God's Imitator

Lu Bingjun paused briefly and continued, ”The confession for the first card was this: Wei Changfeng had once lied to him in private, telling him that he would definitely find a way to cure his legs within the Gallery. Once that happened, Wei Changfeng had said he would persuade Xu Yili to be with Gao Teng, because his own feelings for Xu Yili had never been anything more than a performance.

”The confession for the second card was this: he had once written a draft inside the community, designing a game to kill Deng Xiao. The draft had been discovered by Xu Yili, who stopped him firmly and tore it up. But in the end, he still completed it.

”Those two confessions caused him and Wei Changfeng to die together.

”We have no way of knowing what Xu Yili’s reaction was in that moment. She must have witnessed Gao Teng and Wei Changfeng die at the same time. The records show that the three surviving players all ultimately chose to stand.

”What made it shocking was that Gao Teng won that round.

”The second card he drew was the ace of spades, which could be counted as 1 point, just enough to avoid a bust.

”And under the game’s rules, when a round is settled, a player who has died in that round does not have their hand voided. It is counted normally.

”So the final result of that round was that Wei Changfeng, Gao Teng, and Zheng Qingyun all died.

”The player to Zheng Qingyun’s left, from Community 6, had only one chance remaining.

”In Round 30, neither player chose to take a hit, but Xu Yili’s total was lower.”And so, when the game ended, the player to Zheng Qingyun’s left was the sole survivor.

”In the earlier game records, he had almost no presence at all. His crime, as far as the records showed, was fraud.

”But afterward, we all remembered his name.

”He was called Ma Boheng.

”We later tried to find the Community 6 players in subsequent games, particularly Ma Boheng, hoping to learn more about what had happened during that game. We never managed to match with them again.”

A long silence fell over the room.

Lu Qi’s expression was still full of confusion, ”But I still don’t understand.

”Why did any of those things have to be said? Especially the part about Wei Changfeng and Xu Yili’s true feelings toward Gao Teng. That’s the part that should have been kept hidden no matter what.

”In the end, wasn’t it Gao Teng’s mental collapse that led him to choose to take Wei Changfeng down with him?

”But Wei Changfeng knew Gao Teng well enough to understand how emotionally unstable he was. That’s all the more reason not to say things that would push him over the edge.

”If Gao Teng hadn’t collapsed, they might have won.”

Qin Cheng leaned back against his chair and exhaled slowly, ”Perhaps they simply had no usable ammunition left.

”By that point, both sides were in a situation with no way out and no retreat.

”We’ve already established that every round required making the three players on the other side feel genuinely ’Shocked.’ Without that, the point disadvantage would be too great and losing was certain.

”But as the game went on, the material that had already been used couldn’t produce enough of a reaction anymore.

”If the other side failed to press ’Shocked,’ it would either result in one more lost round and three additional penalty counts distributed across your players, or force an extra confession to compensate for the mistake.

”Either way, it was a significant loss.

”So the further the game went, the heavier the crimes that needed to be revealed.

”Wei Changfeng must have anticipated that what he said would cause Gao Teng severe distress, but he couldn’t know exactly when Gao Teng’s mind would finally break.

”Or perhaps Wei Changfeng judged that even if Gao Teng did break down, it was better to wait until Zheng Qingyun was dead first. After all, for Gao Teng, a cheat like Zheng Qingyun should have been the more despised target.

”Whatever fell apart back in the community afterward could be dealt with then. The priority was to win this game first.

”What Wei Changfeng didn’t anticipate was that once Gao Teng’s mind completely broke, he had no intention of going back to the community at all, and used his final confessions to take Wei Changfeng with him.

”Gao Teng probably didn’t want to kill Xu Yili. If he had, he could easily have used one of Xu Yili’s crimes for another hit, but he didn’t.

”Xu Yili, though, had most likely already broken by then as well, with no will left to survive. And in the end, luck was simply not on her side.

”And that was how it came to such a terrible end.”

Huang Shengjie looked around at the others, particularly hoping for some response from Ye Lin.

Ye Lin had said almost nothing throughout, but she quickly understood what Huang Shengjie was looking for, and let out a quiet sigh.

”The game records we were able to access look exactly like this.

”None of what has been described involves embellishment or creative interpretation. Every word comes from what the three of them confessed during the game, and it is all recorded clearly.

”If anything, Brother Lu’s account has been presented in a somewhat softened form.

”Every veteran player here read the game records at the time, and the impact of seeing it then was far greater than hearing it described now.

”So sometimes I think it might not be such a bad thing that the first-stage records were wiped.

”At least Wei Changfeng gets to keep a small measure of dignity at the end, even if there isn’t much left.”

Huang Shengjie found he had nothing left to say.

Given what had happened, it made complete sense that the veteran players of Community 2 had chosen to bury it and never speak of Wei Changfeng again.

Because there was simply no way to speak of him.

Wei Changfeng’s contributions to Community 2 had been real, and on the surface he had been the kind of leader everyone believed in and looked up to.

But what he had done to Gao Teng behind the scenes was so utterly at odds with that image that it risked casting doubt over every single thing he had ever done and every reason he had ever given for doing it.

How much had been driven by principle, and how much by self-interest? That was impossible to say with any certainty.

For Lu Bingjun and Ye Lin, who had been left to pick up the pieces, deciding how to account for Wei Changfeng became a dilemma with no clean answer.

To set aside the contents of this game entirely and preserve only the good was neither honest nor truthful, and the act of concealment could allow the fractures to quietly widen.

But to treat Wei Changfeng and Gao Teng as criminals of the community, based on what this game had exposed?

That risked shattering the community’s faith in everything it had been built on.

They could not find a better way to handle it, so they did the only thing they could: set it aside for now, and, by unspoken agreement, never bring it up.

Lu Bingjun looked around at the group, ”In any case, that’s the full picture of what happened in the game.

”Say whatever you’d like.”

Everyone turned to look at Qin Cheng.

The debrief had been led mainly by the newer players, and Qin Cheng had played the central role throughout. It was only natural that he would speak first.