle as a starting point—"

"Wrong," Si Ming whispered.

The person at the table paused for a moment.

He looked down at the weather report, his fingertips gently tracing the corner of the page.

That gaze seemed to penetrate the fibers of the paper, looking into a deeper layer of texture;

It was as if, between the words, he heard another breath. After a moment, he looked up, his voice soft, yet like a nail driven into pine wood:

"That's not the weather."

He paused, as if recalling syllables that had just slipped from the edge of a dream: "That was some kind of... consciousness brewing." He uttered the last word, "He was gazing at us."

The conference room fell silent; the lights shrank behind the glass dome, as if touched by unseen gazes.

The female editor instinctively asked, "'He' refers to...who?"

Si Ming met her gaze, and for a moment his eyes were as empty as a deep well.

He said in a low voice, "You shouldn't have asked."

Silence spread across the table. He rubbed his temples, his face pale, as if he had walked back into his own body from afar: "Sorry, I didn't sleep well."

He pushed the manuscript back, his tone returning to its usual cool and restrained:

"For the weather report, delete the first paragraph and rewrite it. Do not exaggerate the panic, but do not deny the anomaly either. Keep the wording to 'small-scale unusual celestial phenomena'."

Several pens fell again.

The editors all nodded, but simultaneously avoided his gaze.

A certain indescribable feeling rose in their hearts and then quickly subsided:
—The editor-in-chief seems to be acting really strange lately.

Outside the window, the sky between the buildings turned from black to gray. Midnight in Alleston was gently licked by the blood moon, like a red-covered script being impatiently turned to a new page;

The corners are curled up, the words are not yet visible, but the plot is already permeating the air.

As the night deepened, only the rustling of sand falling remained in the private study on the top floor of the old building.

Si Ming sat quietly, his eyes vacant, as if he had relinquished his vision to the room.

On the table is an old, bell-shaped metal hourglass, with sand falling finely from its narrow neck. Each grain is like a newly written lie, yet to be published, rolling across the Adam's apple of time.

The walls were covered with star charts and newspaper clippings, worn-out performance photos were stacked on top of stacks of blank script covers, and yellowed manuscript papers waved gently in the night breeze. The ink marks were thin and long, like nerves extending from his fingertips.

On the paper, the distorted black characters floated slowly in the lamplight, like fish taking a breath in shallow water:
"That monarch never showed his face, but wrote the ending behind the curtain."

"The crown rolled on the ground, but no one dared to pick it up."

"The yellow robe is the formal attire that conceals madness."

The God of Fate closed his eyes, brought his knuckles together, and uttered an ancient syllable.

That was neither any of Trelian’s known languages ​​nor Alleston’s prayer;
It's more like the low thud of paper tearing, the rough stitching together of the off-key sounds of metal rubbing together. Each phoneme leaves a dent in the air.

A wisp of smoke slowly seeped from a very fine crack in his forehead, causing the shadow in the room to rise slightly, as if someone had pushed the floor from under the carpet. The temperature dropped a notch.

In the next instant, the wisp of smoke condensed into a human shape—his clone, forming an image from the illusion, as if stepping out from behind a mirror, but without bringing out the refraction of light.

It rose silently, its features swaying between the mask and the face, retaining only the outline of the Fate Master;
Wearing the uniform of the editor-in-chief of the Morning Star Times, and shrouded in a pale golden veil that seemed otherworldly, he appeared as if he had just stepped off the stage in Kalquessa, with the stage lights still on and the play still in progress.

It walked to the window and leaped lightly.

The shadow lands first, then the person falls into its shadow—without stirring up a speck of dust, as if the night has caught it. A gust of wind at the street corner tilts the newspaper, flipping half a page, the yellow print on the white paper opening and closing like a patient eye.

The night in Areston was bathed in the glow of a blood moon, and the thin membrane between reality and illusion seemed to be gently lifted by a fingertip—fragile at the slightest touch.

The clone walked through the misty alley, like a tamed shadow:
He carried no death wish, only fear. His footsteps were silent, the fog parted to make way for him in the narrow passage, and the dampness seeping from the cracks in the bricks sounded like whispers yet to be uttered.

In an underground bar in the eastern part of the district, several drunkards huddled around a fireplace, rambling incoherently about "the yellow fog at the theater last night" and "how realistic the monster props in the troupe's new play are."

Their eyes were cloudy, their sentences stumbled together, and their consciousness seemed to have been gently nibbled at by the blood moon, leaving its edges cracked.

The clone didn't manifest, but simply reached out and wrote four words on the table next to their wine glasses:
—The King in Yellow.

The trace left by the fingertips rippled slightly, like a tiny ring of light on the surface of water.

The ripples quickly subsided, and the writing disappeared.

But one of the drunkards suddenly shivered and involuntarily uttered those four words.
The flames seemed to be touched by the wind, and the crowd around the stove fell silent for a moment—they couldn't explain why, but they felt their hearts pounding in their chests.

It's as if I've read these four words countless times in my dreams, and now they've finally come to mind.

The next stop was the ruins of the old church. Since the fire, it has remained in a state of "forgotten by testimony."
The broken walls and ruins resembled severed scriptures, their charred stone surfaces reflecting a cold light in the night dew. The doppelganger stood where the clock tower had collapsed, raising its finger and slowly pressing it against the wall.

A pale yellow mark emerges from beneath the stone skin—its shape somewhere between a crown and a mask, like a badge belonging to a playwright who never shows his face, flickering in the wind, sometimes bright, sometimes dim.

The light lingered for only a few seconds before disappearing into the crevice.

On the morning of the following day, at least ten people on the morning post street would assert with certainty that they had "seen" a miracle and took it as further evidence of the "King in Yellow's presence."

As the night deepened, his doppelganger continued to wander slowly through the streets. Wherever he went, he left only brief, fragmented messages:
Sometimes, it's the corner of an old newspaper damp with rain, where a word in the footnote has been subtly altered; sometimes, it's an inappropriate maxim appearing on a church bulletin board.

"He who dons the yellow robe is the true king."

Street vagrants, drunkards, fanatics, reclusive nobles, and poor night patrols... individuals from every social class inadvertently sense that the stage for that lie is being set up in reality.

They won't know who it all came from;

Only in dreams can one hear ancient whispers, and before dusk, one suddenly feels the moon looking down upon one another, and by the fireplace, one inexplicably utters, "It's not her, it's him directing the script."

That night, the fog that shrouded the depths of Areston never dissipated.

It's like the dampness exhaled by the city itself, serving as both a barrier and a stage curtain.

The clone stood in the mist, slowly raising its head. The blood moon hung low, like a red mark with a bitten edge.

A shattered crown was reflected in the deep blue of his eyes.

He murmured, "A story isn't a lie if enough people believe it."

The night was as dark as ink, and a blood moon hung high in the sky. The streets of Areston were silent, and fog drifted through the cracks in the cobblestones like the breath of an invisible force.

At the edge of the old town, on a long-abandoned fountain square, Si Ming stood quietly in the night mist.

His long robe was gray-black, and his hood was pulled down low, revealing a pale, waxy chin and a pair of blue eyes that gleamed faintly.

No one could tell that this was an avatar forged from "illusion";

The true master of destiny lies hidden deep within the dark study of the Morning Star newspaper, guiding every breath of this body with his spirit.

He slowly knelt down, his palms flat on the ground, his fingers tracing a series of non-Euclidean geometric patterns in the air. It wasn't the language of human civilization, nor was it traditional magical symbolism.

It is the geometry of "lies"—negating straight lines with broken lines and encircling the truth with loops.

The bluestone slabs trembled slightly, and rings of dark blue runes emerged from the cracks in the bricks, overlapping with the old mortar joints, and finally coalescing in the center of the square into a slowly opening eye.

The God of Fate whispered: "The constellations are arrayed. The first act of the script begins."

He pulled a page of the script, stained with blood, from his pocket—it was the darkest scene from "The King in Yellow":
The night the Yellow-Robed Lord ascended. The script was laid out at the center of the formation, and he bent down to recite the forbidden words:
“Our king is neither human, nor beast, nor god, nor dream; He descends upon the top of the theater, and behind the blood-red curtain, weaves the ending.”

The light of the blood moon seemed to be stretched straight by an invisible hand, bending down through the dark clouds and falling as a thin pillar of light at the center of the array. The runes flickered, as if they understood the summons.

A static electricity quickly built up in the air, making one's teeth ache, and the ends of one's hair stood on end slightly;

A faint, almost imperceptible chuckle drifted through the fog, like someone tapping their knuckles behind a piece of paper, tapping on the unspoken secrets of everyone.

The clone's lips curled up slightly, and its fingertip touched the script, as if writing a note or pressing a switch: "The legend is about to begin."

The footsteps in the distance receded into the distance, like a trajectory on an ephemeris that had been quietly rewritten, gradually approaching each other.

Si Ming remained calm and composed, his fingertips lightly folding the last wisp of light from the play and the magic circle into the mist.

With a flick of the long robe, the patterns instantly went out of focus, and all traces were swallowed up by the thick fog, as if they had never existed there.

A moment later, a figure emerged from the shadows of the alleyway—Aranhwin, the captain of the Night's Watch squad.

The young man was dressed in gray hunting attire, with the Blood Kiss Gun slung across his shoulder and a mysterious card of "Vampire Warrior" hanging at his waist.

The light flickered in his palm, like a small flame still willing to reason with the darkness.

He patrolled until he was close, his gaze stopping on Si Ming. His eyes showed surprise at first, but then he regained his composure.

"teacher?"

Si Ming stepped aside to meet him, a slight smile playing on his lips: "Alanhewin, your steps are much more steady than before. A hunter should land like this—like a sentence landing at its full stop."

"What...are you doing here?" Alanhwin spoke slowly, his tone respectful yet tinged with wariness.

"Now is not the time for you to travel alone. The city is uneasy, and the wind carries an ominous air."

"Some scripts can only be written late at night."

Si Ming looked at the lamp of light and said in a soft, even voice, "The light will destroy its structure and expose the metaphor to the sun, turning it into a slogan."

Alanhewin paused, then smiled wryly: "I remember you said—'Words in the dark are the only ones that tell the truth.' I didn't understand then. Now I understand a little."

Si Ming nodded, as if confirming a student's correct answer: "Are you afraid of the dark?"

“Fear,” Alanhewin said without hesitation, “but only in the darkness can we see who is still by our side.”

"Very good." Si Ming raised his hand and gently patted his shoulder and back, his gaze sweeping lightly over the streets and alleys behind him.
"Go patrol. Don't come near here. The fog here... is too thick, it'll wet your clothes."

Alan Herwin frowned slightly as he examined the stone bricks beneath his feet, as if sensing the temperature difference in the earth's atmosphere, or perhaps it was just a fleeting illusion.

He hesitated for a moment, then finally nodded: "...Then please be careful."

Si Ming watched him leave, the emotions in his eyes surging and receding like the tide, the smile on his lips appearing and disappearing in an instant.

After Alanhewin's figure disappeared around the street corner, Si Ming looked down at the ground smoothed by the fog and murmured softly:
"May you never have to know the truth."

The fog rolled in again, like an invisible giant curtain slowly closing—the stage hadn't ended, it was just a change of scenery.

-

After midnight, the study at the Morning Star newspaper office remained as silent as ever.

The old-fashioned grandfather clock ticked away, its sound like a cautious heart.

Si Ming sat under the dim light, his face ashen, his lips moving slightly but silently.

He clutched a die tightly in one hand—its mottled bronze surface engraved with six conflicting “truths,” like six parallel and mutually exclusive rivers.

He's gambling.

I'm betting that I haven't fallen into those nameless whispers yet, betting that the words "Master of Fate" still retain warmth.

The mirror in the corner suddenly fogged up, and on the other side of the glass was not his reflection, but a mask-like face—its contours were as soft as yellow wax, without eyes or mouth, yet it was “smiling.”

The whisper from that face seemed to come from the far reaches of the cosmos, carrying the unique cynicism and gentle seduction of the Great Old Ones:
"Keep weaving, Si Ming... Your lies are coming to life."

“They are watching—the Whisperers, the Echoes, the Yellow Robes…you will no longer be you.”

Si Ming leaned down, not looking in the mirror. The manuscript paper on the table trembled slightly. His fingertips brushed across the lines, the ink stains seeming to be covered by a second layer of hidden ink, the meaning of the strokes shifting slightly.

Originally titled "Script Structure," it now features a series of unfamiliar phrases:
"It's not that you wrote the script, it's that the script is writing you."

He abruptly closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and expelled the force that had tried to redefine its "self" through his body heat—

That lurking, wriggling information beneath the skin, like crystallized words—was forcefully suppressed. Closing the door, bolting it, taking a step back—these actions all occurred in the corridors of the mind.

“Not enough,” he muttered to himself, as if speaking to the sea. “Deeper lies, a bigger stage. It can’t collapse. Not yet.”

He carefully placed the dice in the center of the table, his fingertips trembling almost imperceptibly as he removed them. The dice spun around and around on their own, the bronze surface reflecting the lamplight, before finally coming to rest on—a blank surface.

Si Ming was slightly taken aback.

Blank space is not truth, nor is it a lie; it is simply "undefined."

A smile, somewhere between mockery and pity, played at the corners of his lips.

"It seems... even fate is beginning to lose its way."

He got up and walked to the window.

The blood moon had disappeared behind the clouds, leaving a large patch of frost-covered ink in the night sky.

He pressed his palms against the glass, and a thin crack quietly appeared in the shadow beside his feet. Black as vines, it meandered from his ankles up his spine—something was awakening within him, waiting for him to loosen the last latch.

He closed his eyes, inhaled a breath of misty, cold air, as if asking a question, or perhaps throwing a question at a wall that offers no echo:

"How many more lies do you want me to tell before I can become one of you?"

No one answered.

Only when the wind lifted the unfinished manuscript on the table did a line of words slowly emerge from the last page, gold threads seeping from the center of the paper, like another hand overstepping its bounds to sign its name—

"Welcome back, incarnation of the Thousand Faces."

Sometimes, the person reflected in the mirror is not your reflection, but the person you will eventually become.

"You say that's a lie? No... it's just another truth."

—Notes on the Realm of Illusion, Page 3

(End of this chapter)