Was It Over?

The silence lasted several minutes this time as everyone tried to come to terms with the unbelievable truth.

After a while, Officer Li was the first to turn over his identity card. Sure enough, it read "Liar."

Everyone else turned over their cards one by one. Every last one read "Liar."

"You're impressive..." Lawyer Zhang gave Qi Xia an approving look. "But how did you figure out we were all dead?"

Qi Xia pointed at his scratch 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 'Midgame Break'?"

"A normal person consumes 0.007 cubic meters of air per minute, or 0.42 cubic meters per hour. There are ten people in this room, which means our hourly air consumption would reach 4.2 cubic meters."

"According to the Goat-Headed Man, we slept in this room for twelve hours, then spent nearly another hour playing the game. Multiply 4.2 cubic meters by thirteen, and you get 54.6."

Qi Xia circled "54.6" on his scratch paper with his pen. "That's how many cubic meters of air we should have consumed."

He looked around the room again. "But how many cubic meters does this room contain?"

Everyone followed his gaze.

"The organizers left us a clue. They drew lines on the walls and floor, dividing them into squares with sides roughly one meter long." Qi Xia pointed at the markings on the wall. "The walls have a three-by-four grid of squares, while the floor and ceiling are four by four. That makes the room four meters long, four meters wide, and three meters high-a total of forty-eight cubic meters."

"How can a forty-eight-cubic-meter room contain 54.6 cubic meters of air?" Qi Xia frowned, his expression somber. "After all this time, the air should be growing thin, but none of us feel any symptoms of oxygen deprivation..."

Doctor Zhao thought for a moment, then took Qi Xia's scratch paper and pointed at "49.14." "What does this number mean?"

Qi Xia looked at Doctor Zhao with a grave expression. "That's also the amount of air we would need to consume, except that calculation is for nine people."

"Nine people?"

Doctor Zhao paused. There were clearly ten people consuming air in this room, yet Qi Xia had calculated the amount for nine?

"I made a bold assumption," Qi Xia said expressionlessly. "Suppose the Goat-Headed Man isn't human. Would we have enough air then? Clearly, we still wouldn't."

"What kind of lunatic are you?" Doctor Zhao muttered. "How could you come up with such a bizarre assumption?"

"Is it that hard to understand?" Qi Xia pointed at the headless corpse to his right. "Doctor Zhao, you should know a great deal about skulls. Under normal circumstances, can a human shatter a skull with one hand?"

Doctor Zhao didn't answer. He knew it was utterly impossible.

Never mind a human skull-even smashing a rabbit's skull against a table with one hand would be no easy feat.

Qi Xia looked away from the corpse and back at the others. "We're running out of time. I've already written down my choice. The rest is up to you. But remember, if even one person's answer differs from mine, everyone at this table will be 'punished.'"

The others were afraid.

They were about to vote out a monster who could kill people at will.

Would he accept that?

Qiao Jiajin glanced at the Goat-Headed Man out of the corner of his eye. He hadn't moved at all. His penetrating gaze shone through the goat mask, and there was no telling what he was thinking.

"Fuck it, I'm going all in!" With a sweep of his hand, Qiao Jiajin wrote down "Human Sheep" too.

The others hesitated, then wrote down their answers as well.

Qi Xia glanced around. Without exception, every answer was "Human Sheep."

The clock struck one. The game was over.

The Goat-Headed Man slowly stepped forward. "Congratulations, everyone. You have survived the 'Liar' game. Now I will personally administer the loser's 'punishment.'"

Before anyone could react, the Goat-Headed Man pulled a handgun from inside his clothes, turned the muzzle toward his heart, and pulled the trigger.

An unimaginably loud bang reverberated through the cramped room.

In such an enclosed space, the sound had nowhere to dissipate, leaving everyone's ears ringing.

Then Goat Head clutched his chest and began to scream.

His deafening screams soon drowned out the gunshot's echoes, reverberating through the room and sending a chill through everyone.

Goat Head screamed and coughed up blood. More than a minute passed before his screams finally faded into agonized groans.

"What... what the hell..." Qiao Jiajin stared blankly at the Goat-Headed Man. "He actually did it?"

A few more minutes passed, and even the groans fell silent.

The nine people at the table suddenly discovered that they could use their legs again.

Doctor Zhao stood up first and walked over to the Goat-Headed Man. He reached out to check the artery in his neck and found that it had stopped pulsing.

"Hey!" Doctor Zhao shouted at Goat Head. "The game's over! How do we get out?!"

But a silent corpse could give him no answer.

The others slowly rose to their feet as well.

Nothing in the room had changed, except that there was now another corpse.

"This is so strange... Are we really dead?" Tiantian still seemed hung up on that question. She raised her slender hand and slapped herself hard across the face.

"Ow!" Tiantian cried out. "That still really hurts... Why can I feel pain if I'm dead?"

Qiao Jiajin shook his head helplessly. "What, have you died before?"

"I..." Tiantian paused. "I guess I haven't..."

"Exactly. Who knows what happens after you die? From the looks of things, this might be hell." Qiao Jiajin looked at the two corpses in the room, feeling deeply uneasy. "Not only can I feel pain, I can smell the stench too."

"Then what are we? Souls?" asked Han Yimo, the writer.

Hearing this, Doctor Zhao examined his own body. His heartbeat, temperature, and pulse were all normal. He was breathing normally too, yet somehow he wasn't consuming any oxygen.

Death truly seemed to be a mystery, beyond anything medical knowledge could explain.

"Whatever we are, I don't want to spend the rest of my days trapped in this tiny room," Officer Li said. "Let's find a way out."

Officer Li walked over to Goat Head and picked up the gun lying beside his hand.

The gesture startled everyone, and they instinctively moved away from him.

Officer Li expertly opened the action to check the chamber, then removed the magazine. He discovered that the gun had contained only a single round and was now empty.

That was both good news and bad news.

The good news was that they no longer had to worry about anyone using the gun to hurt someone else. The bad news was that they couldn't use it to defend themselves if they encountered any other danger.

Qiao Jiajin, meanwhile, was remarkably bold. He reached out and slowly removed the Goat-Headed Man's mask, revealing a man whose face had completely rotted away.

His eyes had rolled upward, and he showed no signs of life.

"What a terrifying face..."

Lawyer Zhang voiced his agreement from beside him.