Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 438 The Stars Respond to the Dice
"Failure is not the end, but a weapon that I have acquired."

—Si Ming

The blue flames still trailed long tails across the night sky, their cold light forcefully pushing the blood rain back into the clouds.

Si Ming stood amidst the rubble, the smile lines on his clown mask split in two by the firelight. He raised the back of his hand, and the threads of fate slowly cascaded down from between his finger bones, like a string vibrating softly.

“You’re curious,” he said, looking at the two queens, “why I can summon the stars?”

With a flick of his finger, a thin membrane of light, as thin as a cicada's wing, appeared in the air.

Many versions of him were reflected on the light membrane—some were cloaked and lying on the beach, some were swallowed by the blood moon atop the clock tower, some were torn apart by their reflections on the shore of Mirror Lake, and some had their throats choked by an invisible lament.

Every "he" was powerful, his shoulders and backs were full of starlight, but they were all dead.

“I’ve been down to a lower level,” Si Ming said calmly. “The back room. There lies all my failed futures. Every version of me has faced the Star Calamity and failed.”

He flicked his finger, and the failure on the light membrane instantly shattered into stardust.

These specks of sand do not fall to the ground; they are as if picked out one by one by an invisible hand and woven back into the threads of fate behind him.

“I shattered them one by one, not out of spite.” He looked at his palm, “because the book of lies by the liar needs their embellishment.”

He looked up, his voice not loud, yet it drowned out the surrounding wind—

“I am not bringing them to life. I am writing down the path they have taken, and if necessary, persuading reality to follow it. That is my power: to make lies seem true.”

The distant pile of rubble cracked open with a "crack," as if an unseen pen had altered a sentence.

A few extremely faint stars lit up in the depths of the night sky, their tails slowly turning back to the gesture of the God of Fate.

“The Star Speaker,” said Si Ming, “is just one version of my countless failures. Now, it is at my command.”

He opened his palm, and a tiny, cold blue flame rose from the lines of his palm, then dispersed into a string of even finer specks of light that disappeared into the surrounding air.

“Star Language, not prayer.” He stared at Medusa and Liseria, his voice lowered by half an inch beneath the clown mask. “It is to command the starlight to burn according to my lies.”

"As for the number of times?" He smiled. "You don't need to worry about it."

The threads of fate rustled softly, like the back of a blade gently striking within its sheath. The blue of the night sky and the red of the city formed a clear boundary beside him; stars and blood separated him, as if he had parted them with a single hand.

Si Ming raised his hand and gently pressed his fingertips down an inch.

The ground around the royal palace bulged with countless translucent egg sacs.

It was bluish-white, with slowly rotating star-like patterns inside, like a small section of the night sky stuffed into a jelly. The egg membrane was so thin it shone, and the shadows inside curled up, stretched out, and curled up again.

He snapped his fingers.

Snapped--

pop- pop-

The egg sacs burst open simultaneously, scattering cold blue fluid everywhere.

A creature that was half human and half insect crawled out: a hard shell, segmented limbs, slender mouthparts, a bulging chest cavity, and a faint starlight shining between its ribs.

They didn't roar; they just rubbed their armor plates together in unison, making a grating, grating sound.

“An alien host,” Si Ming said softly.

They leaped up. Before the first row of Blood Moon minions could even raise their shields, their throats were clamped shut, their hard-shelled mouthparts piercing their flesh, causing their entire faces to collapse.

The second row had just begun to pray when their shoulder armor was pierced, and they were lifted off the ground; the third row, attempting to form a formation, had their insteps torn open, leaving long red marks on their blood vessels.

The film is responsible for sewing, and the cats are responsible for tearing; as soon as one is sewn, two pounce on it and rip off the seam.

Regeneration and division intertwined, creating a bloody and chaotic scene.

Si Ming lightly clapped his hands, and a deep red dot appeared on his palm.

The flame was quiet, like a tiny red lotus.

The next second, it exploded into a low wave of fire, rushing along the ground, scalding the air white and then blackening it in its wake.

Flame doesn't consume wind, oil, or wood; it only consumes existence itself.

"The Great Sage of Burning the World." He announced his name, then looked up at the Bloodthorn Valkyrie, "The world and I, shall both return to Nirvana."

The torrent of red lotuses swept up halfway, slicing up from the side and engulfing everything.

The Valkyrie raised her whip to block, but the blood thorns turned to ash and vanished upon contact with the red flames, as if they had been erased from time.

The plates on her body began to crack, black ash oozing from the cracks, and several feather ribs snapped off with a snap; the next instant, the entire armor and wings disintegrated into ash, which quickly dissipated.

Si Ming turned his head and said in a calm tone, "If you are burned to ashes, you will not be able to be resurrected."

"—!"

A sharp, hoarse cry came from above. Without further hesitation, Liseria urged her pale war lion to leap, its silver claws aimed straight for Siming's throat.

She was incredibly fast, leaving three silver streaks in her afterimage and tearing a shallow half-inch mark in the air.

Si Ming didn't turn around, but whispered, "Dark Star, destruction."

when--

It was like a giant bell being struck underwater. A black core appeared out of thin air in front of the lion's paw—not large, about the size of a fist, yet it devoured the surrounding light layer by layer.

The lion's paw froze in mid-air, the silver light at its tip stretched into long threads. The next instant, the entire lion's body was gripped by the tidal force.

The mane, bones, and flesh were drawn, refined, and broken, turning into tiny stardust that rolled back into the black core, silencing its last painful roar.

Once the black core was absorbed, it vanished without a trace.

The thin film on the ground was dragged out in a huge eddy, with wisps of white smoke rising from its edges, as if it had just been branded with a hot iron.

As Si Ming lowered his hand, the threads of fate sprang from his knuckles, stabilizing the swaying corners of the walls and lampposts around him, preventing the city structure from collapsing further.

He didn't look at the results, but just chuckled softly:
"Dark Star Destroyer".

In the distance, Medusa and Liseria spoke almost simultaneously:
"impossible."

"This is impossible!"

Si Ming smiled enigmatically, the smile lines on his clown mask being drawn out by the blue flames: "These are all my failed futures. I remember their power and will use their methods. You should be glad—I'm only selective in using them now."

The alien brethren were still being hunted down, and the black marks left by the Crimson Lotus Flame meandered forward on the ground;
Occasionally, dark blue fragments of stars would continue to fall from the sky, trailing behind them, like belated echoes, striking precisely the energy supply nodes of the blood membrane.

Siming raised his wrist, and time seemed to be distributed among different weapons:

The illegitimate child is responsible for tearing apart the heretical relatives;

Honglian is responsible for erasing the powerful and mysterious;

Dark Star is in charge of crushing ambition.

Every inch of progress was like stabbing into the hearts of the two queens.

Medici raised her palm and gently closed it with her five fingers pointing downwards.

A huge, bloody mass bulged in the ground in front of the royal palace. The fetal wall was translucent, with countless tiny blood vessels extending in all directions, as if connecting the pulse of the entire city.

A series of tire tread marks appeared on the tire tread, rapidly jumping from "0".

"Only born, never dying." Her voice fell to the ground.

wow——

The fetus opened, red rain poured out, and the thin film spread on the floor tiles doubled in thickness.

Those who fell on her side were swept away by the membrane—

A few breaths later, the membrane bulged into a small bulge, and a new person stood up from inside, his whole body flushed, with a thin layer of bloodshot light in his eyes.

In the distance, the entire battle line seemed to have been rolled back:

The shield wall that had just been torn apart stitched itself back together under the membrane, and the pile of corpses that had been blackened by the Crimson Lotus were sorted, reshaped, and re-erected in the ranks.

Liseria slowly rose into the air, her skirt falling naturally without wind. She turned her head, her lips gently parting and opening. It wasn't a song, but a breath, yet it left a subtle pain in every heart.

"Let it go," she whispered. "The ending has never changed."

As the mournful sound faded, the entire field slowed down:

The alien monstrosity was a beat late in jumping, and its mouthparts trembled slightly when it opened its mouth.
Selene stepped forward, her boot soles feeling as if pressed down by an invisible hand, her joints tightening slightly;
The fate threads behind Siming's shoulders thickened, and their trembling frequency became slightly off-center, like forcibly pacing a heartbeat.

The white-masked figure silently raised a finger, the spreading tremors were suppressed, and the collapse at the corner of the wall stopped;
The dim light from the yellow robe filtered out the piercing metallic howls and screams from my ears, leaving only the necessary information lines.

But the amniotic fluid count is still ticking, and the blood flow is still increasing—

Each time I looked up, the resurrection procession stretched out by another arc.

Selene slashed down a group of newly formed remnants, the blood flames spiraling along the blade, only to be absorbed by the membrane upon landing; she turned, slashed again, and was sewn up once more. She exhaled softly, her knuckles turning white.

Crimson flames swept across the ground, turning everything in their path to ashes; in the next instant, blood membranes surged to fill the gaps, growing new skin on the ashes.

The tide of the Dark Star left a black trail in the sky. Just as it was about to spread, the mournful sound stopped its expansion with a "crack," swallowing only the edge.

“This is my city.” Medici looked at Siming, her blood-red wings unfurling, gathering all the raindrops within her. “Death is but a temporary departure.”

“Then slow down,” Liseria added.

Before the royal palace, three voices overlapped:
The sound of red raindrops hitting the membrane surface;
The mournful sound was like fine needles piercing through the bones;

The soft rustling of fate's threads, like a taut bowstring, could snap at any moment.

The God of Fate raised his eyes, his gaze passing over the blood-stained fetus, and saw the fetal surface counter flashing:

[27][28][29]...[Overload]...[1]

Each "reload" meant she was connecting another umbilical cord, pulling more dead back to the battlefield. He exhaled a short breath, his tone flat: "Understood."

Red and blue continued to collide on either side of him.

White and Yellow leveled the battlefield, while the two sister divine authorities suppressed resurrection and slowdown to the greatest extent.

The steps of the royal palace cracked and splintered under the repeated clashes of forces, only to be smoothed out one by one by the threads of fate. The distant bells, their mournful tones muffled, each strike felt like a tap on one's shoulder.

“You cannot breach my city,” Medusa declared firmly.

“You can’t escape my song either.” Liseria’s eyelashes fell and then rose again, her cold white eyes showing no ripples.

Si Ming glanced at them, flipped his hand, and the thread of fate made a short ding.

“Then let’s put it another way,” he said in a low voice.

Si Ming looked at Medici, his smile as faint as a knife's edge: "There's another ability I haven't shown yet."

He uttered four words, like sending a bullet into a keyhole:

"The dream weaver of destiny".

Instead of making a move, he pretended to explain the principles to his opponent:

"On everyone's destiny line, there is more than one 'you.' Time is not a straight line, but a multi-stranded rope—the same rope, with some strand from the future brushing past us at this moment. I don't try to change time; I only convince reality: 'A future you needs to happen here.'"

He raised the back of his hand, the thread of fate knotted between his fingers: "The dream cocoon is the proof. I will first tie a knot in someone's fate, collecting their broken dreams, vows, and unfinished deeds, layer by layer, weaving them into a cocoon."
Once I sign the lie, reality will admit it—let's use some time to reflect on him at that moment.

He tilted his head, adding a final, honest remark: "The cost? I'll bear it. The timeframe is short. As for exactly how short—" he laughed, "it doesn't matter, just enough for you to regret it."

After saying that, he raised his hand and pointed to the distance of the capital.

A dream cocoon lights up in the air, as if someone has ignited the night from the inside out.

The cocoon was translucent, revealing a sea, sails, and a monocle lens that gleamed coldly inside. Silk threads hung from the cocoon, reaching far away to the fate knot in the palm of the God of Destiny.

“My friend, Rex,” Si Ming turned his gaze back to Medici and said calmly, “he wants to speak with you—alone.”

He flipped his hand, and the air beside him folded open a door. There was no corridor inside, only a flattened sea breeze and a stretched horizon.

A figure stepped out of the door, black boots landing first, followed by the muzzle of a gun, the shoulder line, and that familiar monocle lens.

He raised his hand to adjust his glasses and grinned at Si Ming:
"Let me borrow a phrase from you—I'm the only one still alive."

Si Ming nodded: "From your future moment. I guess you've already gone up?"

Rex shrugged, a smile playing on his lips. "Of course. I'm not that useless. My path—the Realm Walker."

He held the gun across his shoulder, his gaze passing over the Fate God and landing on the direction of Bloodwing and the Womb, as if picking at a reef at sea:

"Your Majesty, let's talk privately."

Medici's eyes narrowed with a bloodshot glint, and the blood-red wings on her back folded a fraction of an inch: "A lie."

The God of Fate seemed to be seriously correcting: "A lie is only a half-truth. You have already understood half of it, and that half is enough to be effective."

The dream cocoon slowly closed in the distance, its threads still wrapped around the fingertips of the Fate Master. He turned his wrist, as if gently plucking a string:

"Time begins counting."

Snapped--

It wasn't one sound, but four, echoing simultaneously from different directions.

The bullet seemed to be divided into four segments, simultaneously existing on four boundaries: Blood Wings, Lament, Familiarity, and the Furnace of Life.

With all four points hit simultaneously, the entire Bloodwing Line was fractured, as if it had been split in two by a blade.

“Zero-distance corridor.” Rex pulled with his left hand, and a narrow, bright corridor snapped open in the air, forcibly pulling the umbilical cord of the uterus behind the royal palace closer to the edge of the steps.

"Closer." He nodded slightly to the side.

“I’ll go.” Celian stepped in, her blood flames rising to the second level, her fingertips striking down, a cold glint flashing in her snake eyes.

*Snap*—The umbilical cord was severed on the spot, and a fine red mist spurted out from the cut. The tire tread counter on the tire sidewall began to flash wildly—[Heavy load][Heavy load][Heavy load]—and then it shifted gears, jumping from [29] back to [7].

Medici's eyes sharpened, and the blood wings on her back suddenly retracted, with more blood vessels connecting to her shoulder blades to forcibly fill in the gaps.

Liseria's low moan paused, then intensified, narrowing Rex's corridor by an inch, causing the walls to creak like glass.

Rex changed his instrument very quickly, and with a smile he cursed, "You sang it perfectly."

With a tap of his toes, he rotated the entire "zero distance" ninety degrees horizontally, as if he had lifted the edge of a canvas—the corridor exit was turned around and aligned with another hidden power supply line.

boom!
Second shot.

The umbilical cord burst, the luster of the fetus changed from "full" to dry, the first three rows of the regeneration queue got stuck, and the hand that emerged from the membrane stopped in mid-air, unable to hold on tightly.

Siming's gaze swept across the battle lines, and the threads of fate swiftly converged at a crucial juncture, stabilizing their own advance. He whispered a reminder: "The borrowed future will last at most ten minutes."

Rex chewed on a leaf and raised his gun with one hand: "Ten minutes, it won't interfere with my 'polite visit'."

He tilted the gun slightly, raised his chin at Medici, and smiled flippantly: "Your Holiness—shall we talk?"

Medici's eyes flashed with a bloodshot light: "Get out."

"Just take this." Rex's trigger fell again, the bullets striking two different "temperature surfaces" simultaneously, forcing the blood rain to open a dry band, and the Holy Symbol Array briefly lost pressure.

Selian seized the opportunity to strike, and a series of red shadows severed the Bloodwing Deacon, who had just recovered, at the waist, leaving only a pile of cracked shells when he landed.

High in the sky, Liseria closed her eyes, gently pressed her fingertips, and a mournful sound pressed directly against Rex's brow.

His shoulders swayed slightly, and tiny black cracks were reflected in his glasses. He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and still smiled.

“I apologize, Princess. I know how to use borders better than you do.”

He tilted his glasses up, his vision shifted, and a mournful sound emanated from between his brows, gliding past his earlobe like a needle being deflected by his touch.

"The last shot." Rex spat out the chewing leaf and tossed it to the ground.

boom.

The shot went unanswered, as if it had been stuffed into cotton. But the enormous blood fetus behind the palace suddenly groaned, cracks appeared in its walls, and the counter dropped to [2] before flashing wildly.

Si Ming glanced sideways and said in a low voice, "Beautiful."

Rex slung the gun over his shoulder and tilted his head at him: "I borrowed your cable to prop it up. Here you go."

The thread of fate wrapped around his wrist and bounced back behind Si Ming, the few burrs automatically smoothing out.

Siming raised a finger, the silk threads pulling and releasing, stabilizing the entire battlefield. He didn't look at Rex, offering the same calm reminder:

"Nine minutes and forty seconds remain."

Rex grinned: "Enough for me to say one more harsh thing."

He pointed the gun at Medici's heart, his index finger on the trigger, his smile as gentle as the sea breeze of yesteryear: "Holy Mother, step back a little, lest the fragrance of the bullets taint your holiness."

Si Ming gestured with his hand and looked back: "Come back."

Selene leaped backward, landing beside him. She licked her canine teeth, her eyes gleaming: "Should I also display my Star Calamity now?"

Si Ming's smile remained unchanged: "Of course—my vampire progenitor."

A mysterious card spun on Celian's fingertip, its surface radiating a deep red satin shadow.

The next instant, two stunning vampire princesses emerged slowly from the light, their sheer veils trailing on the ground, and ancient blood emblems fastened to their necks by silver and black collars.

They knelt on the ground, hands clasped together, their lips parting simultaneously, their voices low and melodious:

"May your blood live on forever—True Ancestor, Your Excellency Celian."

Crimson threads flew from their palms, like two thin ribbons of blood encircling Serian's waist and shoulders, snapping together. A soft cracking sound came from her joints; it wasn't a break, but a change of status.

Her spine was lifted by the blood-red light, and the life lines under her skin lit up like scarlet lace, flowing along her collarbone and into the blood crown mark on her heart.
The fingertips were as black as onyx, and the nails naturally extended into sharp points.

Two pairs of blood-red bat wings unfolded from the skin behind him, the membranes were semi-transparent, and the blood vessels were clearly visible;
Spiral blood flames ignited at the wingtips; the fire was not fire, but rather a wisp of iron's scent and the night's temperature intertwined.

The temperature around us plummeted.

The candlelight was drawn inwards, the flames hanging upside down like dripping water; the shadows stretched along the pillars of the palace, converging at her feet to form a black, high-backed chair, like a temporary throne.

She took a step forward, and the chair shattered into countless bat silhouettes, which then returned to her wings in mid-air.

Selene looked up, her pupils seemingly filled with red glass; she smiled slightly, a cold glint of her canine teeth showing at the corner of her lips.

The twin princesses took half a step back and bowed together, raising the hem of their skirts.

Si Ming raised his hand to introduce, his tone as calm as if he were announcing a program: "Above the Star Calamity - The True Ancestor of Blood. The pinnacle of the Blood Clan."

He turned his head to look at the princess in the air: "Liseria. This one—can she be your opponent?"

Liseria's fingers tightened slightly, then loosened, her gaze cold and silent.

Si Ming then turned his head and pointed towards the wall of blood wings: "Meddes. She—she's yours, Rex."

Rex, with his signature smug grin, slung the gun over his shoulder: "I'd love to."

The two nodded simultaneously. The air seemed to tighten for a moment: red rain and blue flames parted in mid-air, and mournful sounds and life threads twisted into an invisible rope on the stone steps.

Si Ming took a half step back, the smile lines on his clown mask casting a clean shadow in the light and shadow. He raised his hand, as if pressing a switch in the dark of a stage, his voice clear:

"Act Four - Opening."

"Life and death. Please applaud."

—Star Disaster Theater

(End of this chapter)