God's Imitator

Lin Sizhi nodded, ”The Imitator deliberately withheld this rule, which is why Feng Yuguang was completely at a loss and had no idea what he was supposed to do.

”But with a little application of the Imitator’s mindset, this possibility becomes immediately obvious, and a statement or two is all it takes to confirm and verify it.

”So before the game officially began, I had broadly settled on two different strategies.

”The first was ’active defence’: in a situation where the opponent was highly cautious and unlikely to make any mistakes, I would proactively introduce legal provisions in my statements that could potentially work against me, but reframe them so they became harmless.

”This would leave the opposing side no angle to attack from, ultimately ending in a draw.

”The second was ’passive attack’: in a situation where the opponent was eager to push and showing obvious vulnerabilities, I would deliberately refrain from altering the legal provisions. I would only explain using real-world legal provisions, making it appear as though I was trapped in passive defence and unable to counter-attack, thereby lulling the opponent into complacency.

”After entering the game, I assessed the situation and concluded that the second strategy had a noticeably higher chance of succeeding. So that’s the one I executed.”

Yao Yuan turned the two terms over in his mind, thoughtful, ”Active defence and passive attack. Two internally contradictory phrases, and yet they fit perfectly here.

”Active attack and passive defence would never work in this game.

”If Lawyer Lin had proactively tried to create legal provisions unfavourable to Tang Qing, Tang Qing could simply have refrained from submitting any evidence connected to himself, and that kind of head-on exchange would clearly have ended in Lawyer Lin’s loss.”Or if Lawyer Lin had tried to find legal provisions to protect himself only after each piece of evidence was verified as genuine, there would always be gaps. A single mistake and it’s over.

”Active defence is like setting a controlled backfire in advance, creating a firebreak to stop the flames spreading further.

”That’s probably the optimal strategy for most players in this type of game: not guaranteed to win, but at least ensuring you don’t lose too badly.

”Passive attack, on the other hand, demands an extraordinary level of player skill. Most people would never be able to pull it off.”

Shen Bowen nodded in quiet reflection, ”I see.

”I was also wondering before: Lawyer Lin, your final reversal rested significantly on that Lion King Card. So what would have happened if Wang Yongxin hadn’t produced the card, or had been firmly committed to not cooperating with you?

”But now I understand. If you had assessed from the start that Wang Yongxin wouldn’t cooperate, you would have used a more proactively defensive approach, actively modifying or creating legal provisions favourable to yourself, leaving Tang Qing with no opening to exploit.

”The downside of that approach is that once it works, Tang Qing would know to back off. At that point, it would also be very hard for you to turn around and catch him off guard.

”The likely outcome would have been all three of you dividing Feng Yuguang’s visa time, with considerably lower returns than what you ended up with.”

Huang Shengjie quickly followed up, ”So does that mean Lawyer Lin only committed to the passive attack strategy after the first Recess?

”If I recall correctly, it was after that Recess that Tang Qing started showing a much clearer desire to attack.

”As for exposing a vulnerability, I’m not sure exactly when that happened. Was it after the gold card came out?”

Lin Sizhi took a sip of coffee, ”No.”

Qin Cheng said, with a slightly resigned expression, ”Shengjie, we literally just talked about the Imitator’s mindset, and you’ve already forgotten it?

”Why can’t you take one more step forward in your thinking?”

Huang Shengjie blinked, momentarily at a loss for what was being implied.

Yao Yuan explained, ”Think about it carefully. Both the Detective and the Wealthy Merchant could submit evidence. But what if their evidence overlapped?

”The Lawyer and Doctor don’t have this problem. Their statements have a clear order and are distinguished by different areas of expertise.

”But with evidence, any overlap produces a catastrophic outcome.

”In Round One, for example, Tang Qing produced the wedding photograph. If Wang Yongxin had also produced a wedding photograph, what would happen?”

Huang Shengjie thought for a moment, ”Nothing, presumably. Those two didn’t draw the photo themselves. It must have been generated by the game after they provided certain keywords.

”So it would generate people with the same appearance.

”Oh, wait. Actually that’s not quite right, because they would obviously add their own keywords to the photo, like the tattoo showing at the husband’s collar, which Tang Qing must have deliberately specified.

”If Wang Yongxin also wanted a photograph but specified different details, the two pieces of evidence would still conflict.

”If two conflicting pieces of evidence were brought into the courtroom, even if one were ruled false, it would seriously damage the game’s internal consistency, making the audience aware too early that these props weren’t found but created from scratch.

”For the Imitator, that would be a complete failure.

”So the virtual ’Evidence Room’ serves exactly this purpose: there must be some rule preventing the two of them from creating duplicate evidence.

”Which means from the first round’s evidence submissions, you can roughly determine each person’s game style and strategy.

”A ’photograph’ is the best piece of evidence that can be produced in the first round, because it lets every audience member see what the couple looks like, and details like the tattoo or the woman’s expression can carry layered information to guide the audience.

”If both players wanted to submit the same type of evidence, the order of submission would probably be the tiebreaker.

”So either both of them wanted to produce a ’wedding photograph’ type of evidence but Tang Qing was faster, or Wang Yongxin never intended to produce that kind of evidence in the first place.

”Either way, Tang Qing was clearly the more aggressively offensive of the two, while Wang Yongxin’s strategy leaned more toward defence.

”Though not pure defence. He buried something useful in almost every piece of evidence he produced. You could call it an attack-and-defence balance.”

Lin Sizhi continued, ”So now we can talk about Wang Yongxin.

”You may have guessed: he and I have known each other for a long time. For the majority of the First Stage, we were in the same community.

”Of course, our cooperation in the game wasn’t unconditional. And the foundation of that cooperation wasn’t only our prior relationship. Game strategy also played a significant role.”

Lu Bingjun was quiet for a moment, then said with a note of reflection, ”The community you came from must have operated at quite a level.”

Lu Bingjun had already known that Lin Sizhi’s original community had pushed their fund to an extraordinary amount, which indicated no shortage of strong players.

But knowing that abstractly was different from having a concrete sense of it.

Wang Yongxin’s performance in the game had now filled in that gap.

And beyond that, an S-tier game had appeared in their region as early as the First Stage. Whether that Imitator had come from their community or another, it would inevitably have raised the overall standard of play across the entire region.