God's Imitator

Seeing these rules, Huang Shengjie felt his head starting to swim. He could sense that there was some specific optimal solution buried in there, but he couldn’t find the thread of it for the moment.

If any of the players happened to recognise the type of puzzle this was modelled on, or had a strong affinity for numbers, they might arrive at the optimal solution more quickly.

Zhou Wanlin turned and pointed back toward the lounge, indicating they could now use the overhead walkway to go and check their own Inspection Room.

Huang Shengjie waved her off, however, and gestured for her and Geng Yuxia to wait a moment.

Then, holding the Inspector Armband in his hand, he left the enclosed corridor where the miniature steam train was kept and stepped out into the mist.

The instant he entered the grey fog, a wave of severe pain tore through him.

He seized up almost as though he had been struck by electricity and nearly fell.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, he forced his trembling hands to pull the Inspector Armband on.

A second later, the pain was gone.

Still catching his breath with lingering unease, he quickly retreated back into the corridor.One thing had been confirmed: this was well-deserved severe pain. Under its effect, moving was nearly impossible, let alone enduring it for long.

The three of them then made their way back through the Raw Materials Warehouse to the lounge, and from there crossed the overhead walkway at the far left of the lounge to reach their community’s Inspection Room.

The walkway was wide, passing directly above the main prison structure, with an open view on both sides that allowed the entire venue to be seen at a glance.

Suddenly, Geng Yuxia gave Huang Shengjie and Zhou Wanlin a light tap on the arm and pointed to the right.

Huang Shengjie only then noticed that three players from the opposing community were on the walkway across from them, the two groups passing each other in opposite directions at some distance.

The gap between them was considerable, but faint silhouettes were still visible.

It seemed the players on the other side were doing exactly the same thing.

The walk stretched on for some time. Finally, after descending a turning staircase, the three of them arrived at their community’s Inspection Room.

The Inspection Room felt more enclosed than any other space they had seen so far. There was no view of the outside, and naturally no view in from the outside either.

The room had two doors. One led to the outdoor area, which was presumably where Community 23’s rail track ran, and the other led to the ’Raw Materials Holding Area.’

The Inspection Room was roughly as wide as the lounge, though considerably more spartan in its furnishings.

There was a dedicated position for the inspector, and a specialised security scanning machine.

The inspector’s position had a simple operations console with a card reader and two buttons labelled ’Inspect’ and ’Full Inspection.’

A notice board in a prominent position in the room detailed the specific rules for the Inspection Room.

[Players from this community may only enter or exit the Inspection Room via the overhead walkway.]

[10 minutes after each round begins, the door connecting the Inspection Room to the walkway will automatically lock and will not unlock until the current round ends.]

[When the opposing community’s cargo enters the inspection process, the inspector may conduct the inspection in one of two ways:]

[1. Press the ’Inspect’ button to inspect 1 unit of raw material currently passing through the security scanning machine. A fixed fee of 200 Gold Pounds applies.]

[2. Press the ’Full Inspection’ button and directly examine all raw materials currently awaiting inspection. (Materials that have already passed through the scanning machine are not included.)]

[The inspection must be completed within 2 minutes.]

[If Contraband is discovered, it will be confiscated and destroyed on the spot, and the opposing community will be required to pay a fine of ’quantity of Contraband × 1,000 Gold Pounds’ to the inspector.]

[If the ’Full Inspection’ button is pressed but no Contraband is found among the materials awaiting inspection, the inspector must pay the opposing community a fine equal to 40% of the total value of all materials currently in the Inspection Room.]

[All fees or fines incurred in the Inspection Room will be automatically deducted from the total Gold Pounds earned by the respective community at settlement, to a minimum of zero.]

Beyond this, there was no further information in the Inspection Room.

Huang Shengjie stepped to the doorway of the Inspection Room and looked through. It was a special one-way door, and it was locked for the duration of the preparation period before the game officially began.

This meant players from the opposing community could enter through that door while carrying raw materials, but players from their own community could only use the walkway.

Forcing entry would count as leaving a designated area as defined by the rules, which would trigger a Minor Violation.

The three of them exchanged glances, then each pointed back toward the walkway they had come from and made their way back to the lounge.

Back in the lounge, Huang Shengjie checked the time. Roughly 20 minutes had passed.

The preparation time for this game had looked generous at first glance, but it was not as spacious in practice, because the venue was large and simply moving back and forth consumed a significant amount of time.

That was before even accounting for the need to stop and read each new notice board from scratch upon entering every new area.

While it was possible to think on the move, that placed additional demands on a player’s memory, and was not easy either.

The full preparation time was 30 minutes, with free communication and strategy discussion only permitted in the final 5. That meant they currently had about 5 minutes left for individual thought.

Huang Shengjie did his best to absorb the rules, mentally simulating the likely scenarios once the game officially began, while simultaneously trying to identify any exploitable gaps.

The rules this time were genuinely more complex than anything he had encountered before, and the volume of information packed into just the basic rules was substantial, with the steam train and Inspection Room notice boards adding yet more on top. Working through so much was a struggle just to retain, let alone fully understand.

The three of them moved around separately, looking over the various props and notice boards in closer detail.

Before they quite realised it, the 5 minutes were up.

With a click, the restraints over all three of their mouths unlatched and dropped to the floor.

The countdown to the official start of the game showed only 5 minutes remaining.

Time was short. All three of them knew they needed to discuss strategy and make their arrangements immediately, but for a moment none of them seemed to know where to begin.

”The rules for this game are way too damn complicated.

”Is this what they call a catastrophic opening?”

Huang Shengjie’s words came straight from the gut.

Before entering the game, all three of the community’s core players, Lin Sizhi, Lu Bingjun, and Ye Lin, had been filtered out and unable to enter.

And then, once inside the game, there had been a second round of filtering on top of that.

Yao Yuan and He Qinyun were almost certainly the more experienced and capable of the five selected players. Based on the arrangement made before entering, Yao Yuan was meant to function as the temporary core.

Geng Yuxia was someone who had barely registered any presence within the community. Huang Shengjie’s impression of her amounted to little more than ’gentle and kind,’ and she was clearly someone who would need looking after.

Zhou Wanlin wasn’t much more visible. She spoke up occasionally during community discussions, but was generally quiet and reserved. Huang Shengjie’s impression of her was more like a warm older sister from next door, friendly enough, but not someone who could be counted on as a strong and reliable player in a game.

At best, she could serve as a support or someone to carry out instructions.

Now Yao Yuan and He Qinyun had clearly been sorted into the ’Prisoner’ role, locked inside the fully sealed prison structure with no way in and no way to reach them.

Instead, the three weakest players had been pushed into a situation they were wholly unprepared for, and the disorientation was understandable.

Making things worse still, the complexity of this game’s rules far exceeded anything they had encountered before. The basic rules alone were packed with an enormous amount of information, and the notice boards at the steam train and the Inspection Room each contained separate rule sets on top of that.

With this much to process, remembering it all was already a challenge, let alone understanding it.

Thirty minutes of preparation time had seemed like a lot, but for ordinary players it was barely enough.

The three of them looked at each other in silence.

Then, just as Huang Shengjie was steeling himself to open his mouth and start assigning roles, Zhou Wanlin spoke first.