The end of ten days

Chapter 4: The Disaster?

At this moment, the tattooed man raised his hand and looked at the goat-headed figure. "Hey, referee, how do we handle cases like this with pseudonyms? Does it count as lying?"

The goat-headed man neither nodded nor shook his head. He simply said in a calm tone, "I will no longer be involved in the process. You only need to write down the names based on your own judgment. Just remember, 'the rules are absolute.' In the end, I will personally 'sanction' the loser."

The word "sanction" landed heavily, sending a chill down everyone's spine.

"T-this proves I didn't lie!" Tian Tian shouted anxiously. "If I were lying, I'd be dead by now, right? Even if it's a pseudonym, my stage name really is 'Tian Tian'!"

No one responded to her. They were now at a critical life-or-death stage, and no suspicion could be overlooked.

"Then it's my turn to speak," the tattooed man said, pursing his lips with obvious reluctance. "If this lady's story doesn't count as a lie, then mine definitely doesn't either."

"My name is Qiao Jiajin, and I live in Guangdong. I don't have a formal job. Before coming here, I was collecting debts."

Qiao Jiajin's Mandarin was poor, so everyone had to listen carefully.

"People these days are really something. When they borrow money, they promise everything, but when it's time to repay, they start crying about how hard their lives are."

"Damn it, they call us debt collectors devils, heartless monsters."

"But those bastards should think about it from another angle. When they were at their most desperate, when they needed money the most, I was the one who reached out to help. When no institution would lend them money, I did. To them, I wasn't a devil; I was a savior."

"But how did they treat their savior?"

"They cried everywhere about how hard their lives were, how they'd been scammed out of two million. They even condemned us debt collectors as heartless, trying to use the sympathy of their neighbors to solve their problems. But when they borrowed the money, we signed a contract, and all the interest was clearly explained to them. Now that they can't repay, is it our fault?"

"Last night, I decided to teach him a lesson. I took him to the rooftop of a tall building, but then an earthquake suddenly happened. I didn't originally plan to kill him, but that bastard actually took out a knife and tried to kill me in the chaos!"

"In the midst of the chaos, he pushed me off the rooftop, and I hit a billboard. After that... I can't remember anything."

After hearing the man's story, everyone frowned.

Tian Tian, however, seemed to have realized something and sneered, "See! Now I know why you tried to throw dirt on me! You're the liar!"

"What? How can you say I'm lying?" Qiao Jiajin growled.

"I'm in Shaanxi, and you're in Guangdong!" Tian Tian pointed at him. "Your story is clearly just a copy of mine! I had an earthquake, and so did you. I was hit by a billboard, and you also hit one! Isn't that lying?"

"I don't care where you are! I really experienced an earthquake," the tattooed man retorted, glaring. "If I had hidden it, that would be lying! As for the billboard, there's more than one billboard in the world, right?"

"Anyway, you're lying!" Tian Tian pointed at Qiao Jiajin. "Your job is already something only bad people do, so lying isn't surprising!"

"Hah, and your job is so much better than mine?"

Qi Xia glanced at the two arguing fiercely and felt that something was indeed off. It wasn't because either of them was necessarily lying, but because he had also experienced an earthquake.

He wasn't in Shaanxi or Guangdong—he was in Shandong.

Could there really be an earthquake that spanned such a vast area? An earthquake that covered half the country, affecting three provinces?

If what they were saying was true, wouldn't this be an unprecedented disaster?

"Stop arguing. Let's just finish this," the burly man sitting across from them interjected, then looked at the next girl. "It's your turn. If we really need to judge who's lying, let's wait until everyone has spoken."

The two of them snorted coldly but fell silent.

The woman next to Qiao Jiajin timidly nodded and began, "Um... my name is Xiao Ran. I'm a kindergarten teacher."

The girl named Xiao Ran seemed terrified. Her voice was soft and trembling.

"Before coming here, I was waiting with a child for their parent. The child's mother usually picked them up, but I heard she had fallen seriously ill—something in her brain that required surgery... So these past few days, the father has been picking them up instead. But he seems to forget a lot..."

"Yesterday, it was already past 6 p.m. I had been off work for a while, but for some reason, the child's father wasn't answering his phone..."

"I didn't know the child's address, so I couldn't take them home. I could only stand at the intersection with them, waiting."

"Actually, I had plans that evening too... I had an appointment with a psychologist. I feel like I don't really enjoy my job anymore, and I was hoping the psychologist could help me sort things out."

"But I didn't expect to wait for hours. The evening appointment was completely ruined."

"Just as I was zoning out, the ground suddenly started shaking. I was terrified... It took me a few seconds to realize it was an earthquake..."

"The feeling of an earthquake is different from what I'd heard... The ground wasn't jumping; it was swaying side to side. It felt like I was standing on a table, and someone was shaking it constantly..."

"I immediately hugged the child next to me, but I didn't know what to do. I saw the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple in the distance cracking... Luckily, we were standing in an open area."

"Then, I saw an out-of-control car rushing toward us at high speed... I could only stumble while holding the child, trying to run to the side. But the shaking ground made me fall with every step."

"Finally, when I fell, I hit my head... and then I passed out. When I woke up, I was here."

It was a rather unremarkable story.

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. Although he had covered the three words with his hand, he knew they said "Liar."

So, could there be multiple liars?

If "the rules are absolute," then what the goat-headed man said earlier—"there is one and only one liar"—must also be absolute.

Since he had drawn the "Liar" card, it meant no one else could be the liar. There was only one liar.

They were all telling the truth.

But the stories spanning three provinces seemed to connect in a strange way.

Not only the earthquake, but even the details of their stories seemed to link together. Wasn't that too much of a coincidence?

At this moment, everyone's gaze turned to the next person—the middle-aged man in the white coat.