God's Imitator

Before long, the second round of production from the five offenders on the floor had also finished.

This batch produced the same yield as before, 36 canisters, 360 bottles in total.

This was largely expected. The process had already been refined during the first round, and all five offenders had clearly been putting in real effort, with no major mistakes surfacing.

So there wasn’t much room left for further improvement, and the overall output would likely stabilise around this number of 36 canisters.

That was already a considerable amount.

All five players looked visibly worn down. Working inside the Production Rooms had turned out to be more exhausting than anticipated.

After a brief rest, they each dragged their tired bodies back toward their waiting rooms, while the newly produced batch of medication was once again sent to the Audience Representatives for inspection.

Before they reached their rooms, a new broadcast rang out.

[The final results of the first production batch’s sales are now announced: all 352 bottles sold, for a total revenue of 211,200 minutes of visa time.]

[Audience members may now begin casting Sympathy Votes for the offender players.]

[Zeng Yiming has received 2 Sympathy Votes.]

[Wen Wan has received 1 Sympathy Vote.]

[Zeng Yiming has received 1 Sympathy Vote.]

The Sympathy Vote announcements continued trickling in even as the offenders made their way back to their waiting rooms.

Wen Wan returned to hers, and her attention drifted once again to the machines.

As before, she made sure not to waste the opportunity, entering different numbers on each machine to test.

She started with the one for Liang Guicheng, the fruit farmer.

Three digits were already confirmed: 0, 6, and 7. On the second digit, two incorrect answers had already come back, 3 and 2.

This time, she tried entering 0167.

The click sounded again, and this time the digit 1 locked in with the special green border as well. All four digits were now correct.

”Got it.”

She’d had something of a feeling about it even as she typed the number in, and now that feeling had turned out to be right.

The two digits she’d originally been given were the last two, 67. From there, working off her rough inference about Liang Guicheng’s background, she’d guessed the first digit was likely 0, and hit it correctly on her very first attempt.

She hadn’t been sure about the second digit at all, but her instinct told her it probably wasn’t very high, so she’d started with 3 as her guess, and landed correctly on 1.

”Two players need to guess a number correctly for it to trigger a trial, so even though I’ve got it now, his crime won’t actually be exposed.

”I can hold onto this number to protect myself.

”If something unexpected happens, I could use this to pressure Liang Guicheng, or trade it with someone else for information they hold.”

Wen Wan reaffirmed her thinking to herself.

Even though the cooperation among the five offenders had gone well so far, giving up entirely on guessing numbers would still be a genuinely foolish move. Things in this game could change in an instant, and there was no telling whether things might fall apart later. Better to keep some defences in place.

If Wen Wan had abandoned guessing altogether, she’d have very little leverage in hand. If another player guessed her number and shared it, she’d be sent straight to trial with no way to fight back.

So she needed to keep guessing.

She’d successfully worked out Liang Guicheng’s number now, which counted as solid progress.

But almost immediately, something else occurred to her.

”Wait. If I’m thinking this way, the others must be too.

”They’re almost certainly guessing my number as well.

”Zhao Xiuying, for instance, already knows my last two digits. Is she close to figuring out the rest?

”The others have every reason to want me gone too.

”Because half of the total profit at the end gets split among the five of us.

”Every additional death means a larger share of visa time for everyone left.”

The thought pulled Wen Wan’s earlier optimism right back down.

She had originally assumed guessing all four digits correctly wouldn’t be easy, and that needing two separate players to land on the same number before a crime was exposed would keep the success rate fairly low.

Which meant concealing her crime should have been a viable strategy.

But now that she’d actually tried it herself, she realised guessing numbers was far easier than she’d expected.

If the other players were doing exactly the same thing she was, then, before production drew to a close, the crime numbers of most players would likely be exposed, one after another triggering their own First and Second Trials.

The threat of exposure still hung over the remaining four players like a blade waiting to fall.

”So, even though I’ve already lost my shot at becoming Production Director, I should still confess as early as I can.”

The rest period was nearly over. Wen Wan hurried to try a few more numbers on the machines for He Qing and Zhao Xiuying.

This time, one correct digit came back on He Qing’s machine: the third digit was 8.

With more and more wrong answers eliminated, the odds of pinning down each number kept climbing.

Wen Wan returned to the game floor, carrying her unease with her.

Everyone filed back into their respective Production Rooms and resumed manufacturing.

Just as Zeng Yiming in Room 1 was reaching for a fresh handful of raw materials, He Qing suddenly called out loudly from Room 3, ”I want to confess!”

Every faint sound on the game floor carried clearly through to the audience waiting rooms, and this outburst startled more than a few audience members who were still weighing whether to buy into the second batch.

Inside the game floor itself, the other offenders looked equally caught off guard.

He Qing seemed to hesitate for a moment, but pressed on. ”I’m an air conditioner installer.

”My guess is that my crime has to do with not following proper procedure during installation, specifically the vacuuming stage.

”Here’s how it works: installing an air conditioner requires pulling a vacuum for a fixed amount of time, roughly 15 minutes. If that time isn’t met, then years down the line, say a few years, or even over a decade, the unit’s cooling performance starts to degrade.

”But installation work usually happens during peak season, when the company sends out a huge number of jobs, and we’re under serious time pressure. So there’s no way we could guarantee a full 15 minutes on every single unit.

”I do want to stress, even when the time fell short, we always used proper equipment to make sure the vacuum reached negative 0.1 MPa. I’ll stake my integrity on that. There’s no way we ever cut corners on that part.

”All I did was fall short on time for the vacuuming step on some of the units. Nothing beyond that. No other crimes.

”So please, esteemed audience members, show some mercy. Freezing in here to make this medication for you, that’s fair, I’ve earned that. But I genuinely don’t deserve to die for this. Thank you.”

When He Qing finished, he dropped to his knees and knocked his head against the floor several times before climbing back to his feet.

Production continued after that.

He Qing went back to his usual routine, inserting his coin and curling up in the corner, enduring the extreme cold as before.