God's Imitator

For some reason, Chen Yumei suddenly had a bad premonition.

To be more accurate, this feeling had always been lurking, but Yao Yuan’s words further brought it to the forefront.

But Chen Yumei couldn’t quite figure out what the problem was for the time being because when she first saw the rule, she had seriously considered the relevant possibilities.

𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

From the current perspective, the rule does not explicitly mention who initiates the ’death vote’; thus, based on the situation of this game, it should still be initiated by the players in the ’Reflection Room.’

For Chen Yumei, the most dangerous scenario is if the players in the ’Reflection Room’ designate ’Players of the 18th Community’ as the subject of punishment.

However, this possibility is not high because the entire plan was jointly completed by Communities 15, 17, and 18, and other communities also participated; players in the ’Reflection Room’ cannot set conditions to filter all these communities.

Even if filtered in, they can’t achieve the 70% voting requirement.

If they were to target a specific community?

Then the first target would definitely not be the 18th Community; after all, they are well hidden.

Aside from this, the possibility of filtering players based on identity or behavior is also low.

If they were to target ’All Spokespeople,’ ’All Agents,’ or ’Some Spokespeople,’ these players often have complex relationships behind them.

Players from the same community as them, or those with direct interests involved, would surely cast opposing votes, also making it impossible to reach the 70% voting requirement.

As for other filtering methods, Chen Yumei couldn’t think of much for the time being.

The waiting time wasn’t exactly long, yet Chen Yumei still felt as if every day was a year.

Finally, follow-up information appeared on the big screen.

[First Death Vote: Players who have sent or received more than 10 advertisements on the big screen.]

[If you believe these players must suffer the instant death penalty, press the ’Death’ button; otherwise, press the ’Survive’ button.]

[When the total player vote exceeds 70%, these players will suffer the instant death penalty.]

Seeing such information, Chen Yumei was momentarily stunned.

She knew very well what this meant: this condition very precisely filtered her in.

Not just her, but many other players from the 18th Community were also filtered in.

This rule targets two types of players: one is the ’Agent’ sending the advertisement, and the other is the ’Media Representative’ receiving it.

First, this condition almost covers all ’Media Representatives’ because agents are constantly sending them advertisements, and the total number exceeds 10 times, whether they adopt or not.

Secondly, this condition also filters in ’Agents,’ but only a small portion.

Because many agents did not even attempt to purchase advertisements on the big screen, like Yao Yuan.

There were also agent players who might have tried but gave up after not being adopted, not continuously attempting.

After all, there were seven rounds in total before the end of the game, and most advertisement attempts were concentrated in the first five rounds.

These agent players might have attempted to send ads to two or three big screens, for two or three rounds in total, making it difficult to exceed 10 times.

But agents like Chen Yumei were completely different.

Because she had to constantly share information with her community’s media representatives and have them unify perspectives with other media representatives and try to control multiple big screens to send the same information.

Other agents from Community 17 and Community 13 were like her, sending advertisements more than 10 times.

The time they spent furloughing was not much because when media representatives simultaneously received several different advertisements, they didn’t have to choose the higher bid but could freely choose.

Thus, Chen Yumei could control the content displayed on the big screen at a very low price.

If filtered by ’Amount,’ it might not work, but filtered by ’Times,’ they had nowhere to hide.

Chen Yumei suddenly felt her mind go blank.

But she still tried her best to stay calm, quickly calculating the specific number of people this filter might affect and estimating whether the voting ratio could reach the deadly ’70%.’

"There are 16 media representatives."

"How many agents are affected besides me? Couldn’t it only be 3~4 people..."

"If calculated based on a total of 20 people, that’s about 18% of the total 112."

"Players from the same community as these 20 people would surely press the ’Survive’ button."

"In other words, there would be an additional 15 people! This way, it can exceed 30% of the total and ensure the vote won’t pass."

Chen Yumei’s calculation was originally optimistic, but soon she realized the problem.

Because the worst point is that most of these players are from the same community.

For instance, in Chen Yumei’s 18th Community, to control the big screen as much as possible, everyone was mobilized, and besides the spokesperson ultimately on stage, all other players were affected.

It’s the negative impact of monopolizing the big screen: monopoly itself requires as many community players as possible to become ’Media Representatives,’ which leads to them being affected in the final ’death vote,’ unable to involve the innocent to share the burden.

Additionally, there’s the most crucial point.

This selected group actually does not have many players with direct interest relations with other audiences.

If the group were ’All Spokespeople,’ it wouldn’t just affect their corresponding community but also the top ten audiences in spokesperson popularity.

Spokespeople and audiences still have emotional connections as they exchange furlough times.

If the group were ’All Agents,’ it would affect too many communities.

But the current selection group, filtering out all ’Media Representatives’ and a few manipulating big screen ’Agents,’ doesn’t have much impact on general audiences.

Under a normal bidding method, 16 big screens would be allocated to 16 different communities, making the vote impossible to pass.

But now it’s different.

Chen Yumei felt chills all over but was unwilling to give up, forcing herself to reason.

"Community 17 also has several media representatives, Hu Yingxu and others should vote against."

"Perhaps Hu Yingxu can persuade other communities to help cast some negative votes?

"Media representatives from other communities might be affected? Assuming one community has only one media representative, the remaining 6 players from that community would vote against, ensuring many opposing votes...

"Thus, this vote might not pass..."

However, as the voting results were announced, Chen Yumei’s heart tightened.

[Death vote result for players having sent or received big screen ads more than 10 times:]

[Death: 83 votes]

[Survive: 29 votes]

[Death vote passes, and these players will suffer the instant death penalty.]

Chen Yumei immediately stiffened, her breath halted.

Yao Yuan sighed silently and said, "Actually, among media representatives, there are players who won’t be affected.

"Although a few communities bought big screens to become media representatives, it was merely to advertise for their community spokesperson, not to receive ads from other communities.

"After one or two simple attempts, realizing this, they won’t continue advertising.

"Therefore, the advertisements they receive are far fewer than you imagine.

"And do you truly believe Hu Yingxu from Community 17 would vote ’Survive’?

"Do you truly believe he wouldn’t think about the risks media representatives might face?

"I lean more towards the idea that he identified the risk but deliberately used this opportunity to remove some unwanted players from his community."

Chen Yumei now understood what Yao Yuan meant by ’risk.’

The plan she executed indeed was perfect, but it had a major flaw: Players in the Reflection Room, when coerced, would bear grudges.

If it were possible, they wouldn’t allow players who posed a threat to them to continue living.

And the ultimate death vote precisely provided such a possibility.

Players in the Reflection Room truly couldn’t discern which community designed or executed the entire plan; however, they could lock onto the most involved batch of players in this plan by counting ’the total times of sending or receiving big screen ads.’

Jiang Chenyan and Xu Zhao from Community 15 were aware of this, so they didn’t personally implement the plan but selected Community 18 as scapegoats to execute it.

Yao Yuan from Community 2 and Tang Qing from Community 7 also understood, so they opted for a cautious defensive strategy, merely taking a small slice of the cake from final gains, refusing deep participation, not letting their players become media representatives.

Hu Yingxu from Community 17 actually got it too, except he happened to want to clear some players during the game and conveniently arranged them into media representative positions.

Only players from Community 18 thought they had a sure-win method, pushing the entire plan forward with full force.

Now it’s all too late.

Chen Yumei felt darkness envelop her vision, and her body collapsed uncontrollably.

In the audience, players continuously fell.

Behind the big screens, invisible to everyone, media representatives collapsed one after another, with few surviving.

Most players merely watched indifferently.

Yao Yuan breathed a long sigh of relief, as the prolonged game finally concluded.

He inadvertently looked up, discovering Qin Cheng on stage staring at him.

Yao Yuan didn’t know when Qin Cheng began observing; it could have been just now or from the start.

[Game Over.]