Chapter 6: The Police Officer
"Stop trying to sow discord." Officer Li glared at Qiao Jiajin, speaking very sternly. "You're a loan shark, and I'm a police officer. Who do you think people will believe?"
Qi Xia looked at the noisy crowd. He knew Officer Li probably wasn't lying—he really was a detective.
But his approach was wrong.
Maybe it was his professional instinct, maybe it was his sense of justice, but he kept trying to organize everyone in an orderly fashion.
Half of the intermission had already passed, and the crowd gradually fell silent.
During this time, Qi Xia had repeated "My name is Li Ming" to himself countless times, until he even started to grow annoyed.
After all, the corpse with the shattered skull lying right next to him made it impossible to calm his mind.
Blood dripped from the table onto the floor with a steady *drip, drip, drip*. Everyone had been in the same room with this corpse for nearly an hour now, and a strange, foul odor began to spread.
Qi Xia glanced nonchalantly at the body beside him. Its pants were already filthy.
After death, within a short time, various organs lose the restraint of muscle strength, causing incontinence.
Before the smell of decay arrived, a stench of excrement had already hit them.
Qi Xia and another woman sat on opposite sides of the corpse. The woman seemed quite displeased with the odor, constantly covering her mouth and nose with her hand.
Another ten minutes passed before the Goat Head finally spoke: "The twenty-minute intermission is over. The game resumes."
The young man named Han Yimo steadied himself, took a deep breath, and said, "My name is Han Yimo. I'm an online fiction writer."
"Before I came here, I was writing the final chapter of a novel in my rented apartment. The book had over a hundred characters, and almost all of them were supposed to appear in the finale, so I was completely focused on writing. I didn't hear anything going on outside."
"In fact... I don't even know when the earthquake happened or when I lost consciousness..."
The story Han Yimo told was different from everyone else's. So far, he seemed completely "independent," and his account ended abruptly after just a few sentences.
"That's it?" The muscular man was slightly taken aback. "You just say 'I don't know' and that's the end?"
"Because I can't lie. There's no need for me to fabricate an answer just to fit in with everyone else." Han Yimo's voice wasn't loud, but it strangely carried conviction.
"Fine... Next one, then." Officer Li's face still showed suspicion as he spoke again. "It's that lady's turn."
"Hey, cop." Qiao Jiajin was somewhat displeased with Officer Li's attitude. "We're all 'participants' here. Don't act like you're the team leader."
"Someone has to organize everyone, right?" Officer Li argued. "I've said it before—only one among us is the enemy. The remaining eight must unite."
"That still doesn't give you the right to order people around here." Qiao Jiajin completely dismissed Officer Li's words. "Outside, maybe I'd be afraid of you. But in this situation, no one knows if you're the 'deceiver.'"
"Would you two stop arguing?" The cold, aloof woman interrupted them.
From the very beginning, this cold woman had accused the Goat Head of imprisoning everyone for twenty-four hours. She seemed clear-headed and very calm.
Seeing them calm down, she continued, "In this so-called 'game,' no matter who wins in the end, the remaining people might be seen as 'indirect murderers.' After all, it's us who collectively vote to have the goat kill him. That's what you all should be thinking about."
Upon hearing this, Qi Xia's expression shifted slightly.
If he really did get out of this room alive, then he would indeed have "killed" the other eight people.
But what else could he do?
The card in front of him was a genuine "Deceiver." Who would willingly give up their own life to let others live?
"My name is Zhang Chenze. I'm a lawyer." The cold woman crossed her arms and spoke expressionlessly. "It's unfortunate to meet everyone in such a strange place. Otherwise, I would definitely hand out my business card."
None of them could appreciate Zhang Chenze's humor, but it seemed she didn't care.
"Before I got here, I was organizing court materials. My client was scammed out of two million yuan. The amount is huge, and the nature of the crime is severe."
When she said "two million," everyone's expression remained normal, but Qiao Jiajin was visibly shocked. "Two million?"
"That's right, two million. They say lawyers are the most impartial people, but we have our own biases too. That man borrowed from loan sharks just to support his family—very worrying. But illegal lending is another case, unrelated to me."
"When the earthquake hit, I was driving to meet my client on Qingyang Avenue. I had just passed Du Fu's Thatched Cottage and was near the Wuhou Shrine. I remember... I wasn't driving fast, about 40 km/h. Suddenly, I saw the ground cracking not far ahead."
"I braked immediately and stopped steadily in front of the crack, but I didn't expect the car behind me couldn't avoid it. There was a chain collision."
"I only heard a few loud crashes. My car was pushed into the crack, and then I lost consciousness. I woke up here."
Another story ended. Now only three people had yet to speak.
"Wuhou Shrine..." Dr. Zhao pondered for a moment. "Is that the Wuhou Shrine in Chengdu?"
"Yes. I work in Chengdu."
It seemed this earthquake had spread across the entire country.
With these unfamiliar stories, guessing who was lying was really too difficult.
"It's my turn now." Officer Li looked around at the group. "I already said my name earlier. I'm Li Shangwu, a detective from Inner Mongolia."
"Before I came here, I was staking out a fraud suspect. According to reliable intelligence, we had confirmed the suspect's exact whereabouts."
"This suspect had defrauded a huge amount—two million yuan—the first major fraud case in our city this year."
"My colleague and I were watching from the car, waiting for the fraudster to show up."
"But that suspect was smarter than we thought. He seemed to sense something dangerous and didn't show his face for three straight days."
"We ate, drank, and slept in that car for three days. We were about to lose our minds."
"But do you know what's worse for a grown man than having no food or water?"
"It's running out of cigarettes."
"Neither of us had a single cigarette left. In principle, we absolutely couldn't leave our post, but the feeling of having no smokes was unbearable."
"So I told my colleague to run out and buy some cigarettes, while I kept a close watch on the suspect's residence entrance and exit."
"But what I didn't expect was that shortly after my colleague left, the whole ground started shaking violently. I wanted to get out and see what was happening, but suddenly someone wrapped a thin cord around my neck from behind."
"Even though we're both good at close combat, a thin cord strangling me from the back seat was very hard to deal with. I couldn't reach the person behind me at all, nor could I remove the cord from my neck."
At this point, everyone looked at Officer Li and saw that there was indeed a red mark on his neck.
"So I immediately lowered my seat to get some air, but I couldn't turn around. I'm tall, and my legs were stuck under the steering wheel."
"While I was lying back, the person behind me struck me hard on the head with something, and I lost consciousness."
Everyone finished listening to Officer Li's story and couldn't help but grow suspicious.
He had described a completely different situation. Before him, all participants had lost consciousness due to accidents.
Only he had been attacked and brought here.
If they had to pick the most suspicious person among them, wasn't it him?