God's Imitator

”Whichever side has more votes?

”Have you already worked out which side that’ll be?”

Huang Shengjie looked surprised. Lin Sizhi’s meaning was clear enough on the surface, yet it still felt oddly opaque to him.

Because Huang Shengjie’s own instinct had been that the two sides would end up very close.

Both Lu Bingjun and Ye Lin could each reliably count on only three or four votes at most. The community was full of swing votes, and those swing votes could genuinely go either way right up to the final moment.

Both of them had likely been working privately over the past several days, but even these final 8 hours still had real potential to shift things significantly.

Huang Shengjie waited, hoping Lin Sizhi would offer more of a hint, but he showed no sign of continuing the explanation, simply returning to his book and his own thoughts.

Huang Shengjie didn’t feel comfortable pressing further, so he turned instead toward the floor-to-ceiling windows and kept working through his own reasoning. It felt a bit like meditating in quiet self-reflection.

”By what Lawyer Lin said, the vote must be clearer than I expected, which is why he can already commit to voting with the larger side.

”So for me, the key question is guessing who’s going to win.

”Not a narrow edge, but a decisive one.

”Would Lu Bingjun really win by an overwhelming margin?

”No, no, that can’t possibly be right.”

Huang Shengjie got up, grabbed paper and pen, and prepared to do it the brute-force way: count the votes.

”Lu Bingjun, Yao Yuan, and Qin Cheng are 100% guaranteed support votes. Ye Lin, Uncle Zheng, He Qinyun, and me, we’re 100% guaranteed opposition votes.

”Lawyer Lin will vote with the larger side, so let’s set him aside for now.

”That leaves Zhang Yan, Shen Bowen, Auntie Geng, Zhou Wanlin, and Lu Qi.

”The last three are the standard go-with-the-flow types. They might not have especially firm opinions and could easily waver back and forth.

”Though, maybe precisely because they’re all that type, they might end up voting the same way as each other, out of some kind of herd instinct?

”Zhang Yan and Shen Bowen are both veteran players. They should have a fairly clear sense of what they actually want, and it seems unlikely either would simply cave to momentum and back Lu Bingjun’s motion.

”I think, even if they don’t say it outright, they’d still be uneasy about a motion this blatantly disruptive to the community’s environment.

”After all, throughout the entire first stage, neither of their previous communities ever attempted anything like this.

”And Zhang Yan refused to accept unchecked medication use in her community, choosing to leave rather than tolerate it. She’s genuinely someone with strong convictions and real courage. With an anonymous vote, surely she wouldn’t be too afraid to cast even a single opposing vote?

”She’ll definitely vote against.

”So, assuming Ye Lin has secured both Zhang Yan and Shen Bowen, she could use that momentum to pull along the three go-with-the-flow votes, and the outcome would look fairly decisive.

”Of course, maybe she doesn’t secure all three of the go-with-the-flow votes, maybe one of them slips unexpectedly. Even so, the advantage would still be substantial.

”And if Lawyer Lin is thinking the same way, we can add his vote on top, bringing it to 9 or 10, an overwhelming margin.

”And following this line of reasoning further, Ye Lin’s advantage might actually run deeper than that.

”The community’s rule is anonymous voting, and that alone can shift how players actually lean.

”Under anonymity, are players more inclined to vote ’in favour’ or to ’refuse’?

”Clearly, to refuse.

”Of course, there’s still the threat of the Imitator to weigh against that. But since no one actually knows the truth, this doesn’t hinge on whether the Imitator genuinely is in Community 2, but on whether players are willing to believe that they are.

”For most ordinary players, I doubt they’d want to believe that.

”After all, people generally gravitate toward the simpler, easier path.

”Between paranoid fear and comforting self-deception, self-deception always seems to win out more often.

”Putting it all together, Ye Lin should win by a wide margin, and the motion won’t pass.”

Huang Shengjie felt his own conclusion was perhaps a bit too optimistic, so he ran through it again, more than once.

But the more he considered it, the more certain he became that this had to be the outcome.

Without noticing, over an hour had passed.

Lin Sizhi had made considerable progress through his book. He glanced up at Huang Shengjie. ”Instead of guessing blindly with no real basis, you’d be better off spending this time actually canvassing for votes.”

Huang Shengjie blinked. ”Canvassing?”

Lin Sizhi nodded. ”Of course. Lu Bingjun already said everyone’s encouraged to discuss this in whatever small groupings they like during this window.”

Huang Shengjie nodded, somewhat hesitant. ”Yeah, that’s fair.”

Even so, he didn’t immediately get up and take action. There wasn’t any single clear reason for this. It felt more like a collection of small, half-formed hesitations.

For one, Huang Shengjie had never done anything like canvassing before, so he wasn’t quite sure how to even begin.

For another, while he personally leaned toward voting against, he wouldn’t feel devastated if others ended up voting in favour instead, so he lacked any strong drive to go around persuading people.

And on the opposition side, Ye Lin had surely already done extensive groundwork. Anyone persuadable had likely already been persuaded, and if someone couldn’t be moved, there was little point in Huang Shengjie trying the same thing again.

After thinking it over more carefully, though, Huang Shengjie began to feel this reasoning wasn’t quite right either.

Even if he only managed to sway a single vote, even if it didn’t change the final outcome, that would still have value.

The trouble now was that players had already scattered across every corner of the community, and deciding who to approach first was itself a real question.

Huang Shengjie quickly settled on two priority targets: Zhang Yan and Zhou Wanlin.

In his judgment, Zhang Yan was likely already a firm supporter of voting against. She had only recently joined Community 2 and wasn’t tangled up in any of the community’s complicated web of relationships.

If she’d already firmly decided to vote against, that would give Huang Shengjie some reassurance. And if she’d decided to vote in favour instead, persuading her would probably be easier than persuading anyone else.

Zhou Wanlin, meanwhile, seemed to be the anchor among the three go-with-the-flow players, and she and Huang Shengjie had cooperated well together during the Prison Factory, giving them a fairly solid foundation of mutual trust.

If he could secure Zhou Wanlin’s opposition vote, that might in turn help sway Geng Yuxia and Zheng Chunhua’s positions too.

As for anyone else, he could decide after talking to these two first.

With that settled, Huang Shengjie got up right away.

Ten minutes later, he found Zhang Yan in the gym.

Since arriving in the community, Zhang Yan had made a habit of training there nearly every day, though not at any fixed time, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening.

Huang Shengjie had assumed today would be different, that Zhang Yan would wait until after the vote to train, and had gone looking elsewhere first.

But there she was in the gym after all.

”Brother Zhang, got a minute?” Huang Shengjie glanced around and saw no one else in the gym. Good timing.

Zhang Yan had just finished a set and wiped the sweat from her forehead. ”Sure. About the vote?”

Huang Shengjie nodded quickly. ”Yeah.”

Zhang Yan answered without much hesitation. ”I’m voting against.”