Chapter 736: Withdrawing Sympathy Votes

Huang Shengjie stood frozen, momentarily unable to process it.

"How is that even possible?

"How could the very first batch already have been fake?

"These audience members must be lying!

"Maybe they're deliberately saying the medication doesn't work to scare other communities off buying it, so they can scoop up everything that's left themselves?

"But that doesn't make sense either. Players from other communities have already bought the medication. They could just as easily test it themselves.

"If it's genuinely effective, then what Community 7 and Community 22 are saying makes no sense at all.

"But if it really is fake, then how? How could this only be discovered now?"

Huang Shengjie fired off question after question, but got no answer.

He turned and saw Ye Lin's eyes wide with the same shock.

But she had clearly worked something out. She stared at the large screen in disbelief, her body trembling faintly.

On the floor, Zeng Yiming had lost all of his earlier composure, looking visibly shaken and rattled.

"How could the medication have no effect?

"That's impossible. It has to be false information from those two audience communities!

"All five of us inserted real coins! Didn't we?

"I'm asking you! Answer me!"

Zeng Yiming's furious gaze swept across the other players, but apart from Liang Guicheng, the other three all avoided his eyes, refusing to respond.

Something seemed to click for Zeng Yiming.

Forcing down his rage, he walked up to He Qing. "Did you really have to do this? Did you need to see all of us destroyed before you'd be satisfied?

"Your room really was dangerous, the cold or the heat could genuinely have caused hypothermia or heatstroke. I understand wanting to cut corners because of that. But what gave you the right to gamble with all of our lives?"

The others all turned to stare at He Qing in unison.

It was obvious that if something had gone wrong in one of the five stages, He Qing was the most likely suspect. His room was the most dangerous, and it directly determined the yield rate, or rather, his stage and Zhao Xiuying's stage together determined it.

He Qing could choose between two extreme environments, cold or heat, both of which posed a genuine risk to his health. The longer he held out, the more processing time Zhao Xiuying would have available. Only if both of them endured the maximum duration could the medication achieve its highest possible yield.

But conversely, if He Qing chose to insert a fake coin, the yield rate would collapse entirely to zero, regardless of how normal everything appeared on the surface. Every batch would come out worthless, rendering every other stage meaningless.

He Qing snarled back, "Are you out of your mind? Why come to me first the second something goes wrong?

"Have you even considered why I might have done it?

"I could see Liang Guicheng inserting his coin. He was using fake coins from the very start!

"So it didn't matter what I inserted. The medication was already ruined. That's why I switched to fake coins too, understand?

"And what makes you think those two are innocent?"

He pointed at Zhao Xiuying and Wen Wan. "This lady here could see what I was doing, and she never called me out on it. Why? Because she was inserting fake coins too!

"So how is this on me?

"Liang Guicheng started it. What choice did the rest of us have but to follow, one after another?

"There was no point inserting real coins anymore once he'd already ruined it!"

Everyone's attention turned toward Liang Guicheng at once.

His face went completely pale. "But, but Zeng Yiming used fake coins! I saw it clearly!

"If he hadn't gone first, why would I have dared to do it?

"His stage determines the potency. If he used a fake coin, the medication was already worthless from the very beginning! It didn't matter what I did after that!"

Zhao Xiuying stepped forward, her voice rising with fury. "Learning to copy someone else's excuse the second you hear it, is that it?

"You think blaming everyone else keeps you safe? Think you can just muddy the water and slip away?

"You think we're stupid enough to believe that garbage?

"You were the first one to insert a fake coin!"

He Qing's face had gone equally dark. "Don't think we don't know exactly what you were counting on, Liang.

"You knew that the moment you inserted a fake coin, the entire chain was already ruined. You knew none of us would dare call you out, because doing so would mean admitting we'd have to go along with it too.

"And that's exactly what happened. I saw you use a fake coin, and for a moment I let it slide, wanting to see how the audience would react.

"But I forgot something. Once this batch was found to be defective, the potency issue would be the first thing anyone noticed. Which meant this lady and I ended up taking the fall for you. You played that hand well, didn't you?

"You absolutely deserve to die for this."

The five offenders on the floor had descended into open shouting.

Chaotic broadcasts rang out one after another.

[1 Sympathy Vote has been withdrawn from Liang Guicheng.]

[1 Sympathy Vote has been withdrawn from Liang Guicheng.]

[1 Sympathy Vote has been withdrawn from He Qing.]

[Zeng Yiming has received 1 Sympathy Vote.]

Clearly, sorting out exactly whose fault it truly was had become an impossible tangle. But one thing was now an established, verified fact: the medication itself had no effect whatsoever.

With that in mind, the audience was redistributing their Sympathy Votes based on how much hostility they now felt toward each offender.

Huang Shengjie, still confused, walked back to the console.

"How are they even withdrawing Sympathy Votes?"

He pressed the Withdraw button again. The same click sounded, and the small panel beside the console popped open, still empty.

But this time, understanding hit him quickly.

"This slot, it's for depositing medication."

The rules had only vaguely mentioned that votes could be withdrawn and recast at significant cost, without ever specifying what that cost was. Now Huang Shengjie finally understood: players could deposit medication they had purchased into this slot, and in exchange, withdraw a portion of the Sympathy Votes they had already cast.

The amount of medication required would be considerable, translating into a substantial sum of visa time, which certainly matched the description of a significant cost.

But medication and visa time were fundamentally different things.

If withdrawing a vote required spending visa time directly, most players would have been reluctant to do it. They'd likely have chosen to simply accept the loss.

But if the cost could be paid in medication instead, then a great many audience members in this game wouldn't hesitate for even a moment.

The broadcasts kept coming, with more and more Sympathy Votes being withdrawn and recast toward other players.

Only Zeng Yiming had not had a single vote withdrawn from him.

The audience members who had purchased the medication were now in a state of extreme fury, nearly beyond reason. But even so, they could see clearly enough that among the five offenders, Zeng Yiming was the one with the least reason to have used a fake coin, and the only one who had genuinely earned the right to survive this Elimination-type game.