The End of Ten Days

This silence lasted for several minutes, as everyone was coming to terms with this unbelievable fact.
After a moment, Officer Li was the first to flip over his identity card, and sure enough, it said "Liar."

The others followed suit, flipping their cards one by one, and all of them read "Liar."
"You’re impressive…" Lawyer Zhang looked at Qi Xia with an approving gaze. "But how did you figure out that we’re all dead?"
Qi Xia pointed to his draft paper and said, "It wasn’t difficult. I kept wondering why the room was sealed, why the walls and floor had lines drawn on them, why there was a clock in the center of the table, and why the Goatman forced us into 'mid-game rest.'"

"Normal people consume 0.007 cubic meters of air per minute. That means every hour we consume 0.42 cubic meters of air. With ten people in this room, that’s 4.2 cubic meters per hour."
"According to what the Goatman said, we’ve been asleep for 12 hours and have been playing for almost an hour. So, if we multiply 4.2 cubic meters by 13, we get the number '54.6.'"
Qi Xia circled the number "54.6" on his paper and continued, "This is the amount of air we should have consumed."

He then looked around the room and said, "But how many cubic meters of air does this room actually have?"
The group followed his gaze.
"The organizers left us clues. They divided the walls and floor into squares, with each square roughly 1 meter long," Qi Xia pointed to the marks on the walls. "The number of squares on the walls is 3 by 3, and on the floor and ceiling, it’s 4 by 4. The room has dimensions of 4 by 4 by 3, which gives us 48 cubic meters."

"And how does 48 cubic meters of room space accommodate 54.6 cubic meters of air?" Qi Xia frowned and said in a somber tone, "By now, the air should have become thin, but we haven’t felt any lack of oxygen…"
Dr. Zhao pondered for a moment, took Qi Xia's paper, and pointed to "49.14" on it, asking, "What does this number mean?"
Qi Xia looked at Dr. Zhao with a serious expression and replied, "That’s also the amount of air needed, but it’s calculated for 'nine people.'"

"Nine people?"
Dr. Zhao was puzzled. There were clearly ten people in the room, so why was the air consumption calculated for just nine?
"I made a bold assumption," Qi Xia said expressionlessly. "What if the Goatman 'isn't human'? Would there be enough air for us? Clearly, there wouldn’t be."

"Are you crazy?" Dr. Zhao muttered. "You really believe such an absurd theory?"
"Is it so hard to understand?" Qi Xia pointed to the headless body next to him. "Dr. Zhao, you should be very familiar with skulls. Do you think a human could crush a skull with one hand?"
Dr. Zhao didn’t answer because he knew that was absolutely impossible.

Let alone a human skull, it wouldn’t even be easy to crush the skull of a rabbit with one hand.
Qi Xia turned his gaze away and looked at the others, saying, "Time’s running out. I’ve already written down my choice. Now it’s up to you. But remember, if even one person’s answer is different from mine, everyone here will face 'punishment.'"
The group hesitated.
A monster that could kill anyone at will—now they had to 'vote' to eliminate one of them.

Would it accept this?
With a glance at the Goatman, who remained motionless, Joe Jiajin saw the Goatman’s deep, calculating gaze through the goat mask, wondering what was going on in his mind.
"To hell with it!" Joe Jiajin waved his hand and wrote the words "Human Goat."

After a moment’s hesitation, everyone else wrote down their answers too.
Qi Xia looked around, and sure enough, everyone had written "Human Goat."
The clock struck 1:00, and the game was over.

The Goatman slowly walked forward and said, "Congratulations, you all survived the 'Liar' game. I will now personally carry out the 'punishment' for the losers."
Before anyone could react, the Goatman pulled out a handgun from his pocket, turned the muzzle toward his own chest, and pulled the trigger.
A deafening bang echoed through the cramped room.

The sound was so loud that it lingered in the enclosed space, causing a ringing in everyone’s ears.
Then, the Goatman clutched his chest and began to scream.
The loud scream soon drowned out the sound of the gunshot, reverberating throughout the room, sending a chill down everyone’s spine.

As he screamed and coughed up blood, the sound slowly subsided after a minute, becoming a painful groan.
"What the hell…?" Joe Jiajin stared at the Goatman in disbelief. "Is he serious?"
Several minutes later, the groaning finally stopped.

The nine people suddenly realized that their legs had regained strength.
Dr. Zhao was the first to stand up, walk over to the Goatman, and feel for his pulse. He found that it had stopped.
"Hey!" Dr. Zhao shouted at the Goatman. "The game’s over! How do we get out?!"

But the quiet body offered no answer.
The others slowly stood up.
The room was unchanged except for the addition of a corpse.

"Strange… Did we really die?" Sweet Sweet seemed to still be struggling with this question. She raised her slender hand and slapped herself hard.
"Ouch!" Sweet Sweet screamed. "It still hurts… Why can I feel pain after dying?"
Joe Jiajin shook his head helplessly. "What, have you died before?"

"I…" Sweet Sweet paused for a moment. "I guess I never have…"
"So, who knows what happens after we die? Looking at this situation, maybe this is hell," Joe Jiajin glanced at the two bodies in the room, feeling uncomfortable. "I can feel pain, and I can even smell the stench."
"So, are we souls?" asked the writer, Han Yimo.

Dr. Zhao, hearing this, checked his own body and found that his heartbeat, temperature, and pulse were all normal. He was still breathing, yet he didn’t seem to be consuming oxygen.
It seemed that death was truly a mysterious thing—nothing in medical science could explain it.
"No matter what we are, I don’t want to stay trapped in this small room forever," Officer Li said. "Let’s find a way out."

Officer Li walked over to the Goatman and casually picked up the gun that had fallen by his side.
This startled the group, and they instinctively moved away from him.
Li Officer opened the chamber, checked, and then ejected the magazine. He discovered that the gun only had one bullet left, which had already been fired.

It was both good and bad news.
The good news was that they didn’t have to worry about someone using the gun to harm others, but the bad news was that they couldn’t defend themselves if any other danger arose.
Meanwhile, Joe Jiajin, bold as ever, slowly reached over and removed the Goatman’s mask. Beneath it was the face of a completely decayed man.

His eyes were rolled back, and there were no signs of life.
"What a terrifying face…"
Lawyer Zhang echoed from the side.

[--------------------------------------------]
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