God's Imitator

Lu Bingjun paid no attention to Li Hui’s stunned expression and continued, ”You have been doing everything you can to conceal your offence. Every time you chose what to copy onto the board, you would rather copy something that would heavily count against you under the ’health’ criterion than reveal any information connected to your actual offence.

”But do you really think that makes you safe?

”Before the game officially began, the three audience players’ analysis actually provided us with three additional pieces of information.

”Of those three, ’exercise’ and ’diet’ have already been accounted for. But the third piece of information, ’smoking,’ has not been matched to any inner room player’s offence.

”I should thank Lawyer Lin here. If he hadn’t been able to extract ’smoking’ from the third sentence, you might genuinely have slipped through.

”It’s clear this was not a meaningless piece of information. It means that one of the guilty players in this room was directly connected to the victim’s smoking habit.

”Li Hui. That person is you, isn’t it?

”Tang Qing had clearly already realised the third piece of information was related to smoking, but deliberately said nothing. That tells us this information must concern someone from the same community as him.

”Tang Qing knows you smoke, and guessed that this was most likely connected to your offence. Otherwise, his behaviour makes no sense.

”Of course, there is also physical evidence.”The tips and nail beds of your index and middle fingers have a dark yellowish discolouration. Your teeth are also noticeably yellowed.

”Yet from your clothes, accessories, and general appearance, you’re someone who cares about how they look.

”So this is not poor hygiene. This is the result of heavy, long-term smoking.

”You once copied this sentence onto your board: ’I am not enthusiastic about sharing my hobbies with friends.’

”That sentence failed the lie detection. Which almost certainly means you have made deliberate efforts at some point to encourage the victim to start smoking, to get him addicted alongside you.

”You might have been classmates, childhood friends, or simply close friends in real life.

”That makes this all the more unforgivable.

”The probability of smokers dying of sudden cardiac death is two to three times that of non-smokers. For heavy smokers, the risk can increase to ten times.

”Smoking can trigger malignant cardiac arrhythmias and accelerates the destruction of the cardiovascular system. There is substantial medical evidence for all of this.

”Without the compounding effect of smoking, even occasional excessive exercise would at worst result in exhaustion and the need for a few days of rest. It would not have caused sudden cardiac death.

”So, smoking, excessive exercise, pre-packaged food. Of those three factors combined, which poses the greatest harm? Everyone should be able to work that out for themselves.”

Li Hui’s expression froze, but he recovered quickly and pulled his right hand back behind his board.

”Rubbish!

”Anyone in this room could be a smoker. Just because I dye my hair, does that mean the smoker must be me?

”Given your profession, status, and age, there must be plenty of occasions when smoking comes up in your professional life too. I think you’re projecting your own guilt and deliberately smearing me!”

Li Hui pushed back hard, but the expressions on the other players’ faces said everything.

Whether or not he chose to display his right hand, the others had already made up their minds.

Unless he confessed to an even more damaging offence himself, no amount of arguing would accomplish anything.

The seconds ticked by, and Li Hui suddenly realised that he had an unexpectedly generous amount of time left.

A full four minutes.

According to the game rules, each round’s free speaking time was a fixed twelve minutes, divided evenly among all six players at two minutes each when everyone was still alive.

But with one player now dead, ordinary players still had a maximum of two minutes each, which left extra time unaccounted for.

It appeared this extra time went to the moderator.

Li Hui gritted his teeth and decided to throw caution to the wind.

”Fine. I admit it. I did encourage him to smoke!

”But so what? I smoke myself!

”Everyone knows smoking is harmful. Did I force him to? No. It was his own choice!

”Think about it carefully. Why did he start smoking in the first place? It was because the pressure at work was so overwhelming that he had no choice but to smoke to stay alert.

”So I didn’t hide information and I didn’t deliberately try to harm him. I did nothing more than any smoker would do, offering a cigarette to someone as a matter of basic courtesy.

”And by the same reasoning, why did he exercise? Why did he drink so much coffee and energy drinks? It was because the burden of work had crushed him completely!

”The real culprit behind all of this is Lu Bingjun.

”Look at what he wrote on his board. He was once deceived into prolonged overtime by a boss who made promises and then broke them.

”That means in the workplace environment he came from, this kind of thing was simply the norm. So when he became management himself, do you think he corrected that culture, or do you think he turned around and did exactly the same thing to the victim?

”Everyone here should know the answer to that.”

Speaking time finally ended. The players each bowed their heads and pressed the corresponding buttons on their boards.

Deng Xiao could feel his heart growing worse. Instinctively, he reached back to touch the carving on his board and could feel his heartbeat getting faster and faster.

Given the current state of things, what the voting would produce was completely impossible to predict.

Because this round placed no restriction on voting criteria, players were free to vote under either ’Offence’ or ’Health’ as they saw fit.

And even under a single criterion, with everyone’s offences now fully exposed, different players would come to different conclusions.

The constraining effect of the lie detection mechanism was diminishing with each round.

When you layered community affiliations on top of all of that, the final voting outcome could only become more chaotic and unpredictable.

At last, the voting ended.

But what none of the players had expected was that all five blades on the platform plunged downward simultaneously.

As the blades drove into the platform, every single player’s expression changed at once. All five bodies locked rigid, hands clutching at their chests, unable to move.

All five players had been penalised with chest pain.

After what felt like an eternity, Deng Xiao finally came back to himself. His chest was heaving violently, his heart pounding as though it were about to force its way up through his throat.

”What’s happening? What is happening?

”A five-way tie?!”

That was the only explanation he could think of.

A blade falling and chest pain meant everyone had received the same number of votes, which were all the highest. The only way that worked was if each person had received exactly one vote.

Deng Xiao looked at Li Hui and found Li Hui was already staring back at him.

”Why is this idiot still alive?”

Deng Xiao was stunned. If Li Hui had died, the game would most likely still not have ended, but at least the next round would have had one fewer Sudden Death Vote to contend with.

Yet after all five of them endured chest pain simultaneously, not one of them had died.

Of course, this also meant the votes received were genuinely few in number. The vote tally directly affected the severity of the vascular blockage.

Deng Xiao glared at Li Hui and Shi Guoliang. Clearly, both sides had reached the point of no return, an all-out confrontation to the end.

Lu Bingjun and Deng Xiao were both from Community 2, while Li Hui and Shi Guoliang were both from Community 7.

Players from the same community would certainly not vote for each other.

This round had placed no restriction on voting criteria, which meant considerable freedom in how votes were cast. With these four players split into two opposing pairs each attacking the other, a one-vote-each outcome was entirely plausible.

”But there’s one thing that doesn’t add up. What happened with Xu Guangxin?

”He’s from Community 11. His offence should have been nothing more than turning a blind eye. Lu Bingjun and I shouldn’t have voted for him.

”Oh. I see now. Under the health criterion, it would have been perfectly valid.”