God's Imitator

Everyone nodded. It was clear that the kind of situation Lu Bingjun had described would very likely occur, and some of the communities in the games that had already taken place had almost certainly fallen into exactly that trap.

Among the different player identities, the closer the position in the chain, the easier cooperation tended to be.

For instance, Sales could cooperate with the Reviewer, the Reviewer with the Doctor, and the Doctor with patients.

But with one link in between, the difficulty of cooperation would rise exponentially.

A Sales player trying to cooperate with a Doctor would need to bypass the Reviewer entirely. While limited communication was possible through the courtyard windows or the Call function, the foundation for that kind of cooperation would be far weaker.

As for Sales and patients, they happened to be at the two opposite ends of the entire medication supply chain. Not only was communication between them difficult, but the game mechanics offered them no meaningful space for cooperation whatsoever.

If all the players from a single community happened to be split into Sales and patients, the result would almost certainly be meaningless internal friction, leaving the community as a whole with only negative returns from the game.

Many people, however, also caught the implication beneath Lu Bingjun’s words.

Even as he kept crediting collective decision-making, the real credit ultimately rested more with him personally, since the final call had been his to make.

Lu Bingjun continued, ”So I’d like to offer particular recognition to Qin Cheng here.”If he hadn’t volunteered to participate in the game, our community might very well have been unable to secure Advantage Identities like Doctor and Reviewer, and in that case, the result of this game would have been genuinely uncertain.”

Qin Cheng shook his head, ”You’re giving me too much credit, Lu. In this game, I didn’t really do much. I just tried to hold the line in Zone D and keep the medication from flooding in, and even that ended in failure.”

Lu Bingjun smiled and said, ”No need to be so modest. New players as capable as you and Shengjie are something I never encountered in the First Stage.

”In addition, there’s the question of identity selection inside the game.

”Sales, Reviewer, Doctor, Patient, together they form a medication supply food chain, but the entire chain is actually a negative-sum game.

”The Sales and Reviewer players at the top of the food chain have enormous advantages. They can choose to look out for themselves, they can choose to help the patients, or they can choose to harvest the patients.

”The patients at the bottom of the food chain have almost no autonomy. They have two options: either play the role of willing collaborators, like Qian Li in Zone C, helping the Doctors to extract from other patients, or take a passive stance and simply try to protect themselves.

”From that perspective, this game was actually quite unbalanced.

”That said, there is one point I’d like to highlight specifically. And of course, this is only my personal view.

”I believe that Advantage Identity players helping the patients is the better approach.

”In other words, what Qin Cheng was trying to do throughout the game.

”While Ye Lin and Zheng Chunhua, you two veteran players, were actually outshone by Qin Cheng.

”On the surface, the two of you did earn more visa time, but Qin Cheng’s conduct would have left a much better impression on players from other communities.

”The Second Stage has barely begun, and communities will inevitably start to differentiate themselves as cooperative or adversarial.

”If we can build relationships with other cooperative communities, we may be better positioned in the games to come.

”That’s the difference between long-term and short-term benefit.”

Zheng Chunhua kept his head down and said nothing, which suggested he had accepted the criticism entirely.

Or perhaps it was something he had already been thinking about himself.

In the first half of the game, he had consistently followed Qin Cheng’s lead, doing his best to resist the Sales players’ influence and protect the patients.

But under the combined pressure of Sales and patients, Zheng Chunhua had buckled fairly quickly and had not held on to the end the way Qin Cheng had.

And looking at the outcome, if he had been able to hold out, he would have earned slightly less visa time, but the overall result might have been more favourable.

Ye Lin, however, clearly had a different view.

”I’d actually say Uncle Zheng’s choice was the right one.

”Expressing goodwill to other communities and laying the groundwork for future cooperation is certainly one kind of strategic approach, but it shouldn’t be our community’s only strategy.

”It might also lead other communities to see us as easy to push around and exploit.

”One person taking the moral high ground is enough. The rest of us should still try to earn as much visa time as possible whenever the opportunity is there.

”Our community’s development fund has a fixed contribution rate, and the more we put in, the more special items we can unlock, which also increases our strategic flexibility and margin for error in future games.

”So whether it’s helping other communities’ players or earning visa time, both are simply strategies. Neither should be ranked above the other, and promoting one while discouraging the other seems wrong.”

Lu Bingjun smiled and said, ”Of course. Strategic flexibility is absolutely a consideration.

”And as I said, this is only my personal view.

”And it applies specifically to this one game.”

Ye Lin said nothing more.

Lu Bingjun then looked at Huang Shengjie.

”Beyond Qin Cheng, I think Shengjie’s performance also deserves particular recognition.

”At the start, Shengjie was somewhat at a loss due to being in a game for the first time and without an Advantage Identity, and was also taken advantage of by players from other communities. But fortunately, he didn’t get in too deep. Once he realised something was wrong, he did his best to limit the damage.

”And he ultimately succeeded in identifying the Imitator.

”So now we come to the centrepiece of today’s debrief: let’s have Shengjie walk us through the thought process that led to catching the Imitator. Everyone, please welcome him!”

Lu Bingjun started the applause, and the other players followed.

Both Shen Bowen and Ye Lin instinctively looked at Lin Sizhi, and seeing that he was also clapping, raised their own hands and gave a symbolic few claps.

Huang Shengjie stood up, a little embarrassed, ”You’re too kind, Lu. Looking back on it now, it was mostly luck and stumbling onto things.

”When I made the accusation, I did start by narrowing down the Imitator’s likely identity to Reviewer, which reduced the pool. But honestly, that was drawing the target around the arrow after the fact.

”What actually got me started was noticing something off about Du Peng, who was in the same zone as me.

”From the information I had, I specifically tracked down a player from the same community as Du Peng, and then it was through Ye Lin’s account of her experience that I noticed Xu Yiheng’s behaviour was a little unusual.

”As for a lot of what I said during the accusation, I was honestly stretching quite a bit, trying to make the logic work by pushing the evidence toward him. I had to make my argument as persuasive as I could.

”And Lawyer Lin, Ye Lin, and Qin Cheng all provided a huge amount of information. It was entirely thanks to their help.

”Once again, thank you all!”

Huang Shengjie bowed to everyone, and another round of applause followed.

Lu Bingjun clapped a few extra times before saying with approval, ”Well said!”

He then looked at Lin Sizhi, ”Lawyer Lin also did excellent work in this game, particularly in providing Shengjie with a great deal of key information and playing an irreplaceable role.

”Though I am a little curious. Why did you decide from the very start to use the Monitor to gather information across all the different zones? Did you have it in mind from the beginning to end the game by finding the Imitator?”