God's Imitator

Ye Lin gave a nod, then spoke with real gravity. ”First, I want to apologise to everyone.

”Whatever reason Wen Wan had for choosing me, as one of this community’s core game players, I bear full responsibility for what happened to her.

”I did not perform at my best in this game.

”I’ll walk everyone through the entire process in detail, and explain honestly what I was thinking behind each decision I made.

”Shengjie, Lu Qi, feel free to correct me at any point.”

She then gave a thorough account of the entire game.

Huang Shengjie thought it over, ”I don’t have anything to add.”

Lu Qi looked somewhat surprised, ”Huh, there were that many details in this game? I didn’t even realise.”

Lu Bingjun gave a nod, ”That’s more than enough detail. I don’t think there’s anything deliberately withheld here.

”But I think we still need a fuller explanation of the reasoning behind certain decisions.

”Let me start with one question, and everyone else can follow up afterward if they have more.

”What I want to ask is: how did you think through and plan your use of the two suggestion functions? And what led you to decide against buying any medication at all, from start to finish?”

Ye Lin let out a quiet sigh. ”As I said before, honestly, I didn’t perform at my best in this game.

”Looking back now, if I had recognised sooner that something was wrong with Zeng Yiming, and used the broadcast immediately to raise a warning or expose him, or specifically instructed Wen Wan to report honestly to the audience exactly what she saw regarding who was inserting real or fake coins, the outcome of this game might have been different.

”I underestimated Zeng Yiming’s audacity and malice, and I was taken in by how convincingly he performed.

”By the time I recognised the truth, it was already too late.”

Qin Cheng looked thoughtful, ”From where I sit, I think Ye Lin did everything she reasonably could.

”First, sending Wen Wan the suggestion to ’confess early, crime is light’ as quickly as she did was already the optimal move, even in hindsight.

”If Wen Wan had trusted it completely and confessed first, securing the Production Director role for herself, the outcome of this game would almost certainly have been different.

”At that point, whether the broadcast ever needed to be used might not have mattered at all.

”After that point, deciding exactly when to use the broadcast really was a genuinely difficult call.

”Because Zeng Yiming projected the image of a flawless, decent person the entire time, almost existing in a kind of superposition.

”Whether he was actually good or bad depended entirely on whether he’d inserted a real coin or a fake one, and the only person who could actually see that was Liang Guicheng.

”What Zeng Yiming did was an enormous gamble, and he won it.

”Under those circumstances, it would have been genuinely difficult to arrive immediately at the conclusion that ’Zeng Yiming is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,’ unless the audience member in question was simply the type who refuses on principle to believe any good person could exist in the Gallery. And Ye Lin isn’t that kind of extreme thinker.

”At that point, Ye Lin certainly could have forced the issue and used the broadcast to warn everyone on the floor and in the audience, or directly question Zeng Yiming’s motives.

”But the problem is, what if Zeng Yiming really had been telling the truth?

”What if the medication really was genuine?

”That could have backfired badly.

”To verify a claim like that, a great many audience members would have had to break the seal on medication they’d already bought, an unnecessary loss for them. And the offenders, already facing a brutal Judgment Game, would have been furious at being falsely accused like that.

”That anger could easily have turned on Wen Wan.

”At that point, her crime number hadn’t been exposed yet, and everything appeared to be going smoothly. Under normal reasoning, caution really was the sensible choice.

”By the time the audience actually discovered the medication was fake, it was already too late for anything to be done.”

Ye Lin nodded, ”Yes. By that point, the game really only had two possible outcomes left.

”The first was that I said nothing, and no other player exposed Zeng Yiming either. In that case, he would very likely have walked away with nearly a million minutes of visa time, and built himself a flawless reputation as a good man in front of every community watching.

”All the blame would have fallen on the other offenders, and by the time anyone tried to revisit it, it would be far too late.

”The second was that I, or someone else, used the broadcast to expose the truth, which led to the outcome we saw.

”When I sent that broadcast, I honestly didn’t hold much hope. I knew that, given how things stood, I had probably already lost any real chance of saving Wen Wan.

”But I still had to try.

”When I exposed the offenders’ performance, I deliberately left Wen Wan’s name out of it. And in my final appeal, when I asked everyone to reconsider how they distributed their Sympathy Votes, I never named her either. I only said to save whoever was ’more deserving of being saved.’

”All I could really hope for was that a handful of audience members in other communities still had enough compassion left to use their Sympathy Votes to keep her alive.

”It really wouldn’t have taken many.

”But there was nothing more I could do. By that stage, the game had stopped being a moral question and turned entirely into cold, self-interested calculation.

”If there had been an option to voluntarily give up one’s share of the payout, Wen Wan might still have had a chance. But the Imitator never left that possibility open.”

Ye Lin paused briefly, then continued, ”As for why I decided from the very start not to buy any medication.

”That was mainly a decision based on our community’s specific circumstances.

”Type M medication is extraordinarily rare and discontinued, yes, but setting aside its potential as an appreciating investment asset, its practical use really only comes down to three things.

”First, if medication dependency ever emerged within our community, Type M could help with withdrawal.

”Second, it could be used to manage the community’s regular scheduled pain.

”Third, it could be resold to other communities for profit.

”But none of these three uses were especially cost-effective for our community specifically.

”Our community enforces strict medication controls, and as things stand, no player is showing any serious signs of dependency that would require Type M to help with withdrawal.

”As for whether some player might develop a dependency down the line and need that kind of help eventually? That’s far too distant a concern to justify taking on risk now for a hypothetical future benefit.

”As for the second and third points, those are genuine, measurable returns, yes. But buying any amount of medication at all meant giving up a share of the payout, and from a purely rational standpoint, I didn’t think that trade-off was worthwhile.

”Of course, I can’t claim my judgment here was entirely rational or objective. There was inevitably some subjective bias baked into the decision.”

Lin Sizhi cut in unexpectedly, ”There might also be another factor at play here. Perhaps, deep down, some part of you had already grown seriously distrustful of Zeng Yiming from early on, but in the moment, it was difficult to act on that instinct alone and make such an extreme call.

”So what came out in the end was this somewhat contradictory state.”

Ye Lin paused, then gave a somewhat resigned nod, ”Perhaps.”

Lu Bingjun turned to look at the others, ”Everyone, feel free to share your thoughts. And don’t forget, we now have a motion in place requiring everyone to contribute a substantial amount to the discussion.”