God's Imitator

The room stirred again at these words.

Tang Qing had clearly played his hand. Through these documents, he intended to implicate Lin Sizhi as the husband’s accomplice and lock in the charge entirely.

Lin Sizhi, however, showed none of the panic many might have expected.

”Please let me finish.”

With those words, the ’Verify Evidence’ function on the jury members’ screens was temporarily locked.

Under the game’s rules, statements from suspects and jury members took precedence over evidence verification.

Lin Sizhi tapped the documents back into alignment on the table and returned them to the folder.

”I believe the authenticity of these materials is in question.

”The central problem is: why would the wife have agreed to sign such an agreement?

”Once the General Power of Attorney was signed, it would place all assets in the wife’s name under the husband’s complete control, giving him multiple avenues to quietly drain her of everything.”Even the most naive person should not have made such an elementary mistake.”

Tang Qing was not surprised, ”In fact, this is easily explained when combined with the medication evidence just submitted.

”It is clear that the wife had been subjected to the husband’s psychological manipulation and pharmaceutical control over a long period.

”The wife came from a comfortable background and had a strong income, but someone like her could very easily have been too trusting as a result of insufficient worldly experience.

”Especially when clouded by love. An impulsive decision made in the heat of emotion is entirely plausible.

”Many women who have been defrauded out of hundreds of thousands, even millions, by romance scams, would you say they lacked professional ability? People simply tend to function at very different levels of intelligence when it comes to their careers versus their emotional lives.

”The husband had clearly been using medication to control the wife.

”Looking at the wedding photograph, the wife does carry a degree of anxiety. That anxiety may have come from work, from daily life, or from the relationship itself.

”A high income inevitably comes with high pressure and uncertainty. On top of that, the deaths of her doting parents left her devastated. Under multiple blows, the wife was already in an extremely fragile state.

”If the husband then deliberately used psychological manipulation to amplify her pressure and anxiety, the conditions would have been ripe for the wife to develop the early signs of a psychiatric disorder: anxiety, agitation, insomnia.

”At that point, medication to manage these symptoms would become a natural next step.

”The husband could then secretly substitute the prescribed medication while feigning care and concern, causing the wife’s condition to worsen and eventually producing significant cognitive impairment.

”Once that plan was complete, the husband would effectively have achieved complete psychological control over the wife. Having her sign these agreements in a state of diminished consciousness would then not be beyond the realm of possibility.”

Lin Sizhi gave a slight nod, ”I see. That does sound like it could explain things.

”However, there are still quite a few unresolved issues.”

Tang Qing raised an eyebrow, ”Oh? Do tell.”

Lin Sizhi explained, ”If all of these documents are genuine, then the husband has in effect already successfully extracted the wife’s entire estate through psychological manipulation and similar methods.

”The property worth fifteen million registered in the wife’s name, the savings accumulated from her annual seven-figure income, and various other assets, all of these would already be within the husband’s grasp.

”After that, it would simply be a matter of time.

”So then: what exactly is the purpose of the large insurance policies?

”If the husband already had access to all that money, why would he go to the extraordinary trouble of having the wife sign the policies and pursuing the crude and risky scheme of ’murdering his wife for the insurance payout’? The additional risk would be completely unnecessary.

”Beyond that, the idea of using drugs and psychological manipulation to obtain the wife’s signature on a General Power of Attorney is also not particularly convincing.

”This is a real-world case, not a drama. The effects of ’psychological manipulation’ have their limits.

”No matter how thorough the conditioning, it is not possible to completely extinguish a person’s autonomous will.

”Signing such a General Power of Attorney is equivalent to surrendering one’s entire financial existence to another person.

”If the husband’s psychological control over the wife had truly reached that degree, it would mean he could do anything he wished with her.

”He would not need forged policies to make her sign new ones. He would not need to prepare a ring to coax her into jumping overboard. Why go through all the extra effort?”

Tang Qing’s expression still held its faint, unreadable smile, but he did not respond immediately.

Chen Yumei frowned and pressed the speaker button at her table.

”Esteemed members of the jury, I believe Lawyer Lin is simply using sophistry to delay the proceedings and prevent the evidence from being verified.

”All of these objections can be answered.

”Lawyer Lin said: if the husband already had access to the wife’s twenty million in assets, why bother pursuing the insurance fraud?

”This was already discussed. Lawyer Lin is applying the logic of a rational person who weighs risk against reward. But the husband is a desperate and reckless gambler.

”For someone like him, getting twenty million is fine, but getting an extra ten million on top of that would obviously be even better.

”Criminals who plot to murder a spouse for insurance cannot see the risks. Rational thought doesn’t apply to them. If it did, they would never have devised such a plan in the first place.”

Bai Zhilan also gave a nod of agreement, ”Using nothing but psychological manipulation and conditioning to make someone completely obedient does sound genuinely difficult.

”But real cases are often stranger than anything a drama could depict. Fiction requires internal logic. Reality does not.

”Besides, the Possibility Analysis Lawyer Lin himself proposed is ’mutual suicide.’ How often does that actually happen in the real world?

”This is a court of law. Our discussion must be grounded in evidence, not pure logical deduction or conjecture.

”Furthermore, there is a clear difference between ’compelling the wife to sign a power of attorney’ and ’compelling the wife to jump into the sea,’ isn’t there?

”I believe the former remains plausible, while the latter is not possible at all. They should not be conflated.”

Wu Xiufang considered for a moment, then said, ”I agree with Lawyer Lin. The new evidence feels somewhat forced, and the possibility of forgery cannot be entirely ruled out.

”As jurors, we must not be swayed by emotion. We must address all outstanding issues before reaching a considered conclusion.

”In any case, let us verify the evidence first.”

[Jury Representative Wu Xiufang has proposed verification of the authenticity and supplementary information of the ’Family Asset Integration and Optimisation Plan (Complete Documents).’]

[If 10 jury members agree to the verification, each will be charged 500 minutes of visa time, and a confirmed result will be provided.]

Many jury members were extremely eager to learn the truth about this evidence and pressed confirm immediately, quickly producing a result.

[The ’Family Asset Integration and Optimisation Plan (Complete Documents)’ contains false information.]

[The ’Entrustment Party Asset Verification Materials’ and ’Certificate of Inheritance Notarisation’ are genuine. The ’General Power of Attorney’ is a forgery and has no legal effect.]