God's Imitator

Huang Shengjie paused, then quickly grasped what Ye Lin meant.

Under the game’s mechanics, an Offender Community had 3 accompanying audience members, while an Audience Community had 4.

The Audience Representative could only inspect medication and couldn’t communicate with the offender or the other audience members. But Regular Audience Members were different. They were split into groups of two or three, and within each group, communication was entirely free.

It was exactly the kind of thing Huang Shengjie had thought of himself early on: he and Ye Lin, only one of them buying medication, ideally whoever carried more visa time. That way, the one who didn’t buy could still collect the payout, while the one who did could bring valuable Type M medication back to the community, useful either way, whether kept or resold.

A strategy this simple, there was no reason other communities wouldn’t have thought of it too.

Ye Lin continued, ”Of course, some communities lean more toward gambling behaviour, so there may genuinely have been cases where every audience member in a group bought medication.

”That’s because most communities by now have almost certainly passed motions capping how much visa time a player can carry on them at once.

”The lower end might only be seventy or eighty thousand, the higher end probably no more than 120,000 or 150,000.

”If one player ran out of visa time and their community’s core player still wanted more medication, it’s entirely possible every audience member from that community ended up buying.

”But that shouldn’t have happened too often.

”If all 8 batches sold out, and we assume each player who bought spent roughly 100,000 minutes on average, that would mean around 16 players in this game went essentially broke.

”For most players, buying medication would come down to two options: spend every last bit of visa time on hand, or don’t buy at all.

”Someone like Lu Qi, buying just a small amount, would be a rare exception.”

Lu Qi looked a little embarrassed, ”I, honestly I never expected the payout to be this large. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have bought anything either.

”I just wanted to bring a little medication back to the community, in case we ever needed it for an emergency.”

Huang Shengjie’s brow furrowed, ”Right, the number of audience members collecting a payout should have been well above 5. So how did we end up receiving that much?

”If 10 audience members were splitting the payout, that’s 220,000 each, which comes to 2.2 million total. That’s already more than the entire profit generated from all the medication sold!”

Ye Lin gave a nod, ”Exactly.

”The only explanation I can think of is that the Imitator built a hidden rule into how the profit distribution actually worked.

”If all the offenders end up dead, all the profit from medication sales, and possibly even the visa time the dead offenders were carrying, would be split entirely among the audience members who never bought anything.

”That would explain why the numbers came out this inflated.”

Zheng Chunhua looked genuinely surprised, ”That’s right! The rules said the total profit from medication sales would be split 50% among surviving offenders and 50% among audience members who didn’t buy.

”But if all the offenders die, what happens to their share, and to the visa time they were carrying, was deliberately left unspecified.

”How could something this significant about the payout structure be left as a hidden rule?”

Shen Bowen’s brow furrowed, ”Based on what we’ve seen, it clearly can be.

”The Gallery has always leaned this way, honestly. The specific mechanism by which an Imitator profits from a game has always been kept deliberately vague.

”The clearest one we know of is claiming the visa time carried by dead players, but beyond that, there could be a cut taken from transactions, or other methods entirely. An Imitator was never obligated to spell any of that out.

”And this game’s situation is different from anything we’ve seen before in one important way: the Imitator wasn’t quietly funnelling this ambiguous profit to themselves. They were giving it to the other players present in the game instead.

”Which makes it even less of an issue.”

Lu Qi seemed to understand now, ”I see. So leaving out the clause that ’if all offenders die, 100% of the profit goes to the audience’ was meant to protect the Imitator’s identity?”

Qin Cheng thought about it carefully, ”That’s certainly part of the purpose, but I think there might be another layer to it.

”If that rule had been spelled out explicitly, the entire scheme in this game probably wouldn’t have worked at all.

”Because if that rule had been made clear from the start, the audience would have done everything in their power to kill the offenders on the floor. The motivation to inspect the medication carefully would have shot up dramatically, and the fraud would almost certainly have been caught much earlier.

”The audience had to believe there was no way to earn that other 50%, for the game’s mechanics to function properly and produce a total wipeout ending.”

Huang Shengjie slumped back in his chair, deflated. ”So, checking everyone’s visa time was pointless from the start.

”This Imitator never intended to profit from this game at all, so of course their visa time wouldn’t show any change.

”That’s genuinely devious.

”If we hadn’t noticed the discrepancy in the payout numbers, checking everyone’s visa time would have only made them look more innocent!

”So we still can’t rule out the possibility that this Imitator is in our own community.

”If anything, I’d say the odds just went up.”

Ye Lin was quiet for a moment, ”I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s definitely in our community.

”Checking everyone’s visa time right after a game ends isn’t a difficult idea to come up with.

”We’re almost certainly not the only community that does this.

”The resistance to actually implementing it comes from the fact that it inevitably undermines trust between players and damages the overall atmosphere within a community.

”So the stronger a community is, the more likely it is to resist adopting a method like this.

”Weaker communities, or ones with more tension internally, probably established a rule like this well before we did.

”If the Imitator behind this game happens to be from a community that also checks remaining visa time as a matter of routine, then designing a hidden rule like this would make perfect sense for them too.

”Or, put another way, as the overall intensity of the Gallery keeps climbing in the second stage, community environments are naturally growing more extreme across the board, and the Imitator’s choice here might simply reflect that broader trend.

”It’s hard to draw a firm conclusion from this alone. If we guess wrong, the consequences could be serious.”

Lu Bingjun’s expression turned solemn. ”Alright. Speculating on the Imitator’s identity is certainly something we’ll need to focus on going forward.

”But for now, let’s finish working through the game itself.

”Only once we’ve fully broken down the game’s mechanics will speculating about the Imitator’s identity be more reliable, and less likely to drift from the truth.

”We did catch glimpses of the game footage back in the community before we used the Death Exemption Ticket, but we still don’t have a clear picture of the full process and its details.

”Ye Lin, would you walk us through it in detail?”