He is the liar

This can't be right... Jack Li's mind raced. If survival depended merely on drawing lots, why orchestrate this elaborate charade? A sickening realization crept over him as he dissected the Goatman's every word.

Barrett's calloused hand jolted him back to reality. "Your turn, pretty boy."

Nine pairs of eyes pinned him to his chair. The con artist straightened his collar, the weight of revelation pressing against his ribs. "I'm Jack Li from Shandong." His voice cut through the tension like honed steel. "Professional swindler."

Gasps rippled through the room. The admission hung suspended - a spider dangling above its prey.

"Was laundering two million when the quake hit." Jack's gaze swept across their startled faces. "Got 1.4 mil through the cracks. Rushed into collapsing buildings like some damned hero." He shrugged. "Woke up here."

The Goatman's hooves clacked against concrete. "Twenty minutes deliberation." Its mask tilted toward the wall clock. "Then vote."

Chaos erupted. Accusations volleyed between Barrett and Officer Liu. Dr. Lee cornered the writer about disconnected narratives. Through the bedlam, Jack's pencil flew across graph paper - equations blooming like bloodstains.

"Enough!" His fist slammed the table. "We're all dead."

Silence descended. Nine pairs of eyes reflected the same primal denial.

Jack thrust his calculations forward. "Air consumption rates don't lie. 54.6 cubic meters needed versus 48 available." His finger jabbed at wall grids. "We've been breathing impossible math for thirteen hours."

One by one, cards flipped - nine crimson "LIAR" stamps glaring beneath fluorescent lights.

"The final deception." Jack's smile held no warmth. He turned to their horned jailer. "There's only one true impostor here."

Pistol smoke bloomed crimson as the Goatman collapsed. The survivors stared at pooling blood, reality reshaping itself. Walls dissolved into endless void. Nine silver threads glimmered in the darkness - each tethering to a broken body in earthquake rubble.

Jack's consciousness frayed at the edges. Somewhere beyond the void, emergency sirens wailed.

The gunshot's deafening report reverberated in the claustrophobic chamber, soundwaves ricocheting off concrete walls until nine pairs of hands instinctively clamped over assaulted eardrums. Through ringing auditory canals, they heard the Goatman's death rattle - a wet, gurgling crescendo that crescendoed into blood-flecked coughs before dwindling to deathwatch beetle clicks.

Barrett's tattooed fingers dug into the steel table. "The fuck..." he breathed, watching arterial spray pattern the goat mask in Rorschach blooms. "Performance art?"

When Dr. Lee's stethoscope finally slid from the cadaver's carotid artery, the metallic rasp of its diaphragm snapping shut echoed through the tomb-silent room. "Clinical death confirmed." His voice held the sterile detachment of autopsy reports. "Though given our current ontological status..."

Candy's palm connected with her cheek in a slap that cracked like dry kindling. "Still feel!" Her mascara-streaked eyes widened. "If we're ghosts, why—"

"Sweetheart," Barrett interrupted, nostrils flaring at the coppery stench, "you ever smelled gangrene up close? This ain't Sunday school's pearly gates." His combat boot nudged the oozing corpse. "More like Hell's waiting room."

As Officer Liu retrieved the smoking pistol with SWAT-team precision, the slide racking echoed like a coffin nail being driven. "Single round cylinder." His thumb depressed the magazine release. "Empty." The clatter of metal on concrete sent involuntary shudders through the group.

When Barrett peeled back the horned visage, the revealed countenance drew collective gasps. Beneath lay a face straight from forensic textbooks - putrefied flesh sloughing off in necrotic patches, clouded eyes staring into some unfathomable abyss. The stench of advanced decomposition flooded the chamber, yet their lungs kept mechanically inflating in cruel biological mockery.

Dr. Lee's fingers found his own pulse point. "Sinus rhythm 82. Body temp 36.7°C." His clinical monotone cracked slightly. "Perfect vital signs... for breathing corpses."