God's Imitator

A sharp beeping sound rang out.

Wen Wan looked around in alarm and found herself in a narrow, simply furnished waiting room. Apart from the usual furnishings, a sofa, a coffee table, the most striking feature of the room was a row of unusual machines.

There were five of them in total, roughly the size of an ATM judging by their dimensions, though very plain in design, with a simple numeric keypad in the middle section and a screen above it displaying different pieces of information.

At the centre of each screen was a physical four-digit number display.

Across the five machines, from left to right, were photographs and names of five different players.

[Liang Guicheng (Fruit Farmer): Total sales of ’XX67’ tonnes.]

[Zeng Yiming (Restaurant Manager): Owner of a mid-sized sushi restaurant operating for 5 years, where approximately 30% of plates were not properly cleaned. Total number of times an improperly cleaned plate was served to a customer: ’XXXX’ times.]

[He Qing (Installer): Total units installed: ’XXXX’.]

[Zhao Xiuying (Stall Owner): Illegally profited ’XXXX’0 yuan.]

[Wen Wan (E-commerce): Problematic sales revenue of ’XXXX’0 yuan.]Wen Wan’s eyes moved across the five photographs and noticed that the players in this game skewed notably older. She was the youngest of the group.

Liang Guicheng, Zeng Yiming, and He Qing were men, while Zhao Xiuying and she herself were women.

She wasn’t yet sure what the machines were actually for, and could only wait for the formal rules to be introduced.

For the moment, a different question concerned her more.

”Where are the others?”

Lu Qi, Ye Lin, and Huang Shengjie had also entered the game, but the waiting room she was in held only herself.

That suggested there was very likely a separate room for the audience members.

While she was still working through her unease, the large screen on the wall began to display the game’s rules.

[Good morning, players, and welcome to ‘Trust Marketplace’.]

[This is an Elimination-type game involving 32 players drawn from 8 communities. 5 of these communities are ’Offender Communities,’ and the remaining 3 are ’Audience Communities.’]

[An Offender Community’s delegation consists of: 1 offender, 1 Audience Representative, and 2 Regular Audience Members.]

[An Audience Community’s delegation consists of: 1 Audience Representative and 3 Regular Audience Members.]

[The total duration of this game is not fixed. The game will end once the offender players have produced 10 batches of medication. Please monitor the game progress timer on the outer hall’s large screen.]

[The following are the detailed rules.]

[1. Crime Exposure]

[There are 5 ’offender players’ in this game. In your waiting room, you can clearly see each other’s photographs, names, and partial information about each other’s crimes.]

[Your objective is to correctly guess the other offenders’ ’crime numbers.’] [Each time you return to the waiting room, you may submit one ’guess’ on every machine.]

[Each digit allows a maximum of 5 guesses. Once exhausted, that digit becomes permanently locked.]

[If any offender player’s 4-digit crime number is correctly guessed by any 2 other offender players, this is considered ’crime exposed,’ and that offender will immediately undergo a ’First Trial.’]

[All audience members will cast a vote of either ’Guilty’ or ’Not Guilty,’ and may not vote against their genuine judgment. If ’Guilty votes exceed half,’ the charge is considered established, and the offender player will immediately suffer an ’Instant Death Penalty.’]

[This penalty allows the offender player to ’advance-borrow a Death Exemption Ticket,’ meaning their community’s next available Death Exemption Ticket may be used on credit. Until the community repays this debt, all special items in the community shop will be disabled.]

[In addition, near the end of the game, any player whose ’crime has been exposed’ will undergo a ’Second Trial.’ No new vote will be taken. Instead, the result of the ’First Trial’ vote will be directly applied.]

[During the ’Second Trial,’ the outcome may be altered by a special mechanism known as ’Sympathy Votes.’ If the result remains ’charge established,’ the offender player will suffer the ’Instant Death Penalty’ once again.]

[2. Medication Production]

[On the main game floor, the 5 offender players will each enter a separate ’Production Room,’ each responsible for a different stage of medication manufacturing, and will sell the resulting ’painkillers’ to the audience present.]

[The first offender to have their ’crime exposed’ will become the ’Production Director,’ responsible for deciding how offenders are assigned to Production Rooms.]

[After ’the first batch of medication has been sold,’ audience members may continue casting ’Sympathy Votes’ for offenders until the game ends.]

[Sympathy Votes follow special rules:]

[a. Each audience member has 15 Sympathy Votes.]

[b. Votes cannot be cast for a player from one’s own community.]

[c. All votes must be cast before the game ends.]

[d. ’At significant cost,’ a portion of cast Sympathy Votes may be ’withdrawn and recast.’]

[During an offender’s ’Second Trial,’ every 10 Sympathy Votes can offset 1 Guilty Vote, potentially changing the outcome of the trial.]

[Please refer to the notice boards outside each Production Room for the specific rules governing medication production.]

[3. Purchasing Medication]

[Audience members in this game may freely choose whether to purchase the medication produced on-site.]

[If you choose to purchase: purchased medication may be brought back to your community, or resold to other communities through the community vending machine. However, you will no longer participate in the medication profit distribution.]

[If you choose not to purchase: you may participate in the medication profit distribution at the end of the game. Of the total profit generated from selling all the medication, 50% will be split evenly among ’surviving offender players,’ and the remaining 50% will be split evenly among ’audience players who did not purchase medication.’]

[Please explore the game for further detailed rules as they become relevant.]

[This is a game about trust. How you understand trust will determine the final outcome of this game.]

[The game will officially begin in 10 minutes. Please make your preparations.]

The room Huang Shengjie and Ye Lin found themselves in was a dedicated audience waiting room, considerably more spacious than Wen Wan’s, equipped with a sofa, a coffee table, a vending machine, and other basic amenities.

Notably, alongside the large screen displaying the game rules, the room also contained a separate operating console.

Lu Qi, designated as the Audience Representative, was not present in this particular room.

The large screen continued displaying the rules, and both Huang Shengjie and Ye Lin listened with complete focus.

[The following are the rules governing the audience side of the game.]

[1. The Audience Representative has a dedicated waiting room, and after the offender players produce medication, may conduct a ’Quality Inspection,’ marking it as ’Pass’ or ’Fail.’]

[A Quality Inspection may influence other audience members’ willingness to purchase the medication.]

[2. Regular Audience Members have two opportunities to assist an offender player.]

[First assistance: send a written suggestion of no more than 5 characters to an offender’s waiting room. Each character costs 2,000 minutes of visa time.]

[Second assistance: deliver a broadcast announcement of no more than 3 minutes to all players in the game, costing 10,000 minutes of visa time.]

[In addition, Regular Audience Members may also influence an offender’s trial outcome by purchasing medication and casting Sympathy Votes. Please consider these choices carefully.]

The rules remained displayed on the large screen to help players absorb them fully.

Huang Shengjie’s brow furrowed as he worked through possible strategies as quickly as he could. After a moment, he sensed Ye Lin’s eyes on him.

That meant she had likely already worked through her own thinking.