Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 149: Submerged in the Fantasy Sea: After the Gate Opens

"In the dark depths of the sea, nightmares sleep forever. Those who try to spy on fate will ultimately be mocked by it."

In the very center of the Upside-Down Sea, Ju Men lies deep in the sea's eye.

It is like a forgotten eye under the world, the outline of the door is dim, but it is surrounded by the mottled blue light.

It was like the gaze of the sleeping lord left at the edge of a dream, cold, eternal, and impossible to look directly at.

Lilia slowly raised the "Dream Whisper" card. Her fingertips trembled slightly, but her voice pierced the storm like an ancient oath, echoing distantly in the abyss:

"I will cross the abyss of dreams."

"I will face the Lord of Dreams."

"In the name of dreams—open this door."

At that moment, the sea seemed to hold its breath.

The vortex suddenly stopped, and the whole world seemed to be pulled into a time fault that did not exist in reality.

The next moment, countless bright and colorful rays of light rushed out from the huge gate, breaking through the boundary like a torn silk, burning the abyss transparently.

Siming only felt that the Lost suddenly accelerated, the whole world began to spin and collapse, and his consciousness was torn into the crack between dreams and reality by the all-consuming suction force.

In my ears, there is the roar of the sea;
Before our eyes, there is the interweaving of light and shadow, the overlapping of illusion and reality;
Inside the chest cavity, the blood is vibrating at a high frequency and the heart is beating like a drum;
In the last moment of weightlessness, he only remembered his bound arms, as if being strangled by something heavy and soft—

——Damn it, it’s Celian’s unconscious body in the bloody coffin!
She actually slept like a cat hugging a pillow...

……

When Sima Ming opened his eyes again, his first feeling was not light or sound, but a dullness.

He looked down and saw a long but heavy leg stepping unceremoniously on his chest.

The leather boots were so cold that he almost rolled his eyes.

When he looked up again, he saw the familiar silver-haired profile of Celia, sleeping in a slumber, with saliva hanging from the corner of her mouth, and even a "hehe" smile on her face.

Siming was speechless, and he opened his mouth and said: "...The way you sleep, you should be enshrined as a holy statue to the Lord of Sleep."

He pushed the leg away and moved her away from him.

Then he slowly sat up and took a deep breath of the damp and fishy air.

But as he regained consciousness, he realized at that moment that something was wrong.

--weightlessness.

His body seemed to be floating in the air, but his feet were actually on the deck of the Lost.

He looked up suddenly and felt that the "gravity" seemed to come from above his head, not from under his feet.

Above my head, there is no longer the sky.

It was a whole deep ocean—an upside-down deep ocean.

The water hung like a dome above them, and a great blue sea serpent coiled in the water.
Schools of shadowy fish and glowing eyeballs swam slowly in the dreamlike luster, like countless undead floating above the nightmare of God, gazing at the broken ship.

The Lost seemed to be falling, yet also seemed to be moving "upwards", sailing through this upside-down and twisted sea of ​​dreams.

Siming subconsciously covered his mouth - this was the deep sea, he should have suffocated.

But no. He could breathe normally, his heartbeat was steady, and he could even - speak.

"This... this is unscientific..." he muttered.

Behind him, Alison's chuckle sounded quietly. She seemed to be accustomed to such unusual scenes and even nodded.

Baroque squatted down quickly, scooped up a handful of "sea water" and put it into his mouth: "Salty, but - quite fresh."

"Si... uh... Ming?" Ian choked on the water a few times when he first spoke, but he quickly got used to it.

It was like finding some kind of frequency. "I can talk now? Really? This place is outrageous!"

Rex's voice came from the observation tower, filled with shock and anxiety:
"This is... the deep sea? But we can breathe? And talk?"

Lilia didn't answer immediately.

She stood in the middle of the deck, gazing at the upside-down sea and sky, a kind of ethereal feeling emerged in her eyes.

As if rising slowly from the deep well of memory. She spoke softly, her voice low but as if coming from the bottom of the sea:

"This is the Sea of ​​Dreams."

"This place is both an illusion and a dream."

"The seawater is but the embodiment of our nightmares, the skin and memories of the Lord of Dreams."

Her words rang low over the deck like an old ship's bell.

Siming felt uneasy and was about to ask something when Calvino's voice suddenly came, deep and steady:

"Never mind why we can still breathe."

"You guys better look ahead."

Everyone looked up at the same time, their eyes passing through the end of the deck. In the depths of the dark blue dream sea, they finally saw "it".

That thing, quietly waiting in the distance, resembles both an island and a relic, a deity and a tombstone.

And its direction is exactly the path that the Lost is heading towards.

The Lost is moving forward in a way that goes against common sense.

It feels like falling into a bottomless abyss, but also like being held up by an invisible giant hand, gently swaying across the gap between nightmare and reality.

The surrounding darkness was like a curtain, pressing heavily on everyone's chest, but a faint blue light continued to flow out, as if the ocean itself was breathing.

Those faint lights meandered and swirled along the water, like the blood vessels of dreams wriggling.

Floating around are wrecks that have long been forgotten by time - broken masts, shattered pirate flags, and rotten keels.

And the blurry and fleeting shadows of corpses floated silently in the water, as if they were watching these people who were dreaming.

"What the hell is this place..." Siming murmured softly, his voice seemed to be sucked into the abyss, vibrating only in his throat.

At this moment, a chillingly familiar whisper pierced through the depths of his mind, like a whisper, but also like a laugh, curling up in the depths of his soul:
"Again...you're about to stand there, Siming."

"Are you ready... to face the end?"

——He is the One with a Thousand Faces.

Siming was shocked and looked up suddenly.

As my chest pounded, a cold shudder ran down my spine to the back of my head.

His gaze passed over the abyss of black water, over the water curtain shrouded in phantom light, and finally solidified at the bottom of the deadly abyss.

He saw it.

It was a shadow deep in the sea - huge, silent, sleeping, yet faintly wriggling.

An indescribable outline, like the ruins of a god, or an ancient palace built in nightmares, lies quietly in the depths of the abyss.

It seems to be waking up.

"...What is that?" Alison's voice was hoarse and slow, her eyes fixed on the front, and even her lips trembled slightly with fear.

Rex's expression suddenly changed, and his throat tightened: "Did you... hear that?"

He unconsciously moved closer to the side of the boat, his fingers tightly gripping the railing, as if trying to identify the strange sounds coming from the sea water.

"There's something echoing at the bottom of the sea." The sound wasn't from the water, nor was it from the roar of a deep-sea monster.
It’s like “memory” itself is whispering—in an untranslatable way, directly engraved in the brain.

The Sea of ​​Dreams finally revealed its true face.

This seemingly peaceful area has never been a haven for sleep, but rather a mirror of the abyss.

"Dreams are the mirror of the abyss,"

Lilia whispered, the silhouette of the seabed reflected in her pupils, "It illuminates the past and the future, and also devours the present."

Her voice was low and slow, yet it carried a quiet power that penetrated her bones, as if it came from some instinctive memory.

On the Lost, everyone fell into a brief silence.

They did not stop, the ship was still moving slowly forward, but it seemed to have entered some unknown maze.

At this moment, a vague shadow slowly passed by the side of the ship.

Siming turned his head subconsciously, and his pupils suddenly contracted.

That was—a human figure.

A translucent, headless figure was swimming close to the hull of the Lost One.
His movements were slow and lifeless, like some old sailor who had sunk into a sea of ​​dreams and never woke up.

"Those are... afterimages." Rex murmured softly, a hint of fear and pity in his tone. "Those... are the memories of those who once failed."

Around the sea surface, the shapes of "people" gradually became clear.

There were commanders in military uniforms, witches in tattered cloaks, and tiny, childlike figures slowly swimming in the water.

They are silent, nameless, sleeping in this sea of ​​dreams, and seem to be waiting for something.

“Don’t stare too long.” Calvino’s voice suddenly came, calm and firm. “The longer you look, the more they look like you.”

Baroque said in a deep voice: "They are not ghosts... but they are no longer human either."

The air seemed to be filled with the spell of nightmare.

The sea of ​​dreams did not greet them with surging waves.

It simply holds a mirror in front of them.

In that mirror is their past and their possible ending.

The Lost is still sailing.

But no one knows whether what lies ahead is the other side of the dream or the abyss from which there is no return.

Sima Ming was the first to notice something was wrong.

In the waters surrounding the Lost, shadowy ships appeared one after another.
They were of different shapes, broken and dilapidated, yet surprisingly similar - they were clearly all the "Lost Ones".

Some ships had charred hulls and broken masts, as if they had struggled out of the thunder and fire that devoured the sky;

Some of them seemed to have been devoured by some giant beast, with broken hulls, collapsed decks, and blood stains still wet;
Some are as still as tombs, with corpses hanging upside down on the deck like hanging threads.
All the corpses were facing the bow, with their empty eyes wide open, as if welcoming their masters who had never returned.

"What the hell is this place..." Siming cursed softly, but took a step back unconsciously.

He was about to ask further questions when he saw a black shadow suddenly jump down from the observation deck - Rex's face was distorted almost beyond recognition.

He threw himself to the side of the boat, his hands stretched straight, his eyes red, as if he wanted to tear through the dream and grab something.

"Mira! No! Don't go! You said... you said you would wait for me to come back..."

Just as he was about to fall over the side of the boat, Alison suddenly knelt on the deck, her nails digging into her palms.

Whimpering softly: "No... It's not my fault... It's not because of my mistake in judgment... They shouldn't have died, it shouldn't have been them..."

Ian stood on the main mast, laughing wildly as he swayed.

He murmured to some "ghost from the past": "You... are still here? No, that's impossible. You are clearly dead. I buried you myself..."

Baroque said nothing, but his eyes were burning, and his muscles were trembling as if they were about to tear his body apart.
He was like a beast king forced into a nightmare by chains, ready to collapse and roar at any moment.

"They... are all in a dream." Si Ming whispered, his eyes suddenly becoming colder.

“Nightmare.” Calvino stood at the helm, his voice as low as a rusty millstone:
"This is the 'Nightmare Fragment', the afterimage of memories in everyone's heart, and also... the mirror of fate."

He stretched out his hand and pointed at the gray, lifeless "Lost" ship in the distance.

There was a figure standing at the bow of the ship - it was Sima Ming himself.

He was wearing a windbreaker, his face was covered in blood, and his eyes were tearful but lifeless.

He raised the cards, his fingertips trembling, and the next moment, all the playing cards flew around like sharp blades and rolled back into his throat.

"That's me..." Siming murmured, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.

"That is the 'possibility' you will eventually reach." The voice of the Thousand Faces emerged from his mind, his tone teasing and cold:
"Do you see it? The nightmares of the past, the destiny of the future. These images are but ripples reflected in the river of your destiny."

"Enough." Siming gritted his teeth and flames ignited at his fingertips.

He pulled out a fiery card and suddenly called out her name: "—Celian, wake up!"

The fate pattern roars, the two stars burn together, the "Wild Hunt Blood Devouring" is activated, and the dream contract is unlocked!

In the blood-red starlight, Celian slowly appeared.

She was wearing a long dress that dragged on the ground, her eyes slightly open as she murmured softly, "Hmm... who disturbed my deep sleep... it was you, my dear master..."

"Don't talk nonsense." Siming said word by word, "Moonfall Di Ling, summon 'Fan Lou' and tear this dream apart."

Celian smiled softly, and the flute began to play.

The next second, the dream layer by layer broke apart.

[Moonfall Flute·World System Intermediate No. 47]

The domain emerged. A blue moon eye cracked above the deck, resonating with blood red and frost.

A huge "Fan Tower" woven from painful nightmares slowly rises, with flames and glaciers coexisting, blocking all exits of consciousness.

Screams and whispers resonated, and everyone was swept up by the sound of the flute, as if falling into a deep well, returning to the deepest dream again and again.

Ten minutes later, the moonlight washed over us.

The first sound to wake up was Baroque.

He suddenly jumped up, his face full of anger: "Bah! Another octopus tentacle?
Don't you fucking use these disgusting things on me!" He kicked over the bucket.

Ian sat under the mast retching:
"I can't take it anymore... I dreamed that Kerkosen kissed me in a wedding dress... Si Ming! I want to sue your princess for violating my personal dignity!"

Alison was silent for a long time, clutching her right arm, which had been burned by the phantom fire, and gave Celian a complicated look. "Thank you... for saving us."

Rex held his head and sighed, whispering: "I...had a very shameful dream."

Everything seemed to be calm until -

Boom!
A low roar came from the depths of the sea, like a war drum, or a roar declaring war!

The Lost One vibrates and the abyss churns!
A gigantic beast emerged from the seabed, with dozens of tentacles rolling like mountains.

His body was covered in iron armor and bone fragments, and his eyes burned with flames of hatred and madness.

It—spoke.

“—Calvino!!”

Calvino looked at the monster suddenly, his pupils shrank, and his voice was hoarse: "...Holt?"

(End of this chapter)