Chapter 697: Standing Together

Shen Bowen's brow furrowed deeply, "So Wei Changfeng ultimately chose to get involved after all.

"That makes sense. Looking at how things turned out, both sides had clearly reached a point of no return, and abandoning a teammate at that moment would have been anything but wise.

"No matter what Gao Teng said or did, Wei Changfeng ultimately had no choice but to follow without question.

"But in the end, was it still a case of losing by a single move?

"Was the other side really that strong?

"From everything described so far, Wei Changfeng was a top-tier player. Even playing seriously, he still lost?"

Qin Cheng's brow furrowed, "Because the game's rules were not actually fair. Our side was at a massive disadvantage.

"Let's go back and lay out the situation as it stood at that point.

"In that extreme state of play, what were the factors that ultimately decided the outcome?

"First, luck. That was beyond anyone's control, so there's nothing more to say about it.

"Second, confessions. Every round required producing something that would genuinely shock all three players on the other side.

"If you failed to do that, the opposing side's total would only shift within a range of plus or minus 4, and they could adjust flexibly to get closer to 21, giving themselves a much stronger winning position.

"That was completely unacceptable.

"And the confessions had to be planned carefully, split into pieces and delivered in a specific order.

"Once all usable confession material was exhausted, the ammunition was gone, and losing became inevitable.

"Third, trust and coordination. All three players on your side had to be fully involved.

"Each player's hand was different, and if your initial cards were already high, taking an extra hit carried a serious risk of busting. So it only made sense for the player with the lowest starting total to take the hit.

"And because Zheng Qingyun was counting and manipulating the return order, if the number of cards used each round remained consistent, he could potentially use his earlier method again to direct high-value cards to his own players. The only way to prevent this was to take hits in an irregular pattern.

"Finally, you had to ensure, as much as possible, that the penalty counts were distributed evenly across all three players on your side.

"If the penalty counts concentrated on a single player, even if that player was prepared to sacrifice themselves, losing them early would put the remaining two at an enormous disadvantage and could cause a complete collapse."

Lu Qi looked slightly uncertain, "I understand there would be a disadvantage, but would it really be that severe?"

Huang Shengjie nodded quickly, "Of course it would.

"Because by that stage both sides had already pushed the rules to their absolute limit, and the margin for error was extremely thin.

"In the end it still came down to the cards in your hand, and they couldn't be too high or too low. Going from three hands to two hands would dramatically reduce the chances of drawing something workable."

Qin Cheng added, "And the confession material would almost certainly be affected as well.

"Looking at what Zheng Qingyun did, a player could choose to confess the crimes of another player on the same side.

"But if that player was already dead, that option would presumably no longer be available."

Lu Bingjun nodded and added, "Some rules were not stated from the outset, but could be inferred from the game records.

"For instance, confessing using a dead player's crimes was invalid. A player who died in the current round would still have their hand counted in that round's settlement and could still win, but would receive no cards in the following round."

Qin Cheng continued, "Wei Changfeng's final decision to stand alongside Gao Teng looked somewhat reckless at first glance, but given the circumstances at that moment, it was genuinely the only viable option.

"Gao Teng had said he once had the thought of killing a specific player within the community, and that he had acted on it. That meant he had already come to terms with dying in the game. For Wei Changfeng, even if he had abandoned Gao Teng, the consequences back in the community would not have been too severe.

"An ordinary player might have weighed up whether to cut Gao Teng loose.

"But the real question was: if Gao Teng died, would Zheng Qingyun go for the kill and finish off the remaining two as well?

"Assume Gao Teng was the one taking hits and confessing every round. Each time he lost, he would accumulate twice the penalty counts of Wei Changfeng and Xu Yili.

"Gao Teng alone against three players was obviously a losing battle.

"By the time Gao Teng died, Wei Changfeng and Xu Yili's devices would already have reached a dangerous point of activation.

"If there were still many rounds left before the game ended and the situation shifted to three against two, whether Zheng Qingyun chose to finish them off would depend entirely on his mood.

"There was a theoretical possibility that Zheng Qingyun might hold back to avoid Wei Changfeng fighting to the death, but that was far from certain.

"Betting on the restraint of a cheat is an extremely foolish gamble.

"And beyond the tactical calculation, no matter how much of Gao Teng's darker side had been exposed, he was still a comrade across many games, and that was not something Wei Changfeng could simply discard.

"Even if Gao Teng had done wrong, that was a matter to be brought before the community after returning. Abandoning him in the middle of a game made no sense at all.

"So, given the situation and given Wei Changfeng's character, his only option was to go all in and win at whatever cost.

"Either all three of them survived, or all three of them died."

Shen Bowen gave an approving nod, "Yes, that's exactly right. So even though Wei Changfeng's decision appeared somewhat driven by feeling, it was in fact the only choice he could have made.

"The game's rules were not fair, but he had no choice but to accept that.

"Under this set of rules, crimes had become ammunition and resources.

"But the other side had three deeply guilty individuals, whereas Wei Changfeng and Xu Yili, even if they had done something wrong in the real world, likely hadn't done anything severe enough to genuinely shock the other side.

"As for crimes committed within the community? Even if there were any, they wouldn't stretch very far.

"That was a massive disadvantage.

"If luck also happened to be against them, then yes, they would lose."

Huang Shengjie quickly turned to Lu Bingjun, "Brother Lu, so in the end, was it a loss down to luck? Or did they simply run out of confession material?"

Lu Bingjun quietly let out a long breath, "If it had only come down to luck, would there have been any reason to keep all of this so carefully buried?

"What happened next was completely beyond anything we had anticipated.

"The game itself, in terms of its mechanics, doesn't need much explaining. Both sides chose the right players to confess and take hits each round, and it wasn't only Wei Changfeng, Xu Yili was also fully involved.

"Both sides spread the penalty counts across all three players to avoid losing anyone first.

"At times, when securing a win or disrupting the card sequence was necessary, two players on the same side would both take hits in the same round.

"The only real difference between the two sides was in the specific crimes they exposed.

"On Community 6's side, all three players were thoroughly contemptible individuals.

"Zheng Qingyun was a professional cheat. The player to his right was a domestic abuser. The player to his left was a fraudster.

"What made it worse was that each of their crimes could be split and reused multiple times.

"Take the domestic abuser to Zheng Qingyun's right, for example.

"The first confession was the fact that he had driven his wife to suicide.

"The second confession was that he received an extraordinarily short sentence.

"The third confession was the specific cause and details of one particular act of abuse.

"At the extreme end, that single crime could be broken into three separate confessions.

"In theory, after the first two confessions, Wei Changfeng's side would have built up some mental expectation of what the domestic abuser was capable of. But when the specific details of extreme cruelty in a particular incident were laid out, it was still impossible to press 'Unmoved' in any genuine sense.

"And to keep winning, Wei Changfeng, Gao Teng, and Xu Yili had no choice but to bring out increasingly weighty crimes of their own."

Huang Shengjie paused, visibly thrown, "When you say weighty crimes, do you mean... Wei Changfeng was actually the Imitator within the community?

"Because his last confession was that he performed well in earlier games because he had advance knowledge of the rules.

"But something like that could only be used once, couldn't it? Would that really keep making the other side choose 'Shocked'?"