Chapter 10: Is It Over?

This silence lasted for several minutes as everyone was coming to terms with this unbelievable fact.

A moment later, Officer Li was the first to flip over his identity card—it indeed read “Liar.”

One by one, the others also revealed their cards, and all of them were “Liar.”

“You’re impressive…” Lawyer Zhang gave Qi Xia a look of acknowledgment. “But how did you figure out that we’re all already dead?”

Qi Xia pointed at his draft paper and said, “It wasn’t difficult. I kept wondering: Why is the room sealed? Why are there lines drawn on the walls and floor? Why is there a clock placed in the center of the table? And why did the Goat-headed Man force us to take a ‘halftime break’?”

“The average person consumes about 0.007 cubic meters of air per minute, or 0.42 cubic meters per hour. There are ten people in this room, meaning our collective air consumption would reach 4.2 cubic meters per hour.”

“According to the Goat-headed Man, we not only slept in this room for 12 hours but also played the game for nearly an hour. Multiplying 4.2 by 13 gives us ‘54.6.’”

Qi Xia circled the number **54.6** on his draft paper and said, “This is the total volume of air we should have consumed.”

Then, he glanced around the room and asked, “But how many cubic meters of air does this room actually hold?”

The others followed his gaze.

“The organizers left us clues. They drew lines on the walls and floor, dividing them into squares, each roughly one meter in length.” Qi Xia pointed at the marks on the wall. “The walls have a 3×4 grid, while the floor and ceiling are 4×4. So, the dimensions of this room are 4 meters in length, 4 meters in width, and 3 meters in height—a total of 48 cubic meters.”

“But how can a 48-cubic-meter room hold 54.6 cubic meters of air?” Qi Xia frowned, his expression darkening. “After all this time, the air should be thinning, yet none of us feel any signs of oxygen deprivation…”

Dr. Zhao pondered for a moment, then took Qi Xia’s draft paper and pointed at the number **49.14**, asking, “What does this number mean?”

Qi Xia looked at Dr. Zhao with a grave expression and replied, “That’s the air consumption calculation—but for **nine people**.”

“Nine?”

Dr. Zhao was stunned. There were clearly ten people in the room consuming air, yet he had calculated for nine?

“I made a bold assumption,” Qi Xia said expressionlessly. “What if the Goat-headed Man **isn’t human**? Would our air supply be enough then? Clearly, it still wouldn’t.”

“What kind of lunatic are you?” Dr. Zhao muttered. “How could you even come up with such a bizarre assumption?”

“Is it really that hard to understand?” Qi Xia gestured toward the headless corpse beside him. “Dr. Zhao, as a medical professional, you should know—can a human crush a skull with a single hand?”

Dr. Zhao didn’t answer because he knew it was absolutely impossible.

Forget a human skull—even a rabbit’s skull would be nearly impossible to shatter with one hand on a table.

Qi Xia withdrew his gaze and looked at the others. “Time is running out. I’ve already written 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 group hesitated nervously.

A monster capable of killing at will was now to be “voted out” by them.

Would it comply?

Qiao Jiajin glanced at the Goat-headed Man out of the corner of his eye and noticed that he remained motionless, his inscrutable gaze piercing through the mask as if lost in thought.

“Rot in hell, let’s do this!” Qiao Jiajin waved his hand decisively and wrote down **”Goat-headed Man.”**

After some hesitation, the others followed suit and wrote their answers.

Qi Xia scanned the responses—without exception, all of them read **”Goat-headed Man.”**

The clock struck 1:00. The game was over.

The Goat-headed Man slowly stepped forward and announced, “Congratulations. You have survived the ‘Liar’ game. Now, I shall personally administer the ‘sanction’ to the loser.”

Before anyone could react, the Goat-headed Man pulled out a pistol from his coat, turned the muzzle toward his own chest, and pulled the trigger.

An unimaginably loud gunshot reverberated through the confined 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 let out a blood-curdling scream.

His agonized wails quickly drowned out the echoes of the gunshot, filling the room with an eerie dread that sent chills down everyone’s spine.

The Goat-headed Man screamed, coughing up blood, until over a minute later, his cries weakened into pained groans.

“What the… hell?” Qiao Jiajin stared in shock. “He’s serious?”

A few minutes later, even the groaning ceased.

The remaining nine people suddenly realized they could move their legs again.

Dr. Zhao was the first to stand up. He approached the Goat-headed Man and checked his carotid artery—there was no pulse.

“Hey!” Dr. Zhao shouted at the corpse. “The game’s over! How do we get out?!”

But a lifeless body couldn’t answer.

The others slowly rose to their feet.

The room remained unchanged—except for the addition of another corpse.

“This is so strange… Are we really dead?” Tian Tian murmured, still fixated on the question. She raised her delicate hand and slapped herself hard across the face.

“Ow!” she yelped. “It still hurts… Why would I feel pain if I’m dead?”

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

“I…” Tian Tian hesitated. “I guess not…”

“Exactly. Who knows what happens after death? Maybe this **is** hell.” Qiao Jiajin eyed the two corpses in the room, feeling uneasy. “I can still feel pain, and I can smell the stench.”

“So what are we? Ghosts?” asked Han Yimo, the writer.

Dr. Zhao checked his own body and found that his heartbeat, body temperature, pulse, and breathing were all normal—yet he wasn’t consuming oxygen.

Death was truly a mystery, defying all medical logic.

“Whatever we are, I refuse to spend eternity trapped in this tiny room,” Officer Li declared. “Let’s find a way out.”

He walked over to the Goat-headed Man and picked up the pistol that had fallen beside him.

The others flinched, instinctively backing away.

Officer Li expertly checked the chamber and magazine—only one bullet had been loaded, and it had already been fired.

This was both good and bad news.

The good: No one could use the gun to harm others.

The bad: If another threat appeared, they had no means of self-defense.

Meanwhile, Qiao Jiajin, bold as ever, reached out and slowly removed the Goat-headed Man’s mask—revealing the face of a man whose flesh had completely rotted away.

His eyes rolled back, devoid of life.

“What a horrifying face…”

Lawyer Zhang shuddered in agreement.