God's Imitator

The voice in the broadcast continued.

”In this game, the Imitator is certainly not the player who caused the most obvious damage on the surface!

”While that approach might achieve a blinding effect, under the current game mechanics there would always be players who, in their desperation, threw accusations around at random.

”The probability of such accusations actually succeeding is very low, but it isn’t zero, and the Imitator wouldn’t risk something so pointless.

”On that point, the Imitator is unlikely to be Sales, because Sales is naturally the troublemaking role.

”As for Doctor and Patient, those two identities are too passive to effectively control where the game goes.

”So the most likely identity for the Imitator is Reviewer!

”First: the Reviewer’s authority is enormous and impossible to bypass. Whether medication passes through or not is entirely at the Reviewer’s discretion, unconstrained by anyone else.

”Second: the Reviewer identity is extremely safe, because at the very start, the Sales player will certainly send over medication samples.

”Third: the Reviewer has one natural advantage that all other identities lack. Staying in their room for long periods without coming out raises no suspicion whatsoever.”Because the Reviewer can choose to meet with two Sales players and two Doctors, while Sales-to-Sales, Sales-to-Doctor, and Doctor-to-Doctor communications are all very difficult.

”When the Reviewer stays in their room without coming out, the Sales player assumes they’re convincing the Doctor, while the Doctor assumes they’re meeting with Sales.

”By contrast, any other identity that stays in their room for long periods without meeting anyone is far more likely to draw suspicion.

”The Reviewer is a position of both offense and defense, and it is the identity the Imitator custom-designed for themselves.

”Of the four Reviewers, Zone A’s refused to let in any Type O or Type F from start to finish, while Zone C’s decided from the very beginning to help the Sales player flood the zone with medication for personal gain.

”These single-minded approaches don’t fit the behavioural logic of an Imitator.

”By contrast, the Reviewers in Zones B and D, who initially resisted and then eventually gave way, are in a state of both advance and retreat, which makes disguising oneself much easier.

”So in my assessment, the two of them are the most suspicious.”

Two minutes had passed, but the broadcast had not been cut off.

That meant at least ten players still wanted to keep listening.

It was clear that this accuser had taken a different approach from the previous ones.

Rather than starting from small specific details, given the limited time available, they had gone straight to the Imitator’s psychology.

Even Chen Guangming had to admit there was some logic to this line of reasoning.

Because it matched how he himself thought.

In this game, all the Sales players were high-risk-tolerant players. That was partly their individual strategic preference, and partly the result of the Gallery’s selection process.

And the Imitator who had won the bid for the very first game of the Second Stage was absolutely no ordinary figure. How could someone like that go to all this trouble and walk away with only a small amount of visa time?

The Imitator had no way to determine in advance which specific players from each community would be participating, nor what decisions each of the four Reviewers would make.

If all four Reviewers turned out to be like Shen Qingyun, the outcome could be extremely damaging from the Imitator’s perspective: no deaths, and no one buying medication compulsively due to addiction.

In that scenario, the Imitator would earn almost nothing.

So the Imitator would certainly have chosen the most critical position available, and while maintaining their concealment, would do everything possible to push each zone toward collapse and maximise their own returns.

And if this Imitator was arrogant enough, they might even enjoy dancing at the edge of danger, like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime.

The broadcast continued.

”And the reason I ultimately locked onto Xu Yiheng is that his apparent helplessness was actually a carefully constructed illusion.

”According to the Sales player, the overall flow of events in Zone B went roughly like this.

”Xu Yiheng told the Sales player that both Doctors had taken the same position: they were only willing to purchase Type M at the lowest price, and only four bottles at that. They didn’t want any other medication and wouldn’t give the Sales player any profit margin.

”He then introduced the Sales player to the real-world counterparts of the four medications and expressed a desire to cooperate, calling for a steady supply of Type M to ensure the safety of all patients in Zone B.

”On the surface, the two Doctors clearly had relevant professional knowledge and were fully aware of the dangers of Type O and Type F.

”Their behaviour, at first glance, appeared to be well-intentioned.

”But when the Sales player made a call to a patient in Zone B, she discovered that the Doctors were actually selling Type M to patients at an inflated price of 1,500 Medical Points per tablet.

”In other words, the Doctors had been exploiting Reviewer Xu Yiheng’s goodwill to deliberately restrict the medication supply in all of Zone B, monopolising it for profit.

”Eventually, the Sales player, the patients, and Reviewer Xu Yiheng together exposed the two Doctors’ scheme and allowed the patients in Zone B to freely choose from all available medications.

”At first glance, this appears completely consistent with what happened in Zone D: Reviewer Zheng Chunhua was similarly outmaneuvered by Sales and ultimately gave way under multiple pressures.

”But on closer examination, there are far too many inconsistencies.”

The accuser paused briefly and continued.

”Under normal circumstances, it’s entirely possible for the two Doctors in Zone B to collude. Just as the Sales players managed to reach an unspoken understanding not to sell Type M despite having no way to meet with each other.

”But the difficulty of colluding in these two cases is completely different.

”The Sales players had sufficient motivation and only needed to agree on one simple thing: don’t sell Type M.

”But these two Doctors were supposedly both worried about drug side effects harming patients, and at the same time trying to earn Medical Points for themselves. They only wanted Type M, and were both only willing to buy it at the lowest possible price from Sales.

”How could details this specific be reached through nothing more than unspoken understanding?

”Setting aside whether these two Doctors communicated telepathically or via call, and setting aside whether their cooperation was driven by principle or by profit,

”if they had truly forged this level of cooperation, they should have held out to the very end, just like Zone A’s Reviewer Shen Qingyun.

”How could Xu Yiheng have broken them apart so effortlessly?

”From a game mechanics standpoint, Xu Yiheng could have simply stopped buying medication himself, cutting the supply chain at the Reviewer stage. But there was absolutely no way for him to force the two Doctors to sell medication.

”From a game strategy standpoint, even using a prisoner’s dilemma to separate two coordinating Doctors would require exceptional persuasion skills.

”And Xu Yiheng’s performance throughout this game was full of apparent weaknesses. He did not appear to be a particularly strong player.

”So the colluding Doctors in Zone B and Xu Yiheng dismantling that collusion are mutually contradictory events.

”Beyond this, there is one more highly suspicious detail. The first time Xu Yiheng met the Sales player Ye Lin, he proactively produced Type I medication as a goodwill gesture.

”But he called it ’Type I,’ not ’Type 1.’

”We now know that all medications are named using the first letter of their real-world counterparts. But before ever seeing the Special Medications themselves, most players would instinctively read I as the Roman numeral one, and naturally assume there were also Type II or Type III medications.

”Yet from the very beginning, Xu Yiheng read it as ’Type I,’ and when Ye Lin later produced the Special Medications, he showed absolutely no surprise or reaction whatsoever.

”So the reasonable explanation is...

”Xu Yiheng’s apparent ’leaking of information’ throughout the game was entirely deliberate.

”The so-called unbreakable alliance between the two Doctors was never established by the Doctors themselves. It was constructed entirely at his direction.

”Xu Yiheng would seemingly let slip the name of patient Tan Minglei, but would never reveal the names of the two Doctors, which would have given Ye Lin an opportunity to contact them and verify his claims.”

The seconds continued to pass. The voice in the broadcast was still going and had not been cut off.

Chen Guangming considered for a moment, then decisively pressed the verification button.

He had already earned a considerable amount of Medical Points in this game. By rights, he owed this Imitator some gratitude.

But killing the Imitator would yield additional returns.

Spending 2,000 Medical Points for a share of the Imitator’s visa time was a very worthwhile trade.

In the broadcast, the accusation was drawing to a close. Chen Guangming had already guessed the likely outcome, but kept listening carefully.

”Finally, one more key piece of supporting evidence.

”As the Imitator, Xu Yiheng couldn’t openly run a black-shop operation. But he could still use players from his own community to achieve his goals.

”Xu Yiheng is a player from Community 8. Du Peng in Zone C and Li Haoqiang in Zone D are both from the same community.

”And both of these players showed abnormal behaviour.

”Li Haoqiang in Zone D was a Regular Patient. In the very first round, he was fortunate enough to be received by Doctor Qin Cheng. When he became Infected, Qin Cheng voluntarily bore the consequences of a violation transaction to personally hand him three tablets of Type M.

”By any reasonable standard, that was a substantial act of goodwill. A normal player, even if not outright grateful, should at least have trusted him.

”Yet Li Haoqiang showed obvious suspicion, repeatedly probing and testing, and even suspected Qin Cheng of being the Imitator himself.

”You could explain this as a snake biting the farmer who saved it, but there is actually a more likely explanation.

”Li Haoqiang had received information from another channel and firmly believed that Qin Cheng, a Doctor who had shown him clear goodwill, was feeding him false information and deliberately deceiving him.

”Where did that information come from?

”Other patients in the same zone? Impossible. If Li Haoqiang didn’t even trust Qin Cheng, he certainly wouldn’t have trusted a stranger.

”There is only one answer. A player from Li Haoqiang’s own community called him specifically and fed him a mixture of true and false information.

”Only someone from the same community, someone he would inherently trust, could have words that carried that kind of weight.

”As for Du Peng in Zone C, his abnormal behaviour took a different form. Throughout the entire game, he never once managed to see the Doctor, and no other patient in the Lounge shared accurate information about the medications with him.

”At the time, he had only two options: Type O or Type F.

”In the fourth round, he bought one bottle of Type O.

”But after that, even as Standard Pain kept worsening, he bought no more medication. Instead, he endured and simply waited for a new type of medication to appear.

”This was clearly abnormal. Even without becoming Infected, the vast majority of players would purchase Type O or Type F as a precaution when the price was low, in case of emergency.

”And then, the moment Type M appeared, he bought it without a moment’s hesitation.

”This shows that Du Peng initially knew nothing about these medications, but very quickly someone called him and told him what he needed to know.

”The player behind both of these two, is Xu Yiheng.

”My guess is that Xu Yiheng did not order them to do anything specific. He simply chose what information to pass along, true and false mixed together, based on their circumstances, thereby influencing their behaviour and exerting pressure on other zones.

”And the reason he was able to locate these two players and identify which zones they were in was precisely the advantage of the Reviewer identity, which gave him ample time to stay in his room using the Monitor function without drawing suspicion from other players.

”Clearly, the rule that players from the same community are scattered across different zones was written into the game from the start by the Imitator himself.

”On the surface, this was designed to increase the game’s difficulty and isolate community members from cooperating.

”But from the Imitator’s perspective, it carried an additional benefit: it made it much easier to manipulate players from his own community, apply influence across multiple zones, and ultimately do everything possible to ensure all four zones fell completely.

”In summary...”

The accuser’s speech was evidently not finished, but the system broadcast came on again.

The votes were already sufficient. No closing statement was needed.

[More than half of all players have chosen to verify. The system will automatically check the Imitator’s identity.]

[Verification confirmed. Xu Yiheng is the Imitator of this game.]

[The Imitator will receive a death penalty.]

[The Imitator who designed this game has died. The game will proceed to early settlement.]

[All surviving players will equally share the Imitator’s total visa time.]

[Game over.]