Lin Sizhi paused slightly and continued, "For example, Cell No. 1 is themed around cattle and horses driven to exhaustion. Cai Zhiyuan can enter, Uncle Ding can enter, and even Zhang Peng or Wang Yongxin can enter.

"No matter who enters, a fitting justification can be found.

"If Zhang Peng enters, it's to make idle people start working. If Wang Yongxin enters, it's for the big boss who makes money while lying down to experience the hardship of being a beast of burden.

"Similarly, for Cell No. 2, where people are hung from a lamppost, Wang Yongxin can be hung, and so can Gao Zhankui. If capitalists can be hanged, why shouldn't the accomplices to capitalism hang as well?

"Cell No. 3, whoever enters, it makes sense.

"For Cell No. 4, Silence is Golden, Zhang Peng can also enter because Zhang Peng has been inciting Uncle Ding, so going to Cell No. 4 fits the theme of Silence is Golden.

"Cell No. 5 Unforeseen Calamity and Cell No. 6 Fate are similar to Cell No. 3, where anyone's entry can be reasonably explained.

"The King can make relatively free arrangements, as long as he loudly announces the reasonableness of such arrangements at the same time, then some of the audience will agree, and the justice score will not drop too much.

"Of course, the premise is that the King has a certain eloquence.

"Moreover, triggering the mechanism for judging the King in advance doesn't pose much of a problem. If Wang Yongxin is the King, as long as Uncle Ding and Cai Zhiyuan don't cast execution votes in the obvious bias towards them, he remains safe."

Fu Chen fell into thought, "Hmm... that makes sense."

Lin Sizhi continued, "Returning to the previous topic. If Wang Yongxin were the King, he might also enter a cell himself, although the likelihood isn't high and it would only be Cell No. 3.

"The King will earn a lot of visa time in this game, and Wang Yongxin himself has a lot of visa time. If deducting a little for entering Cell No. 3, he wouldn't mind much.

"As for Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui, I don't know much about them and it's hard to make specific guesses.

"But from the perspective of game mechanics, purely evil people in this game won't necessarily die either.

"Suppose the King, from the start, just throws two prisoners into cells and tortures one to death for audience rewards; the justice score will soon plummet, triggering a judgment.

"But as long as the prisoner favored by the King doesn't vote for execution, the King is safe.

"And there's only one chance to vote on the King's judgment. Once past this vote, the King can do whatever he pleases.

"Of course, the situation is more complex than this, and I'm merely making a hypothesis based on the game's rules."

Cao Haichuan nodded, "Yes, so compared to these four, what's Uncle Ding's biggest disadvantage in this game?

"I think it's just two words: stubbornness.

"Uncle Ding is the most stubborn among the five of them.

"Thus, he employed a variety of standards at different stages of the game.

"This prevented him from achieving the highest justice score while also being despised by all the prisoners."

Cao Haichuan exhaled a puff of smoke and continued,

"Of course, if Uncle Ding knew about the justice voting, things might have been different, but unfortunately, the game's mechanics denied him any chance of knowing it."

Fu Chen frowned, "I've been meaning to say, hiding the justice voting from the King does seem unfair."

Lin Sizhi shook his head, "I find this mechanism quite reasonable.

"Because the King is inherently the dominant side, almost holding absolute control on the field. If he knows the justice voting exists, he could correct his behavior without hesitation, securing an unbeatable position.

"The Walkway and the Imitator would not allow such a thing to happen.

"Moreover, the justice voting mechanism, like 'Farmer's Walk,' has specific implications.

"In reality, every subject of the King conducts a mental justice vote about the King, and the King will never know his actual score.

"As the poem goes: The boat secures its passage on the people's tears; until the waters are chaotic, one does not realize the danger.

"The King will never know when judgment will fall on him, or even if such judgment is ongoing. By the time he realizes, it will already be too late.

"Additionally, the King's life or death is truly decided not by the audience, but by the prisoners.

"Just like in reality, when subjects lose trust in the King, those who decide whether the King ends on the chopping block are often the prisoners and slaves most oppressed by the King.

"In short, it's precisely this series of realistic and ingenious game mechanics that heightened Uncle Ding's characteristics.

"Uncle Ding's stubbornness stems from his internal fury, always feeling the world is unfair and loathing this unfairness.

"There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but when he becomes the beneficiary of such unfairness, he's more prone to making extreme decisions.

"Because he believes that returning unfairness for unfairness is true justice.

"Much like his retort in the game—'why?'

"Even with 18,000 minutes of visa time, he refused to give in.

"That stems not entirely from stinginess, but also from his obsession with fairness, compelling him to act irrationally."

Fu Chen appeared contemplative, "So, those who care more about fairness are ironically more likely to fall into Cell No. 3's trap...

"Then, did the designer of this game deduce Uncle Ding's character from his profession and dossier, or… had he seen or known Uncle Ding before?

"What was his meticulously planned intent behind causing Uncle Ding's demise?

"A personal vendetta? Or was it visa time?"

Lin Sizhi thought for a moment, "If it were to harvest visa time, that would make complete sense too.

"Because this game has an extreme possibility: Uncle Ding kills all four prisoners, and at that moment, justice is zeroed, triggering the King's judgment mechanism, defaulting to four execution votes."

"In that case, it leads to a total annihilation ending. Whether it's the audience rewarding Uncle Ding's visa time, or the remaining visa time of Uncle Ding and the four prisoners, it will all be harvested."

"That would be a very exaggerated number."

Fu Chen was silent for a moment and then asked, "By the way, which community did Uncle Ding play 'Blood Poker' with before? I remember it seemed to be Community 1?"

Lin Sizhi said no more, and the three of them fell into silence.

Cao Haichuan extinguished his cigarette, "We have deduced to this point, and it's almost enough. Continuing to think too deeply without more evidence might backfire."

"Besides, these are purely guesses, and it's also possible that we're just outsmarting ourselves with thin air."

"What if the designer really didn't think that much? What if all this is just a coincidence? It's not impossible either."

"Just pretend I was talking nonsense."

"It's getting late, let's go back and rest."

...

Lin Sizhi returned to his room, washed up, and turned on the computer.

There were no new messages.

This means that at least for the next three days, the Walkway should not reopen.

He opened the 'King's Judgment' game rules again to review.

This was the second S-rated game to appear in the Walkway, and even the 'Blood Poker,' chosen as the only scenario among all imitators' options, only had an A rating.

Originally, Lin Sizhi speculated that maybe each file given by the Walkway to the imitators was different, and without knowing the crimes of Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui, he couldn't design the closest game.

And the imitator who designed 'King's Judgment' had Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui in their open files, so they designed a more stringent game.

But from the look of 'King's Judgment,' this imitator didn't seem very sure what Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui's crimes were either.

'Silence is Golden' seems to have been guessed based on Gao Zhankui's position as a site manager because this position would likely incite delivery personnel; while 'Unforeseen Calamity' seems more like a catch-all that can fit any mistake.

The crimes of Zhang Peng and Gao Zhankui were not particularly serious, even if known in advance. Even if Lin Sizhi improved the design plan, it might not be chosen.

Thus, Lin Sizhi ultimately needed to figure out this key problem: why did the Walkway eventually choose 'King's Judgment' and not the game he designed?

From the game content perspective, Lin Sizhi's 'Life and Death Line' game also considered algorithm exploitation themes, and he guessed that these five people were likely involved in the same case.

So the core difference should not be here.

Lin Sizhi thought of two possibilities.

The first possibility is that the game he designed wasn't dangerous enough. Although called 'Life and Death Line', the actual probability of death in this game is very low.

This is because Lin Sizhi genuinely believes that Ding Wenqiang, Cai Zhiyuan, and Wang Yongxin's crimes were not worthy of death, and they shouldn't face a high death probability judgment game.

The game he was forced to design merely aligns with their crimes, so naturally, it can only be a low-death-rate game.

The biggest advantage of the designer of 'King's Judgment' compared to Lin Sizhi is that he was not restricted by the specific crimes of these five players and was entirely unconcerned whether this game would have severe fatalities.

According to the rules of 'King's Judgment,' a "five-person annihilation" or "only one person surviving" scenario could occur.

The second possibility is that the game he designed lacked specificity.

Since it was a multiplayer game, Lin Sizhi did not specifically target any particular player with the game mechanics, unlike when he previously targeted Wei Xinjian.

In contrast, 'King's Judgment' was not only extremely targeted towards Ding Wenqiang, but the design of several prisoner cells cleverly catered to the Walkway:

At first glance, it perfectly matches everyone's crimes, but upon closer consideration, it's clear there's still considerable ambiguity and that they are not absolutely one-to-one correspondences.

This could also be seen as a form of superior "exam technique."

Lin Sizhi wasn't sure which specific reason it was, or possibly both.

He looked at the relevant rules of King's Judgment and fell into deep thought.

"Perhaps for the Walkway, from the very beginning, the severity of punishment in the game and whether it strictly matched the criminals' crimes didn't matter."

"Ding Wenqiang has already received the legal punishment he deserved, and from a legal perspective, Cai Zhiyuan did not commit any errors."

"But the Walkway still dragged them into the brutal judgment game."

"According to the description in the rules, the purpose of Walkway's existence is 'elimination and judgment,' namely eliminating waste and judging sinners."

"The so-called sinners in the Walkway do not solely refer to legal criminals, but are more akin to the concept of 'original sin,' related to human nature's weaknesses."

"A judgment game can not only assess the player for existing crimes, but also use entrapment methods to evoke the original sin within human nature and impose severe punishment."

"In this case, the Walkway will still give a high evaluation."

"In the game, those who cannot see through the game's rules, are induced to reveal their original sin, and cannot overcome human nature's weaknesses are deemed unworthy to survive in the New World by the Walkway."

"For players, they must achieve any of these three points to have a chance of surviving the judgment game."

"For the Walkway, as long as the game mimicked by an imitator satisfies any of these three points, it's likely to pass the review; if all three points are met, it may receive an S rating."

"As for whether players live or die, are wronged or not, or whether it's fair, or if the designer has personal motives… none of these are within the concerns of the Walkway."

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