Disaster?

At this moment, the tattooed man raised his hand and looked at the Goat Head. "Hey, judge, what about people using aliases? Does that count as lying?"

The Goat Head neither nodded nor shook his head. He simply said calmly, "I will no longer participate in the process. You only need to write down the names according to your own thoughts. Just remember, 'the rules are absolute.' In the end, I will personally carry out the 'punishment' on the loser."

The two words "punishment" landed heavily, causing everyone to shiver involuntarily.

"This… this means I didn't lie!" Sweetie exclaimed urgently. "If I lied, I'd be dead by now, right? Even if it's an alias, my alias really is 'Sweetie'!"

No one responded to her. This was now a life-or-death situation, and every doubt had to be scrutinized.

"Well, it's my turn to tell a story," the tattooed man said, grimacing and clearly reluctant. "If this lady's story isn't considered a lie, then I'm not lying either."

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

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

"People these days are really interesting. When they borrow money, they promise everything, but when it comes to paying it back, they start crying about how hard their life is."

"F*** them. They call us debt collectors demons, heartless people."

"But that guy should think from another perspective. When he was at his lowest and needed money, I extended a helping hand. When no institution would lend him money, I did. To him, I wasn't a demon, I was his savior."

"But how did he treat his savior?"

"He went around crying, saying how hard his life was, that he was swindled out of two million. He slandered us debt collectors, accusing us of being heartless, trying to gain sympathy from neighbors to solve his problems. But when he borrowed the money, we signed a contract, and the interest was clearly explained to him. Now that he can't pay it back, is it our fault?"

"Last night, I decided to teach him a lesson. I tied him up and took him to the rooftop of a bar, but suddenly there was an earthquake. I didn't want to kill him, but this guy, in the chaos, pulled out a knife and tried to kill me!"

"In the midst of the confusion, I grabbed him and we both fell off the rooftop, crashing into a billboard. I can't remember anything after that."

Everyone frowned after hearing Qiao Jiajin's story.

Sweetie seemed to realize something and laughed angrily. "See? I told you! You were trying to frame me! You're the liar!"

"What? How dare you say I'm lying?" Qiao Jiajin said fiercely.

"I was in Shaanxi, and you were in Guangdong!" Sweetie pointed at him. "Your story is just copied from mine! There was an earthquake where I was, and now you have one too. I got hit by a billboard, and you crashed into a billboard too! How is that not lying?"

"I don't care where you were! I just encountered an earthquake!" the tattooed man glared at her. "If I were hiding the truth, that would be lying! And as for the billboard, there's more than one billboard in the world, right?"

"Anyway, you're lying!" Sweetie pointed at Qiao Jiajin. "Your profession is already something only bad people do, so it's not surprising that you're lying!"

"Heh, how is your profession any better than mine?"

Qi Xia looked at the two of them arguing fiercely and felt that this whole thing was rather odd.

It wasn't that either of them was lying, but because he himself had experienced an earthquake.

He wasn't in Shaanxi or Guangdong, but in Shandong.

Could there really be such a large-scale earthquake?

This earthquake spanned half the country, involving three provinces.

If what they said was true, this would be an unprecedented disaster.

"Enough arguing, let's finish this quickly." A strong man sitting opposite them interrupted the two, then glanced at the next girl. "It's your turn. If we're really going to judge who is lying, maybe it's better if everyone finishes their story first."

Both of them snorted and fell silent.

The woman next to Qiao Jiajin nodded timidly and spoke, "Um… My name is Xiao Ran, and I'm a preschool teacher."

Xiao Ran seemed quite scared, her voice soft and trembling.

"Before coming here, I was with a child, waiting for his parents. The child's mother used to pick him up, but then I heard that she got seriously ill, something grew in her brain, and she needed surgery… So for the past few days, his father has been picking him up. But his father seems to often forget to come..."

"Yesterday, it was already past six in the evening, and I had long finished my shift, but for some reason, the child's father still wasn't answering the phone..."

"I didn't know the child's address, so I couldn't send him home. I had no choice but to stand with him at the street corner and wait."

"Actually, I had plans that night... I had an appointment with a psychologist because I was feeling unhappy with my job, and I hoped the psychologist could help me with some advice."

"But I never expected that we'd end up waiting for several hours, and I missed my appointment."

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

"The feeling of the earthquake was different from what I had heard. The ground didn't bounce, but it swayed from side to side. It felt like I was standing on a table, and someone kept shaking the table."

"The first thing I did was hold the child tightly in my arms, but I didn't know what to do. I saw that the Chongsheng Temple's three towers were cracking... Luckily, we were standing on an open field."

"Then, I saw a small car out of control speeding toward us. I could only stagger to the side with the child in my arms, but the shaking ground made me fall with every step I took."

"When I fell, I hit my head and lost consciousness... When I woke up, I was already here."

This was a rather unremarkable story.

The only thing that made Qi Xia suspicious was the mention of "Chongsheng Temple's three towers."

Those three towers were in Dali, Yunnan.

Qi Xia lightly touched the card on the table. Although he had his hand over the three words, he knew they read "Liar."

So, could there be multiple liars?

If "the rules are absolute," then what the Goat Head had said earlier—that "there is only one liar"—was definitive.

Since he had drawn "Liar," it meant that no one else could be lying, and there could only be one liar. Everyone else was telling the truth.

But these interconnected earthquake stories, which spanned three provinces, were beginning to link up in a suspicious way.

Not just the earthquake, but the details of their stories seemed to align. Wasn't that strange?

At this moment, all eyes turned to the next person, the middle-aged man in the white lab coat.