God's Imitator

Lin Sizhi paused slightly and continued:

”No matter how clever a person is, it’s impossible to completely understand all the rules and plan all the details during the preparation stage in the oxygen-rich environment.

”Take my case for example. Although I formulated my strategy from the start, after entering a new environment like the battle room, I would still subconsciously have some thoughts.

”This extra thinking is an instinctive reaction that cannot be eliminated through conscious self-control.

”The fact that ’Sheep’ could completely avoid thinking has only two explanations: first, she has special abilities; second, she already knew all the rules of this game and had thought through them countless times before entering the game, considering every possible solution, so during the game there was no need for any extra thinking at all.

”Of course, I didn’t determine this based solely on this point.

”There’s another very important point, which is that I guessed the ’Imitator’s intention’ through the details of this game’s rules.

”Many of the rules in this game exist for ’robbing from the rich to give to the poor.’

”For example, why did the Imitator specifically make ’oxygen consumption’ into the form of a ’safety statement’? Why did they have to put exactly how much oxygen was consumed in a prominent position on the mask for everyone to see? Why does ’guessing ‘Fool Cards’’ look like multilayered logical gaming but is actually about guessing the number of ‘Fool Cards’?

”These are all special accommodations for ’wise Fools.’”If the Imitator was just trying to open a casino, to earn visa time, there would be no need to make such a design.

”Beyond this, there’s also the voting stage for ’killing the Imitator.’

”The reason the Imitator dared to write this rule into the game definitely couldn’t be because she went crazy. The only reason is that she confidently believed that at the time nodes when her exposure risk was relatively high, the players voting for death wouldn’t reach as many as 70%.

”There are two different considerations here:

”If she found she couldn’t smoothly implement her plan, then she would hide herself like an ordinary person, and it would be difficult for others to single her out. Once the accusation was wrong, she could get 30,000 minutes of visa time for free.

”If she could smoothly implement her plan, then she would distribute the final chip pool to ‘Fool Players’ as much as possible, and it would be impossible for 70% of people to vote to kill her.

”Both of these results are acceptable to her.

”Only when she believed the risk was far smaller than the benefit would she add this rule.

”An Imitator willing to distribute money to all players in her own game is invincible.

”The only thing she can’t do is frantically accumulate wealth for herself in this game and use a game backdoor to earn the final million-chip prize pool. If she had such an idea, she wouldn’t write such rules.

”To achieve the goal of ’robbing from the rich to give to the poor,’ and to ensure everything developed as she imagined, the Imitator would most likely infiltrate the ‘Sage Players’’ group, push the development of the situation, and might even become one of the people ’distributing Contract Vouchers.’

”So I further narrowed the scope of screening, used consumption records to lock onto ’Sheep,’ and proactively proposed only accepting ’Sheep’s’ Contract Vouchers, cooperating with her plan.

”Before this, I had already shown my aversion to ’Rabbit.’ This choice was natural.

”The last step, right at the start of the third round of Guess the Number, I talked privately with ’Sheep,’ exposed her identity, helped her improve her plan by the way, then called you two over to confirm the poaching.

”To win ’Rabbit’s’ trust, ’Sheep’ also agreed to join ’Rabbit’s’ community.

”But she definitely couldn’t really go.

”’Sheep’s’ original plan was to find players from her own community in the game, but she didn’t expect those players to perform poorly without having the rules spoiled for them. They didn’t stand out, so that their identities couldn’t be confirmed in a short time, and she couldn’t gather the minimum of three people.

”And ’Sheep’ couldn’t make a big show of searching in the crowd. That might arouse ’Rabbit’s’ suspicion.

”Just then, I extended an olive branch to her. After serious consideration, she naturally accepted.

’Woodpecker’ Zheng Jie was even more surprised, ”But wasn’t she afraid we would harm her? After all, she’s the Imitator!”

’Owl’ Lin Sizhi shook his head, ”I also showed my sincerity.”

’Woodpecker’ Zheng Jie was somewhat curious, ”What sincerity? Did you promise something? But that also can’t be verified, right?”

’Owl’ Lin Sizhi explained, ”My not killing her was my sincerity.

”You have to know, that was just when the third round of ’Guess the Number’ had started, not the final vote.

”If it had been after the final vote, ’Sheep’ had already distributed the final prize pool to the ‘Fool Players’, then even if her Imitator identity was exposed, everyone wouldn’t vote her to death.

”But during the third round of ’Guess the Number’ it wasn’t like that.

”As long as I went to accuse her, she would definitely die.

”’Sheep’ also completely didn’t expect that I could actually guess her identity in the third round of ’Guess the Number.’

”Because when she was designing this game, she was negligent and made the same mistake as you: mistakenly thinking that having slightly lower oxygen consumption wasn’t too big a problem. She didn’t deliberately force herself to think during the first stage to increase oxygen consumption, leaving a flaw.

”Fortunately, aside from me, no one else discovered this point.

”But since I had already exposed this point and didn’t kill her, it already proved my sincerity.

”Moreover, I was willing to help her improve this plan, which meant our philosophies were similar.”

’Woodpecker’ Zheng Jie suddenly understood, ”I see!”

He was trying hard to think and keep up with the logic. The oxygen gauge on his oxygen mask was also visibly shortening.

The game was about to end. Most players had already found other players from their own communities, but the atmosphere in different communities was completely different.

’Gray Wolf’ He Xiaojun had also already found the other players from Community 14. However, before leaving the game, he specifically ran over.

”Thank you very much, Mr. ’Owl’! I just don’t know if we can meet again in future games.

”I really want to tell you my name, but unfortunately according to the rules, throughout the entire game we can’t reveal our own information.”

’Peacock’ Qin Yao said, ”It’s okay. If we meet again next time, you just need to remember that the strongest person is ’Owl’!

”Goodbye!”

Everyone waved goodbye to each other.

[Chips and visa time have been settled. Players still in debt will have double visa time deducted. Players with insufficient remaining visa time will suffer instant death punishment.]

Some players in the hall still let out desperate wails. Obviously, because they couldn’t pay off their debts, they would suffer instant death punishment but there was no way around it. This was a screening-type game. Besides ’wise Fools’ and ’true Sages’ benefiting from it, there still had to be some players screened out.

[Wei Yinzhang has been accepted by Community 17 and will become Community 17’s new Player No. 2.]

This message only sounded in the ears of Community 17’s players.

[Game over.]