God's Imitator

In the evening, everyone gathered around the long table and took their seats.

The dishes on the table were all purchased from the vending machine with precise timing, avoiding the awkward situation where later stir-fried dishes would be fresh out of the pan while earlier dishes had already gone cold.

Everyone’s wine glasses were filled with red wine, champagne, or beverages.

Everything looked absolutely perfect.

Jiang He looked at Li Renshu, ”Should we start the toast segment now?”

Li Renshu shook her head, ”There’s no need this time.

”Previous dinners always required forced speeches, mainly because our community lacked cohesion back then, and there were major disagreements between us. We needed some necessary ceremonial elements to unite people’s hearts.

”But now, our community structure has stabilized, and everyone understands each other better. Too much formality would seem somewhat rigid.

”Let’s just raise our glasses together to welcome Aunt Zhou’s joining and wish Community 17 all the best!”

Everyone raised their glasses, ”Welcome, Aunt Zhou!”After each taking a sip of wine or beverage, the atmosphere in the hall became lively. Everyone chatted with those beside them while enjoying the delicious food, savoring this hard-won leisurely time.

After simple exchanges, many people also learned about Zhou Guifen’s specific situation.

Her profession was a middle school music teacher in a small county town. Although she couldn’t be called particularly professional, her musical cultivation still exceeded most people in the community.

Under everyone’s encouragement, Zhou Guifen also sang two songs simply, drawing rounds of applause and cheers, making the dinner atmosphere even more enthusiastic.

Amidst the clinking of glasses, everyone chatted until late.

...

The next day, most people got up relatively late.

Lin Sizhi was still reading books in the rest area as usual. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the hall, he could also see other people engaged in different activities.

Some people would do simple exercises, some studied game rules, and others, like Lin Sizhi, searched for specific professional books from the library area to read.

More and more people in the community had developed habits of exercise and fitness.

Although there was also a gym in the community, quite a few people preferred outdoor running.

Especially Cai Zhiyuan, who had obviously suffered greatly in the previous King’s Trial game. Among everyone, he was the most diligent in physical training.

From the current situation, most games in the Gallery didn’t encourage violence and brute force.

This was understandable, because once violence or brute force was unleashed, male players or players with better physical strength would gain excessively huge advantages in games, severely damaging game balance.

But this wasn’t absolute either. At least the Gallery had never said violence must be completely prohibited.

Prohibiting violence was more a choice made by the God’s Imitators themselves, as well as the result of the Gallery’s review mechanism for game balance.

But if certain specific conditions were met, games where violence reigned supreme could still appear.

For example: The Gallery wanted to screen out some players who were physically weak but intellectually strong. A God’s Imitator designed games that roughly balanced physical strength and intelligence. Or certain specific judgment game themes appeared.

Once these situations occurred, players exercising their bodies would definitely have advantages.

Of course, even knowing this, not everyone could persist in daily exercise, since such things showed results very slowly.

Just like everyone knew that going to the library area to read might happen to encounter relevant knowledge and improve their survival rate in specific games, but daily reading was still behavior only a minority could persist with.

This was a leisurely and comfortable day.

...

In the evening, Lin Sizhi returned to his room, and sure enough, a new game design invitation had appeared on his computer.

[Hello, Lin Sizhi.]

[In three days, the Gallery will simultaneously conduct several different judgment games. You may prioritize selecting files from the archives of the many criminals who will be judged this time for design.]

[You may choose to judge multiple criminals from one case, or you may choose multiple criminals from different cases but with similar crime themes for judgment.]

[Regarding specific selection rules, this game design invitation will have great freedom.]

[The Gallery will evaluate all submitted planning documents and adopt the highest-scored proposal to arrange the game venue.]

[You have 2 hours to determine the list of criminals to be judged, and 48 hours to complete the game design.]

[Now, please make your choice.]

Lin Sizhi opened the drawer and found that this time there were far more criminal files than before.

More than twenty files.

Moreover, among these were criminals from the same case, as well as criminals from different cases.

In terms of quantity, the Gallery’s judgments were accelerating.

Lin Sizhi briefly looked through these files.

According to the Gallery, two different approaches could be taken in selection:

Judgment could target one specific case. Or judgment could target a specific theme, not necessarily the same case, as long as the criminals’ crimes were related in some ways.

These two types of judgment games would have obviously different design approaches.

Judgment of the same case meant criminals naturally had conflicts with each other. As long as these conflicts were utilized well, criminal behavior could be controlled to a large extent. This would be relatively more targeted and even easier to achieve the results the God’s Imitator wanted.

Judgment of the same theme was relatively harder to control criminal behavior, and which specific criminal would fall into traps was relatively difficult to predict. This was more suitable for situations where God’s Imitators wanted indiscriminate killing.

According to the Gallery’s current rules, when large numbers of criminals needed to be judged simultaneously, God’s Imitators’ selection freedom increased, and there would be obvious priority order.

More excellent God’s Imitators could select first, and afterward, slightly inferior God’s Imitators could continue screening and designing games from the remaining criminal list.

As for ”excellent God’s Imitators,” from the current situation, they should be God’s Imitators who had designed at least A-grade games.

Lin Sizhi had finished reading all the files. Among them was a member from Community 17 but this wasn’t the theme Lin Sizhi wanted to judge, and he didn’t have strong feelings about saving or not saving them.

So Lin Sizhi ultimately chose several other files.

These files belonged to the same case, and the main reason Lin Sizhi wanted to design this judgment was the case’s only victim: a player from Community 14 named He Xiaojun.

[He Xiaojun, male, 25 years old.]

[Occupation: Company employee.]

[Due to his weak personality, he was falsely accused of sexual harassment by a female colleague. To keep the peace, he was forced to record an apology video. Eventually, he was fired by the company, suffered cyberbullying, and his reputation was ruined.]

[Judgment result: Not tried.]