God's Imitator

When facing such questions, other players would fall into a dilemma.

First, there must be one option that 100% triggered the against-conscience penalty. For example, option C in this question, choosing it would purely be giving money to the questioner.

Second, among the other two options, one was the correct option, while the other was the wrong option plus an against-conscience option.

Therefore, players could only choose to answer truthfully.

But since only Zhou Guifen met this condition, she would always be in the minority, while other players would always be in the majority.

Community 8 players would also be penalized, but they had already signed a contract with Community 17 and shared earnings, so it didn’t matter at all as long as total earnings were positive.

In the room besides Cai Zhiyuan, there were also 5 free agents.

In other words, the voting pattern for this question would definitely be Zhou Guifen choosing A by herself, while the remaining 6 ordinary players and 5 free agent players all chose B.

Although free agents could transfer the majority penalty, according to the game rules, each room could transfer at most 15 penalties, after which it would become invalid.

This number wasn’t too big of an issue in rooms with fewer free agents, but in the ‘13-person room’ there were currently 5 free agents answering questions, and some transfers had already been consumed previously.In other words, after 2 more questions, they would no longer receive this rule’s protection.

And after free agents could no longer transfer the majority penalty, the deducted numbers began to become shockingly large.

[Are you a player with a lot of white hair?]

[A. Yes]

[B. No]

[C. I am a player with a full head of white hair]

[The net earnings of the 12 answerers in this room: negative 52000 minutes of visa time.]

[The question setter will receive 52000 minutes of visa time.]

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

[Was your former profession a middle school music teacher?]

[A. Yes]

[B. No]

[C. My profession is astronaut]

[The net earnings of the 12 answerers in this room: negative 52000 minutes of visa time.]

[The question setter will receive 52000 minutes of visa time.]

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

Unable to transfer the majority penalty, only Zhou Guifen could choose A with net earnings of 14000 minutes of visa time, while the other 11 players would all be deducted 6000 minutes of visa time.

If they made other choices, due to the existence of the against-conscience penalty, the losses would only be greater.

Among them, 4 players were allies from Community 8. After offsetting, Cai Zhiyuan’s side could still obtain net earnings of 42000 minutes of visa time.

Besides this, in the ’4-person room’, Zheng Jie was also earning visa time from the three Community 1 players.

In the ‘8-person room’, Yang Yuting was also earning visa time from ordinary Community 13 players.

This game no longer had any suspense. The only question was, within the limited time, exactly how much visa time could Community 17 players extract from the other three communities.

They could take away sixty percent of the earnings, while the remaining forty percent would be distributed to Community 8 according to the contract terms.

...

The second stage’s one-hour game time finally ended.

For players from Community 1, Community 13, and Community 15, this hour had been an extremely long hour.

To minimize losses as much as possible, these communities whose visa time was being harvested all tried to delay, extending the answering time to the longest time allowed by the rules, which was 5 minutes.

But even so, in each room there were about ten questions where Community 17 purely earned visa time.

In the ’4-person room’, Zheng Jie’s net earnings were 38000 minutes of visa time.

In the ‘8-person room’, Community 17 and Community 8’s net earnings were 344000 minutes of visa time.

In the ‘13-person room’, Community 17 and Community 8’s net earnings were 436000 minutes of visa time.

The total earnings from the three rooms were 818000 minutes of visa time.

Besides this, when free agent players obtained earnings less than 30,000 minutes of visa time in the room, they would be additionally deducted 60,000 minutes of visa time, transferred to the community with the highest earnings.

The six free agents from Community 1, Community 13, and Community 15 obviously couldn’t achieve this goal.

They were deducted 360,000 minutes of visa time, which was transferred to Community 17, who had the highest earnings at settlement within the game.

Although in the ‘13-person room’, one Community 8 ’free agent’ was caught in the crossfire, it was all internal transfer of earnings, so it didn’t really matter.

This way, distributing according to a 6:4 ratio, Community 17 players could obtain 706800 minutes of visa time, while Community 8 could obtain 471200 minutes of visa time.

Besides this, the God’s Imitator who designed this game also obtained additional earnings.

According to the game rules, when free agents triggered the ’majority penalty’, it would be transferred to the questioner, 10,000 minutes of visa time each time.

But each room had a limit on the number of times, at most 15 times.

Among them, the ‘13-person room’ had triggered it 15 times very early on, while the ‘8-person room’ had triggered it a total of 9 times.

The ’4-person room’, since only Zheng Jie was there alone and the questioner kept rotating, had triggered it 4 times.

In other words, the God’s Imitator who designed this game had earned away 280,000 minutes of visa time from the game.

All losses totaled approximately 1.45 million minutes of visa time, all borne by players from Community 1, Community 13, and Community 15. On average, each player’s loss was around one hundred thousand minutes.

For communities with more visa time, such as Community 15, although this loss was heavy, it was barely acceptable. After all, they had relatively more visa time overall.

After returning to the community, they could at least find ways to pay off the debt and avoid suffering instant death penalties.

But for Community 1 and Community 13, they could only pray for their own good fortune.

In the booth, Cai Zhiyuan did a simple calculation of the approximate earnings and felt slightly regretful.

Because the time was still a bit too short.

If there had been another half hour, earnings could have increased by several more percentage points, which would have been an even more exaggerated number.

However, upon further thought, he realized something was wrong.

One hour of time was actually just right.

Because if the time had been longer, the losses might very likely have expanded to a degree that Wang Weidong couldn’t bear no matter what.

Now Community 15’s total loss was approximately over 500,000 minutes of visa time. For Wang Weidong, this was the limit he could barely accept in order to maintain his reputation and position within the community.

But if the loss had been greater, for example becoming 800,000 or even 1 million, then Wang Weidong very likely couldn’t have accepted it.

At that point, the possibility of both sides choosing mutual destruction would greatly increase.

So one hour of game time was just right.

Cai Zhiyuan leaned back in his chair, silently watching the countdown reach zero.

[Game Over.]