God's imitator

Chapter 98 The Formation of Black Market

Yang Yuting also lowered her head in thought: "I can't figure it out either. How is the mutual trust between copycats and players established in Community 1?"

Lee In-sook seemed to have thought about this issue beforehand, explaining:

I think there are two possibilities.

"The first possibility is that Zhong Yuanyuan is the passive party."

"As a poor imitator, she failed to hide herself well, which led to her being exposed early on for various reasons."

"The First Community failed to decide quickly what to do with her. Under the surveillance of the entire community, the players collectively coerced the copycat to design and spoil the game, turning the community into a black market."

"The second possibility is that Zhong Yuanyuan was the one who took the initiative."

"She first established her core position within the community through some means and strongly bound herself to at least five very trustworthy hardcore players to ensure that she would not be threatened by the community's proposals."

"Then she passed a resolution within the community to distribute visa time equally, binding everyone together with shared benefits."

"They only laid their cards on the table at the very end, and then used a combination of coercion and bribery to turn Community 1 into a black market."

Zheng Jie pondered, "It seems the second possibility is more likely? After all, Zhong Yuanyuan is in the safest position in the game."

Cai Zhiyuan shook his head: "We can't be that sure. It's also possible that other players are voluntarily protecting her. After all, it's not easy to find such an easy-to-control copycat, and we can't let her die in the game so easily."

Wang Yongxin stroked his chin: "But no matter which situation it is, we can be sure of one thing:
"For copycats to collaborate with players and turn the community into a black market, the two sides must be one strong and one weak, not equal in strength."

"Only when one side is strong and the other is weak, and one side coerces the other, can the cooperation be stable."

Some astute individuals understood his underlying meaning: Community 17 did not possess the necessary conditions.

Based on the current situation, the average IQ of Community 17 is significantly higher than that of Community 1, and it can even be said to be higher than that of most communities we have seen so far.

While this is certainly a good thing in community confrontations, it also brings a problem:
Copycats in Community 17 have difficulty gaining the trust of players.

If the copycat isn't very smart, seeing that the average IQ in the community is so high, he will be very careful to hide his identity and dare not reveal it.

If the copycat is clever, then he will be even more adept at hiding himself.

Moreover, based on the current situation, it is highly likely to be the latter.

In the short term, players dare not openly search for copycats, or they cannot find them at all. Copycats, for various reasons, are unwilling or afraid to carry out a bloodbath against players.

Instead, it froze.

If "Find the Copycat" is a game of Werewolf, then other communities might have already reached the end of the game before they even started.

Copycats are quickly exposed, either accidentally or intentionally.

But Community 17 has been stuck in this situation for so long, with absolutely no progress in sight.

Jiang He looked at everyone with some confusion: "Since such a cooperation mechanism exists, if there are really copycats in our community, they can step forward on their own, right?"
"We can also run a shady business!"

"With so many smart people in our community, wouldn't we be invincible if we just revealed a little bit of the game's rules beforehand?"

After he finished speaking, an eerie silence fell over the hall.

Li Renshu looked at Fu Chen and said with a smile, "Fu Chen! You wouldn't happen to be that copycat, would you?"

Fu Chen paused for a moment, then laughed: "Oh right, right, that's me. You guys found out."

Lee In-sook pressed on, "What's the next game? Tell me quickly!"

Fu Chen shrugged: "How should I know! I haven't even started designing yet!"

Li Renshu said in a serious tone, "When will the design be finished?" Fu Chen said helplessly, "Why are you urging me even more than the walkway owner! Why don't you be the walkway owner?"

Everyone burst into laughter; clearly, it was a joke.

Copycats will not voluntarily admit their identity.

Wang Yongxin sighed: "Since it's difficult for our community to establish such a cooperative mechanism, won't we be at a disadvantage in the later games?"

"Besides us, four other communities also witnessed this incident of the 'dating game' community 1 running a black market."

"After they go back, will they also be inspired and learn how Community 1 plays?"
"The same goes for Community 1. Although Zhong Yuanyuan is dead, the arcade is likely to provide them with new copycats."

“Players in Community 1 can easily coerce new copycats to continue this pattern.”

"In that case, every time we enter the game, we might not only encounter copycats who have mastered all the rules, but also players who have already mastered the rules."

"Then what's the point of playing this game? Let's hope everyone else has a script while we don't."

Jiang He nodded: "Yes! So let's find out who the copycat is in our community!"

"This is for our common good; we must cooperate now!"

Wang Yongxin glanced at Jiang He, then hesitated, as if he wanted to say something but didn't.

Jiang He's behavior was somewhat foolish, because it was obvious that the copycat from Community 17 would not come out, so shouting would be pointless.

But sometimes, community discussions still need these rather silly remarks as a catalyst.

Otherwise, if everyone is intelligent, how can we play a game if we're all just staring blankly at each other?

Cai Zhiyuan said thoughtfully, "The more you say that, the more incredible it seems that Attorney Lin was able to dismantle this shady shop."

"After all, the fact that 'copycats can run illegal shops' is the biggest information gap."

"If we don't realize this, then at most we can only focus our suspicions on Gao Jialiang or Fang Wencong."

"If we can't kill Zhong Yuanyuan, the game won't end; instead, we might end up getting ourselves into danger."

"Attorney Lin, how did you come up with this idea?"

Lin Sizhi looked at Cao Haichuan: "Actually, this was inspired by my conversation with Officer Cao before."

"Officer Cao explained a lot of crime-solving knowledge to me in detail. Simply put, the most important thing to catch copycats is to guess their motives by understanding the rules of the game."

"For example, the motives of the 'dating game' are easy to guess: the various rules of killing directly show that 'I want to kill more people to earn more visa time'."

"According to the game mechanics, if you want to kill more people, you need to incite hatred and antagonism between genders as quickly as possible."

"Because if there isn't enough hatred, it will be difficult to create a spiral of male and female players harming each other in the last 4 hours, and not enough people will die."

"Therefore, copycats must incite conflict through broadcasts as early as possible, and create an atmosphere of terror by killing as soon as the game enters the second phase and the rules of killing are updated."

"If you want to kill someone as quickly as possible, you need to prepare enough stomps in advance."

"With these ideas, the probability of finding copycats increased significantly. The two criteria of 'posting early' and 'abnormal like-to-dislike ratio' made it easy for me to pinpoint Community 1."

"I wasn't 100% sure either, but under those circumstances, I could only do my best to try."

Everyone followed his gaze and looked at Cao Haichuan.

Cao Haichuan nodded: "I did explain the idea, but it is really remarkable that this strategy can be implemented in a high-risk environment where it is impossible to communicate with players in the same community and death is always possible."

(End of this chapter)