Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 559, Section 111.5: The Colors of Stars and the Boy's Dream (Sorry, I was half asleep and posted the wrong chapter)

The sky that night was unnaturally bright.

Even the usually dimly lit city was illuminated, as if everyone was forced to look up at the same sky.

The television news kept flashing headlines: "[Unidentified tracker crashes]".

Some say it was a meteor, some say it was satellite debris, and others say it was an apocalypse.

Alpha knew that was a signal for him.

He has believed since childhood that God does not speak, but the universe does.

He was an ordinary, almost invisible young man, 27 years old, a researcher at the Institute of Biological Dimensions and Heterogeneous Materials.

His colleagues saw him as a freak: silent, aloof, preferring to eat alone, and never engaging in idle chatter.

Only one habit left a deep impression—

He always liked to show old cartoons on the projection screen in the laboratory.

The scene was brightly colored and the characters' expressions were exaggerated, as if they were out of place in this world.

He sat there in the light and shadow, his expression as calm as a sheet of paper.

A colleague whispered, "He lives in the world of anime."

Alpha heard it, but did not refute it—because it was the truth.

His office walls were covered with character posters: girls, warriors, gods, demons.

These paper figures are like some kind of talisman, allowing him to temporarily escape the noise of reality.

What is the reality?
It was the sound of a father reeking of alcohol, smashing bottles every night under the dim light.

It is a memory of a mother who died of cancer at a young age.

She was a frail older sister lying in a hospital bed.

He gave all his tenderness to his sister.

My older sister's name is Eileen. She was a painter when she was young, but later she was confined to her bed by a rare lung disease.

She always liked to watch her younger brother busy with his work with a smile, and there was a fragile light in that smile.

"Alpha, one day you will show the world something different."

That was the last thing she said.

After that, her laughter was replaced by tubes.

So when the news broadcast the "meteorite fall" news, Alpha almost immediately stood up.

At that moment, he had an inexplicable intuition—that thing was meant for him.

He didn't tell anyone.

That night, the rain poured down as if the entire sky were flooding.

Thunder rumbled through the mountains and forests as he trudged through the mud and water toward the spot where he had crashed.

His backpack contained a detector, a camera, protective gloves, and his old personal video camera.

"The first person to record a miracle," he murmured to himself.

As he stepped into that scorched earth, the wind stopped.

All sounds seemed to have been drained away, leaving only the heartbeat.

—In the center of the crater, there is a glowing hole.

The bottom of the pit was so smooth it didn't look like a natural formation; it was as if someone had gently pressed a giant finger into the earth. A kind of "liquid" flowed within. It wasn't magma, nor metal, but something—a flowing color.

The color was indescribable. It was like a rainbow, yet more intense; like the aurora borealis, yet deeper.

It buzzed in the air, a very low sound, yet it resonated deep within the chest. It was a frequency close to a heartbeat. Alpha crouched down, took out the light meter, and the instrument's pointer instantly went out of control, the current crackling and flickering.

His eyes were drawn to the light.

He reached out his hand, as if to touch a dream.

The liquid suddenly leaped up, like a sentient being.

At that moment, he clearly felt that "it" was watching him.

Then—the liquid light wrapped around his arm.

He cried out in alarm and tried to break free, but it was too late.

The substance burrowed into the pores of the skin, climbed along the blood vessels, and brought a simultaneous onslaught of sensations: cold, heat, stinging, sweetness, tingling...

He fell to the ground in the mud, rain lashing his face, and he saw the sky torn apart—

In an instant, the whole world turned into a "painting".

He could hear his heart beating, but there were two rhythms: one belonging to humans, and the other—to it.

That night, he became a parasite. That night, he saw the dimensional rift for the first time.

The next morning, Alpha was found unconscious outside the crash site. Rescuers said he had a fever and unfocused pupils, but after being taken to the hospital for examination, all his data were "normal".

But when he opened his eyes again, the world was different.

The buildings on the street appeared "thin," and the outlines of the crowd seemed to have an extra layer of definition; the walls undulated in his vision as if breathing; even the air appeared to have "flowing textures" in his eyes.

“I can see…the skin of space,” he wrote in his notebook.

He called the liquid meteorite "the color of stars".

It is a mysterious liquid meteorite substance that can resonate with the host's nervous system.

It is not a parasite, but more like a "dimensional language," an intelligent life form that uses "color" as its medium. And he became its voice.

Weeks later, Alpha's body began to undergo subtle changes.

The skin becomes smooth and almost transparent. Bone density decreases, and weight is lost.

His shadow began to lag, out of sync with his movements.

In the mirror, his face seemed to flicker, his expression slightly different with each blink.

He began to be able to control the light.

He can make the room's light bend on its own, make shadows extend in the opposite direction, make the characters in a poster move, and even "fold" space, making the surface of an object lose its thickness.

At first, he felt fear.

But fear quickly turned into ecstasy.

He was fascinated by the thrill of "recreating reality".

He looked at the experimental mice that had been flattened and saw perfect order in their still postures.

He started recording videos, speaking to the camera alone: ​​"The color of the stars is a medium of perception. It allows me to touch two-dimensional existence. Three-dimensionality is just an illusion—the real world is flat."

By day, he is a researcher.

At night, he's a madman.

He was in the lab debugging a dimensional deconstruction instrument, repeatedly causing objects to collapse, flatten, and disappear.

Each experiment made him "lighter".

The skin thins, and the bones are almost translucent.

His colleague joked, "You're about to turn into an animated character."

He just smiled.

They didn't know that he was truly—becoming a "painting".

Then, Miranda appeared.

She was a high-ranking executive at Umbrella Corporation.

Wearing a black suit, every gesture seemed calculated.

She stood at the laboratory door, looking at the flattened samples.
A barely perceptible smile appeared at the corner of his lips.

“We are very interested in ‘Starry Night’.”

Her voice was calm and gentle, like a knife slicing through silk.

“You need funding and equipment, we provide that; you need test subjects and facilities, we provide those too. And you—you only need to give me one thing.”

Alpha looked up, his eyes glazed over.

"what?"

“The result.” Miranda took a step closer to him, her eyes flashing coldly across his face.

At that moment, in the reflection of her pupils, he saw himself no longer as a person, but as a moving "image".

He smiled.

That smile was gentle, yet it sent chills down your spine.

"make a deal."

From then on, the laboratory lights never went out again. Alpha became Miranda's key project.

He created the first "two-dimensional cells" that could wriggle on a plane, using light as blood and color as flesh.

That was new life, like a miracle illuminated by a paintbrush.

He calls it: dimensional reduction evolution.

And he himself, in the process of gradually losing his humanity, has lost the depth of being a "human being".

Late at night, he said to the camera, "Humans are limited by stereoscopic illusions."

We only see the 'depth' and ignore the higher beauty.

Two dimensions are a pure paradise.

On the other side of the screen, his smile was like a ripped open, leading to an unknown world. Jason first noticed something was wrong in the early morning.

He pushed open the laboratory door and was greeted by a pungent, acrid smell.

Fine metallic dust filled the air, traces of space being "polished" by some high-energy frequency.

The lights in the room were on, and the screen was flickering with double images.

In that blue and white light, Alpha was sitting in front of the experimental table. His shadow was cast on the wall, but it was moving in the opposite direction. When he raised his hand, the shadow lowered its head; when he stepped back, the shadow leaned forward.

"Alpha...you stayed up all night again?"

Jason asked cautiously.

Alpha did not answer, but stared at the liquid "starlight" in the test tank.

It tumbled slowly in the jar, making a low, pulsating sound.

The sound was like breathing, and also like a heartbeat.

Jason took a few steps closer and saw the experimental log spread out on the table.

It was covered with dense formulas and handwriting, along with a note that sent chills down his spine:

"The two-dimensional response rate reached 83%. The samples began to show a tendency of 'self-description.' They wanted to become me."

Jason instinctively turned the page; the next page showed photos of several laboratory mice.

The mouse in the photo is no longer three-dimensional.

Their fur turned into smooth patches of color.

The eyes lost focus, as if they had been painted on.

He slammed his notebook shut, his voice low: "What are you doing, Alpha?"
Do you know what kind of fire you're playing with?!

Alpha raised its head, its eyes somewhat dazed, yet strangely serene.

"fire?"

He smiled.

“No, Jason. This is light. Fire will burn out, but light will extend.”

He raised his hand; the skin on his palm was translucent, and the veins inside flowed with an unusual color.

"Look, this isn't a disease, it's evolution."

Jason felt a chill run down his spine.

He knew Alpha was a genius, but he never imagined that a genius could go completely insane.

"Alpha, you need a rest. What you're researching—it's devouring you."

He struggled to suppress the fear in his voice.

Alpha's smile was gentle, yet it sent chills down your spine.

"You don't understand... I've seen a new world."

There was no decay, no decay—all the light was singing.

There, everyone is eternal.

Jason remained silent.

He looked at his former friend, the young man who liked to tell corny jokes and would help him adjust his equipment.
Now they are speaking tenderly of "eternity".
But the flowing colors on his body resembled the iridescent patches of a corpse before it decomposed.

He knew that this was no longer the Alpha.

It is the color of the stars that is speaking.

He secretly copied and backed up the experimental data.

Late that night, he went into the computer room alone.
Amidst the silent red light of the alarm, the encrypted file was uploaded to the military's security server.

His hands were trembling the moment the transmission was completed.

He knew he was betraying his friends—but it was the only way to save them.

He prayed silently: that he could stop soon. However, fate had already begun its countdown.

The air raid siren sounded at exactly midnight. The piercing siren echoed through the corridor, and the red lights flashed like the pulse of a ticking time bomb.

Alpha's labs were designated a "biohazard out-of-control zone," and the military ordered the entire building sealed off, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving.

Outside the window, helicopters circled, and searchlights swept across the roof of the laboratory building, casting large, scorched shadows.

Jason broke through the crowd and ran up the stairs.

He's still inside! Let me in!

The guards tried to stop him, but he stormed through the security exit. The first thing he saw when he rushed into the laboratory was a canister of glowing liquid breathing.

The liquid "Starry Night" was slowly churning, and fine cracks appeared on the glass walls, as if something was awakening inside.

“Alpha!” he shouted. Alpha stood in front of the can, his back to him.

He was wearing a white lab coat smeared with paint, and the light swirled like a rainbow in his hair.

“You have to get out of here!” Jason’s voice was hoarse. “This thing is going to ruin you!”

Alpha didn't turn around, but simply reached out and gently stroked the glass jar with his fingers, his tone so gentle it was almost a prayer.

"Destroyed me? No, Jason. It's breathing. It's alive."

It's telling me—finish it.

“That’s parasite!” Jason yelled.

"That's not life, that's a virus!"

Finally, Alpha slowly turned his head. Jason saw his eyes. They weren't human eyes.

The pupil was stretched into a vortex, with a constantly rotating nebula flowing inside.

His face flickered, as if jumping between different frames.

With each breath he took, a ripple appeared in the air.

"You don't understand,"

He smiled and walked step by step toward Jason.

"Two dimensions are salvation. You will thank me."

Jason retreated step by step, his breathing rapid.

He watched his friend's shadow wriggle on the wall.

The shadow had already detached from the ground.

Like a torn piece of drawing paper, floating in the air.

"Alpha...please, wake up!"

Jason almost begged.

At that moment, Alpha's expression suddenly softened.

He whispered, "I'm sorry, Jason. You're my best friend. So I'll let you... be quiet."

A flash of colorful light. Alpha stretched out his hand. The liquid "Starlight" gushed from his palm.
It spread across the ground in colorful ripples, each wave carrying a soft murmur, like a hymn.

Before Jason could even back away, the light had already climbed up his shoes, legs, and chest.

He looked down in horror and saw his body begin to become smooth, his blood vessels, muscles, and bones being swallowed by a flowing, colored membrane.

“Alpha…please…stop…” His voice broke off, like a stretched-out cassette tape.

The next moment, he flattened himself out.

Like a blank canvas, the body's three-dimensionality has completely disappeared.

His features turned into blocks of color, his expression frozen in that moment of fear.

A blurry human-shaped color appeared on the wall.

That's Jason's "portrait".

Alpha gazed at the painting and murmured softly, "Look... you've finally become eternal."

Colorful light flowed around him.

The entire laboratory looked as if it had been repainted by some invisible brush.

A faint light floated in the air, illuminating the tables, chairs, instruments, and curtains.
Everything three-dimensional is slowly "losing its thickness".

Outside, the roar of engines grew closer and closer.

The helicopter hovered low, and an order came over the loudspeaker: "All personnel evacuate immediately! The target area is about to be cleared!"

Alpha looked up, a slight smile playing on his lips.

He reached out and pressed his fingertips against the glass jar that seemed to breathe.

The Starry Night inside was boiling with excitement.

He whispered the words that would change the world: "Then let's do it together."

boom--

The sound tore through the night.

The entire research building was completely destroyed in the first wave of bombing.

Bulletproof glass shattered like paper scraps, experimental equipment tumbled and fell, and metal beams bent and dripped under the high temperature.
The firelight illuminated half the city's skyline.

Alpha was thrown to the ground, his ears ringing.

He looked up and saw the walls flowing, the air melting, and all the lights being replaced by the color waves of "Starry Night".

The sealed liquid meteorite containers ruptured in the explosion, and the liquid tumbled and spilled in the air, like thousands of colorful snakes crawling wildly along the cracks in the floor.

They cheered at every explosion.

That is a living light.

That's the breath of an alien.

Alpha was covered in blood, yet he laughed. His laughter was mixed with gasps and hoarseness, but filled with a kind of blissful madness. "Come on...you want me, don't you?"

He staggered to his feet and, amidst the burning ruins of the laboratory, raised the last can of "Starry Night".

The moment the glass shattered, the liquid throbbed like a heart.

Without hesitation, he plunged the syringe into his chest.

Liquid light flows into the blood vessels, and a cold pain surges like a tsunami. The blood immediately becomes transparent, and the bones begin to glow.

He can "hear" his own cells singing.

The songs came from the depths of the universe, from a language he couldn't understand: "The stars... need you."

His vision collapsed and then expanded.

The ceiling was twisting into a giant vortex, and cracks with overflowing colors began to appear at the edges of the space.

His consciousness expanded rapidly, and his reason was torn apart like a piece of cloth.

He saw that behind every ray of light lay another world; he saw his arms become transparent, his skin flow like water, and his veins transform into swirling rainbow threads.

He looked down and saw his heart beating in a rainbow of light; it was no longer flesh and blood, but a pulsating star.

Alpha laughed, but the laughter shattered in the firelight.

"Then... let's go."

The roar swallowed everything.

The bomb completely destroyed the building, and the shockwave from the explosion, along with a scorching wind, swept across half of the city.

Amidst that chaos, "Starry Night" was fully activated.

Liquid light burst through the ground and spread like a tide to every corner of the neighborhood.

The night sky was painted with a dreamlike curtain of light, where red and blue intertwined, and green and purple danced together; every ray of light carried vitality and consciousness.

Like countless eyes blinking in the darkness.

When the smoke and dust cleared, a corner of the city had already "collapsed".

That's not a ruin.

That was the birth of the two-dimensional world.

Buildings were flattened into thin silhouettes, streets became a giant painting, and corpses of people floated between layers of color, their expressions frozen, like silent murals, forever embedded in that two-dimensional space.

Colorful bubbles floated in the sky, each reflecting a human face.

Those were the souls he "healed".

Alpha emerged from the ruins.

His figure could no longer be described as human.

His body was translucent, his outline constantly shimmering; his arms trailed light.

As you move around, the air is refracted into seven-colored ripples.

His eyes were like swirling nebulae; with each blink, a star went out.

He looked down and saw his own reflection.

The reflection did not follow his movements.

It was laughing, but he himself wasn't.

"...Absolutely gorgeous."

he muttered.

He began to walk.

With each step, the ground is painted a new color; with each breath, the air is redrawn.

He kills, infects, devours; all colors flow within him.

That feeling was sweeter than any drug.

He was laughing, he was crying, he was singing.

Until he saw her. The hospital room was on the edge of a burning city. He pushed open the door and saw his sister, Eileen, lying in bed; she was still alive.

The oxygen mask reflected a gentle blue light in the flash.

She looked up at the figure that no longer resembled a human, and smiled, saying, "Alpha...you are so radiant."

That one sentence left him frozen in place.

In that light, a sliver of humanity struggled to surface.

His eyes were lost and sorrowful.

He reached out his hand, but dared not touch her.

The palm was no longer skin, but flowing light.

"Eileen... I did it. I made the world... a better place."

"It's so beautiful." Her voice was soft. "But I'm so cold..."

In that instant, he became fully conscious. He looked down and saw the mist spreading beneath his feet; it was the tentacles of the Starry Night, silently crawling up the hospital bed.

"No—!" He tried to take it back, but it was too late.

The gray fog swallowed her bedside, her body, and her breath.

The older sister's silhouette gradually became transparent, her smile froze in the air, and the last tear turned into a colorful speck, gently falling to the ground. She became part of the painting.

Alpha knelt down, unable to utter a sound, tears streaming down his face—tears that were not water, but liquid light.

Each drop blossomed into a seven-colored flower on the floor.

He looked up at the sky, and the wind blew through the colorful ruins, like someone whispering in the distance.

He smiled slightly, his voice almost broken: "Alpha is dead."

"A constellation of stars—has been born."

A few days later, the sky returned to calm.

Miranda's helicopter flew over the city.

From above, the entire city appears as if it has been redrawn by the gods: streets, buildings, vehicles, and trees are all transformed into colorful silhouettes, like a giant mural spread across the ground.

The wind blows up the colored powder, and sunlight shines through it, making the whole world seem like a sheet of paper breathing in the shimmer.

Miranda stepped out of the cabin, her black boots creaking on the soft, colorful floor.

The street beneath my feet was no longer hard; it felt like I was walking on paint.

She looked around. A gust of wind swept by, and countless specks of light floated in the air. These were two-dimensional souls, so light that they were almost transparent.

Then—she heard laughter.

It was a cheerful, childlike, and wild laugh.

A figure emerged from the distant ruins of a building.

A constellation of stars—or rather, the young man once known as Alpha.

His body shimmered with light, half transparent and half intensely colored, its outline constantly changing, sometimes resembling an anime boy, sometimes a silhouette of a god, with multicolored coatings flowing across his body like a walking kaleidoscope.

He opened his arms and smiled at Miranda, saying, "Hello, Miss Miranda."

"I'm hungry. I want to eat...more."

Miranda looked at him, her eyes filled with complex emotions.

She gently raised her hand and extended a fingertip.

"Come with me, where the stars shine brightly."

"I'll let you eat your fill."

He paused for a moment, then smiled.

Her smile was radiant, as innocent as a child who had found a playmate.

"Then let's start from here."

Miranda turned, and the helicopter door slowly closed behind her. Light streamed in through the porthole, casting the glittering silhouettes of the stars into flowing shadows that merged into her own.

On that day, the calamity was "brilliant stars" were born.

Two-dimensional aberration beast king, the dimensional reducer of the stars.

He became Umbrella's most terrifying and loneliest creation.

He was no longer human, no longer a scientist, and no longer the cowardly Alpha.

He is simply that eternally hungry color, at the end of all colors, where life and art, madness and divinity intertwine, a constellation of brilliant stars.

A two-dimensional god who devours the world.

(End of this chapter)