An old tungsten filament bulb hung from the center of the ceiling, suspended by a black wire, flickering with a dim, dying light.
The atmosphere was still and silent, like a drop of ink falling into clear water, slowly diffusing and staining the entire room.
In the center of the room stood a large round table, worn and battered with age. At its center sat a small, ornate mantel clock, its intricate patterns etched with delicate precision. It ticked steadily, echoing softly in the stillness.
Seated around the table were ten individuals, each dressed differently. Their clothes were somewhat tattered, and their faces smudged with dust.
Some were slumped over the table, while others leaned back in their chairs, all of them deeply asleep.
Standing silently among them was a man dressed in a black suit, wearing a goat-head mask.
From behind the worn, grotesque mask, his gaze watched the ten sleepers with amused interest.
The clock on the table chimed—both the minute and hour hands pointed directly at twelve.
From far outside the room, a deep bell toll echoed faintly.
At that moment, the ten men and women seated around the table slowly began to awaken.
As they regained consciousness, their eyes scanned the room in confusion, then turned to one another in puzzlement.
It was clear that none of them remembered how they had gotten there.
"Good morning, nine of you," the goat-headed man was the first to speak. "It's a pleasure to meet you here. You've been asleep before me for twelve hours."
The strange figure startled everyone under the dim light—the way he was dressed was downright eerie.
His mask looked as though it were made from a real goat's head. Much of the fur had yellowed and blackened, matted together into filthy clumps.
Two hollow holes had been carved where the eyes should be, revealing his cunning gaze beneath.
Every movement he made carried not only the sharp, musky odor unique to goats, but also a faint scent of rot.
A tattooed man stared for a few seconds, finally realizing the absurdity of the situation. Hesitantly, he asked the goat-headed man,
"Who… are you?"
"I believe all of you must be wondering the same thing," the goat-head replied cheerfully, raising both hands in an almost theatrical gesture. He seemed well-prepared for the question.
A young man named Shai sat farthest from the goat-head. His eyes quickly scanned the room, and soon, his expression grew serious.
There was something wrong—something very wrong about this room.
There were no doors. The four sides were all solid walls.
In other words, the walls, ceiling, and floor were completely sealed.
And yet somehow, a large table had been placed in the middle of the room.
If that was the case, how had they gotten in?
Could it be that they were placed here first, and the room had been sealed afterward?
Shai glanced around again. The floor, the walls, the ceiling—everything was marked with intersecting lines, dividing the surfaces into large square grids.
What also caught Qi Xia's attention was the goat-head's choice of words—he had said: "nine of you."
There were ten people seated around the round table—no matter how you counted. Including the goat-headed man, there were eleven people in the room altogether.
So what did he mean by "nine of you"?
Shai reached into his pocket. As expected, his phone had been taken.
"No need for introductions," a cold-voiced woman spoke to the goat-headed man.
"I suggest you stop whatever you're doing right now. I suspect you've detained us for over twenty-four hours already, which constitutes unlawful imprisonment. Every word you say from this point forward can and will be used as evidence against you."
As she spoke, she brushed the dust off her arms with clear disdain—evidently, being dirty bothered her more than being imprisoned.
Her calm but forceful words snapped the group out of their daze.
Whoever the man in the goat mask was, daring to kidnap ten people alone—he had clearly crossed a legal line.
"Wait a second…" a middle-aged man in a white lab coat interrupted.
He slowly turned toward the cold-voiced woman and asked,
"We all just woke up… so how do you know we've been imprisoned for twenty-four hours?"
After she finished speaking, the cold-voiced woman pointed toward the walls around them and continued,
"You should've noticed by now—there are no doors in this room. That means he went to some lengths to get us in here. He said we've been asleep for twelve hours, and now the clock points to twelve again, meaning it has gone around at least twice. So yes, I suspect it's been more than twenty-four hours. Is that a problem?"
The man in the lab coat gave her a cold look after hearing her explanation. His eyes still brimmed with suspicion.
After all, in a situation like this, the woman was too calm.
Would a normal person really speak so clearly and logically in the face of being kidnapped?
Just then, a muscular young man in a black T-shirt spoke up,
"Goat-head—why are there ten people here, but you said there are nine?"
The goat-headed man remained silent. He didn't answer immediately.
"F*** your whole family," the tattooed man snapped. He pushed against the table as if to stand, but his legs gave out—completely limp.
Still, he pointed at the goat-headed man and said with menace,
"You bastard, you better think twice. You have no idea what kind of trouble you're in messing with me. I swear I'll kill you."
The atmosphere grew tense as the other men's expressions turned grim.
It was clear someone needed to take the lead—if they could just subdue the goat-head, maybe they could take back control of the situation.
But one by one, they realized something strange.
Their legs—numb and powerless—refused to respond, as if someone had injected them with a paralytic.
They couldn't move at all.
So the tattooed man could only keep hurling threats at the goat-headed figure, shouting curses at him with increasing fury.
Shai stayed silent. He reached up and gently rubbed his chin, his gaze fixed on the small clock in the center of the table, deep in thought.
Something about this wasn't adding up.
He recalled that the goat-head had said there were "nine participants."
Yet, if there were ten people in this room, that could only mean one of them wasn't a participant.
Then… who was it?
There were six men and four women seated around the table.
Could it be that one of them was actually part of the kidnapping?
The goat-headed man didn't respond. Instead, he slowly walked to Shai's side and stopped behind a young man.
Everyone turned their heads to follow his gaze—and only then did they notice that this young man was different from the others.
Though his face was also smudged with grime, he wore a strangely content smile—a blissful, almost unnatural expression.
The goat-head raised a hand slowly and placed his palm on the back of the young man's head.
The young man's smile grew even more bizarre. His eyes gleamed with anticipation as he glanced around at everyone else, as if he'd known all along what was going to happen.
Then—a dull, sickening thud.
The goat-headed man slammed the young man's head into the table with brutal force.
A mixture of pale pink and white matter splashed out across the surface, as if someone had spilled a can of paint.
Droplets of blood landed on every face seated at the table.
The young man's skull had been shattered completely against the wood.
From outside the room, the distant sound of a bell echoed once again.
Shai, seated closest to the dead man, felt something warm and sticky splatter onto his face—some unidentifiable fragment of flesh.
Though he had always considered himself mentally strong, he found himself trembling in that moment.
The girl sitting to the right of the corpse froze for three seconds—then her expression twisted in horror as she let out a piercing scream.
That scream shattered the fragile psychological defenses of everyone in the room.
To crush a human skull—the hardest bone in the body—against a table with just one hand…
Could the goat-headed figure really still be called human?
How could such a thin, frail-looking body contain that kind of monstrous strength?
The goat-head finally spoke again, his voice calm but menacing:
"The reason I brought ten people… was because I needed one to help the rest of you stay quiet."