Chapter 4 Catastrophe?
At that moment, the man with sleeve tattoos raised his hand and directed his gaze towards the goat-headed figure. "Hey, ref, she’s using an alias. Does that count as lying?"
The goat-headed figure neither nodded nor shook his head, but simply replied, "I shall no longer intervene in the proceedings. Each of you shall write down the names according to your own judgment. Remember, {the rules are absolute}. And in the end, I shall personally administer the {punishment} to the loser."
The word {punishment} carried a weight that made everyone shudder involuntarily upon hearing it.
"This—This proves that I didn't lie!" Tian Tian exclaimed anxiously. "If I had lied, I would be dead by now, wouldn't I? Even if it’s an alias, my alias is truly {Tian Tian}!"
Her words hung in the air, met with silence. In such dire circumstances, every detail was scrutinized, leaving no room for doubt.
"Okay, then it’s my turn." The sleeve-tattooed man curled his lips with a look of unwillingness, "If this young lady's story doesn't count as a lie, then mine shouldn’t either."
"My name is Qiao Jiajin(乔家劲). I live in Guangdong Province and I don't really have a job. Before coming here, I was collecting debts."
Qiao Jiajin's Mandarin wasn't particularly fluent, so everyone strained to listen carefully.
"Hahm-ga-caan, they always curse us debt collectors cold-blooded devils."
"But that lan-joeng should think about it from another perspective. When he was most helpless and needed money the most, it was me who lent him a helping hand. When no other agencies would lend him money, it was me who did. To him, I shouldn’t be seen as a devil, but a savior."
"But how did he return his savior’s favor?"
"He cried miserably everywhere, saying how hard it was for him and how he was cheated out of two million. He also scolded us debt collectors for being cold-blooded; he actually wanted to use the sympathy of neighbors to solve his problem. But when he borrowed the money, we signed a contract that clearly stated all the interests. How is it our fault if he still can't pay it back?"
"Last night, I planned to teach him a lesson. I took him to the rooftop of a high building, but unexpectedly, there was an earthquake. Originally, I had no intention of taking his life, but that lan-joeng actually took advantage of the situation and brought out a knife, preparing to kill me!”
"In the chaos, he pushed me off the rooftop, and I collided with a billboard. I don’t remember what happened next."
After hearing this man's account, everyone frowned. Tian Tian appeared to have stumbled upon something and spoke with an angry grin, "See! That's why you kept accusing me! It turns out that you are the liar!"
"What? And what gives you the right to call me the liar!?" Qiao Jiajin retorted fiercely.
"I'm in Shaanxi Province while you're from Guangdong Province!" Tian Tian pointed at him and said, "Your story is just based on my story! There was an earthquake in my area, and you actually had an earthquake too? I was hit by a billboard while you also hit a billboard?! What else can your story be but a lie?"
"You think I care where you live? I really did run into an earthquake." The sleeve-tattooed man stated with a glare, "It would be lying if I left out any part of my story! And as for hitting a billboard, there's more than one billboard in the world, you know!?"
"Either way, you're the liar!" Tian Tian pointed at Qiao Jiajin and said, "Only bad people do those kinds of jobs, it wouldn’t be strange for you to lie!"
"Ha! Like your job is any better than mine?"
Qi Xia looked at the two people arguing fiercely and couldn’t shake off the particularity of this situation. It wasn't the dubious nature of their stories that troubled him, but rather the fact that he too had experienced an earthquake. He wasn't in Shaanxi or Guangdong, but in Shandong Province. Could there truly be earthquakes of such magnitude in this world?
The earthquake spanned half the country and affected three provinces.
If they were all telling the truth, wouldn't that have been an unprecedented disaster?
"Stop arguing, let's just get this over with," the robust man sitting across from them intervened, then turned his attention to the next girl. "It's your turn. If we truly want to discern who is lying, it's better to wait until everyone has finished speaking."
Upon hearing this, the two fell silent with cold snorts.
The woman next to Qiao Jiajin nodded timidly and said, "Well... My—My name is Xiao Ran(肖冉), and I am a kindergarten teacher."
It seemed that the girl named Xiao Ran appeared visibly frightened, her voice small and trembling. "Before coming here, I was accompanying a child while waiting for his parents. This particular child is usually picked up by his mother. I later heard that his mother fell seriously ill, had something growing on her brain, and needed surgery… So these days, it’s his father who picks him up, but his father seems to often forget to come over..."
"It was already past six o'clock last night. In fact, I should have already gotten off work, but for some reason, the child's father never answered the phone..."
"I don't know the address of the child's home, so I couldn’t send him home. I could only stand with him at the intersection and wait."
"Actually, I had something to do that night... I made an appointment with a counseling psychologist. I didn't like my current job very much, so I was hoping the counseling psychologist could help me gain some clarity."
"But I didn't expect the wait to last several hours, so the evening appointment fell through."
"Just when my mind was wandering, the whole ground suddenly started to tremble. I was so frightened...it took me a few seconds to realize that there was an earthquake..."
"The feeling of an earthquake was different from what I had imagined...The earth is not beating, but shaking from side to side. It felt as if I was standing on a table, and then someone kept shaking the table..."
"I immediately held the child in my arms, but I didn't know what to do. I saw that the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple in the distance all split open... Fortunately, we were standing in an open space."
"Not long after, I saw an out-of-control sedan car speeding towards us... I could only stagger and run to the side with the child in my arms, but the shaking ground made me trip every step I took."
"I hit my head on my last fall...and I passed out. By the time I woke up again, I was already here."
This was a story without any highlights. The only thing that Qi Xia found strange was the mention of the {Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple}. The Three Pagodas were in the town of Dali, which was in Yunnan Province.
Qi Xia gently stroked his card on the table. Although the words were hidden on the underside of the card, he knew that {Liar} was written there. Could there be multiple liars?
If {the rules are absolute}, then the rule {there is only one liar in this game} the goat-headed figure had mentioned previously was absolute. Since he drew the {Liar} card, it proved that no one else can be a liar because there can only be one liar. All of their stories must be true.
But the stories, spanning three different provinces, seemed to inexplicably interweave. It's not just the earthquake; even the details of their accounts shared a strange coherence. Is this merely a coincidence?
At that moment, all eyes shifted to the next individual—the middle-aged man clad in a white coat.