God's Imitator

Zhou Xiaoying hesitated and gave a small nod, ”It was too unbearable. I... I’d rather take the medication and suffer a little less.

”Either way, this is the seventeenth round out of twenty-four. There’s only an hour left.”

Lin Sizhi looked at her and said quietly, ”The game rules never said anywhere that this addiction pain will definitely disappear once you leave the game.”

Zhou Xiaoying paused, then said with a flash of alarm, ”But, but the rules also never said this kind of pain would continue either.

”Are you saying we’ll still be suffering from addiction pain when we get back to the community?

”That, that doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

She looked toward Qian Li, hoping to hear the answer she wanted.

Qian Li was quiet for a moment, ”In the First Stage games, there was never a precedent for this.

”But in the Second Stage, the rules have changed in many ways. Something like this, no one can make any guarantees.”

Zhou Xiaoying’s expression became troubled.Lin Sizhi’s position was clearly stated: he was advising her to stop taking any more Type O and to endure the withdrawal pain as much as possible.

That way she would not become any more deeply trapped.

But what if the withdrawal pain only existed within the game? What if it simply disappeared the moment she left?

In that case, enduring it would have been completely pointless suffering.

Both possibilities existed, and in the end it could only be Zhou Xiaoying’s own decision.

Qian Li looked at Lin Sizhi and said, ”Go on then. What are you planning to do?”

Lin Sizhi looked around at everyone, ”Are any of you interested in working with me to find the Imitator who designed this game?”

A brief silence fell.

Zhou Xiaoying and Du Peng both looked surprised. Zhang Yuan and Qian Li looked as though they had seen it coming.

Huang Shengjie paused, then said, with a degree of uncertainty, ”If we can actually find them, of course. But...”

A player had already tried to accuse Chen Guangming of being the Imitator, and it had not stirred any reaction at all.

That had made most players realise that identifying the Imitator was far harder than it seemed.

Huang Shengjie noticed that Zhang Yuan and Qian Li’s expressions seemed a little strange, and asked with surprise, ”Do you two actually think this is possible?”

Qian Li looked at Lin Sizhi thoughtfully and said, ”So all this time you’ve been staying in your room, you’ve been observing the players in this game?

”You must have collected some information about the other zones by now.

”And perhaps... you already have an answer in mind?”

Lin Sizhi nodded and said, ”I have indeed gathered a fair amount of information.

”However...

”I don’t yet have a clear picture of who exactly the Imitator is.

”Which is why I want to make use of everyone here.

”You all come from different communities. You can each reach out to players from your own community to confirm more details.

”Working together, we have a better chance of finding traces of the Imitator and flushing them out through cross-verification.”

Qian Li and Zhang Yuan exchanged a glance. Clearly, neither of them quite believed this.

Not that they doubted Lin Sizhi had gathered a great deal of information. What they doubted was that he had not already identified the Imitator.

He would not have left his room without a clear target in mind.

In all likelihood, Lin Sizhi already had a suspect, but for some other reason did not want to move immediately, or did not want to be the one making the accusation himself.

Of course, being the sharp players they were, they were not about to say any of this out loud.

As for Zhou Xiaoying, her attention was elsewhere.

”So all this time you were in your room, you were using the Monitor on other rooms every round?

”Which means over the past dozen or more rounds, you’ve spent almost 40,000 Medical Points?”

Qian Li said, with mild exasperation, ”Of course not every round.

”In this game, there are two ways to learn what’s happening in other rooms. Besides the Monitor, there’s also the Call function.

”You use the Monitor to find a player you know, or one from your community, and then you make a Call to share information.”

Zhou Xiaoying nodded with sudden understanding, ”Oh. Right.”

Zhang Yuan added, ”Besides, for a top-level player in the Gallery, visa time has never been something precious. It’s just a number.”

Lin Sizhi stood and pointed to the room layout diagram on the wall of the Lounge, then began introducing the situation to everyone.

”I’ll share all the information I’ve confirmed so far.

”Think about whether any of these players have any obvious points of suspicion.

”Once you’re back in your rooms, you can each make calls to players you know and confirm more details.

”In the next round, we’ll gather in the Lounge again and continue sharing.

”We keep doing this until we’ve identified the most likely candidate for the Imitator.”

There was no paper or pen in the game, so Lin Sizhi had no way of writing the names onto the room layout diagram for everyone to remember.

Everyone simply had to make a particular effort to memorise players from their own community or other key individuals.

Huang Shengjie did his best to keep up while intermittently enduring the waves of withdrawal pain.

Lin Sizhi went through things in the order of Sales, Reviewer, then Doctor, while also describing the current state of all four zones, A through D.

The four Sales players showed some differences. Ye Lin in Zones A and B had shown more goodwill, Bai Zhilan in Zones A and D had appeared naive and guileless, Chen Guangming in Zones C and D had had a poor reputation from start to finish, and the Sales player in Zones B and C had made the least impression of any of them.

But their behavioural patterns were highly similar, all selling medication with relentless dedication.

The four Reviewers, on the other hand, had shown markedly different patterns.

Zone A’s Reviewer, Shen Qingyun, had maintained the most resolute position of all. No matter how Sales or Doctors tried to influence her thinking, she did not waver. Throughout the entire game, she had not purchased a single bottle of Type O or Type F.

Zone B’s Reviewer, Xu Yiheng, and Zone D’s Reviewer, Zheng Chunhua, had initially shared Shen Qingyun’s intention to keep Type O and Type F out of their zones, but had eventually given way under the combined pressure of Sales and patients.

So by this point, Zones B, C, and D had effectively all fallen, with medication flooding freely in all three.

Zone A was not in a much better position either. Shen Qingyun’s supply of Type M was severely limited.

As time went on and more players became Infected, if Shen Qingyun continued refusing to allow Type O and Type F through, deaths were likely to occur.

Lin Sizhi had covered the general state of all four zones.

He had not been able to confirm the identity of every player, particularly those in the patient roles across Zones A, B, and D. The majority of those remained unknown.

Finally, he added one more observation.

”One more thing worth emphasising: I haven’t observed any obvious black-shop operations.”