God's Imitator

Zheng Qingyun looked at his fingertip, stained with his own blood from when he had touched the wound on his neck.

He brought it to his tongue and licked it, as though trying to use this to reawaken some animal instinct in himself, or coax his luck back.

”If this were anyone else, maybe you really would have frightened them.

”Maybe they’d even bow their head and beg for mercy.

”After all, putting on that reckless death-wish act in a Judgment Game does look a little intimidating at first glance.

”But I’m not that kind of person.

”No matter how badly I’m behind at the table, no matter how strong the other player’s hand looks, I never stop believing I can find a way back. And I never stop believing luck will come back around to my side in the end.

”Whatever happens, at this table, I will never lose to someone like you.

”The game’s still long. We have plenty of time.”

Round 20 began, and this time the rotation put Zheng Qingyun as the first to act.He thought for a moment, then gestured toward the player to his right.

”The thing I need to confess is this: he’s a domestic abuser. For a long time, he regularly verbally and physically assaulted his wife, and it drove her to take her own life with medication.”

This time it was Gao Teng who froze.

He looked at the player to Zheng Qingyun’s right with something close to disbelief. This was a middle-aged man who had been meek and silent throughout, not saying a single word from the start of the game to this moment, moving like a puppet on strings.

Yet somehow, this was the kind of person he turned out to be.

The buttons on the table in front of Gao Teng activated again. He had no real choice and pressed ’Shocked.’

His hand at this point was 11 points. That wasn’t especially high, but pressing Insincere Unmoved would add 12 points and directly cause him to bust.

But pressing ’Shocked’ didn’t mean Gao Teng had to lose.

If all the players pressed ’Shocked’ and had 12 points deducted, the game remained broadly fair, since the winner would still be determined by comparing the post-deduction totals.

Either way, this communicated something very bad.

Zheng Qingyun was not without options. He had found a way to fight back.

Gao Teng had originally assumed that only he and Zheng Qingyun were offenders forced into the game, which meant the four players who participated voluntarily should not have committed anything too serious.

He had been wrong.

The two players Zheng Qingyun had brought along seemed like people with no opinions of their own, but it turned out they both apparently carried very ugly offences, and Zheng Qingyun knew every detail.

If Zheng Qingyun hadn’t spoken it aloud, Gao Teng would never have imagined that this quiet, submissive-looking middle-aged man was a domestic abuser who had indirectly driven his wife to her death.

What was more, after Zheng Qingyun exposed his offence, the domestic abuser showed no sign of protest or surprise. He simply accepted it in silence, expressionless.

In other words, he had placed his life entirely in Zheng Qingyun’s hands.

Gao Teng couldn’t quite work out why. Perhaps Zheng Qingyun had something on him, some kind of leverage. Or perhaps within this small group, within this community, Zheng Qingyun had always occupied that kind of dominant, unquestioned authority.

Either way, this meant Zheng Qingyun now had a steady and seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammunition.

The game’s rules stated:

Every time a player chooses to hit, they must perform a confession, speaking aloud one piece of a secret from their side that requires acknowledgement.

A confession being revealed triggers one penalty count.

But there was one point worth noting: the rules never stated that the confession had to belong to the player who spoke it. It only needed to belong to someone on their side.

And the penalty triggered by a confession was not borne by the player who made the confession. It was borne by the player to whom the confession belonged.

The offence Zheng Qingyun had just revealed had nothing to do with gambling. All the mental preparation Gao Teng had built up was useless against it.

His only options were ’Shocked’ or ’Insincere Unmoved,’ either of which would cause a wide swing in the points.

It looked like a draw on the surface, but in reality Gao Teng had fallen into a comprehensively disadvantaged position.

Because Zheng Qingyun could use the other two players as a kind of rotating shield, with all the damage from penalties distributed across the three of them, and preferentially absorbed by the other two first.

Gao Teng had no one to absorb it for him. He was on his own.

Unless his luck held consistently enough that he kept drawing totals under 9, which was very unlikely, if both sides had broadly similar luck, he would be the first to die.

Gao Teng looked at the domestic abuser to Zheng Qingyun’s right, genuinely puzzled.

”Why? Someone like that, and you’re willing to hand him your life?”

Zheng Qingyun gave a cold laugh, ”What a stupid thing to say.

”You’re a strange one. Sometimes you seem sharp, and then suddenly you say something laughably naive.

”Not that it’s surprising. Nine out of ten gambling addicts who’ve lost everything look exactly like you.

”Is it really that hard to understand why those two would hand their lives over to me? This is a death game, and I can lead them to a win. Isn’t that enough of a reason?

”They know exactly what they’re worth. They know they can’t win this game without me.

”And when they leave this game and go to the next one, and the one after that, they still won’t be able to win without me.

”There’s no one else who would take them in or stand behind people like them, so they have no choice.

”This game has no way to aim a kill at just one person. If you win a round, all three of us take the punishment together.

”If you hadn’t made it so obvious you were out to destroy us all, maybe they’d still be hesitating.

”But you’ve made it clear you want us finished. Did you really think they’d just sit back and do nothing?

”You’re right, I’m a cheat. But don’t tell me you think that’s all I know how to do.

”Want to know why gamblers like you always lose?

”Because every gambler with your kind of thinking follows the same logic: see a good hand, feel a surge of confidence, shove everything in at once. And yet they never stop to ask whether the dealer might be holding something bigger.

”Whether this or that is bigger, you only find out when the cards are on the table.”

Gao Teng was quiet for a moment, then said coldly, ”Then let’s put them on the table.”

The player to Zheng Qingyun’s left, and Xu Yili, each declared stand.

Gao Teng thought it through carefully, then confessed again and hit.

”I once had the thought of killing a specific player within the community, and I acted on it.”

Gao Teng had already pressed ’Shocked’ and was certain to receive a 12-point deduction, but he still had to keep pressing the attack against Zheng Qingyun.

If he did nothing, Zheng Qingyun was holding three cards without busting and would almost certainly win.

If both sides kept pushing, at least there was luck to fight over.

Zheng Qingyun’s brow furrowed. He thought for a moment, then pressed ’Shocked’ again with a dark expression, ”Fine. I want to see how many times you can split the same thing.”