God's Imitator

Cheng Wen glanced at his screen, with a 15-minute countdown in the top right corner, and the main screen displayed the words ’Curtain Call Vote’.

Below were the avatars of the four actors: ’Detective’ Tang Qing, ’Wealthy Merchant’ Wang Yongxin, ’Lawyer’ Lin Sizhi, and ’Doctor’ Feng Yuguang. Each avatar had two special voting progress bars beneath them, labeled ’Support’ and ’Oppose’ respectively.

At the end of the opposition progress bar, there was a red line marked with the number 23.

The ’Curtain Call Vote’ is a vote by the entire audience, the actors themselves can’t vote, and there’s no difference in the number of votes, so the total is 44 votes.

When the opposition votes reach 23, the player will suffer an instant death penalty.

At this moment, the progress bars under some actors were already changing, for example, Lin Sizhi had already received a ’Support’ vote.

But the vast majority of the audience hadn’t voted yet.

Since the voting time was quite long, a full 15 minutes, there was no rush to make a decision.

Cheng Wen cast a ’Support’ vote for Lin Sizhi without any consideration, then tried clicking on Tang Qing.

He wanted to cast ’Oppose’ for Tang Qing but couldn’t because the vote couldn’t be cast against one’s conscience.

According to the rules, to cast an oppose vote, you must choose one of two conditions: either the role played by the actor is guilty, or the actor did not achieve a perfect performance.

Since the truth of the case was confirmed as ’romantic suicide’ and there was no evidence showing the detective was involved in the crime, the role played by Tang Qing was innocent.

Moreover, throughout the performance, Tang Qing adhered to the image of a detective, whether it was presenting evidence or analyzing the case, he offered a qualified performance with no place that made people feel out of character.

Although his guess of ’killing wife for insurance money’ didn’t end up being the truth, it did provide a lot of meaningful clues.

Whether or not the detective ultimately gave the correct answer does not affect the audience’s evaluation of the actor’s performance.

As for his questioning of Lin Sizhi, it was also within a reasonable range, without evidence proving he was framing.

Therefore, Cheng Wen could only cast a ’Support’ vote for Tang Qing, with no other options.

However, at that moment, Cheng Wen saw Tang Qing’s ’Oppose’ vote number jump from 0 to 1.

...

Cheng Wen, somewhat shocked, rubbed his eyes again and clicked the oppose vote option under Tang Qing.

He still couldn’t cast an oppose vote, but the oppose vote cast by another player was real.

"Sister Lu! Sister Lu! What’s going on?

"Why is someone able to cast an oppose vote for Tang Qing? It’s unreasonable, isn’t this game supposed to prevent votes against conscience?"

Just by seeing Lu Xinyi’s somewhat angry expression, Cheng Wen realized he might not have asked properly.

Lu Xinyi glanced at him, somewhat angry at his lack of understanding: "I cast it.

"During the recess earlier, didn’t I tell you those things, and you just ignored them?

"I’ve already given you hints, can’t your brain process anything?

"If by the end of the 15-minute countdown you still haven’t cast an oppose vote...

"Then you won’t have dinner today, it’ll be a great way to lose some weight and also drain the water from your brain."

Cheng Wen was startled: "Ah? Sorry Sister Lu, I’ll think!"

Lu Xinyi sighed and looked at the others in Community 3 again.

"I’ll emphasize the hint information one last time.

"The hidden rules and mechanisms of the evidence are the core mystery of this game. Only by unraveling this mystery can you truly understand what happened in this game.

"Indeed, the performance has concluded, and the actors’ performances are over.

"But for the audience, the real game now has just begun."

...

Audience seat in Community 2.

Huang Shengjie was also very curious: "Hey? Why did Tang Qing receive an oppose vote? How was it done?

"I simply can’t cast it!

"The game rules stated that votes against conscience are not allowed, is there some detail I missed?"

"Feng Yuguang also received an oppose vote... this I can somewhat understand."

He subconsciously looked at Qin Cheng and Ye Lin, finding both were deep in thought, without providing answers.

Huang Shengjie, out of embarrassment, didn’t continue to interrupt their thoughts, and instead frowned in contemplation.

"This game, so far, is indeed full of doubts, leaving people in bewilderment.

"The oddest aspect is that this game seems very unfair, with the detective and wealthy merchant constantly presenting evidence favorable to them, while the lawyer and doctor can only defensively react.

"Even though Lawyer Lin successfully turned the tables using the ’Lion King Card’ in the end, according to prior circumstances... couldn’t Tang Qing counter with other evidence?

"But Tang Qing chose not to counter, instead admitting defeat.

"Moreover, this ’Lion King Card’ is also quite bizarre, it was verified, but the verification result simply said: ’This card is issued by a prestigious casino to seasoned gamblers.’

"Looking at post-analysis, this is complete nonsense!

"It mentions it’s issued by a prestigious casino but doesn’t state that the card itself is premium or has an asset threshold; it mentions it’s issued to seasoned gamblers but doesn’t specify who the actual owner is.

"That means the two crucial pieces of information are entirely concealed.

"And Lawyer Lin relied on these two points to transfer the actual owner of this card from the male to the female, altering the entire inference direction.

"This is very strange, because the ’verification’ feature, according to rule introduction, is ’to verify authenticity and provide supplementary information’, but the supplementary information obtained is too unstable.

"Some evidence has key supplementary information, but the supplementary information for this Lion King Card is quite vague.

"It’s as if the person writing ’specific information’ intentionally concealed it.

"Wait a minute, who exactly writes this ’specific information’ for these props?

"Is it generated automatically by the system? That seems unlikely, Walkway shouldn’t be intelligent to that extent, even if they could, they shouldn’t allow the imitator designing this game to openly shirk responsibility.

"Is it written by the imitator who designed this game?

"This seems like the most straightforward scenario, but upon further thought it seems peculiar.

"Because to pass Walkway’s review, basic fairness and strategy in the game must be ensured, leading to the possibility that all four actors could be proven as perpetrators.

"To achieve this, the imitator must anticipate every possible strategy players may adopt, arrange a plethora of evidence, and deliberately leave clues in the supplementary information of evidence, corresponding to different players, different crimes, and different plot directions.

"That surely explodes the workload of designing this game, right?

"Even if he can accomplish it, the total evidence in the evidence room should be incredibly exaggerated, so why do Tang Qing and Wang Yongxin always manage to find it precisely?

"Furthermore, Wang Yongxin was clearly cooperating with Brother Lin, Lin accurately estimated the concealed setup of the card through its appearance, but how did Wang Yongxin know that the supplementary information of this card would be hidden even if he knew it’s a Lion King Card beforehand?

"This indicates Wang Yongxin knew exactly the supplementary information of this card from the beginning, but Tang Qing was unaware.

"So, the only explanation is...

"This card was customized by Wang Yongxin himself, and he was the one who wrote the supplementary information, while Tang Qing was completely unaware.

"There really was no evidence room.

"The entire evidence system operates under a completely different set of rules."