Chapter 97: The Formation of a Scam Operation - God's Imitator - NovelsTime

God's Imitator

Chapter 97: The Formation of a Scam Operation

Author: Inebriation-seeking Blue Shirt
updatedAt: 2025-09-20

Yang Yuting also lowered her head in thought, "I also can’t figure out how mutual trust between the God’s Imitator and players in Community 1 was established?"

Li Renshu seemed to have already thought about this problem and explained, "I think there are two possibilities.

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

"As an incompetent God’s Imitator, she didn’t hide herself well, causing her to be exposed early due to various reasons.

"Community 1 failed to quickly decide how to deal with her. Under the collective surveillance of the entire community, the players collectively coerced the God’s Imitator to design and spoil games, turning the community into a scam operation.

"The second possibility is that Zhong Yuanyuan was the active party.

"She first established her core position within the community through some means, and strongly bound at least five very trustworthy core players, ensuring she wouldn’t be threatened by community proposals.

"Then she passed some kind of proposal within the community to evenly distribute visa time, binding everyone with interests.

"Only then did she reveal her cards, using both coercion and inducement to turn Community 1 into a scam operation."

Zheng Jie was thoughtful, "The second possibility seems higher? After all, Zhong Yuanyuan was in the safest position in the game."

Cai Zhiyuan shook his head, "We can’t be so certain. This could also be protective behavior willingly provided by other players. After all, finding such an easily controllable God’s Imitator isn’t easy, and they can’t let her die easily in games."

Wang Yongxin stroked his chin, "But regardless of which situation it is, we can confirm one point:

"For a God’s Imitator to cooperate with players and turn a community into a scam operation, the two sides must be one strong and one weak, not equal in strength.

"One strong and one weak, with one side coercing the other, this kind of cooperation is stable."

Some smart people heard his implication: Community 17 didn’t have such conditions.

From the current situation, Community 17’s average intelligence was obviously higher than Community 1’s, and could even be said to be higher than most communities they’d encountered.

While this was certainly good in community confrontations, it also brought a problem:

Community 17’s God’s Imitator would find it very difficult to establish trust with players.

If this God’s Imitator wasn’t very smart, then seeing the community’s high average intelligence, they would very carefully hide their identity and not dare to expose themselves.

If this God’s Imitator was very smart, then they would hide themselves even more perfectly.

And from the current analysis, it was most likely the latter.

In the short term, players didn’t dare to openly search for the God’s Imitator, or couldn’t find them even if they searched. The God’s Imitator also didn’t want to or dare to go on a killing spree against players for various reasons.

Instead, they were deadlocked.

If "finding the God’s Imitator" was a game of Werewolf, then other communities might have reached the finale right after entering the game.

The God’s Imitator would quickly accidentally expose themselves, or actively expose themselves but Community 17 had stubbornly played until now, with no progress visible at all.

Jiang He looked at everyone somewhat puzzledly, "Since such cooperation mechanisms exist, if our community really has a God’s Imitator, they can actively come forward!

"We can also run a scam operation!

"Our community has so many smart people. As long as we get advance knowledge of game rules, wouldn’t we be invincible?"

After these words, the hall fell into an eerie silence.

Li Renshu looked at Fu Chen and smiled, "Fu Chen! You wouldn’t be that God’s Imitator, would you?"

Fu Chen was stunned for a moment, then laughed, "Ah yes yes yes, I am. You all found me out."

Li Renshu pressed further, "Then what’s the next game? Tell us quickly!"

Fu Chen spread his hands, "How would I know! I haven’t even started designing yet!"

Li Renshu said seriously, "Then when can you finish designing!"

Fu Chen was somewhat helpless, "You’re more demanding than the Gallery! Why don’t you be the Gallery instead."

Everyone laughed. Obviously, this was a joke.

A God’s Imitator wouldn’t actively admit their identity.

Wang Yongxin sighed, "Since our community can hardly establish such cooperation mechanisms, wouldn’t we be very passive in future games?

"This time in the ’Blind Date Game,’ Community 1’s scam operation was witnessed by 4 other communities besides us.

"After they return, will they also be inspired and learn Community 1’s methods?

"And Community 1 too, although Zhong Yuanyuan is dead, the Gallery will very likely supplement them with a new God’s Imitator.

"Community 1’s players can completely coerce the new God’s Imitator to continue this model.

"In that case, every time we enter games, we might not only encounter God’s Imitators who know all the rules, but also players who know the rules in advance.

"Then what’s the point of playing these games anymore? Don’t let everyone else have scripts while we don’t."

Jiang He nodded, "Exactly! So which big brother or sister in our community is the God’s Imitator, please come out quickly!

"This is for our common benefit. We must cooperate now!"

Wang Yongxin glanced at Jiang He, wanting to speak but stopping himself.

Jiang He’s behavior was somewhat foolish, because Community 17’s God’s Imitator obviously couldn’t come out. Calling for them was pointless but sometimes, community discussions still needed these relatively foolish statements as catalysts.

Otherwise, if everyone was smart, with a table full of riddle-speakers all staring at each other, how could they play?

Cai Zhiyuan was thoughtful, "The more we talk about this, the more incredible it seems that Lawyer Lin was able to dismantle this scam operation.

"After all, ’God’s Imitators can run scam operations’ was the biggest information gap.

"Without realizing this point, at most you’d lock suspicion onto Gao Jialiang or Fang Wencong.

"Unable to kill Zhong Yuanyuan, the game wouldn’t end, and you might instead put yourself in danger.

"Lawyer Lin, how did you think of it?"

Lin Sizhi looked at Cao Haichuan, "Actually, this was inspiration I received from chatting with Officer Cao before.

"Officer Cao explained many case-solving principles to me in detail. Simply put, the most important point in rooting out God’s Imitators is to deduce their motives through game rules.

"For example, the motive of ’Blind Date Game’ was easy to deduce: the varied killing rules directly wrote ’I want to kill more people to earn visa time’ on their face.

"According to the game mechanism, since they wanted to kill more people, they had to quickly incite hatred and opposition between genders.

"Because if hatred wasn’t enough, it would be hard to form a spiral of mutual harm between male and female players in the latter 4 hours, and not enough people would die.

"So, the God’s Imitator had to incite opposition through broadcasts early, and after the game entered the second phase with updated killing rules, quickly kill to create a terrifying atmosphere.

"To kill quickly, they had to prepare enough dislikes in advance.

"With these thoughts, the probability of finding the God’s Imitator greatly increased. ’Broadcasting early’ and ’abnormal like-dislike ratios’, these two points let me successfully lock onto Community 1.

"I didn’t have 100% certainty, but in that situation, I could only make the greatest effort to try."

Everyone followed his gaze and looked at Cao Haichuan.

Cao Haichuan nodded, "I did explain the approach, but being able to implement this strategy in a high-risk environment where you completely couldn’t communicate with community players and could die at any moment was indeed remarkable."

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