Chapter Content
Matthew was dead!
The moment the gunshot rang out, everyone present froze in shock. Following a sudden, piercing scream from an unseen source, the crowd scattered like startled birds, fleeing in every direction.
However, the Secret Room had limited space. Where could they escape to? Ultimately, they all huddled in the corners.
One by one, they desperately squeezed into the deepest parts of the corners, terrified that they would be the next to suffer.
Since Chen Ran was the last one facing the wall, he had preemptively seized a favorable position and was squeezed into the innermost part of the corner.
Seeing The Judge raise his Pistol again, Li Qiang, who was at the very front, protested, "You guys in The Underworld are resorting to vigilantism! I-I-I'm going to file a complaint against you!"
"Yes, yes, yes! You said that as long as we confessed the crimes from our past lives, we could go to Heaven!"
"We don't have to go to Heaven, but you can't kill us either! We never did any bad deeds while we were alive!"
They grew increasingly agitated as they spoke, the crowd's emotions flaring. However, the response they received remained exactly the same:
"You lied."
"You lied."
Every time The Judge fired his Gun, he would repeat those same words as corpse after corpse fell to the ground.
The eyes of the survivors were filled with despair and terror.
Someone lunged forward to snatch the Pistol while The Judge was shooting someone else, but the moment they made contact with him, an invisible force repelled them.
Some fell to their knees and begged for mercy, some confessed every sin they had ever committed in life, some cursed, and others wept until their tears fell like rain.
The Judge resembled a cold killing machine, the Pistol acting as a death knell that snatched away life after life.
As the saying goes, good and evil will eventually face their due karma. Just as Horse-Face had mentioned earlier, the people who arrived here were not good people in life. They had escaped the laws of the Living World, but they could not escape Judgment in the Underworld.
Before long, the only ones left alive in the Secret Room were The Judge, Ox-Head, Horse-Face, Chen Ran, a woman, and The Youth who had not spoken a single word from beginning to end.
The Judge swept his gaze over the three of them before finally locking his eyes onto Chen Ran. He raised his hand, aiming the muzzle squarely at him.
"You lied."
Click. The Bullet jammed. Under The Judge's horrified gaze, the Pistol slipped uncontrollably from his grasp and dropped to the floor.
Ox-Head, Horse-Face, The Youth, and Chen Ran all widened their eyes. Almost simultaneously, the four of them charged forward like madmen, desperate to snatch the fallen Pistol.
Horse-Face ran the fastest. He was just about to touch the Pistol when a fair, slender hand beat him to it.
Bai Xiuci scooped up the Pistol, looked at the charging Horse-Face, and fired instinctively.
Click. The Bullet jammed. But strangely, the Pistol did not fall this time. It remained firmly gripped in her hand.
Unable to halt his momentum, Horse-Face was about to crash right into Bai Xiuci when an invisible force violently repelled him. He flew backward and slammed heavily against the wall.
"Give the Gun to me!" Ox-Head stretched out his hand, his eyes brimming with urgency. He wanted to snatch it by force but feared being knocked away by the mechanism.
"Little girl, it seems you are the Person of Destiny meant to restore The Underworld. Give the Gun to Ox-Head, and we will introduce you to the Underworld Emperor," The Judge said, feigning pleasant surprise.
"Don't give it to him!"
Chen Ran and The Youth shouted in unison. They both stepped behind Bai Xiuci, staring warily at the Big Man Trio.
"Then who should I give the Gun to?" Bai Xiuci turned to look at Chen Ran and the other man, acting as if she had no mind of her own.
"To me!"
"To me!"
Seeing that both Chen Ran and The Youth wanted the Gun, Bai Xiuci dropped the timid expression from her face. She swept her gaze over the five of them and sneered, "So, why exactly should I give the Gun to any of you?"
The five of them suddenly realized they had been played. Sure enough, anyone who ended up here was no saint in life.
Bai Xiuci looked at Chen Ran. "I don't believe a word the Big Man Trio says. You must have figured something out."
"What do you mean?" Chen Ran frowned.
"Still playing dumb? I used to work at a deaf school when I was alive, so I know a little lip-reading. Earlier, you mouthed several words before finally saying 'Yellow Springs Road' aloud. But in reality, your original sentence was: 'The person in front of me told me that this is the Yellow Springs Road.'"
"Aside from the words 'Yellow Springs Road', you deliberately made no sound for the rest of the sentence."
Hearing this, Chen Ran remained relatively calm, but The Judge, Ox-Head, and Horse-Face glared at him as if they wanted to eat him alive.
"Speak. What did you discover?"
Faced with her question, Chen Ran pulled a Cigarette Case from his pocket. He lit a Cigarette, took a deep drag, and said nothing. He simply pointed his finger toward the desk where The Judge had been registering them.
On the front of the desk, the words "Ghost Gate Pass" were incredibly conspicuous—so eye-catching that anyone could easily read them.
"It clearly says Ghost Gate Pass right there, yet the people in line claimed this was the Yellow Springs Road. It was an absolute Bold-Faced Lie."
Chen Ran then pointed at Ox-Head and Horse-Face. "Furthermore, there was a flaw in what those two said. They could have directly informed the newcomers where we were, but they insisted on doing something entirely unnecessary by having the person in front pass the message along."
Hearing Chen Ran's explanation, Bai Xiuci recalled the words The Judge repeated every time he fired his weapon. Realization dawned on her, and she asked hesitantly, "Are you saying they were deliberately leading the people in line to lie?"
"Exactly. Lying is likely forbidden here. They set it up so that the first person would lie to the second, the second would lie to the third, and so on, causing everyone in line to lie."
"Even if someone managed to slip through the cracks, The Judge's interrogation during registration served as a second trap to guide people into lying."
Bai Xiuci nodded.
During the interrogation earlier, The Judge had intentionally led the people in line to answer with lies about being forced to commit evil deeds.
And every time he pulled the trigger, he declared, "You lied," which further proved Chen Ran's deduction:
Lying was strictly forbidden inside the Secret Room!
At the same time, it could be deduced that the Pistol was a crucial item used to pass Judgment on whether each ghost was lying or not.
Liars would be shot.
For those who told the truth, the Bullet would jam during Judgment, indicating that the Judgment had failed. Consequently, the shooter would lose their right to judge, which was why the Pistol would drop from their hands.
This Pistol was a Liar-Slayer!
Having figured this out.
Bai Xiuci was left with only one final question. She stared sharply at Chen Ran, but considering that she herself could not lie, she took a moment to organize her words mentally.
"When you were registering earlier, your words also sounded like a lie. Yet when The Judge passed Judgment on you, the Bullet jammed. That proves you were telling the truth at the time. I want to know why that is."
This was also exactly what The Judge couldn't figure out. Chen Ran claimed he had an argument with his girlfriend and then buried her, which meant he had indeed killed someone when he was alive.
But then he had argued that he didn't murder anyone. It was clearly a lie, so why had the Judgment failed?
Facing the inquisitive gazes of the five people, Chen Ran leisurely took a drag from his Cigarette before finally flashing a toothy grin.
"Take a guess."
Bai Xiuci paused for a moment, then relaxed. "Fair enough. You were just judged to be someone who tells the truth. As long as you don't spout any lies from here on out, even with the Gun in my hand, I can't do anything to you."
She looked around at the others.
Chen Ran was not a liar. The Judge and his two companions knew the rules of the Secret Room, so they wouldn't be stupid enough to lie either.
However, when The Judge demanded the Gun earlier, he said he would introduce her to the Ten Yama Kings. Those words...
...had elements of a lie, but it was merely a suspicion.
Ultimately, her gaze landed on The Youth. Based on her earlier analysis, the people ahead of Chen Ran had all told a Bold-Faced Lie, and The Youth was in line right in front of him...
However, it was also possible that he had used the same trick as Chen Ran—mouthing words without making a sound so that the person behind him would only hear the words "Yellow Springs Road".
Therefore, The Youth was also a suspect.
Wait. Bai Xiuci suddenly remembered something. She recalled what The Judge had said earlier: "Thirteen it is, then."
'Earlier, there were eighteen people in the Secret Room. I refused to answer The Judge's questions, which rules out the possibility that I lied. Ox-Head and Horse-Face are in cahoots with The Judge, so they can naturally be ruled out as well.'
'In that case, according to The Judge's assessment, myself, Ox-Head, Horse-Face, and he himself did not lie. Aside from the four of us, all fourteen remaining people—including Chen Ran—had lied.'
'Yet he said, "Thirteen it is, then." It was obvious that among those fourteen people, one other person had not lied.'
'Who was this person?'
'The Big Man Trio wanted to set everyone up to lie, meaning the first person in line was the key. Only by tricking the first person into lying could the falsehood be passed down the line.'
'There were two possibilities. First, the person at the front of the line was in on it with the Big Man Trio and lied voluntarily to mislead everyone behind them.'
'Second, someone among the Big Man Trio was lying.'
'Just now, Chen Ran was huddled in the deepest part of the corner, and The Youth had been standing in front of him. Yet, The Judge bypassed The Youth and chose to pass Judgment on Chen Ran first. That points to the first possibility.'
'The Youth was the first person in line, and he had lied!'
'How should I pass Judgment on him?'
'When I fired at Horse-Face just now, the Bullet jammed, yet I didn't lose the right to judge. That means the Judgment hadn't actually started at that moment... Wait! Every time The Judge fired the weapon, he would utter a specific phrase: "You lied." '
'That was the command to initiate the Judgment!'
Realizing this, Bai Xiuci sneered.
She raised her arm, leveling the muzzle at The Youth. "Although I don't know how to leave the Secret Room, the fact that you all chose to guide people into lying and then gunned them down proves that the method to leave this place involves killing."
"I-I-I didn't lie!" Seeing the muzzle pointed straight at him, The Youth panicked.
"You lied."
Having said that, Bai Xiuci slowly pulled the trigger.
However...
The bloody scene of a Bullet blasting through a head did not occur.
Click. It jammed!
Following that, her gun-wielding hand was overtaken by an invisible force, forcing her fingers to slowly uncurl.
"No!" Bai Xiuci's eyes widened in absolute horror.
Judgment failed!
The Pistol fell!