God's Imitator

The minutes ticked by, and the vote totals for all four Actors kept shifting.

Lin Sizhi and Wang Yongxin received only Support votes, with no Oppose votes at all.

When the Support count reached 22, the rate of incoming votes visibly accelerated, and it ended quickly with all 44 votes in favour.

Under the constraints of the insincere vote detection mechanism, no player in the venue could find any genuine grounds to cast an Oppose vote against either of them.

Feng Yuguang’s situation was entirely different.

After the truth of the case was established as mutual suicide, he had let out a quiet breath of relief, believing he was safe.

He had felt completely lost throughout the game, only dimly aware that Tang Qing and Lin Sizhi had been locked in fierce confrontation the whole time, with Wang Yongxin occasionally stepping in to support. But one way or another, it had somehow come to an end.

Feng Yuguang felt his performance had been broadly acceptable, consistent throughout with the image of a doctor.

And yet, he watched as the Oppose votes against him kept rising.

”Why? Why?”Under the game’s rules, Actors could not move or speak during the voting period. Feng Yuguang could only stare at the screen in disbelief, his voice little more than a murmur he could barely even hear himself.

In the early minutes, the Oppose votes against him were not particularly numerous.

Even after some audience members discovered they could cast Oppose votes against him freely, most still found it difficult to bring themselves to do it immediately.

They had no personal grievance with Feng Yuguang. Condemning him to potential death on the spot felt harsh, and some reluctance was natural.

But as the Oppose votes mounted, those who had hesitated were left without other options and were forced to vote the same way.

This was true even for players from Feng Yuguang’s own Community 16.

Because a Support vote offered no benefit. It couldn’t save him at that point, and it would cost the voter their entire visa time balance.

In the end, Feng Yuguang received all 44 Oppose votes.

He felt a sudden inability to breathe, his mind going blank.

Throughout the entire game, he had done almost nothing. He had neither attacked others nor reached out to help anyone.

He had simply, in a state of confusion, provided a professional explanation of the medication Wang Yongxin handed him, and after that, everything was decided.

Tang Qing and Wang Yongxin had clearly treated him as a disposable pawn from the very start.

After all, he was free visa time. There was no reason not to take it.

From the perspective of the game’s mechanics, however, Feng Yuguang had not been without options. There had been more than one way for him to protect himself.

He could have engaged actively in the discussion from the start, steering the case’s narrative toward terrain that played to his own strengths as a doctor.

He could have introduced medical topics, such as illness, medication, and psychological control, and used his special privilege of interpreting medical information to guide the conversation, clearing his own name and mounting a counter-attack.

He could also have offered testimony about the medication earlier, using the verification mechanism to have it confirmed as genuine, thereby closing off possibilities that would have worked against him and preventing the Detective and Wealthy Merchant from using the evidence to implicate him.

He could have made his cooperative intentions known earlier, aligned himself with one of the other Actors, and pushed someone else toward becoming the designated guilty party.

He had done none of these things.

The matchmaking system had placed Feng Yuguang in a high-end game he simply could not handle. This was the only outcome that could have followed.

Tang Qing, upon seeing his own Oppose votes appear, understood the reason immediately.

His situation was quite different from Feng Yuguang’s, however. The Support and Oppose tallies rose almost in tandem.

This was because not every player could work out the reasoning within the limited time available.

If an audience member hadn’t grasped that ’Tang Qing was creating the evidence himself,’ they had no grounds to cast an Oppose vote against him.

Tang Qing had initially believed his Oppose votes would not reach the majority threshold. As time passed, he realised he had miscalculated.

The Oppose count kept climbing.

Because audience members could discuss things with each other, which meant that the moment a single player in any community worked out the logic, they could share it with everyone else.

And the communities participating in this game happened to be, for the most part, communities with capable players.

Weaker communities could only cast Support votes for Tang Qing. Stronger communities could cast Oppose votes, and by doing so, effortlessly claim the visa time of the weaker communities’ Support voters.

Tang Qing turned to look. Within Community 7’s own audience section, internal conflict had already broken out. They were arguing heatedly over how to vote.

Individual players had already worked out the grounds for casting an Oppose vote, and once they did, they could not in good conscience switch back to Support.

But they could choose not to explain it to the others, and could try to pressure the remaining players into casting Support votes without understanding why.

If Support votes could be secured at 22 first, Tang Qing could still be saved, and those who voted Support would be safe from having their visa time claimed.

But Community 7’s audience section only had five players, which was not enough to control the outcome.

In the end, Tang Qing’s Support and Oppose votes settled at 13 to 31.

Community 2, Community 3, Community 4, Community 11, and Community 23 all appeared to have voted Oppose in full, as each of these communities had audience members sharp enough to see the reasoning.

This meant they would claim the entire visa time held by the 13 players who had cast Support votes.

With the final vote results determined, the betting payouts would also now be calculated.

Every player who had bet on Tang Qing or Feng Yuguang would walk away with nothing.

Among those, the number who had bet on Feng Yuguang was relatively small, but not negligible. Some players had noticed his high odds and reasoned that there was a chance he might slip through, and had bet on him with that logic in mind.

Those who had bet on Tang Qing were numerous.

Before Lin Sizhi actually reversed the situation with the Lion King Card, Tang Qing had appeared certain to win. The game’s odds couldn’t drop below 1, so even low odds meant a positive return, and Tang Qing’s frequent speaking had kept his odds from falling too far.

Many players had mindlessly staked visa time on him, expecting easy returns.

The final result was a devastating loss for all of them.

There were also many players who had not managed to reach the 30,000 minimum bet.

Because in practice, this game had only gone through three Recesses.

By the third Recess, the state of play was still chaotic and unclear to most observers.

Tang Qing, Lin Sizhi, and Wang Yongxin had all privately prepared for the final confrontation, but most of the audience couldn’t see that.

They had been hesitating, expecting at least one more Recess where they could make their remaining bets.

But after the third Recess, the situation shifted with extraordinary speed, and the Truth Vote was completed in a matter of moments. Those players never got their chance to bet.

Whatever they had staked below the 30,000 threshold would be deducted in full as a penalty.

Tang Qing let out a long breath and quietly closed his eyes to wait.

The fifteen-minute countdown ended.

[Based on the Curtain Call Vote results, Actors Tang Qing and Feng Yuguang will receive an instant-death penalty.]

A moment later, Tang Qing opened his eyes and realised there was no pain at his wrist.

A Community 7 player had used the immunity voucher to save him.

Tang Qing had known his community possessed an immunity voucher, but he hadn’t been fully confident that the player holding it would choose to use it on him.

In ’A Single Word to Settle a Case,’ he had failed to save two community members. And now in the ’Jury Game,’ he had lost again.

Not only had all of his own visa time been forfeited, but he had also dragged his community’s audience members into a heavy loss.

On top of that, the immunity voucher itself was worth 300,000 minutes of visa time.

If the community players had chosen not to use it, Tang Qing would have thought that fair.

But looking at the final outcome, Community 7’s players had not hesitated for a moment.

Of course they couldn’t afford to give up one of their strongest players over a single unexpected loss.

And Tang Qing’s performance in this game had not been poor. He had simply been unfortunate enough to encounter someone stronger.

Tang Qing looked at Lin Sizhi, then at Wang Yongxin.

In the First Stage, he had rarely faced opponents of this calibre. The bad habits he had picked up from crushing weaker opponents had quietly laid the groundwork for his defeat.

Once the stakes of a game rose, even the smallest detail could produce an entirely different result.

Tang Qing looked back at Community 7’s audience members.

”I’m sorry, everyone. I’ll find a way to win back what was lost in the games ahead.”

To his right, Community 16’s Feng Yuguang slumped forward onto the arc table with a dull thud.

Whether Community 16 had no immunity voucher, or simply chose not to use it, Feng Yuguang became the first person to die in the newly established ’Role-Play Game’ type.

[Rewards will be distributed in the following order:]

[1. Based on each audience member’s odds at the time of betting, visa time rewards will be calculated and distributed.]

[2. Players who bet less than 30,000 minutes of visa time will have the shortfall forcibly deducted.]

[3. Audience members who cast a Support Vote for Tang Qing will have all of their visa time claimed by those who cast an Oppose Vote for Tang Qing. 48 hours may be retained for return to the community.]

[4. All visa time held by Tang Qing and Feng Yuguang will be split equally between Lin Sizhi and Wang Yongxin. Tang Qing may retain 48 hours for return to the community.]

[For specific earnings, please check the screen in your community hall.]

[Game over.]