God's Imitator

Lin Sizhi was not particularly surprised, ”I’ve considered that possibility. There is a real chance it was aimed at me.

”Because the four professional roles in ’Jury Game’ were clearly chosen with care by the Imitator.

”One of those roles very likely corresponds to a player the Imitator wanted to probe.

”First, Doctor can be ruled out. Since entering the Second Stage, every community has had an abundance of doctors. Under this game’s selection rules, it would be very difficult for an Imitator to single out a specific doctor.

”Second, Detective can also be ruled out. It’s a profession that doesn’t exist in the real world, so the game would have to draw from players with some tenuous connection to it. Someone like Tang Qing, who is a reader of mystery and detective fiction, or players with backgrounds in security or private investigation, might all be selected. That selection pool is also far too broad for an Imitator to control.

”As for Wealthy Merchant: business owners and senior executives with a degree of real-world success would likely fall within the selection range. Players like that exist in communities, but they aren’t particularly rare either.

”But Lawyer, from my perspective, I genuinely haven’t come across many.

”So if the Imitator deliberately set up those professional roles to ensure certain players would be selected, then yes, I could very plausibly be the one they were targeting.”

Lu Bingjun added, ”And on top of that, the Lawyer is a structurally weaker role.

”Looking back at the debrief, the disadvantage isn’t insurmountable, but the real problem is the information gap.”The Detective and Wealthy Merchant can both submit evidence, define the details of that evidence, and use the dossier to identify the game’s true mechanic from the very beginning.

”The Lawyer and Doctor have their privileges, but would not necessarily realise how to use them quickly. Even a small delay in working that out creates a massive disadvantage, as we saw with Feng Yuguang.

”If the Lawyer role had been filled by someone weaker rather than you, this game could have become entirely one-sided without any suspense at all.

”In other words, if the Imitator who designed this game was targeting you, they could achieve two goals simultaneously: either successfully eliminate you as a threat, or gauge the true extent of your abilities.

”In some sense, I believe they may already have achieved the second of those purposes, which is learning your true capabilities.

”When you first joined this community, you seemed to be deliberately holding back.

”But through one game after another, your actual strength has inevitably shown itself. That’s certainly reassuring, but could it also be something of an unwelcome development?”

Lin Sizhi looked at him with a meaningful expression but said nothing.

Lu Bingjun paused briefly. He lowered his head in thought, turning over the possible meaning behind Lin Sizhi’s response.

”Then tomorrow it is. I’ll tell everyone the details of that game.

”That said, even among the older members, there are still significant divisions about how to interpret what happened.

”I hope this discussion produces some new conclusions.”

The following afternoon.

All the players gathered in the hall.

They only knew that Lu Bingjun had something very important to discuss, without knowing what it was.

Some players may have had their guesses, but nothing was certain.

Lu Bingjun looked around at everyone and came straight to the point without preamble.

”First, I owe an apology to every new player who joined the community in the Second Stage.

”I’m sorry. I withheld certain information from you.

”But the reason for withholding it was not for any personal gain on my part. It was for the unity and stability of the community as a whole, and it was a decision made collectively by the veteran members.

”That said, since entering the Second Stage, our community has performed well across four games, and the new members have integrated well.

”So I believe the time has come to be fully open and share the truth with everyone.

”This concerns the community’s former leader, Wei Changfeng, and the Judgment Game that led to his death.”

Lu Qi’s first reaction was surprise, followed quickly by something closer to mild confusion.

Clearly, she had known nothing at all about the community’s original leader. But even knowing it now, she didn’t quite understand why it would be significant enough to warrant this level of solemnity.

In a place like the new world, death could come at any time. Ordinary players died. Community leaders died too. The old leader was gone and a new one stepped up. Wasn’t that just how things worked? Whether it was disclosed or not didn’t seem like a big deal, and certainly not something that called for such a formal apology.

For a player like Qin Cheng, who had already suspected for some time that Wei Changfeng existed, there was still a faint sense of surprise, because he had assumed Lu Bingjun would keep this hidden indefinitely and never be transparent with the newer players, or at least not this soon.

As for the veteran Community 2 players, not all of them had been told in advance, so traces of genuine surprise were still visible on some faces.

But no one raised any public challenge. Everyone was listening carefully.

Lu Bingjun also had no intention of inviting questions at this stage, so he left no space for them and simply continued.

”In the First Stage, our community actually had three core game players: the original Player 1, Wei Changfeng, myself, and Ye Lin.

”Wei Changfeng, as his name suggests, was a big brother with a genuinely chivalrous spirit. He was three years older than me and one year older than Zheng Chunhua. At the time, Geng Yuxia hadn’t yet joined the community, and he was our oldest member.

”He made a decisive contribution to this community. The spirit of mutual help that defines how we do things here was something he established.

”He was also an excellent player, a notch above Ye Lin and me.

”So throughout most of the First Stage, the community made steady progress. Our earnings in the games were solid, and the atmosphere within the community was very warm.

”Of course, we did experience some deaths during the First Stage, but overall, the rate was lower than the average across other communities, and we supplemented with new members as needed.

”At the time, the community had a total of twelve players. Most games with full community participation were structured in groups of four, so the groupings before that Judgment Game were roughly as follows.

”Yao Yuan, Deng Xiao, and I were a relatively fixed trio.

”Ye Lin, Zheng Chunhua, and He Qinyun were another group.

”Wei Changfeng was in a group with the original Player 9, Xu Yili, and Player 12, Gao Teng.

”The remaining players, Wen Wan, Zhou Wanlin, and Geng Yuxia, were in a more flexible position and would be distributed and adjusted based on the specific situation each game.

”That Judgment Game was called ’Remorse Poker,’ and its rating after the fact was A.

”In that game, the player compulsorily selected as the offender was Gao Teng. The other two spots were voluntary.

”Wei Changfeng and Sister Yili chose to enter the game to help. After all, the three of them had always been a relatively fixed group, they had the best coordination and the most aligned instincts, and all three were strong players.

”From the moment they entered the community in the First Stage, the three of them had worked together well, winning the vast majority of games they played, and even in the games they lost, they always came out intact.

”So none of us were particularly worried.

”But we never expected all three of them to fail to return.”