God's Imitator

Zhang Yan’s brow furrowed. ”Everyone’s first instinct might be to assume the Imitator is in our community. But having heard the full account of the game, I actually lean toward thinking the Imitator is far more likely to be in Community 8.

”Because achieving a result this specific would have required several conditions to align at once, with no room for any one of them to fail.

”Let me walk through the three key stages of this game and consider what else could have happened at each one.

”First stage: what if Zeng Yiming had been more cautious, only starting the fake medication scheme in a later batch, or never even conceived of a plan like this in the first place?

”Second stage: what if Liang Guicheng, or any other offender, had exposed the previous player’s fake coin much earlier?

”Third stage: what if some audience member had simply happened to notice the fake medication sooner by chance?

”This is a chain where every link depends on the one before it. If any single link had failed, the outcome would have turned out completely differently.

”The overall probability of success is the product of the probability at each stage, and that’s not a large number at all.

”Now, when Ye Lin gave her broadcast, she already offered a partial explanation: the offenders didn’t expose each other’s fake coins because of their own character flaws, and the special selection mechanism for Audience Representatives skewed the inspection results and misled the ordinary audience.

”So, for now, let’s grant that the second and third stages are reasonably well explained.

”An Imitator could never calculate for 100% certainty anyway. As long as a plan carries better than even odds of success, that’s enough for them to commit to it.

”And even if it failed, an Imitator wouldn’t face any real consequence themselves, so taking on a certain degree of risk is understandable.

”But the key issue is that the first stage, Zeng Yiming’s own behaviour, simply isn’t something that could be controlled at all, unless the Imitator understood Zeng Yiming extremely well, or had even planted hints, leaked information, or misled him within the community beforehand.

”So I think it’s more likely the Imitator is from Community 8, hidden among the audience members that community sent into this game.

”Because that would let them kill off Zeng Yiming, earn clean visa time through their role as an audience member, and clear any suspicion of being the Imitator within their own community, all in one move.”

Qin Cheng suddenly thought of something, ”Right, Lawyer Lin, it’s been a while since we debriefed the King’s Trial. Could you share a little more now?

”I’d guess the King’s Trial was also the work of someone the community knew personally, wasn’t it?”

Lin Sizhi gave a nod, ”Yes.”

Zhang Yan felt his theory strengthen further. ”That makes it even more likely.”

Huang Shengjie found something odd about this. ”Wait, that doesn’t quite add up.

”Are you saying the Imitator was inspired by the King’s Trial to design this game? That’s what I thought too at first, but how could this Imitator possibly exist in both our community and Community 8 at the same time?

”There’s absolutely no cross-community communication available right now, and our community and Community 8 weren’t even in the same region originally. We’ve barely had any contact with them since.

”If they’re in our community and were influenced by the King’s Trial, they couldn’t have possibly been the one scheming against Zeng Yiming. And conversely, if they were the one scheming against Zeng Yiming, they shouldn’t even know about the King’s Trial.”

Zhang Yan shook his head. ”I don’t think that’s actually a contradiction.

”Why would you assume we’re the only community with knowledge of the King’s Trial?

”During the first stage, the detailed rules of every game were shared across communities within the same region.

”Which means, once the second stage began, if Community 8 ended up with a player from the same original region as Lawyer Lin, they could very well already know the rules of the King’s Trial.

”And note, they don’t need to be from the same community, just the same region.”

Huang Shengjie reconsidered, ”Oh, right, that’s true.

”I just thought it was a bit much that we’d only just finished sharing the King’s Trial, and then a game this similar shows up right after.”

Zhang Yan nodded, ”That is a genuine point worth questioning, but I don’t think it’s conclusive proof.

”If the Imitator really were in our community, would they really be bold enough to pull something like this right in front of everyone? And how would they have predicted Zeng Yiming’s actions so precisely?

”Other communities could have shared the same information too, or the Imitator could simply have arrived at the same idea independently, a case of parallel invention.

”On balance, I still lean toward this being the work of someone within Zeng Yiming’s own community.”

The group fell into silence.

Zhang Yan’s reasoning clearly carried some weight, and given how significant this question was, no one felt confident enough to declare him definitively right or wrong.

Lin Sizhi gave a slight shake of his head. ”I actually see this a bit differently.”

Everyone perked up immediately, listening closely. On this particular question, Lin Sizhi clearly had more authority to speak than anyone else in the room.

Lin Sizhi explained, ”The core issue is that the two games use fundamentally different selection mechanisms for who ends up in the advantaged role.

”The King’s Trial’s selection mechanism was guaranteed to produce Ding Wenqiang specifically. But Trust Marketplace’s mechanism works differently: it wasn’t designed to select one specific player, but rather a specific type of player.

”In other words, if the mechanism had selected someone other than Zeng Yiming, say, He Qing instead, that would simply mean He Qing was closer to whatever profile the Imitator’s selection criteria were built around, and he would have ended up doing essentially the same thing.”

This took a moment to sink in, and everyone lowered their heads in thought.

Shen Bowen seemed to be piecing it together. ”That’s right.

”On the surface, this game doesn’t appear to have any selection mechanism at all, so our instinct is to assume Zeng Yiming becoming Production Director was purely a random outcome.

”But thinking it through carefully, there actually is a hidden selection mechanism at work.

”To get production started as quickly as possible, one of the five players needed to confess faster than anyone else. And whoever that ended up being would almost certainly share certain traits.

”First, they’d need to be sharp and decisive, at least above average among the five.

”Because the audience’s suggestion was only five characters long, and once an offender received it, there was no room for hesitation or wishful thinking. They had to act on it immediately and decisively.

”And that same person would also need to grasp its meaning quickly, work out an execution strategy on the spot, and be capable of course-correcting if that strategy started to go wrong.

”The reason Wen Wan hesitated to act decisively on it was precisely because she didn’t believe she could manage all of that: confessing was the easy part, but reliably executing a strategy after securing the advantaged position, and correcting course if something went wrong, that was genuinely difficult.

”In short, she wasn’t strong enough, which is why she hesitated.

”Zeng Yiming, meanwhile, was clearly the strongest of the five, the sharpest and the most decisive.

”Second, he needed to be sensitive to numbers, and skilled at guessing them.

”Because none of the players actually knew their own exact crime number. They had to estimate it using information from the others.

”If someone took too long to work out their own number, the others would likely suspect they were deliberately stalling or miscalculating on purpose, which would seriously damage everyone’s trust in them.

”That would have badly undermined the authority his voluntary confession was meant to earn him.

”Third, he needed a sharp read on human nature and strong leadership, enough to anticipate and correct the other players’ behaviour, ensuring that once he became Production Director, he could actually hold the whole operation together.

”So, if you filter for this hidden profile, only two kinds of people could realistically come out the other end.

”Someone deeply good, or someone deeply malicious. There’s almost no room for a third possibility.

”And given what these offenders’ actual crimes were to begin with, I think it’s fairly obvious which possibility is more likely.”