The moment they laid eyes on those three words, a flicker of astonishment crossed their faces.
"I drew the 'Liar' card," Qi Xia said slowly. "But whether I reveal it or not is inconsequential—because it doesn't matter in the slightest."
With an air of nonchalance, he picked up the card and tossed it onto the center of the table.
"If my assumption is correct, each and every one of you holds the same card—the 'Liar.'"
A hushed silence fell upon the group. No one moved. After a moment, Officer Li finally spoke.
"So… you're saying that we all just lied?"
"Precisely." Qi Xia nodded. "You are all far more astute than I initially presumed. Each of you wove a small but deliberate falsehood into your narrative, ensuring that your story remained coherent and logically sound."
Officer Li fell into contemplation, as though piecing something together in his mind.
"If what you're saying is true…" He exhaled deeply, his tone laced with foreboding. "Then the situation is far more precarious than we thought."
Perplexed, the others turned to look at him.
He continued, "According to the rules, only if we all choose 'Liar' can we survive—but in doing so, the liar ultimately loses. Which means…"
Dr. Zhao was the first to grasp his implication. "You mean… we can vote however we please? Since everyone has lied, this has become a 'sure-win' game—except for the one who gets voted out?"
"Exactly." Officer Li nodded. "The optimal strategy now is to consolidate all votes onto a single individual. That way, the loss is minimized. At the very least… the rest of us will live."
His words cast a heavy pall over the room. Meanwhile, the goat-headed figure remained motionless.
So in the end… they were merely voting to decide who would die?
Qi Xia let out a weary sigh and turned to Officer Li. "Officer, is interrupting others a habit of yours? Does it give you a sense of accomplishment?"
"What kind of question is that?" Officer Li frowned. "I'm merely helping you strategize."
"I don't need your help," Qi Xia shot back without hesitation. "Your approach will lead us all to ruin."
"What?" Officer Li was momentarily stunned. "How would I be leading us to ruin? Am I mistaken? If everyone is lying, then any vote should be valid, shouldn't it?"
"Officer Li, the goat-headed figure stated, 'The rules are absolute. There is, and can only be, one Liar.' Do you recall that?"
"This…" Officer Li hesitated, sifting through his memory. Indeed, the goat-headed figure had spoken those words.
"Let me piece this together for you." Qi Xia's voice was cold and precise. "At first glance, the Liar appears to hold an overwhelming advantage in this game. Each of us believes we are poised for victory. But if we vote recklessly, the result will be our collective demise."
Beside him, Qiao Jiajin absentmindedly ran his fingers over the tattooed flowers on his arm and murmured, "Because we have broken the 'rules'…"
"Exactly." Qi Xia nodded. "But the true intrigue of this game lies in the fact that we have no means of verifying who is lying. As Attorney Zhang pointed out, our only clue is to identify contradictions within each other's accounts. Yet we come from different regions—no matter how implausible a story may seem, we lack absolute certainty to disprove it."
Qi Xia swept his gaze across the contemplative faces before continuing. "The 'Host' deliberately chose the nine of us to sit here. That much is clear. His intention was to lure us into finding inconsistencies in what appear to be interconnected narratives."
"But is that truly the right course of action? How can we be so sure that any of us are lying?" A sardonic smile curled at Qi Xia's lips. "Among all the known clues, there is but one 'Liar' we can confirm with absolute certainty. The one whose words stand in stark contrast to our reality."
He picked up a pen and, with deliberate strokes, wrote down two characters: 'Human-Goat.'
"I had been wondering," he mused, "why the goat-headed figure made a point of introducing the term 'Human-Goat' at the very beginning. It seemed redundant at the time. But now I see—it was part of the game all along."
Slowly, the group turned to glance at the so-called 'Human-Goat.' It remained utterly still.
Officer Li faltered before shaking his head. "That's absurd. I have a question—The goat-headed figure stated, 'Among the storytellers, there is, and can only be, one Liar.' But that thing… it never told a story."
"Did it not?" Qi Xia lifted an eyebrow and gave a nonchalant shrug. "I distinctly remember the goat-headed figure saying that it gathered us here to create a 'god.' Tell me—does that not sound like the premise of a wildly implausible tale?"
Officer Li lowered his gaze, his mind tangled in uncertainty. Qi Xia's reasoning was sound, yet something about it felt… off.
"But…" Dr. Zhao hesitated. "Everything you've said is based on the assumption that 'everyone here is a Liar.' But why are you so certain that we all lied? What if we flip over our cards and find that you alone are the Liar?"
"You could not have spoken the truth," Qi Xia murmured bitterly, a look of desolation creeping into his expression. "I've spent time validating this. I not only know that each of you has lied—I know exactly where your lies lie."
He pushed forward a sheet of notes, then turned to Tiantian.
"Tiantian. You were 'working' inside the car when the signboard fell. You said it struck the vehicle and rendered you unconscious. But did it truly happen that way?"
Tiantian pressed her lips together, silent.
"Qiao Jiajin. You fell from such a great height onto the signboard, and you claim to have merely 'lost consciousness'?"
Qiao Jiajin remained mute.
"Teacher Xiao Ran, you said you protected that child and narrowly evaded an oncoming car. Did you truly escape unscathed?"
Xiao Ran's gaze wavered.
"Dr. Zhao. Neurosurgery rooms are usually built underground for environmental stability, yet you said 'the ceiling collapsed.' If the ceiling of an underground room caved in… what would that mean?"
Dr. Zhao turned away.
"Han Yimo. You claim to have no recollection of what happened. But as a writer, isn't distraction the greatest enemy to your craft? Do you truly have no idea how you arrived here?"
Han Yimo let out a faint sigh.
"Attorney Zhang. Your car crashed into a fissure—how deep was it?"
Attorney Zhang folded his arms, his face expressionless.
"Officer Li. What make of car were you driving? One that allows instant seat-flattening to escape a captor's grasp?"
Officer Li rubbed at the red mark on his neck but said nothing.
"Lin Qin. You said your ceiling collapsed, yet your studio was located in a high-rise. If a high-rise begins to collapse, wouldn't the entire building cease to exist?"
Lin Qin bowed her head deeply.
As he observed the grim expressions around him, Qi Xia clenched his jaw and uttered,
"Let's face the truth. All of us, myself included—
We are already dead."