God's Imitator

Zheng Jie suddenly had a flash of inspiration, ”Hey, I just thought of a possibility.

”Since this game can be cleared by just voting one person to death, could it work like this?

”From the beginning, there’s no need to complete the reproduction task. We just need to save only the worst serious offender among all the criminals. Then, after triggering the barbarian invasion, the four judgment team players vote him to death, and we successfully clear the game.

”Then the four people get the full 300,000 visa time reward, over 70,000 per person.”

Yang Yuting looked a bit confused, ”But isn’t that a bit too much of a god’s eye view?”

Cai Zhiyuan shook his head, ”This method won’t work.

”In theory it’s perfect, but in actual operation there are too many variables.

”Because the voting order in this game was carefully designed by the God’s Imitator, look.”

He pointed again at the rule details on the large screen.

”The final voting follows this order:”First are the two assistants.

”Second are the two players forced into the game.

”Last are the released criminals.

”If an extra criminal is released, they are judged last.

”Taking this game’s situation as an example, if our community adopted this strategy, then Community 13 would have many opportunities in the game to secretly hint to the criminal, getting the criminal to vote with them to kill the two players from Community 17.

”In this situation, the criminal’s 1 vote would instead become the key swing vote. Whichever side he stands on becomes the majority.

”Of course, if the criminal votes with Community 13’s players to kill the two people from Community 17, he would definitely also be voted to death by Community 13’s players in the end.

”But regardless, keeping a criminal who committed a serious crime and is cunning and treacherous until the very end, placing hope in trust between two unfamiliar communities, this is by no means wise behavior.

”Any deviation in any link, or even possibly just a random impulse from this criminal, could lead to disastrous consequences.”

Zheng Jie thought for a moment, ”What if we watch each other and don’t allow anyone to approach the criminal privately?”

Cai Zhiyuan shook his head, ”That’s also useless. The criminal won’t just wait for death, he would very likely figure out this logic himself.

”Moreover, what if the other community gets desperate and plays their cards openly? They just blatantly tell the criminal to vote you all to death together. What methods do you have to restrain the other party’s behavior?”

Zheng Jie nodded in sudden understanding. Indeed, this method was really quite unreliable.

The premise for completing this plan was that the two communities had sufficient mutual trust, but if they had that kind of mutual trust, wouldn’t it be better to just play the game properly?

Creating reproduction badges could also clear the game, so why insist on going to the final step, placing fate in the hope of a completely unreliable death vote.

Cai Zhiyuan continued, ”Actually, Li Jiang killing Fei Xiong in the end was also due to voting reasons.

”Li Jiang ultimately chose to vote Chen Xin to death, so his saving Chen Xin definitely wasn’t out of heroic righteousness.

”On the surface, if it’s a choice between Fei Xiong and Chen Xin entering the final vote, Fei Xiong is male and Chen Xin is female, so the probability of Fei Xiong voting Li Jiang to death would be lower.

”But if someone really thinks this way, then they’ve been brainwashed by gender narratives. Who says a man definitely won’t vote to kill another man?

”A murderous maniac like Fei Xiong was already crazy. He very likely would directly vote ’death’ for everyone. Li Jiang even let him use torture devices several times, so how could he possibly show Li Jiang any mercy?

”So Li Jiang definitely wouldn’t allow Fei Xiong to live and vote.

”Looking at Chen Xin on the other hand, although she was a female player, Li Jiang saved her life. The person directly responsible for the game’s failure was Jiang He, who served as the Chief Judge.

”Between Li Jiang and Jiang He, Chen Xin would most likely protect Li Jiang and vote for Jiang He.

”As for why Li Jiang, Chen Yumei, and Zhao Dong voted to kill Chen Xin in the end?

”Because the visa time reward in this game is divided equally among all surviving players. The more people who die, the fewer people to split the money.

”After Li Jiang and Chen Yumei confirmed they were already safe, they would naturally choose to vote to kill Chen Xin and Zhao Dong, the two criminals judged last, as much as possible.

”At this point, for Zhao Dong, if she voted ’life’ for Chen Xin, with three votes keeping Chen Xin alive, then when it was Zhao Dong’s turn to be judged, Chen Xin would most likely vote her to death to get a bigger share.

”Conversely, if Zhao Dong voted Chen Xin to ’death’, when it was her turn to be judged, only four people would vote. As long as Yang Yuting voted ’life’ for her, she would definitely survive.

”So Zhao Dong couldn’t place her life in Chen Xin’s great kindness. The only choice was to vote Chen Xin to ’death’.

”This is a bit like the logic problem of ’pirates dividing gold coins’. The criminals actually don’t have many choices.”

Yang Yuting nodded in sudden understanding, ”I see... I was wondering earlier, since Li Jiang was chosen by Chen Yumei as an assistant to enter the judgment game, he should be a fairly strong player in Community 13.

”But throughout the entire game, I didn’t see him being particularly proactive.

”So this was the strategy.”

Cai Zhiyuan said, ”I think Li Jiang probably isn’t the type of player with very strong ability to break through situations. He mostly adopts stable strategies.

”With Jiang He as the Chief Judge and having a rather negative opinion of him, his suggestions would most likely not be adopted, so it’s better to go with the flow. A weak identity also has its own way of playing.

”’Chief Judge’ is an advantageous identity, but it also means that if the game fails, they will bear the greatest responsibility.

”Once voting starts, the ’Chief Judge’ is the easiest to die.

”Li Jiang didn’t need to ensure game victory, he just needed to ensure that he and Chen Yumei appropriately built up some goodwill, lowered their presence a bit, and weren’t voted to death first in the end.”

Yang Yuting grabbed her hair somewhat frantically, all grace abandoned, ”So that means Jiang He really did step into quite a few traps in this game, and precisely walked onto the only death path planned by the God’s Imitator...

”But there’s one thing I still can’t figure out. Although choosing either mechanism 1 or mechanism 2 was about the same, why did she insist on having women tied to mechanism 1?”

Everyone fell into silence.

Obviously, to explain this issue clearly, one couldn’t just start from the game mechanics, but had to comprehensively analyze Jiang He as a person but most of the people present didn’t actually know her particularly well, so they couldn’t make particularly accurate analyses either.

Li Renshu took over, ”Just right, I should also explain the issue of the death immunity token.

”When everyone decided to entrust the death immunity token to me for safekeeping, I did promise that the use of the death immunity token wouldn’t particularly distinguish between the strong and weak. Whoever encounters a death risk first gets to use it.

”However, I did not violate my political commitment.

”Because I also said there would be situations where I wouldn’t save someone, mainly three types:

”First is destroying the community’s stability and unity.

”Second is acting willfully in a game and not executing team strategy.

”Third is making clear betrayal behavior in a game.

”I may not be able to think of other situations comprehensively, but if there are situations with destructive power roughly equal to these three, it’s also possible I won’t save them.

”Of course, if it’s other bad behavior with harm far less than these three types, I would most likely still choose to save them, leaving the final judgment to the two players who hold veto power.”

Fu Chen hesitated, ”You mean to say that Jiang He acted willfully in the game and didn’t execute the ’kill all’ strategy we gave?

”But at that time, the people inside couldn’t distinguish which specific strategy came from our community.

”Or are you saying she didn’t accept Yang Yuting’s suggestion?

”But between her and Yang Yuting, there was no clear decision-making priority.

”If Lawyer Lin and Jiang He entered the game and she didn’t listen to Lawyer Lin’s suggestions, we could say this was not executing team strategy, but Yang Yuting’s suggestions haven’t reached that level of weight, have they?

”We can’t think about this problem from a god’s eye view.

”Jiang He encountered a judgment game with extremely strong targeting. It could be said that stepping into traps was a high-probability event. If we decide not to save someone because of this, then if other people also encounter targeted judgment games and also step into traps, should we not save any of them?

”Of course, judging from everyone’s attitude, perhaps everyone accepts this result, but I still hope these standards can be more clear.”

Li Renshu shook her head, ”No, I chose not to save her not entirely because of the second reason, but also because of the first.

”I believe Jiang He’s existence would destroy the community’s stability and unity. Her ideological tendencies are dangerous. Or rather, she’s actually already making some similar attempts.

”I made this decision based on these two points combined.”

Fu Chen was stunned, ”Destroying the community’s stability and unity? How so?”

Hearing this statement, Wang Yongxin’s brow twitched, his expression becoming slightly unnatural.

If Li Renshu viewed any private group formation outside the five-person group as ’destroying community stability and unity’, then his behavior obviously counted too.

Could it be that when he encounters danger, Li Renshu won’t save him either?

However, what Li Renshu said next made Wang Yongxin feel much more at ease.

Li Renshu continued to explain, ”Everyone, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying the community doesn’t allow private group protests or opposing voices.

”Each of us has an equal vote, so whether it’s expressing opposing opinions or forming groups to vote and influence community proposals, these are rights we should have.

”What I mean by destroying community stability and unity mainly refers to some values and ideological tendencies whose destructive and divisive effects are significantly greater than their positive effects.

”For example, I believe Jiang He has very obvious gender narrative tendencies, and she’s been making attempts around these tendencies all along.”

Xu Tong was very puzzled, ”Wait, is there such a thing?

”Jiang He has hardly participated in community proposal discussions before, right?

”Gender narrative, do you mean she has feminist thoughts? But that’s not really a capital offense, is it? If we really have to say, don’t we all have some of that to varying degrees?

”Whether it’s feminism or masculinism, as long as it doesn’t harm others, shouldn’t it all be everyone’s freedom?”

Li Renshu nodded, ”Yes, on this point, I acknowledge that everyone’s thoughts are free.

”Feminism or masculinism, as long as it doesn’t affect others, it doesn’t matter what you believe in.

”Just like how Brother Wang believes capital is supreme, while some people hate the wealthy. These are also two opposing values, but as long as they don’t seriously infringe on other community members’ interests and can be reconciled, then the community should remain neutral on this issue.

”But Jiang He has obviously been frequently attempting to use gender narratives to influence the community’s political activities recently. You may not feel it very obviously, but as a party involved, I can feel it very clearly.”