God's Imitator

”At that point in the game, both sides had played their hands. If Tang Qing’s theory had prevailed and the truth had been established as ’murder for insurance,’ he could have produced further evidence after the next Recess to implicate Lawyer Lin as the husband’s accomplice who provided legal counsel, formally locking in Lawyer Lin’s guilt.

”But Lawyer Lin had put forward two theories: ’mutual suicide,’ where the wife had resolved to die and pulled the husband down with her, and ’an outside helper,’ where the wife had recruited someone and that person ultimately pushed both of them overboard, a theory that pointed directly at Tang Qing.

”The crucial moment came when Tang Qing realised that Wang Yongxin was actually on Lawyer Lin’s side. The Lion King Card had been a setup arranged between Wang Yongxin and Lawyer Lin from the very beginning.

”The ring and the social media photographs were also pieces of evidence that looked innocuous but ultimately pointed in the direction Lawyer Lin had laid out.

”Wang Yongxin and Lawyer Lin presumably had no way to communicate directly, so this cooperation was based purely on reading each other’s signals. Or perhaps they already knew each other and understood each other well enough to act in concert.

”Alternatively, looking at it from an objective standpoint: Wang Yongxin’s approach was inherently unlosable.

”He appeared to go along with Tang Qing’s line of reasoning to earn Tang Qing’s trust, while simultaneously embedding information favourable to Lawyer Lin within his evidence.

”If Lawyer Lin had failed to find this hidden information, Wang Yongxin would still have won. If Lawyer Lin found it and pulled off the reversal, Wang Yongxin would still have won.

”Whether he was splitting Lawyer Lin’s visa time or Tang Qing’s, he stood to gain the most, and he himself would never be the loser.

”Once Lawyer Lin found the hidden information and achieved the reversal, Wang Yongxin naturally aligned himself openly with Lawyer Lin.”From Tang Qing’s perspective, he was facing two against one.

”Feng Yuguang might as well have been out of the picture entirely. Both Lin Sizhi and Wang Yongxin were top-tier players, and they had the evidence advantage on their side.

”If the game went to another round, Tang Qing would lose for certain.

”So Tang Qing chose to cut his losses decisively, stepping forward to express support for the ’mutual suicide’ theory.

”This ensured the character he was playing would not be designated as guilty.

”Once Tang Qing expressed this position, it meant the entirety of Community 7 would have no choice but to follow his vote. That was a guaranteed 15 votes.

”And Lawyer Lin, Wang Yongxin, and Feng Yuguang were all broadly willing to accept this outcome, so the players behind them would also vote in support.

”Of course, the reason Lawyer Lin and Wang Yongxin didn’t push for a complete defeat of Tang Qing was that they had already laid other traps elsewhere. There was no need to fight to the death in the performance itself.

”Different people accepted this truth to different degrees. Most were fairly accepting, but many players instinctively resisted and found it unsatisfying.

”But among those players, a large number were willing to pay the cost of an insincere vote just to support it anyway, and that is what ultimately forced it through as the recognised truth.

”The final result came out the way it did.

”So, as for why some audience members were ultimately able to cast Oppose votes for Feng Yuguang and Tang Qing: that also becomes clear now.

”Feng Yuguang is a doctor. He had almost no presence throughout. But the bottle of medication Wang Yongxin produced was effectively lethal to him.

”In the final recognised truth, ’the husband used medication to control the wife’ was a confirmed fact.

”So who gave the husband this medication? Who advised the husband on using medication to control the wife?

”If anyone had, it could only have been a doctor.

”The worst of it was that Feng Yuguang’s minimal presence throughout the trial meant he had produced no evidence or testimony confirming him as a righteous figure. So whether or not he had been the one to supply the medication was entirely open to the audience’s interpretation.

”Feng Yuguang had probably never even realised this. He might have been naively assuming that the absence of explicit evidence pointing at him meant the audience couldn’t cast Oppose votes against him.

”But the Truth Vote had already shown that this game’s insincere vote detection is relatively lenient.

”When Lawyer Lin first proposed ’mutual suicide,’ I didn’t entirely believe it and felt there were still gaps, but I couldn’t think of a more convincing alternative. At that point, either vote was permissible, with no restriction.

”The Curtain Call Vote works the same way.

”Under those open conditions, many audience members would vote for guilt, because if their Oppose votes pushed a given Actor over half, any audience member who had cast a Support vote for that Actor would have all their visa time claimed by those who cast the Oppose votes.

”That is a concrete and tangible return.

”And there were probably very few people betting on Feng Yuguang to begin with. Few would be willing to commit a Support vote to protect him, because if that protection failed, their entire stake would be lost.

”Lawyer Lin faced no such risk.

”In theory, he too could have been the one providing legal advice to the husband. But the established truth contained no direct evidence pointing to this. And the image Lawyer Lin had projected throughout the trial was broadly positive. Claiming he had provided legal assistance to the husband would be quite a stretch.

”The insurance policies had been challenged by Lawyer Lin multiple times, and he had repeatedly argued that a successful fraud was unlikely. Tang Qing’s counter that this reflected a desperate gambler’s thinking had, to some degree, actually distanced Lawyer Lin from any association with the husband’s plans.

”Beyond that, there were clearly many audience members ready to support him, so there would be no danger.

”For Tang Qing, the situation was uniquely precarious.

”’When an Actor’s appearance, conduct, inner qualities, and overall presentation are completely consistent with their character, this is considered Perfect Portrayal.’

”Tang Qing’s appearance and conduct were entirely consistent with the Detective’s character.

”But his inner qualities were not.

”Under the recognised truth, the Detective is not guilty. He was not involved in the case, told no lies, and committed no act that violated justice.

”But Tang Qing himself, throughout this game, lied multiple times: he deliberately suggested there were many items in the Evidence Room and that he had gone to great effort to locate these specific pieces. These were substantively deceptive claims.

”The rule allowing Actors to ’create evidence’ is a double-edged sword.

”If the evidence had genuinely existed beforehand and Tang Qing had simply retrieved it, the question of wrongdoing might still be open to debate. But Tang Qing fabricated all of it himself, and on reflection, that is a deeply problematic thing to have done.

”These factors would give many audience members genuine grounds, based on their own conscience, to conclude that Tang Qing had not achieved Perfect Portrayal, because his performance was clearly infused with deliberate malice, which was inconsistent with the righteous image of the Detective character in the story.

”So any audience member who understood the hidden mechanics of the evidence system had sincere, non-insincere grounds to conclude that Perfect Portrayal had not been achieved and to cast an Oppose vote accordingly.

”The other three Actors, by contrast, were free of this issue.

”Wang Yongxin produced several pieces of evidence: the ring, the gold card, the medication. But none of his props pointed directly and explicitly at any specific suspect. He never directly accused Feng Yuguang of being the husband’s accomplice. He simply created a deliberate ambiguity and let the audience fill in the gap.

”And he never claimed the Evidence Room was large or that locating these items had taken great effort. He had no intention of deliberately deceiving anyone.

”After all, this was all part of the game’s hidden mechanics.

”So he was far safer than Tang Qing, with no risk of things backfiring.

”In the end, the two Actors against whom Oppose votes could genuinely be cast were Feng Yuguang and Tang Qing.”

Having worked all of this out, Huang Shengjie tried once more to interact with the screen.

This time, he found he could cast Oppose votes for both Feng Yuguang and Tang Qing.