God's Imitator

Lu Bingjun also couldn’t spell a lot of things out too clearly, but the smarter players could fill in the blanks on their own.

Shen Bowen thought for a moment and put forward a new hypothesis: "If One Word Breaks the Prison really did adopt Gao Teng’s plan, doesn’t that mean this Imitator had a very good relationship with Gao Teng in private?

"Because as of now, the only people who clearly knew about Gao Teng’s Imitator identity are Wei Changfeng and Xu Yili.

"The only reason Xu Yili could happen to see this plan and tear it up was because Gao Teng trusted her enough.

"As long as Gao Teng himself wanted to keep something like this hidden, no one else would have any reason to see it.

"By the same logic, this Imitator must also be a player whom Gao Teng trusted especially, and this plan might even have been something Gao Teng actively showed him."

Everyone fell silent.

It was obvious that regardless of whether there really were veteran players who had been particularly close to Gao Teng, bringing it up at this point already counted as a very serious accusation.

Qin Cheng thought for a moment and said, "Or we can try a different angle.

"Brother Lu, right after Repentance Poker ended, after you did the first post-game review, did you check all the players’ visa times in the Community?"

Lu Bingjun nodded. "I see what you mean.

"Judging from the rules of Repentance Poker, the Imitator should have gained a large amount of visa time in that game, so there ought to have been some abnormality.

"The moment the game ended, three shattered wristbands appeared in the Community hall, and all of us were utterly shocked.

"After a brief period of chaos, we spent about ten minutes gathering all the players into the hall for a post-game review.

"After the review on the first day, although we couldn’t immediately reach a conclusion, we did at once check the visa time of every player.

"But we didn’t find any obvious anomalies."

Qin Cheng’s brows knitted tightly. "If this Imitator really is in our Community...

"Then it means he’s an extremely cunning Imitator."

Yao Yuan nodded. "We had already considered this during the review.

"If the Imitator isn’t in our Community, that would of course be ideal.

"But if it’s the other possibility, then it’s troublesome.

"From the game rules, in Repentance Poker half of the visa time of the dead players will be earned by the surviving players of the opposing Community.

"If you do the math carefully, the amount of ’ownerless time’ generated by this game is really enormous.

"The total 50% visa time carried by Old Wei and the other two should have been taken away by Ma Boheng.

"But what about the remaining 50%? And what about the full visa time of the two players on Zheng Qingyun’s side?

"The rules don’t clearly spell that out, which means it was earned by the Imitator.

"Back then our Community was already discussing whether we should donate large amounts of visa time into the Community to avoid losses during games, but we hadn’t yet formed a complete proposal or implemented it.

"So the three of them—Old Wei, Gao Teng, and Xu Yili—were all still carrying a large amount of visa time on them, more than two hundred thousand each.

"Zheng Qingyun’s visa time should also have been considerable.

"So in total we’re probably talking about seven to eight hundred thousand in visa time.

"If this Imitator is in our Community, the only explanation is that he used that brief period right after we saw the game results and were still in shock to rapidly consume this extra visa time."

Huang Shengjie said thoughtfully, "Consume it?

"Then there’s only one way: buy some high-value goods from the vending machine in his own room.

"Like those insanely expensive cigarettes and liquor? Cosmetics? Luxury goods? Bags? Watches?

"When I first joined the Community I wondered, these things are so expensive, who would spend tens of thousands of minutes of visa time on them?

"So they had this use.

"These things are very expensive but don’t take up much space. Buy a dozen or so of them in bulk and stock them in your room, and you can burn through all the extra visa time.

"It’s really wasteful... but it does work."

Shen Bowen subconsciously glanced at Lin Sizhi; she was starting to understand why this Community’s Community fund seemed relatively small.

The Community she had originally belonged to did not impose mandatory donation requirements, so it wasn’t a good point of reference.

But judging from how things had been in Lin Sizhi’s former Community, Community 2’s fund was clearly on the low side.

Now she finally had it figured out:

Because during Repentance Poker, the players of Community 2 had not yet passed a resolution to deposit most of their visa time into the Community, and Wei Changfeng, Gao Teng, and Xu Yili were among the stronger players in the Community, each carrying a lot of visa time, all of which was lost during the game.

Then Lu Bingjun and Ye Lin were forced to use their own visa time to buy a large number of game recordings, further increasing the drain.

This directly dealt a crippling blow to the entire Community 2; such a disastrous loss was something they simply could not make up for in a long time.

But Shen Bowen soon had a new doubt. "But... isn’t that a bit redundant?

"If the Imitator had already planned to burn off his excess visa time this way, why not just reduce his own gain in the rules from the start?

"For example, simply change the gain rule to ’surviving players take all the visa time of the dead players’?"

Qin Cheng was silent for a moment. "If we keep pushing this line of reasoning...

"The only reason would be that if the Imitator designed the rules that way, it would strengthen the suspicion that he’s in our Community.

"But by first setting up the current version of the rules, and then burning off the visa time, he can instead maximize the washing away of suspicion.

"If all of the above assumptions hold, it leads to just one conclusion.

"This Imitator did things flawlessly, leaving no loopholes."

Everyone fell into silence.

By this point, their assessment of the Imitator had been pushed to the extreme: he might not be in Community 2 at all, and everyone was just spooking themselves; but if he was in Community 2, then he was inevitably an enemy buried very deep and extremely dangerous.

Lu Bingjun looked around at the others. "Actually, we veteran players in the Community have long considered this possibility.

"We just never made it explicit in public.

"In theory, when Repentance Poker ended, as the Community leader temporarily chosen at the time, I should have done something.

"But the Community had just gone through a huge upheaval, there were countless things to deal with, and we had to ensure internal stability first, so in this matter we were forced to adopt an attitude of deliberate neglect.

"This time I discussed things privately with the important players in the Community. We all felt that continuing to drag things out and pretend we didn’t see the danger inside the Community was not a long-term solution.

"So we might as well lay our cards on the table while we have this opportunity.

"I think we should use this chance to restart the investigation into this Imitator inside the Community."