God's Imitator

Wen Wan looked toward Lu Bingjun, ”Then maybe we should just buy this one?

”The Death Exemption Ticket is something no one can predict when they’ll need it.

”But this privilege takes effect sooner the earlier it’s purchased.

”And Brother Lu has donated so much to the community fund. 2,000 minutes a day isn’t a lot, but it’s at least a small way for things to come back around.”

Lu Bingjun considered for a moment, ”My donations were voluntary, and once given, the visa time becomes community property. I can’t just spend it however I like.

”Whether to buy this or not is ultimately up to everyone.

”My personal view is this.

”If you look at it purely as 2,000 minutes of visa time, it’s not a significant amount on its own.

”But looking at how the First Player Identity Card is structured, it very likely functions as an integrated item with many more features still to come.

”There will probably be a Privilege 5, a Privilege 6, possibly more, added further down the line.”Which means the community, or the Gallery, is most likely intending to bundle all these special functions into the Identity Card progressively.

”In all probability, you can’t skip a privilege and jump straight to activating a later one.

”With that in mind, buying sooner rather than later makes sense, because every day earlier means one more day of return.”

People exchanged glances around the room, and voices began to speak up, ”Let’s buy it.”

Players in favour quickly outnumbered those who weren’t.

Lu Bingjun gave it one more thought, ”Alright then. Let’s buy it.”

He completed the transaction at the vending machine, spending 120,000 from the Community Development Fund to purchase Privilege 4 of the Identity Card.

A 30-day countdown appeared automatically on the display. When it reached zero, the daily 2,000-minute income would begin.

The Community Development Fund now showed a remaining balance of 1,680,000.

It was still a remarkable sum, capable of purchasing a great many things, but with the Discount Voucher now a consideration, there were no plans to spend further for the time being.

Lu Bingjun turned to face the group and gave a slight bow, ”Even though the First Player Identity Card privileges belong to the community as a whole, I’m the one currently holding it, so I want to say sincerely: thank you all for placing your trust in me.

”I won’t betray that trust, and I’ll do my best to make sure it delivers as much value as possible.

”While we’re at it, let’s also take this opportunity to review the community’s medication restocking levels and how many times each person has experienced the pain.”

Before the ‘Jury Game’, the community had already passed a new management plan for the medications, so restocking had been handled promptly after each game.

The restocking allowance this time came to 80 bottles as anticipated, divided equally among the six players who had participated in the game, giving each person a total of 14 bottles, 7 of each type.

Of those six, Lin Sizhi, Ye Lin, and Qin Cheng retained their restocking allocation for themselves, while Zhang Yan, Lu Qi, and Huang Shengjie each restocked their share, after which Qin Cheng used community funds to purchase and hold the remainder in managed storage.

21 bottles of each medication were placed under management, at a total cost of 18,900 minutes of visa time.

The profit margin from this arrangement was converted into earnings for Zhang Yan, Lu Qi, and Huang Shengjie.

As things stood, the medication management system was functioning well. No cases of private restocking or medication leakage had been found, and the costs involved in managing the medications each time remained within acceptable limits.

Afterward, everyone returned to their seats at the long table and went through an updated count of pain incidents.

The community’s severe pain continued to occur at its regular interval, with 3 players drawn from the 7 with the lowest visa time rankings every 3 days to experience severe pain.

Qin Cheng had previously stated that his decision to remain in the bottom 7 was not an abandonment of his exemption right, but an attempt to observe what changes the basic medication actually produced during the pain.

So after experiencing the pain for the second time, he withdrew a portion of visa time from the Special Fund and moved himself into the top 7, exempting himself from further pain.

Apart from the four exempt players, Lu Bingjun, Lin Sizhi, Ye Lin, and Qin Cheng, the number of times the remaining players had experienced pain had shifted.

Since the pain was not recorded anywhere in the community’s machines, Yao Yuan and the other players tracked it manually on paper and kept backup copies.

Zheng Chunhua (4 times)

Huang Shengjie (4 times)

Zhou Wanlin (3 times)

Wen Wan (3 times)

Yao Yuan (3 times)

Shen Bowen (2 times)

He Qinyun (2 times)

Geng Yuxia (2 times)

Zhang Yan (1 time)

Lu Qi (1 time)

Zhang Yan had inherited Deng Xiao’s community number, but the pain count was clearly not something that could be inherited. Neither Deng Xiao’s previous pain count nor the count Zhang Yan had accumulated in her original community carried over. Both were treated as reset to zero by default. Zhang Yan accepted this without complaint.

Wen Wan glanced at Lu Qi with a somewhat complicated expression.

After this latest recalibration, the ranking broadly reflected the order of pain counts.

Because small adjustments had been made after each pain event, the overall difference in how many times each person had experienced pain had not grown too large.

But signs of inequity were already beginning to show.

Players like Zheng Chunhua and Huang Shengjie, who had clearly been on the receiving end more often, moving into the top 7 was uncontroversial.

But for players just below them, Zhou Wanlin, Wen Wan, and Yao Yuan, all tied at 3, deciding which of them could move into the top 7 was exactly the kind of thing that could spark friction.

Worse still was the special case of Lu Qi.

From the time she first entered the community, she had consistently remained in the bottom 7, and yet the pain had simply never landed on her.

To date, Lu Qi had only experienced it once.

Wen Wan had spent the whole time in a state of dread, praying every time that it wouldn’t fall on her, only to find that the more she feared it, the more unlucky she seemed to be. By now she had been through it three times, putting her in the middle-to-upper range among all players.

Even so, no one raised any objection to the figures in the end, and everyone accepted the record as it stood.

The group settled back into their seats at the long table and continued working through the discussions from the day before.

Yao Yuan distributed the motion documents he had prepared in advance.

”After yesterday’s discussion wrapped up, I put together a brief summary of the three key points and drafted these two motions.

”Let me walk through them one by one.

”First, to prevent the Imitator from having real-time access to all the information in the community, we inevitably need to allow players to share certain sensitive information privately.

”But this doesn’t actually need to be formalised in a motion, and there’s no way a motion could meaningfully regulate it anyway. Besides, our community has never prohibited this behaviour.

”So that one is just something everyone should keep in mind.

”Second, we need to increase participation in discussions.

”That brings us to the first motion.”

[Motion 1: New ’Community Speaking Rule’]

[In special occasions where all community players are gathered and discussing matters, including game debriefs and community motion discussions, every player must speak for at least 1 minute.]

[Players who fail to do so will be fined 500 minutes of visa time per occurrence, to be added to the Community Development Fund.]