God's Imitator

Huang Shengjie still couldn’t quite let it go, ”Couldn’t you have agreed that neither side would send their Inspector into the Inspection Room during Round Three? That would have allowed cooperation too.

”Once the Inspection Room locked, the Inspector couldn’t get in anyway, and then both sides could deliver Contraband without worry.”

Qin Cheng shook his head, ”Not really workable.

”You can’t restrict another player’s freedom of movement in this game. And if you sent someone to watch the other community’s Inspector, by the time their Inspector slipped in at the last moment, your player wouldn’t have time to run back and report it.”

Everyone fell quiet.

Huang Shengjie sighed inwardly. He now understood completely why Qin Cheng’s group had ended up with lower earnings.

The cooperation in Round Two had ultimately meant nothing, because Round Three’s prisoner’s dilemma was essentially unsolvable, and it would almost inevitably lead to a mutual loss.

Unless something very unusual occurred: both sides being too simple-minded to think of defecting, or thinking of it and choosing not to act on it, which was the only path to a mutually optimal outcome.

What happened with Huang Shengjie’s group was not merely unusual. It was genuinely extraordinary.

An unscientific kind of luck, one might say.Because in the process of executing the plan against Zhao Heng, Yao Yuan had effectively built a genuinely reliable working relationship with Wu Xiufang.

Not a relationship of mutual trust, but one of shared conspiracy.

From Wu Xiufang’s perspective, earnings were not her primary concern. Her first priority was Zhao Heng’s death. Once she confirmed that Zhao Heng had triggered the special penalty, she had no further reason to enter the Inspection Room.

There were more pressing things to do with the remaining time outside, such as coordinating with Zhou Xiaoying and Peng Xinyuan about what would happen when they returned to the community.

And on Huang Shengjie’s side, no one had gone out of their way to target the other community, or pushed aggressively for the 1.5x bonus. Instead, they had given up on assigning an Inspector entirely and sent everyone to deliver Contraband, maximising the total volume of smuggled goods.

As a result, Huang Shengjie’s group had effectively achieved maximum returns in Round Three, and combined with the Gold Pounds earned from Zhao Heng’s death, their total actually exceeded Qin Cheng’s group’s.

Yao Yuan glanced at Zhang Yan, then at Qin Cheng, ”So when did you decide to attempt the poaching? Did it have any effect on your earnings?”

The question was clearly pointing at a contradiction in what Qin Cheng had described. If the two sides had been at five versus five throughout, the prisoner’s dilemma in Round Three had been essentially inescapable.

But if Zhang Yan had been poached before Round Three, the balance would have shifted to four versus six, making the outcome far less uncertain, and the mutual defection scenario would have been far less likely to arise.

Zhang Yan spoke up directly, ”I’ll explain that part.

”Leaving Community 16 was my own decision from the beginning. No one influenced me.

”During the Round One inspection, I asked Wen Wan about a few things, and then I initiated the idea of joining their community myself.

”But I had one condition for joining Community 2: to continue fighting for Community 16 until the game ended.

”The reason I was leaving Community 16 was a difference in values, not any real conflict. I’m still friends with a lot of people there. I didn’t want to betray them.”

Qin Cheng added, ”Yes. We discussed it among ourselves during the rest periods after Round One and Round Two, and eventually agreed to those terms.”

Lu Bingjun gave an approving nod, ”That’s a principled stance.

”Still, I’m curious about what you meant by a ’difference in values.’ Can you be more specific?”

Zhang Yan let out a sigh, ”Medications.

”I kept pushing for them to exercise at least some control over the medications, or to find a way to limit regular players’ access. But we could never reach a consensus.”

Huang Shengjie asked quickly, ”So what’s Community 16’s situation right now?”

Zhang Yan was quiet for a moment, seeming to struggle with how to describe it, and finally said, ”It’s just... left to chance. Nothing was actually done.

”Anyone who wants to buy, buys. Anyone who wants to restock, restocks.

”The one thing they did manage to agree on verbally was that no one should buy or stockpile excessively, and reselling at a markup isn’t allowed.

”For now, it’s just about holding together. Everyone has honoured that agreement voluntarily. But what happens further down the road is hard to say.”

He paused briefly and continued, ”I was fortunate enough not to have been in the Pain Game, and I managed to get through the community pain without using either of the two special medications.

”But watching more and more players in Community 16 start taking the special medications gave me a persistent and strong sense of unease.

”This game was a distribution-type game with a large number of players involved, which is relatively safe, and it’s also the best type of game for making a switch or poaching. So I thought I’d take a chance and see if I could find a community that kept the medications under control.”

Wen Wan looked puzzled, ”But how did you know we were actually that kind of community?

”Weren’t you worried we might be lying to you?”

Zhang Yan explained, ”That’s exactly why I put forward the condition I did.

”If you had refused and insisted I had to help you win the game before I could join Community 2, that would have suggested you might be lying.

”But if you accepted my condition, that was a strong signal that our values were probably aligned.”

Lu Bingjun gave another nod of approval, ”That was a smart move.”

Qin Cheng looked at Huang Shengjie, ”I think we’ve covered our side of things well enough. Shengjie, what about yours?”

Huang Shengjie glanced at Yao Yuan and Zhou Wanlin.

The strategy had largely been their work.

But Zhou Wanlin gave a small shake of her head, indicating he should be the one to tell it.

Yao Yuan added, ”Shengjie really did play an indispensable role in winning this game. Without him, there would have been no way to force Zhao Heng into a violation.

”And I think hearing it from his perspective would make the whole thing more compelling.”

Huang Shengjie felt a little awkward, but there was no polite way to decline, and he gave a broad account of what had happened.

Qin Cheng looked genuinely surprised, ”Your side was... that complicated?”

Several people instinctively looked toward Yao Yuan.

Shen Bowen’s expression shifted to open surprise, ”You actually killed Community 23’s leader?

”In a distribution-type game?”

Both sessions had played under identical rules. Throughout more than three hours of gameplay, Shen Bowen, Qin Cheng, and the others had been thinking through strategies the whole time, and the conclusion they had reached was that while a death mechanism existed in this game, the actual probability of triggering it was extremely low.

Because doing so required satisfying three conditions simultaneously.

The individual or community violation count had to reach its limit.

A specific player had to be forced or tricked into committing one more violation.

At least three of the other four players from the same community had to choose not to donate Gold Pounds to save them.