God's Imitator

Deng Xiao’s hand trembled as it reached toward Lu Bingjun’s button, but he could not bring himself to press it.

”Everyone else will certainly vote for me. There’s no other possibility.

”What about Lu Bingjun?

”What should I do?”

If he had to name anyone other than himself who should bear the most responsibility for this death, the only person Deng Xiao could think of at this point was Lu Bingjun.

Lu Bingjun had presumably been the victim’s direct supervisor, responsible for assigning an excessive workload.

The voting was subject to lie detection, but when judging something that concerned yourself personally, objectivity was clearly not going to be easy to maintain.

The rules also stated that there was a small margin of ambiguity in the voting. You could not cast a vote that contradicted your genuine beliefs, but when the choice was genuinely unclear between two options, you were free to vote for either.

So if Deng Xiao pressed Lu Bingjun’s button, it might just go through.

”If I vote for Lu Bingjun, I could reduce my own tally by one. But when I get back to the community and we debrief, what do I say?”Tell everyone my own button didn’t light up when I tried?

”That’s probably plausible. No one would genuinely want to vote for themselves.

”But this might also put extra risk on Lu Bingjun. I’m almost certainly getting a lot of votes this round. We can still call for assistance later, and there might be a chance to turn things around. But what if this one vote from me gets Lu Bingjun killed before me?”

Voting time was short. In the end, Deng Xiao pressed Lu Bingjun’s button.

”This button probably won’t register anyway. If it doesn’t go through, I’ll just vote for myself.

”Lu Bingjun is the community’s leader. He’s still safe right now. Taking one vote for me is fair.”

The button lit up and locked in. That meant Deng Xiao had successfully cast a Sudden Death Vote for Lu Bingjun.

Deng Xiao paused, and once the vote was truly cast, he felt a faint pang of regret.

But immediately after, a wave of chest pain hit, as though someone had grabbed his heart and squeezed it hard before twisting.

The pain froze his breathing in an instant. His entire body locked rigid and his face went white.

At the same moment, the blade on the central platform plunged swiftly downward, driving into the sector corresponding to Deng Xiao.

His body went completely rigid. All he could feel was something like a massive void opening in the region of his heart, every last bit of strength drained from him in an instant, unable to move.

Fortunately, the chest pain did not last too long.

What was not good, however, was that as Deng Xiao touched the heart carving on the back of his board, he felt clearly that his heartbeat had surged noticeably faster, and there was now a distinct lump in one of the major vessels.

This lump was blocking the blood flow, forcing the heart to pump harder and faster to compensate.

”The Sudden Death Vote not only triggers chest pain, it also accumulates blockage.”

Now Deng Xiao understood fully why Wei Hongbing had died.

On the surface, both Li Hui and Wei Hongbing had endured two rounds of chest pain. But the actual number of Sudden Death Votes they had received was different.

Wei Hongbing had received one or two more votes than Li Hui, so her cardiac blockage had been more severe.

Combined with being older and in poorer health, the second round of chest pain had resulted in outright sudden cardiac death.

Li Hui, by contrast, could still hold on a while longer.

From that perspective, Deng Xiao was not yet in immediate danger.

With some luck, he should be able to survive one more round of chest pain.

But this was not certain. As Tang Qing had said: a person’s cardiac health and their physical athletic ability were not directly linked.

In the worst case, Deng Xiao could just as easily die in the next chest pain episode.

A new round began. The prompt on the central platform updated again.

Li Hui was still the moderator.

He paused in surprise, then quickly understood why. In the previous round, no inner room player had spoken, which meant no one could be identified as the first to attack anyone else.

As a result, Li Hui’s moderator status had carried over to this round.

Li Hui’s expression brightened. He had assumed his moderator status had been wasted, but now it was clear the role still applied this round.

He quickly made adjustments on his board to set the speaking order.

Deng Xiao looked toward Lu Bingjun and made it very clear with his eyes: use the one assistance opportunity immediately and call on Lin Sizhi.

Because Deng Xiao’s situation was genuinely precarious.

Tang Qing’s argument had been devastating in its impact and far-reaching in its influence. One round of votes would not be enough to undo it.

If this speaking round did not produce new arguments and failed to shift the blame toward other players, the others would almost certainly pile their Sudden Death Votes onto Deng Xiao again.

That would be over for him.

So Deng Xiao did not want to take any chances. He just wanted to call on Lin Sizhi immediately and redirect the discussion’s focus to other players.

But Lu Bingjun gave a slight shake of his head, a clear and unambiguous refusal.

”You’re not calling for assistance? Why not?”

Deng Xiao had no way to ask the question aloud. All he could do was try to work out the reasoning.

”Lu Bingjun thinks the timing isn’t right yet?

”There’s only one assistance opportunity. Lin Sizhi is watching from the outside and may have noticed things we haven’t, but the truth only has maximum impact if it’s revealed at exactly the right moment.

”Or does Lu Bingjun have a plan of his own and feel we don’t need it yet?”

Deng Xiao did not know what Lu Bingjun’s specific reasoning was. He stared at the assistance button on his board, torn.

He could press it directly and call for help. Under the game rules, he did not need Lu Bingjun’s approval.

But Lu Bingjun was the community’s leader and a core player. If Deng Xiao went around him and spent the precious opportunity on his own initiative, it could disrupt the entire plan.

And when they got back to the community, that would be very hard to explain.

”But what if something goes wrong?”

Deng Xiao was still hesitating, his hand already reaching toward the assistance button.

But at that moment, the system broadcast sounded again.

[Xu Guangxin has used the ’Help’ function. Bai Zhilan from the same community will speak on their behalf.]

[All originally scheduled activities for this round will be cancelled. All speaking time will be given to the audience representative.]

[For the voting phase, the audience representative may compel all players to vote according to either the ’Offence’ or ’Health’ criterion only.]

In the Audience Room, Bai Zhilan also looked mildly surprised.

Xu Guangxin’s situation was not yet particularly urgent, so she had not anticipated him using the assistance function this early.

Even so, Bai Zhilan wasted no time. She had been thinking through the game’s content throughout and had already prepared her thoughts in advance.

After a brief moment of careful consideration, she began speaking immediately.

”I want everyone to be clear about something. A Judgment Game is not actually about judging guilty parties. It’s about finding a way to survive.

”Debating who is the most guilty inside a Judgment Game is a completely meaningless exercise. Tang Qing knows this perfectly well, which means everything he said was nothing more than rhetoric.

”Right now, only one thing matters: finding the Impostor.

”Our community has already lost one player. But clearly, that does not satisfy the Impostor. So no matter how many more players die, as long as the Impostor is alive, this game will keep going.

”Conversely, if the Impostor is found, the game ends immediately.

”You don’t even need to actually vote to kill them. As long as the Impostor feels their life is threatened, they will end the game on the spot.

”Does it really matter if some guilty players escape punishment and leave the game? We’re all in the Gallery. Who among us is truly clean?

”I have found the Impostor. It is Shi Guoliang, from the same community as Li Hui and Tang Qing.”