Ten Day Ultimatum

"You—stop trying to stir shit up!" Officer Li snapped at Qiao Jiajin, glaring. "You're a goddamn loan shark, and I'm a cop. Who do you think they're gonna believe?"
Qi Xia stood back, watching the clash. Judging by the way he carried himself, Officer Li probably wasn't lying—he really was a cop.

But the conversation was going off the rails. Maybe it was his training, or maybe some twisted sense of duty, but the man had been trying to keep everyone in line since the beginning.
The chaos began to settle. Qi Xia had gone over {My name is Li Ming} in his head so many times it was starting to make him antsy. It wasn’t just the nerves—there was a headless corpse right there. Staying calm was no longer an option.
Blood dripped from the table onto the concrete floor. After nearly an hour of sharing space with the body, the stench began to rot its way into the air.

Qi Xia stared at the corpse beside him, expression flat.
The kid's pants were soaked. Dead bodies lose control. Bladder, bowels—it all gives out. Long before the body odor kicked in, the piss and shit did. The girl across from him had been holding her hand to her face the whole time, trying not to gag.
Ten more minutes crawled by.

Then, finally, the goat-headed figure spoke. "The twenty-minute intermission is over. The game resumes now."
The kid named Han Yimo sat up straighter, pulled in a breath, and said, "My name is Han Yimo. I write web novels."
"Before I got here, I was finishing the last chapter of a series in my rented apartment. There were hundreds of characters in the finale. I was completely in the zone and didn’t notice anything happening outside."

"So much so that... I don’t even know when the quake hit. I don’t remember blacking out..."
His account was different—short, cut clean, like he was totally {independent} from the rest.
"That's it?" the bulky man said, raising an eyebrow. "You're just gonna leave it at {I don’t know}?"

"I can't lie," Han Yimo said. His voice was quiet but solid. "So I don’t need to make up something to make people feel better."
"...Alright then. Next," Officer Li said, though suspicion still flickered across his face. "It's this lady’s turn."
"Hey, pig," Qiao Jiajin interrupted, pissed off by Li’s commanding tone. "We’re all {participants} here. Don’t go acting like you’re in charge."

"Someone has to take control," Officer Li said coolly. "Like I said, there’s only one {Liar}. The other eight of us need to stay unified."
"That doesn’t mean it’s gotta be you barking orders," Qiao Jiajin sneered. "Out there, maybe I’d give a shit. But in here? No one knows if you’re the {Liar}."
"Cut it out, both of you," said the cold woman.

She was the one who’d calmly accused the goat-headed freak of holding them captive from the very beginning. Cool-headed, methodical. Dangerous in the right way.
Once the arguing died down, she continued, "This so-called {game}, no matter who wins, turns the rest of us into accessories to {murder}. Don’t forget—it’s our votes that kill. That’s what everyone should be thinking about."
Qi Xia's jaw tightened. If he really made it out of this alive, that meant the other eight had to die by his hand.
And he already knew—he was the {Liar}. The card in front of him spelled it out.
But who the hell would throw their life away for strangers?

"My name is Zhang Chenze, I’m a lawyer," the cold woman said, arms crossed, face blank. "Shame we’re meeting in a place like this. Otherwise, I’d hand you all my card."
No one laughed. She didn’t seem to care.
"Before this, I was organizing evidence for a court case. My client was scammed out of two million yuan. Big number, serious crime."

Someone twitched—Qiao Jiajin. "Two million?" he echoed, stunned.
"Yes. People think lawyers are unbiased, but we all carry our own judgments. My client had a family to feed and took out a high-interest loan. I don’t condone that kind of lending, but it had nothing to do with my job."
"When the earthquake hit, I was driving to meet him. I was on Qingyang Avenue, just past Du Fu Thatched Cottage, almost to Wuhou Memorial Temple. I wasn’t speeding—maybe forty—but then the road split in two."

"I slammed the brakes. Stopped right at the edge of the crack. But the guy behind me didn’t stop. Rear-ended me. Hard."
"I heard the impact, felt the shove. My car dropped into the crevice. After that, nothing."
Three people left.

"Wuhou Memorial Temple..." muttered Doctor Zhao. "You mean the one in Chengdu?"
"Yeah. I work in Chengdu."
The earthquake hadn’t hit just one city. It was bigger. National, maybe.

And even now, nothing they said helped identify the {Liar}.
"My turn," Officer Li said. "Like I said, I’m Li Shangwu. Police officer. Inner Mongolia."
"Before this, I was staking out a con artist. We had solid intel—knew where the bastard was holed up."

"This guy had pulled off a massive scam. Two million yuan, same number as her case. First big fraud report of the year in our district."
"My partner and I were stuck in the car on surveillance duty. Three days straight. Eating, drinking, pissing in bottles. Never left the vehicle. Morale was in the toilet."
"You know what breaks a man faster than ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) hunger or thirst?"

He held up two fingers.
"No cigarettes."
"Protocol says never leave your post. But we were dying. So I told my partner to go get some smokes while I kept eyes on the target."

"Didn’t expect the bastard to make his move right after he left. First the ground shook—hard. I went to get out, but someone looped a wire around my neck from the back seat."
"We’re trained for hand-to-hand, but when it’s wire and it’s behind you? Doesn’t matter how tough you are. Can’t fight what you can’t grab."
Everyone stared now. There was a red mark around his neck.

"I reclined the seat to take pressure off. But I’m tall, legs jammed under the wheel—I couldn’t turn, couldn’t move."
"Then the fucker hit me in the skull with something. Knocked me out cold."
The room went quiet again. The story didn’t match the rest.

Everyone else had passed out during natural disasters. He got attacked.
If anyone seemed off, it was him.