Volume One: I Heard You All

Chapter 1: The Empty House

An old tungsten filament lamp hung from the center of the room by a black wire, flickering with a dim glow.

The quiet atmosphere was like ink dripping into clear water, spreading and diffusing throughout the room.

In the very center of the room stood a large round table, already mottled and worn. In the middle of the table stood a small ornate clock, its patterns extremely intricate, ticking away at this moment.

Seated around the table were ten people, each dressed differently. Their clothes looked somewhat shabby, and their faces were smudged with dust.

Some of them were slumped over the table, some leaned back in their chairs, all deeply asleep.

Standing silently beside these ten people was a man wearing a goat-head mask and dressed in a black suit.

His gaze peered out from the battered goat-head mask, watching the ten people with great interest.

The clock on the table began to chime, with both the minute and hour hands pointing to "twelve."

From somewhere far outside the room, a deep bell sounded.

At the same moment, the ten men and women seated around the round table slowly woke up.

As they gradually regained consciousness, they first looked around in confusion, then looked at each other in puzzlement.

It seemed that no one remembered why they were here.

"Good morning, nine of you," the goat-head spoke first. "I'm glad to meet you here. You have been asleep in front of me for twelve hours."

The man's appearance was truly bizarre, and in the dim light, he startled everyone.

His mask seemed to be made from a real goat's head, with much of the hair yellowed and blackened, matted and stuck together.

Two holes were cut out where the eyes of the goat mask were, revealing his cunning eyes.

Every movement he made exuded not only the unique musky odor of a goat, but also a faint scent of decay.

A man with tattooed arms stared blankly for a few seconds before finally realizing the oddity of the situation. Hesitantly, he asked the goat-head, "You... who are you?"

"I believe you all have this question, so let me introduce myself to the nine of you," the goat-head said cheerfully, waving his hands as if he had long prepared his answer.

A young man named Ashley Carter sat at the farthest spot from the goat-head. He quickly surveyed the room, and after a moment, his expression grew serious.

Strange, this room was just too strange.

There were no doors here, only walls on all four sides.

In other words, the walls, ceiling, and floor of this room were all sealed, yet there was a table placed right in the center.

If that's the case, how did they get here?

Could it be that the people were brought in first, and then the walls were built afterward?

Ashley Carter looked around again. Whether it was the floor, the walls, or the ceiling, all were crisscrossed with lines, dividing the surfaces into many large squares.

Another thing that caught Ashley Carter's attention was the "nine of you" mentioned by the goat-head.

No matter how you counted, there were ten people sitting around the round table. Including the goat-head himself, there were eleven people in the room.

What did "nine of you" mean?

He reached into his pocket, and as expected, his phone had already been taken away.

"No need to introduce yourself to us," a cold woman said to the goat-head. "I advise you to stop what you're doing as soon as possible. I suspect you have detained us for more than twenty-four hours, which constitutes 'illegal detention.' Every word you say now will be recorded and used as evidence against you."

As she spoke, she brushed the dust off her arm in disgust, as if she hated being dirty even more than being imprisoned.

The cold woman's words did sober everyone up a bit. No matter who the other party was, to dare kidnap ten people alone had already crossed the line of the law.

"Wait..." a middle-aged man in a white lab coat interrupted everyone's thoughts. He slowly looked at the cold woman and asked, "We all just woke up. How do you know we've been detained for 'twenty-four hours'?"

His tone was calm and forceful, but hit the nail on the head.

The cold woman unhurriedly pointed at the clock on the table and replied, "The clock here points to twelve o'clock, but I have a habit of staying up late. The last time I checked the time at home, it was already twelve. This means we've been detained for at least twelve hours."

After she finished, she pointed at the walls around them and continued, "You should have noticed as well, there are no doors in this room. That means this person went to great lengths to get us in here. He said we've been asleep for twelve hours, and now the clock points to twelve again, which means it has gone around at least twice. So I suspect it's 'more than twenty-four hours.' Is there a problem with that?"