God's imitator

Chapter 269 The Hidden Player

Cao Haichuan paused slightly before continuing, "Actually, I was wondering from the very beginning why Tic-Tac-Toe, which isn't a complicated strategy, is used in the game rules to determine the ownership of the pieces?"
"As long as the players know how to play, they will inevitably divide the land in a 5:4 ratio."

"But later I realized that the existence of Tic-Tac-Toe is not a game between players, but a game between copycats and players."

"The copycats actually use the act of deduction to occupy the players' thinking time, thereby increasing the difficulty for them to discover the 'hidden player'."

"Although the strategy of Tic-Tac-Toe is simple, it is actually relatively unpopular. If you have never played it before, it will still take some time to figure out the optimal solution and avoid possible pitfalls."

"Even the simplest calculations will still take up brainpower."

"In addition to other game rules and the probing and competition between players, it becomes even more difficult to detect the existence of 'hidden players'."

Jin Cheng clearly found this statement hard to accept: "The order in which the plots of land are opened and the order of the criminal files can also be decided by the audience!"

She is arguably the biggest victim, and she has always blamed the audience for it.

This is also one of the main reasons why she sells the shelter at high prices and extracts money from the audience.

Cao Haichuan shook his head: "At first, I also thought that the audience decided these things, but I quickly realized that was not the case."

"Because most of these decisions clearly run counter to the interests of the audience."

"The order in which the land parcels are opened and the selection of 'privileged communities' may seem chaotic, but there is actually a hidden standard:"

"The community that is willing to offer more gold coins when bidding for land will receive preferential treatment."

"The first nine-square grid was placed on A4, which was not a coincidence, but a deliberate choice to place it in the most densely populated area to check the bidding intentions of the 7th, 9th and 15th communities."

"The next three nine-square grids are all located in the center rather than in the corners, which is also to compare the bidding willingness of each community."

"The reason why the 12th community ultimately won was because they were the most willing to spend gold coins when bidding for land."

"These 'hidden players' can only obtain gold coins by bidding for land, so in the fifth round of the game, they deliberately opened up the G7 nine-square grid in order to pre-select the 12th community as the 'privileged community'."

"They need to use the 12th community as an 'intermediary' to achieve this cycle:"
"Community 12 raises the price of shelters as much as possible to earn gold coins from the audience; then it sends a portion of the gold coins to the 'hidden players' through land auctions."

"Only by choosing the 12th community can their interests be maximized."

"Clearly, the 12th community also realized this a long time ago, and they deliberately raised their bids, and they did get what they wanted."

"The order in which the sinners' crimes are announced is also like this."

"The first crime to be made public was 'selling substandard shelters,' which is actually quite unusual."

"Because if a player wants to commit the same crime, they have to wait until at least the end of the 6th round of the game. But this crime is revealed at the very beginning of the 6th round of the game."

"This means that there are no players who have committed the same crimes, and the only possibility is that the 7th community is being punished as a result."

"After that, since the 'selling substandard shelters' rule is now completely safe and no longer has any deterrent effect on players inside the venue, it will inevitably lead to all shelters being sold to the audience becoming substandard. "This is clearly not in the audience's best interest. If the audience were given the choice, they would never have exposed this crime first."

"But for 'hidden players,' they have every reason to do so."

"The first is to make an example of someone, by killing the weakest bidder in the 7th community, to instill fear in all players and make them more eager to bid for land."

"The second is to allow players in the inner circle to confidently and boldly sell inferior shelters, earn coins from the audience more quickly, and allow the plots to fetch higher prices."

"The order in which the crimes were announced was also designed to take care of the 12th community as much as possible, placing the two crimes that might threaten them last, giving them ample time to think about strategies and persuade others to use the 'insincere coupons'."

Jin Cheng's eyes widened; she still found it hard to accept this statement.

"But no matter what, you still don't have any evidence; it's all just your imagination!"
Can you find any rule in the game that supports your point of view?

Cao Haichuan nodded: "There is indeed a rule that supports my point of view."

The rules of the "lie detection mechanism" are as follows: If there are fewer than 10 "perfect judges", then all players except the "perfect judges" and the "audience" will trigger an additional instant death penalty.

Don't you think this rule is a bit cumbersome?

Cao Haichuan continued to explain:

"Because based on the criterion of 'whether the vote was against one's conscience,' there are only two types of players in the inner circle: those who voted against their conscience and those who did not."

"This rule can be stated as 'players who vote against their will suffer an additional instant death penalty', instead of using the phrase 'all players except for a certain group'."

"So this rule is actually a rule for 'hidden players' because the sentence includes them as well."

"This may be the only way to kill these hidden players in the game."

"If my speculation is true, then these hidden players are the real power players in this game. They can decide the order of the nine-square auction, the order of the trials of criminals, and they constantly observe the behavior of the players in the inner circle, selecting the most obedient and easily controlled communities and players to become the middlemen who make money from the audience."

"Hidden players can earn a lot of gold coins without taking any risk of death throughout the game."

"But they were clearly negligent in not realizing that there was actually a death rule for them; or perhaps they were too confident that no in-field player would be aware of it."

"I don't know if the copycats who designed this game are hiding among these 'hidden players,' but in any case, they are the group that most deserves to suffer instant death in the entire game."

At this point, Cao Haichuan let out a long sigh of relief: "Alright, now the game is truly over. Everyone, enjoy these last moments."

"I'm sorry, but I've already given you a chance."

Clearly, if Community 17 is not selected in the final vote, Cao Haichuan might hesitate about whether to reveal the truth.

But the moment the other communities selected the 17th community, everything became irreversible.

(End of this chapter)