God's Imitator

Huang Shengjie was a bit puzzled: "Did Li Mao tell you all this? Why would he say these things?"

Yao Yuan explained: "These might be false messages, but based on the current situation, they seem credible because they can be verified through other channels, and so far no obvious contradictions have appeared in the information collected.

"Li Mao himself should be a ’fence-sitter’ type player.

"I can sense that he is very dissatisfied with Zhao Heng and his position within Community 23 is rather awkward.

"This game is an allocation game, which veteran players know is quite suitable for switching sides, so Li Mao does have the idea of jumping ship to some extent.

"He provided this information hoping to exchange it for me accepting him on behalf of Community 2.

"But his condition is that I promise he can use drugs freely in our community, in my capacity as the management of Community 2.

"So in the end, we couldn’t reach an agreement.

"In general, this time Community 23’s five-member structure is quite reasonable:

"Zhao Heng is the absolute leader, Wu Xiufang is the talented new player promoted by him exceptionally, Li Mao is the discontented but afraid to stand out execution layer;

"Zhou Xiaoying and Peng Xinyuan are the bottom players in the community, but they are in a ’tethered state,’ bound together, and under these conditions have some emotional bond, making it hard for them to decisively abandon the other and move to a strange community.

"Their division of labor and power structure is clearer, and together with Wu Xiufang being indeed a sufficiently excellent new player, gaining an early advantage is not unacceptable."

Zhou Wanlin mused: "So, this Wu Xiufang’s position in Community 23 is similar to our community’s Dr. Qin?

"In any case, poaching people seems to be a difficult path."

Huang Shengjie frowned: "So, let’s consider the third round’s game strategy instead.

"I think the urgent task is to confirm one thing: whether Zhao Heng will keep his promise, which directly decides what strategy we should adopt in the third round."

Zhou Wanlin shook her head: "I tend to think he definitely won’t keep his promise.

"The reason is simple, they don’t have enough gold pounds now.

"I roughly calculated the number of gold pounds both communities earned in the first two rounds of games, they should have just over 100,000.

"And we should have around 85,000.

"These are numbers after deducting the cost of raw materials and the 10,000 gold pounds spent on getting out of jail, and the fines of the Review Room haven’t been calculated yet.

"This number is an oral estimate of mine, it must be inaccurate, but it won’t be too far off."

Huang Shengjie was stunned for a moment: "Is that so? It seems the gap between our two communities is smaller than I imagined.

"I see, it should be that the 10 contraband items sent into the confinement room in the second round played their role.

"After Zhao Heng tricked me into violating rules, he stuffed 10 contraband items into the confinement room, but Brother Yao entered the confinement room a bit later, so he successfully snagged them.

"This immediately closed a gap of about 30,000 gold pounds, very crucial."

Zhou Wanlin continued: "This matter, Zhao Heng and Wu Xiufang may not know, but they should also consider this possibility.

"If both our communities fully transport contraband in the third round of games, although Community 23 would still have the advantage, it wouldn’t open up too big a gap, impossible to reach 1.5 times our community.

"So for Zhao Heng, if he wants to earn 1.5 times, he will definitely interfere with us, making our profits significantly shrink.

"In this case, even if Community 23 has one less person transporting, the overall profit is still earned."

Huang Shengjie looked serious: "Hmm... so there’s nothing to discuss then?"

Yao Yuan lowered his head in thought: "Besides that... I’ve also thought of another worse possibility.

"Community 23 might have hidden raw materials on the field."

Huang Shengjie was stunned: "Hiding raw materials? What do you mean?"

Yao Yuan explained: "There is a loophole in the rules that you all haven’t noticed.

"When delivery personnel are waiting for the train to deliver goods, they’re not really idle; they can move raw materials to near the Review Room.

"Look at this picture, there is a corridor between the raw material warehouse and the Review Room, with steam trains and tracks inside the corridor.

"Once there are no players in the corridor, the steam train will stop working.

"However, if the delivery personnel keeps walking in the corridor, there’s no problem.

"Assuming Peng Xinyuan is the delivery personnel, after setting up the steam train’s delivery program, it takes 12 minutes for the raw materials to be delivered.

"During this time, he can totally move some raw materials from the raw material warehouse to outside the Review Room, and then pile them in a relatively hidden place under the corridor.

"These raw materials can’t enter the Review Room, but from this place to the cell, it can shorten the route by about one-third."

Huang Shengjie was stunned for a moment: "No way, when I intercepted him in the second round of games, his walking time wasn’t that short, he should have departed directly from the raw material warehouse.

"If he had started distributing directly from the Review Room, I couldn’t have blocked him."

Yao Yuan explained: "He is very likely stockpiling ’drug-type’ raw materials here and transporting the contraband of the current round.

"Because by the second or third round of the game, Prisoner players inside the prison will come out, and by then there will be extra players to transport this batch of stocked raw materials.

"This should be Wu Xiufang’s plan.

"And the reason she decided to not start transporting until the third round of the game is because if she transported earlier, it might be discovered and exposed.

"They don’t want us to notice this strategy."

Huang Shengjie frowned: "Problem is, the contraband for the third round game isn’t confirmed yet, what use is there in stockpiling ’drug-type’ materials in advance?"

Yao Yuan shook his head: "The first round was ’miscellaneous goods,’ the second round was ’food,’ so the third round is very likely to be ’drug-type.’

"If this is true, our situation will be even more difficult.

"Because Zhao Heng will still come to interfere with us, and Peng Xinyuan transporting this previously stocked batch of goods will further widen the profit gap between us."

Huang Shengjie was somewhat frustrated: "To think it can be like this... I completely didn’t expect this..."

However, Zhou Wanlin shook her head: "I think, maybe not necessarily.

"Not that they didn’t stock, but that the contraband for the third round may not necessarily be ’drug-type.’

"Because the game rules only mention that the system will select a type of material to become contraband, but it doesn’t say it has to be each of the three types of materials once.

"Not only that, there’s a sentence in the rules: Ensure this round’s contraband is determined before formulating the corresponding transport plan.

"I think this sentence might be the Imitator’s hint, telling us not to presumptuously arrange such stockpiling plans."

Yao Yuan was a bit surprised, but after seriously considering for a moment, he nodded: "Hm, putting it that way also makes sense.

"Hopefully that’s the case.

"But anyway, I believe Zhao Heng will definitely come to make trouble, there’s no other possibility.

"This is definitely not cooperation, just a temporary ceasefire."

Huang Shengjie exhaled a long breath: "Alright, then for the third round of the game, what exactly should we do? Time is running out.

"Especially whether we should transport all contraband with the steam train, or transport all ordinary raw materials, this needs to be decided as soon as possible.

"Because this also determines our strategy during review; if we anticipate they’re definitely not cooperating, then we might as well directly inspect everything, deduct all their contraband, and earn a fine.

"As for ourselves, we transport all ordinary raw materials."

Geng Yuxia hurriedly said: "Since everyone thinks the other side is sure to backtrack, how about we use the safest approach?

"We only transport ordinary raw materials, then perform a ’comprehensive review’ on their materials."

Yao Yuan gently shook his head: "That’s not necessarily the case, we could also consider using the steam train to transport all contraband and completely abandon the review phase.

"This mainly depends on whether or not we want to take a gamble."