God's Imitator

If Wang Weidong reset the rules, then even if some players triggered the against-conscience penalty, the answerers’ overall earnings would still be positive.

Because there would be the additional reward for ’unanimous agreement’.

In that case, Cai Zhiyuan as the questioner would most likely incur losses.

Looking at the situation in both rooms, the ‘8-person room’ had fewer people while the ‘13-person room’ had more people. Playing this way, the ‘13-person room’ should still have slightly higher earnings.

And Cai Zhiyuan deliberately left room in the first question, which gave Wang Weidong ample space.

Suppose Wang Weidong chose not to set room rules again, and Cai Zhiyuan subsequently stopped sending similar questions. Then although Wang Weidong would lose a large amount of visa time in the game and be suspected by other players, he could still use some rhetoric to cover things up within the community.

For example, he could say that there were other Community 15 players in the ’13-person room’, everyone might have some dark thoughts in their hearts, and he did this to protect same-community players, maintain trust within the community, prevent community players from suspecting each other, ”judge actions not hearts”, and so on.

That would be much better than being completely exposed by those specific questions.

As long as Wang Weidong didn’t set rules, the questioner would definitely keep winning and earn a large amount of visa time. For Cai Zhiyuan, this was the choice with maximum benefit.

Therefore, Cai Zhiyuan’s question wasn’t asking the other answerers, but rather asking Wang Weidong.”Are you willing to betray the interests of all allied players in this game, lose all the visa time to me, in order to preserve your position and reputation within the community as much as possible?”

Community 15 was a community with abundant visa time, and from the previous ’Shelter Game’, one could roughly discern Wang Weidong’s character and the community’s ecology.

He was a core player within Community 15, but still couldn’t achieve ’absolute authority’.

So Cai Zhiyuan judged that for Wang Weidong, reputation and position within the community were far more important than the visa time in this game.

...

Xu Zhao quietly sighed.

Obviously, Cai Zhiyuan didn’t need to specifically spell out what the ’similar questions’ would be. Wang Weidong would figure it out himself.

At this moment, Xu Zhao put himself in Cai Zhiyuan’s position and thought about it, and he could also think of many different ways to phrase questions.

For example, this question only asked whether one had such thoughts.

The next question could further pursue whether you had actually done such behavior.

Besides this, there were many other questions that pierced the heart.

For instance, are you a God’s Imitator?

Do you want to become a God’s Imitator?

Have you never sincerely cooperated with other communities?

When proposing motions in the community, have you sought personal gain?

Do you want to establish a dictatorship within the community?

Do you think weak players in the community should be eliminated?

Do you think strong players in the community threaten your position?

Have you been hoping for a certain player in the community to die in a game?

Do you have secrets you cannot tell anyone in the community?

There were many more questions like these.

Although according to the game rules, the same question couldn’t be asked repeatedly, these questions clearly belonged to different questions.

They would comprehensively and thoroughly expose the secrets and true thoughts in players’ hearts from all angles.

If it was a relatively marginalized player in the community, not particularly clever and without any malicious intentions, then these questions wouldn’t matter at all. They just needed to answer truthfully.

Even if checked afterwards, they could be open and have a clear conscience, and it would actually strengthen other community players’ trust in them.

But if it was a player who originally had guilty secrets in their heart, every one of these questions would be a death sentence.

Xu Zhao sighed. He now completely understood where Cai Zhiyuan’s confidence came from.

This confidence came from the completely different community ecology and values between Community 15 and Community 17.

Cai Zhiyuan believed that when Community 17 players encountered similar questions, they could choose ’no’ without hesitation.

So this method wouldn’t affect Community 17 players but Community 15 players couldn’t do this.

Wang Weidong, serving as the room host, especially couldn’t. He didn’t want to expose his true inner thoughts.

[The correct answer to this question is: Choose ’A. Set them’ or ’B. Don’t set them’ according to your true inner thoughts.]

[The net earnings of the 12 answerers in this room: negative 21000 minutes of visa time.]

[The question setter will receive 21000 minutes of visa time. At the same time, an additional 30,000 minutes of visa time will be deducted.]

[The question setter will ’stay in power’.]

Seeing this result, Xu Zhao was completely certain.

Obviously, the players from Community 17 and Community 8 who entered this room were deliberately answering against-conscience options, giving money to Cai Zhiyuan.

Because looking at how this question’s options were set up, if players all answered according to their true inner thoughts, the answerers’ earnings should have been positive.

There were too many free agents in this room, and free agents could avoid the majority penalty.

This avoidance count hadn’t been exhausted yet.

The current negative earnings indicated that someone was deliberately giving money to Cai Zhiyuan, ensuring he could ’stay in power’.

Although under player voting, Cai Zhiyuan would most likely ’stay in power’ anyway, there still existed an extremely small possibility that earnings would fall precisely between negative 5500 and 5500.

Cai Zhiyuan wouldn’t allow this low-probability event to occur.

And up to now, Wang Weidong hadn’t set room rules again.

This meant he had tacitly agreed to Cai Zhiyuan’s proposal, choosing to lose a large amount of visa time to ensure Cai Zhiyuan wouldn’t ask these kinds of heart-piercing questions anymore.

This also meant the state of the ‘13-person room’ would revert back to a ruleless jungle.

Players could only answer questions based on their own abilities.

But no matter what, as the side possessing the questioner, Cai Zhiyuan’s Community 17 would gain the greatest advantage.

Soon, a new question appeared on the screen.

[Are you a player over 45 years old?]

[A. Yes]

[B. No]

[C. I am a player under 10 years old]

Seeing this question, Xu Zhao was stunned for a moment, then quietly sighed.

Obviously, this was a ’slot-filling question’.

With Wang Weidong not setting room rules, all subsequent questions would be similar questions.

At first glance, this question seemed puzzling, making people wonder why Cai Zhiyuan would ask it this way.

But Xu Zhao had entered the room quite late and had been paying attention to the movements of Community 17 players, so he quickly understood Cai Zhiyuan’s intention.

The 5 players from Community 17 entered three different rooms. Among them, Zheng Jie entered the ’4-person room’, Yang Yuting and Dai Yifan were in the ‘8-person room’, while Cai Zhiyuan and Zhou Guifen were in the ‘13-person room’.

Cai Zhiyuan was the questioner, so this question was designed around Zhou Guifen.

He would continuously screen for ’characteristics that Zhou Guifen possessed but other players did not’ to formulate questions.