At this moment, the man with tattooed arms raised his hand and looked at the goat head: “Hey, referee, how do we count something like a pseudonym? Does it count as lying?”
The goat head neither nodded nor shook its head, only saying indifferently, “I will no longer intervene in any of the proceedings. You only need to write down names based on your own judgment. Just remember one thing—’the rules are absolute.’ In the end, I will personally ‘sanction’ the loser.”
The word “sanction” landed heavily, sending a chill down everyone’s spines.
“Th-this proves I wasn’t lying!” Tian Tian shouted anxiously. “If I were lying, I’d be dead already, right? Even if it’s a pseudonym, my alias really is ‘Tian Tian’!”
No one answered her. They were now at a life-or-death juncture, and no suspicious detail could be overlooked.
“Then it’s my turn to talk,” the tattooed man said, curling his lips in reluctance. “If this lady’s story doesn’t count as a lie, then mine definitely doesn’t either.”
“My name is Qiao Jiajin, I live in Guangdong, and I don’t have a formal job. Before coming here, I was collecting debts.”
Qiao Jiajin’s Mandarin was poor, forcing everyone to listen carefully.
“People these days are really something. When they borrow money, they agree to anything, but when it’s time to pay back, they start whining about their hardships.”
“Rot in Hell. They call us debt collectors devils, cold-blooded monsters.”
“But those bastards should try seeing it from another angle. When they were at their most desperate, when they needed money the most, I was the one who extended a helping hand. When no institution would lend to them, I was the one who gave them money. To them, I wasn’t a devil—I was their savior.”
“And how did they repay this savior?”
“They went around crying about their hardships, saying they’d been scammed out of two million. They even railed against us debt collectors for being heartless, trying to use their neighbors’ sympathy to get out of their mess. But when they borrowed the money, we signed a contract, and I made the interest rates crystal clear. Now that they can’t pay, is that my fault?”
“Last night, I decided to teach him a lesson. I took him to the rooftop of a high-rise, but who knew there’d suddenly be an earthquake? I didn’t actually want to kill him, but that bastard pulled out a knife and tried to stab me in the chaos!”
“In the commotion, he pushed me off the roof, and I hit an advertising billboard. After that… I can’t remember anything.”
Everyone frowned after hearing his story.
Meanwhile, Tian Tian seemed to have realized something and sneered, “See! Now I know why you were trying to pin this on me! You’re the real liar here!”
“What? How dare you call me a liar?” Qiao Jiajin snarled.
“I was in Shaanxi, and you were in Guangdong!” Tian Tian pointed at him accusingly. “You just made up your story based on mine! There was an earthquake where I was, and suddenly you had one too? I was hit by a billboard, and so were you! If that’s not lying, what is?”
“I don’t care where you were—I was in an earthquake,” the tattooed man retorted, glaring. “If I hid that, then it’d be a lie! And are you saying there’s only one billboard in the whole world?”
“You’re lying, plain and simple!” Tian Tian shot back. “Your job is already shady—lying comes naturally to people like you!”
“Oh, and your job is so much better than mine?”
Qi Xia watched the two arguing fiercely and felt something was indeed off.
Not because either of them might be lying, but because he, too, had experienced an earthquake.
He wasn’t in Shaanxi or Guangdong—he was in Shandong.
Could an earthquake really span such a vast area?
This quake seemed to have struck half the country, affecting three provinces.
If they were all telling the truth, wouldn’t that make this an unprecedented disaster?
“Stop arguing. Let’s wrap this up,” the muscular man across the table interrupted, then glanced at the next woman in line. “It’s your turn. If we’re really going to judge who’s lying, let’s hear everyone out first.”
The two scoffed but fell silent.
The woman next to Qiao Jiajin timidly nodded and spoke up, “Um… m-my name is Xiao Ran. I’m a kindergarten teacher.”
The girl named Xiao Ran seemed utterly terrified, her voice barely above a whisper and trembling.
“Before coming here, I was waiting with a child for their parent to pick them up. The child’s mom usually came, but I heard she got seriously ill—something in her brain that needed surgery… So lately, it’s been the dad picking them up, though he often forgets…”
“It was already past six in the evening yesterday—way past my working hours—but for some reason, the father just wouldn’t answer his phone…”
“I didn’t know the child’s address, so I couldn’t take them home. We just stood at the intersection, waiting.”
“Actually, I had plans that night too… I’d made an appointment with a therapist. I’ve been feeling like I don’t enjoy my job much lately, and I hoped they could help me sort it out.”
“But I didn’t expect to wait for hours. My appointment was ruined.”
“Just as I zoned out, the ground suddenly started shaking. I was terrified… It took me a few seconds to realize it was an earthquake…”
“It wasn’t like what I’d heard earthquakes were like… The ground wasn’t jumping—it was swaying side to side. It felt like standing on a table while someone kept shaking it…”
“My first instinct was to hug the child next to me, but I had no idea what to do. I saw the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple in the distance cracking… Luckily, we were in an open area.”
“Then, I saw an out-of-control car speeding straight toward us… I could only stagger away, holding the child, but the shaking made me fall with every step.”
“When I fell the last time, I hit my head… and passed out. When I woke up, I was here.”
Her story was unremarkable.
The only thing that struck Qi Xia as odd was the mention of the “Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple.”
Those pagodas were in Dali, Yunnan.
Qi Xia gently rubbed the card on the table. Though he covered the words with his hand, he knew it read “Liar.”
So, could there be multiple liars?
If “the rules are absolute,” then the goat head’s earlier statement—”there is one and only one liar”—was absolute.
Since he had drawn the “Liar” card, it meant no one else could be the liar. There was only one.
They were all telling the truth.
Yet, their stories—spanning three provinces—seemed to subtly connect.
Not just the earthquakes, but even the details of their accounts intertwined. Wasn’t that too strange?
Now, all eyes turned to the next person—the middle-aged man in the white lab coat.
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