God's Imitator

Lin Sizhi shook his head and said, ”I wouldn’t say I had that exact outcome in mind from the start. It was more of a straightforward choice between two options.

”Because the game rules made it very clear from the beginning: this was a negative-sum game. As a patient, there was only one way to earn stable returns, and that was to help higher-identity players deceive other patients.

”I had no interest in doing that.

”Once I confirmed I could keep myself safe, the game started to feel rather long and tedious. With nothing else particularly worthwhile to do, looking for the Imitator was the obvious alternative.”

Ye Lin considered for a moment and said, ”But if I were in your position, I would have at least considered going into the Lounge in the first three rounds to see what the other patient players were like.

”If you had done that, perhaps you could have helped Huang Shengjie from the very start.

”My identity was Sales, and only after confirming that none of the players around me were from the same community did I give up actively looking.

”As VIP Patient, you had access to more players than I did. It would have made sense to look around a bit before deciding.”

Lin Sizhi did not argue the point, ”Yes. That’s fair.”

Shen Bowen frowned slightly and pushed back, ”I think on this question, everyone is entitled to their own strategy.”The first few rounds of the game are crucial.

”Building a sufficiently reliable connection with the Doctor takes more than one round of communication, and gathering information on other players also requires frequent use of the Monitor and Call functions.

”On top of that, given the nature of the game, the Imitator’s plan has to be set up and propagated right from the start. The earlier you monitor, the more likely you are to catch something.

”By the middle of the game, once the setup is already in place, monitoring at that stage is much less likely to yield useful information.

”If Lawyer Lin had already decided to spend Medical Points monitoring players and searching for the Imitator, he had to make maximum use of every early round.

”That left him no time to look after ordinary players in the Lounge. He also had no way of knowing in advance what was going to happen.”

Wen Wan interjected, ”But surely it wouldn’t have hurt to take one round to have a quick look?

”And besides, identifying the Imitator doesn’t require catching a precise slip-up. It requires a sufficiently persuasive logical argument, one that builds on a large number of accumulated details, doesn’t it?

”Even if you caught a concrete slip-up at the very start, you couldn’t broadcast that image to all the players anyway.”

Qin Cheng shook his head and said, ”Actually, catching a concrete slip-up and making a logical argument are both necessary. If anything, the former matters more.

”Pure logical reasoning alone still carries a fairly high risk of misidentification.

”But if you catch a concrete slip-up, you can draw the target around the arrow, investigate that specific player closely afterwards, and then look for the patterns consistent with Imitator behaviour. That approach has a much higher success rate.

”So if the decision was made from the start to look for the Imitator, it makes sense to make the most of every round. Stepping into the Lounge even once and temporarily giving up the Monitor could mean missing an important clue.

”So I don’t think this particular choice was a problem. And the result speaks for itself.”

Lu Bingjun looked thoughtfully at the discussion, then said, ”Ye Lin, Wen Wan, there’s no need to dwell on this one.

”Mutual support among community members is absolutely important, but it also shouldn’t become a rigid doctrine.

”At its root, that’s treating fellow community members as though they were young people who can’t be held responsible for themselves.

”At least in this game, the fact that Shengjie didn’t receive help right from the start was not necessarily a bad thing.

”If Lawyer Lin had come out of his room at the beginning and dismantled Qian Li’s trap, then Shengjie would never have drawn any lessons from this game, never grown from it, and would certainly never have tried to analyse the information himself and find the Imitator.

”As things stand, I believe Shengjie will very soon be a player who can hold his own independently.”

Ye Lin nodded and said nothing more.

Lu Bingjun stood, ”Alright. That’s where we’ll leave the discussion for this game. Everyone worked hard. Get some rest.”

No one said anything further. The group dispersed from the long table, clustering in twos and threes.

Some people were visibly relaxed, while others still seemed unsatisfied, debating other details of the game.

Shen Bowen went to the window-side seat and sat down across from Lin Sizhi.

”Is this what debriefs are like in your community as well?”

Lin Sizhi looked at her and said, ”What specifically do you mean?”

Shen Bowen explained, ”It felt a little too simple. Or perhaps not deep enough?

”I had expected the debrief to continue for at least another half hour, but it wrapped up just like that.

”The community I came from wasn’t particularly strong, but our debriefs were noticeably longer than this, and we would specifically analyse other possible strategies and approaches.”

Lin Sizhi nodded and said, ”The same was true in my previous community.”

With her impression confirmed, Shen Bowen said nothing more, and quietly looked down at her book.

For other players, perhaps this difference was not especially obvious. But for Shen Bowen and Lin Sizhi, as players who had come from other communities, something was clearly different about the way the debrief had been conducted.

The debrief of the Pain Game had taken a reasonable amount of time on the surface, but the genuinely useful content had been limited.

Of course, this might also be related to the nature of the Pain Game itself. The mechanics of that game were not particularly complex. Once the player identities were established, the available strategies were simple and few, and all of them had already been covered during the account of the game. There was no point in repeating them.

Just at that moment, a startled cry came from Zhou Wanlin.

”Hey! Everyone, come and look at this!”

The players who had already scattered around the hall came back together again.

”What is it?” Lu Bingjun came to Zhou Wanlin’s side and followed the direction of her finger to the vending machine screen.

Then many of them fell silent.

Huang Shengjie pushed through the crowd, not quite sure what was happening, and looked at the vending machine through the gaps between people, then went momentarily still.

Two new items had appeared on the vending machine that had not been there before.

[Type O Painkiller]

[5 tablets per bottle]

[Purchase Limit: 10/10]

[Price: 500 minutes of visa time]

[Type F Painkiller]

[5 tablets per bottle]

[Purchase Limit: 10/10]

[Price: 400 minutes of visa time]

In addition, the item detail pages for both medications carried a notice.

[The two Special Medications most frequently used by players in the Pain Game have been added to the Community vending machine.]

[Medication prices have been set according to the average transaction price of the two medications during the game.]

[Initial purchase limit is 10 bottles.]

[After players participate in any subsequent game, they may spend a certain amount of visa time to ’restock,’ replenishing inventory or raising the purchase limit.]

[The visa time required for restocking is 50% of the standard selling price.]

[When other players in the community purchase the medication, the price difference will go directly to the player who restocked.]

[Visa time spent or earned through restocking by a player is hidden by default and cannot be viewed directly through the vending machine in the common area.]