Lin Sizhi paused for a moment, then continued to explain, "For example, Cell 1's theme is 'Worked to the Bone'. Cai Zhiyuan could go in, Uncle Ding could go in, or even Zhang Peng and Wang Yongxin could go in.
"No matter who goes in, a corresponding justification can be found.
"If Zhang Peng goes in, it's about making an idle person start working. If Wang Yongxin goes in, it's about letting a big boss who makes money effortlessly experience the hardship of being worked to the bone.
"Similarly, for Cell 2, 'Hanged from a Lamppost', Wang Yongxin could be hanged, or Gao Zhankui could be hanged. If a capitalist can be hanged from a lamppost, why can't the capitalist's accomplice?
"For Cell 3, anyone going in makes sense.
"For Cell 4, 'Silence is Golden', Zhang Peng could also go in, because Zhang Peng was constantly instigating Uncle Ding before. Him going into Cell 4 also fits the theme of 'Silence is Golden'.
"Cell 5's 'Undeserved Calamity' and Cell 6's 'Will of Heaven' are like Cell 3, a plausible explanation can be found for anyone who goes in.
"The King could make relatively free arrangements. As long as the King loudly announces the rationale for doing so while making the arrangements, a portion of the audience will agree, and the fairness rating won't drop too much.
"Of course, the prerequisite is that the King must have some eloquence.
"Moreover, even if the 'Trial of the King' mechanism is triggered early, it's not a big problem. Assuming Wang Yongxin is the King, if he clearly favors Uncle Ding and Cai Zhiyuan, as long as those two don't vote for execution, he is safe."
Fu Chen fell into deep thought, "Hmm... that seems to be the case."
Lin Sizhi continued, "Let's go back to the previous topic. If Wang Yongxin were the King, it's also possible he would enter a cell himself. Of course, this possibility is low, and he would only enter Cell 3.
"The King earns a lot of visa time in this game, and Wang Yongxin himself has a lot of visa time. If it's just a small deduction for entering Cell 3, he wouldn't mind too much.
"As for Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui, I don't know much about them, so it's hard to make specific guesses.
"But from a game mechanics perspective, a purely evil person in this game won't necessarily die.
"Suppose the King throws only two prisoners into the cells right from the start, and then, to get tips from the audience, tortures one of them to death. The fairness rating would definitely drop to zero quickly, triggering the trial.
"But as long as the prisoner favored by the King doesn't vote for execution, the King is safe.
"And the vote to try the King only happens once. As long as that vote is over, the King can do whatever he wants.
"Of course, the actual situation is much more complicated than this. I'm just making a hypothesis based on the game mechanics."
Cao Haichuan nodded, "Right. So, compared to these four people, what is Uncle Ding's biggest disadvantage in this game?
"I think it's just two words: conflicted.
"Uncle Ding is the most conflicted person among these five.
"So he adopted many different standards at different stages of the game.
"This led to him neither getting the highest fairness rating nor avoiding being disliked by all the prisoners."
Cao Haichuan exhaled a puff of smoke and continued:
"Of course, if Uncle Ding had known about the fairness rating vote, things might have been different. But unfortunately, the game's mechanics gave him no chance to know."
Fu Chen frowned and said, "I've been wanting to say this, deliberately hiding the fairness rating vote from the King does seem a bit unfair."
Lin Sizhi shook his head, "I actually think this mechanism is very reasonable.
"Because the King is already in a position of power, holding almost absolute control on the field. If he knew about the fairness rating vote, he could correct his behavior without hesitation and become invincible.
"The Gallery and the Copycat would not allow such a situation to happen.
"Moreover, this fairness rating mechanism, like 'Farmer's Walk', has a specific symbolic meaning.
"In reality, every one of a king's subjects will also cast a fairness vote for the king in their hearts, and the king will never know how many points he has left.
"Just as the poem says: The water that overturns the boat is the tears of the common people, a truth the ruler won't know until the flood is upon him.
"The King will never know when the trial will befall him, or even if such a trial is underway. By the time he sees the trial, it's already too late.
"Furthermore, it's not the audience who truly decides the King's life or death, but the prisoners.
"Just like in reality, after the subjects lose faith in the king, what ultimately decides whether the king is sent to the guillotine is often not the subjects, but the prisoners and slaves most persecuted by the king.
"In short, it is precisely because this series of game mechanics is so realistic and clever that it has intensified this trait of Uncle Ding's.
"The reason Uncle Ding is somewhat conflicted is that he has been holding in a fire. He has always felt that this world is unfair and hates this unfairness.
"There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but when he becomes a beneficiary of this unfairness, he is more likely to make some extreme decisions.
"Because he would think that repaying unfairness with unfairness is true fairness.
"Just like he retorted in the game, 'On what grounds?'
"Even for 18,000 minutes of visa time, he refused to pay.
"This isn't entirely due to stinginess, but also his obsession with fairness, which drove him to make such an irrational decision."
Fu Chen said thoughtfully, "So, the more someone cares about fairness, the more likely they are to fall into the trap of Cell 3...
"Then, did the designer of this game guess Uncle Ding's personality based on his profession and file, or... had he met or known Uncle Ding before?
"And what was his motive for deliberately plotting Uncle Ding's death?
"A personal grudge? Or, visa time?"
Lin Sizhi thought for a moment, "If it's to harvest visa time, that also makes perfect sense.
"Because this game has a most extreme possibility: Uncle Ding kills all four prisoners, and at this point, the fairness rating drops to zero, triggering the 'Trial of the King' mechanism, with a default of four execution votes.
"In that case, a total wipeout would be achieved. All the visa time the audience tipped to Uncle Ding, as well as the remaining visa time of Uncle Ding and the four prisoners, would all be harvested.
"That would be a very exaggerated number."
Fu Chen was silent for a moment, then asked, "By the way, which community did Uncle Ding play 'Blood Poker' with before? I remember, it seems to be Community 1?"
Lin Sizhi said no more, and all three fell into silence.
Cao Haichuan stubbed out his cigarette, "The deduction has gone far enough. Before more evidence is found, thinking deeper might be counterproductive.
"Besides, these are all pure speculations. It's possible we're just fighting with thin air.
"What if the designer really didn't think that much? What if these are all just coincidences? That's not impossible either.
"Just take it as me talking nonsense.
"It's getting late, go back and rest."
...
Lin Sizhi returned to his room, washed up, and turned on his computer.
No new messages.
This meant that for at least the next three days, the Gallery probably wouldn't open again.
He opened the game rules for 'King's Trial' to look at them again.
This was the second S-rated game to appear in the Gallery. Previously, even 'Blood Poker', which was the only one selected from all the Copycat proposals, was only A-rated.
Originally, Lin Sizhi had guessed that perhaps the files the Gallery sent to each Copycat were different. Since he didn't know the crimes of Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui, he hadn't designed the most fitting game.
And the Copycat who designed 'King's Trial' had Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui in the three clear files they received, so they designed a more severe game.
But from the situation in 'King's Trial', it seemed this Copycat wasn't particularly sure what Zhang Peng's and Gao Zhankui's crimes were either.
'Silence is Golden' seemed to be a guess based on Gao Zhankui's identity as a station manager, as it's hard for someone in that position not to incite delivery drivers; while 'Undeserved Calamity' was more like a catch-all, where any mistake could be fitted in.
The crimes of Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui were not particularly serious. Even if he had known in advance and improved his design proposal, Lin Sizhi's wouldn't necessarily have been chosen.
So, Lin Sizhi still had to figure out this key question: why did the Gallery ultimately choose 'King's Trial' and not the game he designed.
From the game's content, the game Lin Sizhi designed, 'Life and Death Line', also considered themes like algorithmic exploitation and guessed that these five people were very likely involved in the same case.
So the core difference probably wasn't there.
Lin Sizhi thought of two possibilities.
The first possibility was that the game he designed wasn't dangerous enough. Although it was called 'Life and Death Line', the actual probability of death in this game was very low.
This was because Lin Sizhi genuinely believed that Ding Wenqiang, Cai Zhiyuan, and Wang Yongxin's crimes did not warrant death, and they shouldn't have to face a trial game with such a high probability of death.
The game he forced himself to design only barely matched their crimes, so naturally, it could only be a low-mortality game.
And the biggest advantage the designer of 'King's Trial' had over Lin Sizhi was that they were not constrained by the specific crimes of these five players, and didn't care at all if the game would result in very tragic casualties.
According to the rules of 'King's Trial', it was possible for a "five-person wipeout" or "all but one dead" situation to occur.
The second possibility was that the game he designed lacked specificity.
Because it was a multiplayer game, Lin Sizhi did not target a specific player with the game mechanics like he did with Wei Xinjian before.
In contrast, 'King's Trial', besides being highly targeted at Ding Wenqiang, was also very clever in how the designs of the several cells catered to the Gallery:
At first glance, they seemed to perfectly match everyone's crimes, but upon careful thought, one would find that there was still a lot of ambiguity, not a strict one-to-one correspondence.
This could also be seen as a kind of better "test-taking skill".
Lin Sizhi wasn't sure which reason it was, but of course, it could be a combination of both.
He looked at the rules related to King's Trial and fell into deep thought.
"Perhaps for the Gallery, from the very beginning, it never cared whether the severity of the game's punishment strictly matched the criminal's crime.
"Ding Wenqiang had already received his due punishment by law, and from a legal perspective, Cai Zhiyuan had done nothing wrong at all.
"But the Gallery still pulled them into a cruel trial game.
"According to the description in the rules, the purpose of the Gallery is 'Purge and Trial', which is to purge the useless and try the sinners.
"The so-called sinners of the Gallery do not simply refer to criminals in the legal sense, but are closer to the concept of 'original sin', related to the weaknesses of human nature.
"Trial games can not only judge players for their existing crimes, but can also use entrapment to provoke the original sins in a player's human nature and inflict tragic punishments.
"In this situation, the Gallery would still give a very high rating.
"In the game, those who can't see through the game rules, those whose original sins are provoked, and those who cannot overcome the weaknesses of human nature, will all be deemed by the Gallery as unworthy of surviving in the new world.
"For a player, they must achieve any one of these three points to have a chance of surviving a trial game.
"And for the Gallery, as long as a game submitted by a Copycat satisfies one of these three points, it might pass the review; if it satisfies all three, it might get an S rating.
"As for whether the players live or die, are wronged or not, or whether it's fair, or if the designer has selfish motives... none of these are within the Gallery's consideration."
A patch was added in Chapter 12: A Copycat who receives an S rating can hide the visa time obtained through their Copycat identity in any public area.