God's Imitator

Seeing this, Wen Wan also hurriedly turned toward the big screen and said:

"I want to confess to everyone too!

"I once ran an online shop, mainly selling high-end knockoffs, A-goods.

"But what I sold wasn’t counterfeits. To be precise, they were ’original factory leftovers’.

"Simply put, some big foreign brands—clothes, shoes, bags—will find OEM factories in China to do the production, and during that process some loss naturally occurs. For example, a lot of brands will additionally provide 3% or 5% planned scrap material.

"So in production, the goods that come out may have slight color differences, tiny flaws—stuff the brand won’t take.

"Of course, not all of it is original factory leftovers; some part of it is also the factory’s own imitations.

"The prices of these goods are basically less than 30% of the official factory price. I had a stable client base, and I’ve gone over all these details with them again and again—they all know perfectly well.

"My final Sales volume was actually quite high, and in the end I really didn’t get caught, because when I saw the crackdown tightening, I shut the shop down in advance.

"I know buying and selling A-goods is definitely not good, but everyone loves beauty. Those international big brands are so expensive—several thousand, even over ten thousand for a single bag. I’ve seen many girls even taking out loans to buy them, and I just thought: why bother?

"I fully admit my crime, but I also feel that my actions didn’t cause any actual harm to anyone. Maybe I just walked a bit too far into the grey zone—but honestly, who hasn’t more or less used knockoffs or pirated stuff before? Please forgive me. I’ll definitely work hard to manufacture medicine for everyone to atone for my sins!"

...

In the Audience lounge, Huang Shengjie and Ye Lin weren’t planning to buy any medicine, so they paid no attention to the vending machine; they only needed to keep an eye on the big screen.

Seeing Wen Wan confess, the knot in Huang Shengjie’s heart loosened a little.

"Sister Yelin, I feel like Wen Wan picked a pretty good moment to confess. What do you think?

"Even though she’s the third one to confess, her crime is much lighter compared to He Qing’s.

"He Qing’s crime is that he didn’t give the air conditioners enough vacuum time. Even though he found a bunch of excuses, what he did genuinely harmed consumers’ interests.

"And that was purely him being blinded by greed, wanting to save time and earn more during peak season for air conditioner installation.

"If I were voting, I’d definitely still vote ’Guilty’ for him.

"But Wen Wan’s situation isn’t so bad.

"A-goods are basically in a legal grey area, right? The customers who buy A-goods all know they’re A-goods, so there’s no deception.

"The only ones who get hurt should be those big luxury brands’ brand owners.

"But... in many people’s eyes, those brand owners are exactly the ones ’harvesting leeks’, so there’s not much goodwill toward them anyway.

"On top of that, Wen Wan shut her shop quite early, so she didn’t cause large-scale social harm. Plus, her looks are the most outstanding among all the Sinners players, and that teary-eyed expression she had just now is really good at winning sympathy.

"If it were up to me, as long as the forced-conscience mechanism allows it when voting, I’d definitely cast a ’Not Guilty’ vote for her."

Ye Lin was silent for a moment: "Mm... actually there are issues in Wen Wan’s speech too, but I can’t point them out. Once I say it, you might trigger the forced-conscience mechanism when you vote, and then you wouldn’t be able to give her a ’Not Guilty’ vote.

"But overall, Wen Wan’s actual performance is better than I expected.

"I can sense that there’s a bit of calculation hidden in what she said.

"On the main crime, they probably don’t dare lie.

"Because if the announced crime and the crime they confessed to are different, the Audience will think they’re deliberately trying to escape punishment through deception, and that’s an extra charge.

"But on the details of the crime, they still need to conceal as much as possible.

"Both of them have avoided revealing any information that might let the other Sinners quickly guess their crime number.

"For example, He Qing is an air conditioner installer, so his crime number is very likely how many units he actually installed.

"He Qing never mentioned how many years he’s been in that job, nor what percentage of the air conditioners had problems. That’s probably all to hide his crime number.

"Same with Wen Wan. She never said exactly how many years she ran the shop, or roughly how many orders she completed each month.

"But just as you said, comparing these two cases is advantageous for Wen Wan; she may gain more ’Not Guilty votes’ and ’Sympathy votes’."

The two both let out a slight sigh of relief.

Huang Shengjie went back to the vending machine to check on the medicine.

The medicine being sold now was from the second production batch, and it was already sold out.

"Sold out again? That’s wild. These players’ demand for medicine is even higher than I imagined."

Ye Lin explained, "There’s probably a fixed group of rich players buying.

"If they can secure sales channels, then for players it’s actually cost-effective to use all the visa time they’re carrying to buy M-class medicine.

"Because this batch of medicine can be flipped for a guaranteed profit.

"Say you use the 60,000 minutes of visa time you’re carrying to buy 100 bottles. Then you flip them at a price of 1,000 minutes of visa time per bottle. With a single flip you earn 40,000 minutes of visa time—that’s already equal to the basic profit of one game.

"What’s more, these M-class medicines also have the potential to appreciate.

"After this game, there’s a high chance you still won’t be able to buy M-class medicine in the Community, so this batch might well become a limited edition, getting more and more expensive.

"It might even turn into a financial product."

Huang Shengjie pressed her: "So we’re still not buying?"

Ye Lin hesitated a little: "Let me think it over."

...

The game was still ongoing, and soon the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th batches of medicine were also completed.

Among the five players in the inner arena, Zeng Yiming, He Qing, and Wen Wan had already confessed of their own accord. Zeng Yiming had already exposed his crime number and triggered the ’First Judgment’, while He Qing and Wen Wan had only confessed their crimes early to the Audience and had not yet had their numbers guessed to trigger Judgment.

As for Liang Guicheng (Fruit Farmer) and Zhao Xiuying (Stall Owner), the two of them didn’t seem inclined to reveal their crimes. They seemed intent on hiding them for as long as possible.

Only when they each returned to the field to start producing the 7th batch of medicine did the broadcast come on.

[Zhao Xiuying (Stall Owner)’s crime number has already been guessed by at least two Sinners players. Her crime has been exposed.]

[Zhao Xiuying’s crime: While running a donkey-meat stall, she took advantage of the threefold price difference between horse meat and donkey meat, disguised spoiled horse meat as donkey meat to sell, and used food additives and chemical methods to alter the taste to deceive customers, illegally profiting ’1.34 million yuan’.]

[Sentencing result: Convicted of selling substandard products, sentenced to 5 years and 6 months in prison.]

[Audience, please cast your votes and complete the ’First Judgment’.]