Chapter 10: Is It Over?
This silence lasted for several minutes, everyone struggling to accept this unbelievable truth.
After a moment, Officer Li was the first to flip over his identity card, which indeed read "Liar."
The others flipped over their cards one by one, all of them also reading "Liar."
"You're impressive..." Lawyer Zhang cast an approving glance at Qi Xia. "But how did you figure out that we were all already dead?"
Qi Xia pointed to his scrap paper and said, "It wasn't difficult. I kept wondering—why is this room sealed? Why are there lines drawn on the walls and floor? Why is there a clock in the middle of the table? And why did the goat-headed man force us to take a 'mid-game break'?"
"A normal person consumes about 0.007 cubic meters of air per minute, which is 0.42 cubic meters per hour. There are ten people in this room, so the total air consumption per hour reaches 4.2 cubic meters."
"According to what the goat-headed man said, not only did we sleep in this room for 12 hours, but we also played the game for nearly an hour. Multiplying 4.2 cubic meters by 13 gives us the number '54.6.'"
Qi Xia circled the "54.6" on his scrap paper. "This is the amount of air we should have consumed."
He looked around the room again and said, "But how many cubic meters does this room actually have?"
The others followed his gaze.
"The organizers left us clues. They drew lines on the walls and floor, dividing them into many squares, each about one meter in length." Qi Xia pointed at the markings on the wall. "The wall has a 3-by-4 grid of squares, and the floor and ceiling are 4-by-4. That means this room is 4 meters long, 4 meters wide, and 3 meters high, totaling 48 cubic meters."
"A room of 48 cubic meters—how can it hold 54.6 cubic meters of air?" Qi Xia frowned, his expression darkening. "After all this time, the air should be getting thinner, yet none of us feel any sign of oxygen deprivation..."
Doctor Zhao pondered for a moment, then took Qi Xia's scrap paper and pointed at the number "49.14" written on it. "And what does this number mean?"
Qi Xia looked at Doctor Zhao with a serious expression and replied, "That's also the amount of air that would have been consumed, but calculated for 'nine people.'"
"Nine people?"
Doctor Zhao was taken aback. After all, there were ten people in this room consuming air—why would he calculate for nine?
"I made a bold assumption." Qi Xia said expressionlessly. "If the goat-headed man 'wasn't human,' would our air supply be sufficient? Clearly, it wouldn't be enough either."
"What kind of madman are you?" Doctor Zhao muttered. "Making such a bizarre assumption?"
"Is it that hard to understand?" Qi Xia pointed at the headless corpse on his right. "Doctor Zhao, you must be very familiar with skulls. Can an ordinary person shatter a human skull with one hand?"
Doctor Zhao didn't answer, because he knew it was completely impossible.
Not to mention a human skull—even breaking a rabbit's skull with one hand on a table wasn't an easy task.
Qi Xia withdrew his gaze and looked at the others. "Time is running out. I've already written down my choice. Now it's up to you. But remember, if even one person's answer differs from mine, everyone here will be 'sanctioned.'"
The others felt a flash of fear.
A monster capable of killing at will—and now they were supposed to "vote him out"?
Would he accept it willingly?
Qiao Jiajin glanced sidelong at the goat-headed man, who remained motionless, his deep gaze piercing through the goat mask, as if lost in thought.
"Fuck it, I'm all in!" Qiao Jiajin waved his hand and also wrote down "Human-Goat."
The others hesitated for a moment, then one by one wrote down their answers.
Qi Xia swept his gaze across them—every single one read "Human-Goat."
The clock struck 1:00. The game was over.
The goat-headed man slowly stepped forward. "Congratulations, all of you have survived the 'Liar' game. Now, I will personally 'sanction' the loser."
Before anyone could react, the goat-headed man pulled a gun from his pocket, turned the muzzle against his own heart, and pulled the trigger.
An unimaginably loud noise echoed through the cramped room.
In such an enclosed space, the sound had nowhere to dissipate, leaving everyone's ears ringing.
Then, the goat-headed man clutched his chest and began to scream.
His piercing cries soon overwhelmed the lingering echo of the gunshot, reverberating through the room and chilling everyone to the bone.
Still screaming, he coughed up blood. It took more than a minute for his voice to fade into pained groans.
"What... what the hell..." Qiao Jiajin stared blankly at the goat-headed man. "Is he for real?"
Another few minutes passed, and even the groaning stopped.
The nine people in the room suddenly found that they could move their legs again.
Doctor Zhao was the first to stand up. He walked over to the goat-headed man, reached out to feel the pulse at his neck, and found it had stopped.
"Hey!" Doctor Zhao shouted at the goat-headed man. "The game's over! How do we get out?!"
But a silent corpse gave Doctor Zhao no answer.
The others slowly rose to their feet.
Nothing had changed in the room—except there was now one more corpse.
"How strange... Are we really dead?" Tiantian seemed to still be fixated on this question. She raised her slender hand and slapped herself hard.
"Ow!" Tiantian yelped. "It still hurts! Why can we still feel pain if we're dead?"
Qiao Jiajin shook his head helplessly. "What, have you died before?"
"I..." Tiantian hesitated. "I guess I haven't..."
"So who knows what it's like after death? Judging by this situation, maybe this is hell." Qiao Jiajin glanced at the two corpses in the room, feeling uneasy. "I can still feel pain, and I can smell the stench too."
"So what are we? Ghosts?" asked the writer, Han Yimo.
Doctor Zhao checked his own body afterward. His heartbeat, body temperature, and pulse were all normal, and he was breathing normally—yet he wasn't consuming oxygen.
It seemed that death was indeed a mysterious thing, beyond the grasp of any medical knowledge.
"Whatever we are, I don't want to be trapped in this little room for the rest of eternity," Officer Li said. "Let's find a way out."
Officer Li walked over to the goat-headed man and picked up the gun that had fallen by his hand.
The move startled everyone, and they instinctively stepped back.
Officer Li expertly pulled back the slide to inspect the chamber, then ejected the magazine. He found that the gun had held only one bullet, now spent.
That was both good news and bad news.
The good news was that no one would be using that gun to harm anyone else. The bad news was that if they encountered other dangers, they would have no way to defend themselves.
Qiao Jiajin, bold as ever, reached out and slowly removed the goat-headed man's mask. Beneath it was a man whose face was completely rotted.
His eyes were rolled back, and there were no signs of life.
"Such a horrible face..."
Lawyer Zhang murmured in agreement.