God's Imitator

Ye Lin, Qin Cheng, and Huang Shengjie each gave a brief account of their own experience in the game from their respective perspectives.

Ye Lin’s main vantage point was as the Sales player, and she also covered the general situation in Zones A and B.

Qin Cheng spoke primarily from the Doctor’s perspective, focusing mainly on Zone D.

Huang Shengjie’s perspective was as a patient, covering mainly Zone C.

However, during his account, Huang Shengjie followed Lin Sizhi’s instructions and omitted certain details involving Lin Sizhi: Qian Li and Zhang Yuan’s reactions to seeing him, and the hints and guidance Lin Sizhi had given him. He focused primarily on the fact that Lin Sizhi had spent the game in the VIP Patient room observing the game’s progress and sharing information.

After hearing the full account, everyone was left with a sense of mixed feeling.

Lu Bingjun had clearly already obtained enough information from Ye Lin beforehand, so he showed little surprise. His admiration for Qin Cheng and Huang Shengjie, however, was hard to conceal.

”Your performances in your very first game, both of you newcomers, were genuinely impressive.

”The other players who participated all did very well too.

”The result of this game was better than anyone could have hoped. The earnings are also remarkable.”Lu Bingjun had apparently been very worried beforehand, but all of that concern had now given way to joy.

Ye Lin explained, ”Strictly speaking, the main source of earnings was the share of the Imitator’s visa time.

”I kept track of my own earnings in the game, which came to roughly 28,400 minutes of visa time.

”Which means...

”After killing the Imitator, each player’s share came to 37,436 minutes of visa time.

”I was a little disbelieving at first, but I roughly verified it against other players’ totals, and it checks out.

”An absolutely extraordinary windfall.”

Wen Wan looked stunned, ”37,000 per person!

”That’s an insane amount!”

Lu Bingjun also nodded and said, ”It really is extraordinary. Completely beyond any normal expectation.

”Based on our experience from the First Stage, Imitators vary in strength. A relatively strong Imitator was generally thought to have around 600,000 to 1,000,000 minutes of visa time remaining. A weaker one might be comparable to a sharper player, with perhaps 300,000 being respectable.

”But this Imitator’s visa time, divided among forty, no, thirty-nine players, still left each person with 37,000.

”Which means the total they originally had was close to... 1,460,000 minutes.

”No matter how you look at it, that’s an absurdly large number.”

Qin Cheng bowed his head in thought for a moment, then asked, ”I have a question.

”If the Imitator dies inside the game, would the visa time they were supposed to earn from the game also be distributed?”

Lu Bingjun paused and said, ”We’ve never encountered a case like this before, but it’s certainly possible.”

Lin Sizhi nodded and said with certainty, ”It would.”

Qin Cheng asked again, ”And in the other rounds of this game happening simultaneously, would the Identify the Imitator rule also be available?”

Everyone looked at each other and shook their heads. ”No idea. Nothing like this seems to have come up in the First Stage either.”

Lin Sizhi considered for a moment, ”I would guess that since the Imitator didn’t enter those other rounds, that rule probably doesn’t apply to them.

”The other rules likely wouldn’t change much, though.”

Qin Cheng quickly did some calculations on paper, ”That makes sense then.

”This game was somewhat special.

”It was a game involving all communities simultaneously, which means it wasn’t just the one round we were in.

”There should have been at least three other rounds happening at the same time, possibly more.

”And the Imitator would have been earning returns from all of those rounds.

”Based on Yao Yuan’s earlier overview, from what we saw in the First Stage, Imitators have more than one way to earn from a game. They can earn through player deaths, and also through specific rules.

”In the Pain Game, players who converted visa time to Medical Points inside the game had to do so at a 2:1 ratio. That difference in exchange rates is significant, and I think it was most likely one of the Imitator’s primary methods of earning visa time.

”Similarly, Medical Points deducted for identifying the Imitator, and Medical Points deducted for violation transactions, may also have been partially skimmed, with a portion becoming the Imitator’s earnings.

”In the game, the number of players who were forced to convert visa time to Medical Points was not small, and some even took on debt.

”All of that would have been included.”

Ye Lin nodded and said, ”Yes. That’s almost certainly right.

”Simply put, this game had five players per community participating, and there were probably three or more rounds running simultaneously.

”The total number of players affected could have been close to a hundred.

”And from the game’s design, the Pain Game is a standard negative-sum game. If you averaged out all the players’ losses, the figure would be staggering.

”After all, many players had no choice but to convert at a 2:1 or even 4:1 ratio after becoming addicted.

”On top of that, this was the first game of the Second Stage. The Imitator who won the right to design it was certainly no ordinary figure, and their visa time to begin with would have been substantial.

”But since the Imitator could only be present in one of those rounds, and killing the Imitator means all the earnings are divided only among the players in that round...

”We essentially won the lottery.

”We walked away with the earnings that the Imitator had extracted from players across all the other rounds.”

Many players’ faces showed expressions of envy or regret.

It was clear that quite a few of them were kicking themselves.

The game had been completely open for volunteers, and if they had spoken up and replaced one of the participating players, this windfall could have been theirs.

A player like Zheng Chunhua had earned 60,000 minutes of visa time in the game, and many of them felt they could have done just as well.

It was Shen Bowen who raised the first question.

”There’s something strange about this. Even though killing the Imitator and earning this much visa time is a good outcome...

”Didn’t this Imitator perform a bit weakly?

”It’s quite different from what we might have expected initially.”

Zhou Wanlin paused and said, ”Too weak? In what way? Isn’t it just that our people were too strong?

”If no one had found him, all that visa time would have gone to him alone. 1,460,000 minutes!

”I’ve never heard of an Imitator earning that much from a single game.”

Deng Xiao nodded in agreement, ”And you also have to account for the early termination.

”If the game hadn’t ended early from killing the Imitator, the last few rounds would have brought another heavy round of extraction. Going by the nature of this game, the further in you went, the more ordinary pain would convert en masse to Special Pain, and medication demand would have surged.

”Earning this much from a single game is something we never once saw in the First Stage.”

Shen Bowen was quiet for a moment, ”Yes, that’s fair.

”In terms of earning visa time alone, this Imitator, Xu Yiheng, was genuinely quite impressive.

”But for someone with the Imitator identity, what does all that visa time really mean? The moment you’re exposed, it’s essentially the same as death.

”When it comes to concealing himself, Xu Yiheng did not do well.

”From the debrief, many of his choices were not particularly rigorous.

”He would have been safer doing nothing at all. The cost would only have been a few hundred thousand fewer minutes of visa time.

”There was absolutely no need to take that kind of personal risk.”