God's Imitator

Huang Shengjie looked puzzled. ”Isn’t that basically the same thing?”

Yao Yuan shook his head. ”There’s actually a distinction.

”Though, it’s not an easy one to put into precise words. Try working it out for yourself.”

Huang Shengjie’s brow furrowed. He could sense, on some intuitive level, that the two terms carried a difference, but couldn’t quite articulate it clearly.

A moment later, Lin Sizhi added, ”It might help to think of it this way. There are actually two kinds of trust. One is a value judgment, which you could also call strategic trust. The other is a moral orientation, which you could call ethical trust.

”What we’re really discussing right now leans more toward that second kind, ethical trust.

”Long-termism, meanwhile, is a specific way of thinking, one that weighs real-world interests and prioritises long-term gain over short-term reward.

”The two are genuinely connected. Trust forms the foundation of long-termism, and long-termism, in turn, reinforces trust.

”In this game, most audience members were operating from a long-termist perspective: bringing Type M medication back to their communities could solve a great many problems, and over the long run, that would generate enormous value for every community involved.

”But Zeng Yiming saw straight through that, and it’s exactly why he deliberately chose a short-term perspective instead. He never cared whether the Type M medication actually made it back to anyone’s community. He only cared about walking away with a million by the end of this one game.

”A short-termist strategy will always generate less total value than a long-termist one, but within a narrow window, in the short term, its localised payoff is higher, and it actively disrupts any long-term cooperation in the process.

”If this game had only destroyed trust, that would just be a moral setback, and if enough shared interest existed the next time around, cooperation could still be rebuilt.

”But now that long-termism itself has been destroyed alongside it, even if there’s plenty of shared interest next time, cooperation might not happen at all.”

Qin Cheng added, ”Which means, after this game, for most players, whether from a moral standpoint or a purely self-interested one, trust and cooperation are no longer things worth considering.

”All that’s left is betrayal.”

Huang Shengjie asked, ”Lawyer Lin, from your perspective, is there any way to actually counter a game like this?”

Lin Sizhi gave a slight shake of his head. ”From a god’s-eye view, perhaps, to some degree. But from the perspective of an offender caught inside it, almost none.

”Because a game like this is designed specifically around an offender’s own character weaknesses. The audience can offer suggestions, yes, but the form those suggestions can take is usually tightly constrained by the Imitator.

”For an offender to survive, they have to fight against their own instincts, and that is never an easy thing to do.

”Because most people don’t actually change or grow in any meaningful way, you could think of a Judgment Game as a kind of trial by fire.”

Huang Shengjie nodded, understanding. ”A trial by fire. Fail to get through it and you die, but make it through and you come out a better person.”

Lin Sizhi corrected him. ”Not necessarily better. But you will come out an entirely different person.

”Because sometimes an offender’s crime and their weaknesses are bound up with the most precious part of who they are as well.”

Another stretch of silence passed.

Zhou Wanlin said, with real feeling, ”Lawyer Lin, I think I finally understand a little of what your community must have felt when you first debriefed the King’s Trial.

”Just like this game. Even breaking it down after the fact, even coming up with theoretically viable counters, mostly what’s left is helplessness. A deep sense of powerlessness.

”If an Imitator really is capable of this level of design, then under the Gallery’s current mechanics, this is truly unsolvable, isn’t it?

”They can kill whoever they choose.

”After all, a game at this level would surely be selected the moment it’s submitted.”

Qin Cheng thought it over. ”It’s not quite that extreme. The Gallery still has to choose to judge that particular offender in the first place.”

Up to this point, the players hadn’t discussed every fine detail of the game, and there was certainly room to dig deeper still. But most of the group had already come to realise that doing so wouldn’t accomplish much.

Because the rules of this game weren’t especially complex, and yet when aimed at a specific player, it came close to being unbeatable.

Lu Bingjun drew a deep breath, seeming to steel his resolve further.

”So we genuinely have no other option left.

”If this Imitator really is in our community, we have to find a way to kill them, whatever it takes.

”And a community trial has become, essentially, the only viable path forward.”

He paused briefly, then continued, ”Many of you probably have no real sense yet of what an Imitator at this level actually represents. Let me say a bit more, to help everyone fully grasp the situation.

”In short, he is nearly unstoppable within a game.

”As long as he finds the right opportunity and the Gallery allows it, he can design a Judgment or Elimination game targeting anyone he wants, and it will almost certainly be selected and achieve exactly what he intends.

”And beyond that, given the right conditions, he can use an offender as leverage and, through the game’s own rules, take down other players from our community or from others as collateral damage.

”We’ve seen cases before where an Imitator was killed within their own game. But looking at what happened in Trust Marketplace, this Imitator can simply choose not to enter the game at all, or enter it while facing no death risk whatsoever.

”We honestly don’t fully understand the exact rules governing this: which games require an Imitator to enter personally, and which don’t? It seems tied to game type somehow, but we can’t pin down a clear standard.

”So we can no longer hold out hope of finding and killing this Imitator from within a game itself.

”If he can walk away completely unscathed from a game like Trust Marketplace, he’ll almost certainly use the same approach the next time he kills too.

”He isn’t on the same level as an ordinary Imitator like Xu Yiheng.

”Of course, an Imitator is still a player too, and he might still be forced into a game as an ordinary participant, or even selected as an offender against his will.

”But as long as no other Imitator is specifically targeting him, he’ll most likely come through any game he’s forced into unscathed.

”Judging from the game he designed, his understanding of the rules and his insight into human nature go far beyond an ordinary player’s.

”Even if his real-time responsiveness has some gaps, even if he can’t bring the full weight of his design ability to bear when working through someone else’s game, he’ll almost certainly still perform at sixty or seventy percent of his capacity.

”That alone is more than enough to keep him safe.

”So the conclusion is this: our only remaining option is to root him out from within the community itself, and kill him there.”

Lu Bingjun looked around at everyone.

”Remorse Poker. A Single Word to Settle a Case. The Jury Game. Trust Marketplace.

”The existence of these four games no longer leaves us any room for wishful thinking.

”We must complete the vote on the Community Trial Rules this week.

”Whether it passes or not, this motion absolutely cannot be delayed any further.”

There was little of the usual fire or resolve in his voice as he said this. It carried, instead, a heavy note of resignation.

Yao Yuan spoke up. ”Let’s leave today’s discussion here. We went straight into this debrief without any rest, and everyone must be exhausted.

”The motion is urgent, yes, but we still have 7 days before it needs to be settled.”

Seeing no one object, Lu Bingjun gave a nod. ”Alright, that’s everything for today. Everyone, get some rest. We’ll pick this back up tomorrow.”

A handful of players hadn’t quite met the community’s required speaking duration, but with everyone visibly weighed down by the discussion, no one had the heart to hold them to it.

Before long, the players dispersed, each to their own thoughts.