Chapter 706: Donations

The group moved through the process quickly, each player stepping forward in turn to make their donation.

Although both the Community Development Fund and the Community Special Fund counted toward unlocking new items, the two served different purposes.

The Community Special Fund existed purely to redistribute visa time among players and was, in principle, something players could withdraw from freely.

Some players, Shen Bowen for instance, were carrying substantial visa time but had deposited most of it into the Community Special Fund, which contributed very little to the community's actual development.

Only donations to the Community Development Fund were counted as a player's contribution to the community.

So what everyone turned to examine now was the Community Development Fund rankings.

[1. Lu Bingjun: 870,000]

[2. Lin Sizhi: 420,000]

[3. Ye Lin: 310,000]

[4. Yao Yuan: 160,000]

[5. Qin Cheng: 130,000]

[6. Huang Shengjie: 80,000]

[7. Zhou Wanlin: 70,000]

[8. Shen Bowen: 60,000]

[9. Zheng Chunhua: 50,000]

[10. He Qinyun: 50,000]

[11. Zhang Yan: 50,000]

[12. Wen Wan: 40,000]

[13. Geng Yuxia: 30,000]

[14. Lu Qi: 30,000]

After ‘A Single Word to Settle a Case’, Lu Bingjun had donated his entire earnings, and he remained far ahead of everyone else in the rankings. He had not participated in the subsequent games, however, so he had no new visa time to contribute for now.

Ye Lin had earned something from the ‘Jury Game’ and donated an additional 80,000.

Lin Sizhi had come away from both ‘A Single Word to Settle a Case’ and the ‘Jury Game’ with high earnings, and had no particular reason to keep much visa time on hand visibly, so he donated it all without hesitation, pulling ahead of Ye Lin into second place.

Beyond that, both the ‘Prison Factory’ and the ‘Jury Game’ had yielded strong earnings overall, so the players who had participated in both had accumulated a great deal of visa time.

Qin Cheng and Huang Shengjie donated somewhat more, while Zhang Yan and Lu Qi donated somewhat less.

There were also a few players who donated more than their recent earnings would suggest.

Zhou Wanlin and Shen Bowen, for instance, had only participated in the ‘Prison Factory’. After accounting for the fixed monthly visa time expenditure, they shouldn't have had that much left to donate. But they still chose to withdraw a portion from the Community Special Fund savings and add it to the Development Fund, so the number beside their names wouldn't look too low.

After Deng Xiao's death, the visa time he had previously deposited into the community remained in place, though it was no longer recorded under any name.

On top of that, large amounts of visa time had also been deposited into the Community Special Fund.

Combined across both funds, the total had reached 1,780,000.

Lu Bingjun thought for a moment, "Looking at the previous thresholds, every additional 300,000 unlocks a new item.

"And once the fund is spent on a new item, it takes a very long time to build it back up.

"We're only 20,000 short of the next threshold. Let's make up the difference."

He and Yao Yuan each contributed an additional 10,000 from their personal visa time into the Community Development Fund.

Sure enough, three new items appeared in the shop.

[First Player Identity Card Privileges 1 and 2, cooldown permanently reduced by 7 days.]

[Price: 150,000 minutes of visa time]

[Discount Voucher]

[Consumable. Activates automatically upon purchase. All community purchases and expenses reduced to 80% for 7 days. Cooldown: 30 days.]

[Price: 100,000 minutes of visa time]

[First Player Identity Card Privilege 4 unlocked]

[4. After a player has continuously held the Identity Card for 1 month, they naturally earn 2,000 minutes of visa time per day. The timer begins upon purchase of this privilege. If the Identity Card changes hands, the timer resets.]

[Price: 120,000 minutes of visa time]

All three new items drew genuine interest from everyone in the room, and players read through the descriptions carefully.

Lu Qi's attention went straight to the Discount Voucher.

"A Discount Voucher! And it's 20% off?

"All three of these items together come to 370,000. At 80%, that's a saving of 74,000!"

Qin Cheng shook his head, "You have to factor in the cost of the Discount Voucher itself."

Lu Qi immediately realised her mistake, "Oh, right, the voucher costs 100,000 to begin with. If we only save 74,000, that's a net loss.

"But then, is there any situation where the Discount Voucher is actually useful?

"We'd need to spend at least 500,000 total for the voucher to break even.

"Is there really that much we'd be buying at once?"

Lu Bingjun considered for a moment, "The Discount Voucher is clearly designed to encourage us to buy several major items together.

"Like the Death Exemption Ticket, for instance.

"If you add up the Death Exemption Ticket, the First Player Identity Card, and the relevant cooldown reduction services all together, using a Discount Voucher would definitely be worth it.

"But we only just bought a Death Exemption Ticket not long ago."

Yao Yuan offered a suggestion, "Then the sensible approach is fairly clear.

"We could hold off on some of the less urgently needed special items and save them for the next time we buy a Death Exemption Ticket, buying everything together then.

"That way we'd definitely have enough to make the Discount Voucher worthwhile.

"Take Privileges 1 and 2 of the First Player Identity Card, the cooldown reduction. It's not without value, we did use it in the ‘Prison Factory’ and it did make a difference.

"But the return on investment is a bit low.

"There's no need to buy it now at full price."

Wen Wan looked a little deflated, "So we went to all that effort to unlock three new special items, and we can't buy any of them?"

Unlocking new items and then not purchasing a single one did feel somewhat anticlimactic.

Yao Yuan thought for a moment, "If we really had to choose one to buy now, it would have to be Privilege 4 of the Identity Card.

"2,000 minutes of visa time per day sounds modest at first glance, but it's an exceptionally stable income stream.

"It pays for itself in about two months.

"The reason we're holding off on the other items is that buying them at full price feels inefficient. We want to save them for when we have the Discount Voucher.

"But this item is a bit different.

"At a full price of 120,000, the voucher would save 24,000, which is 12 days of income.

"In other words, we can roughly ask ourselves: if we're likely to use the Death Exemption Ticket and buy with the Discount Voucher within the next 12 days, then there's no need to buy Privilege 4 now.

"On the other hand, if we're unlikely to spend the Death Exemption Ticket within 12 days, then buying it now is equivalent or possibly even better value."

Huang Shengjie scratched his head, sensing something wasn't quite right.

"Hold on, the description says the timer starts upon purchase of the privilege.

"Brother Lu has been holding the First Player Identity Card for well over a month already, but according to the rules, even if we buy it now, earnings would only start next month.

"So you can't calculate it as 12 days, can you?"

Yao Yuan explained, "Shengjie, you might be overcomplicating it.

"The exact moment the timer starts doesn't actually affect this particular question.

"Because buying the privilege one day earlier means the timer starts one day earlier, which means earnings begin one day earlier.

"The difference in visa time generated between the two scenarios is fixed regardless."

Huang Shengjie paused, "Oh. Actually, that does make sense."