The game officially began.
All 12 players had already arrived early at the ’Work Zone.’
The Work Zone also had notice boards explaining the rules, with one rule highlighted in red:
[Conglomerate players can forcibly seize work opportunities using their ID badges.]
This was a previously known rule, now being emphasized again.
Under Fan Zehui’s allocation, Community 4 was assigned 2 button groups, while Community 12 and Community 17 each received 1 button group.
Lin Sizhi and Cai Zhiyuan raised no objections to this arrangement.
Obviously, after communication, Communities 12 and 4 had already treated Community 17 as their common enemy, the target of oppression.
Under these circumstances, having 1 button group was already quite good.
That is, even after Civilian players swiped their ID badges, Conglomerates could swipe again.
Even if Community 17 occupied two button positions first, it would be meaningless, because Community 4 could occupy the other two groups, then Community 12 could exercise Conglomerate privileges to seize Community 17’s two groups as well.
Lin Sizhi and Cai Zhiyuan both understood this clearly, so they didn’t protest and naturally accepted this arrangement.
Regarding button personnel, Community 4 had two button groups, so naturally all 4 players went into action.
Community 12 chose to have Zhou Guifen and another player ’He Ming’ press the buttons.
He Ming was an extremely thin middle-aged man who looked like a submissive nice guy with no opinions of his own.
This arrangement was made because Zhou Guifen was ’youth’ while He Ming was ’childhood,’ with the least initial visa time among the four Conglomerate members.
Getting their wealth to quickly reach the 10,000 threshold would allow them to invest in others, ensuring the Conglomerate community’s wealth circulated at maximum speed.
Community 17 had ’youth’ Cai Zhiyuan and ’youth’ Qin Yao press the ’Work’ and ‘Revenue’ buttons respectively.
This game didn’t restrict ’childhood’ players from pressing ’Work’ buttons, which somewhat smacked of allowing child labor but Lin Sizhi considered that his initial visa time was too little and couldn’t reach the 10,000 investment threshold in the short term, so he simply let others have the work opportunities first.
Luo Wei was an ‘Adult’ player with 5,000 initial wealth, but for various reasons, Lin Sizhi and Cai Zhiyuan didn’t assign her any buttons.
The first round began, and all players assigned ’Work’ buttons had already positioned themselves in front of the buttons, watching intently.
The device had a very simple design, just a column over a meter tall with a large button at the top marked ’Work.’
Next to the button was a special sensor area for swiping electronic ID badges.
The two button groups from Communities 12 and 17 were placed together. While waiting, Lin Sizhi casually asked, "Aunt Zhou, are you related to Zhou Rong?"
Zhou Guifen was stunned and quickly shook her head, "No, it’s just a coincidence. We both have the surname Zhou."
Lin Sizhi smiled, "Nothing special, just asking casually. I thought you might have some relatives or acquaintances in Community 12."
Zhou Guifen also instinctively said, "How could that be? Previously we should all have been strangers to each other, right? Isn’t your community the same?"
Lin Sizhi didn’t answer, pointing at the button that happened to start flashing special lighting effects, "Quick, you can press it now."
Zhou Guifen hurriedly reached out to press it.
A long strip of lights above the machine also lit up, displaying ’Working’ and a progress bar that kept growing.
According to game rules, it needed to be pressed for 1 full minute.
On the ‘Revenue’ button side, the device design wasn’t much different from the ’Work’ button. It also had a place for swiping ID badges, but the lighting above wasn’t a progress bar but two inconspicuous small green lights.
Currently both small green lights were off.
As the ’Work’ button progress bar completed, the two green lights on the ‘Revenue’ button also lit up.
According to game rules, the button could now be pressed twice. The first time by the player who swiped their ID badge, earning 1,000 minutes visa time. The second time could only be pressed by the player who pressed the corresponding ’Work’ button, earning another 1,000 minutes visa time.
The player who pressed the ’Work’ button could also press the second ‘Revenue’ button, so everyone walked toward the ‘Revenue’ buttons together.
The player standing in front of the ‘Revenue’ button pressed it first, then the corresponding ’Work’ button player pressed it a second time.
Everyone’s actions were uniform without obvious anomalies.
On Community 17’s side, Cai Zhiyuan pressed ’Work’ once and ‘Revenue’ once, earning 2,000 minutes visa time.
Qin Yao pressed ‘Revenue’ once, earning 1,000 minutes visa time.
After everyone finished, Fan Zehui breathed a slight sigh of relief, went to the notary office, and purchased an investment voucher.
During this process, 5,000 minutes visa time was automatically deducted from him, while his selected ’investee’ received 2,000.
So Community 12 players began intentionally covering the ’Wealth’ numbers on their chests.
This way, other players couldn’t know the specific wealth distribution within the Conglomerate players.
As for Community 17, there was no need to cover anything yet because all wealth numbers were open cards.
Ten minutes passed, and Round 1 ended.
[Current Total Wealth: 47,000 minutes visa time]
Investment hadn’t yet generated returns. Investing 5,000 to receive 2,000 was actually a temporary loss of 3,000.
All profits came from work, totaling 12,000 minutes visa time.
In Round 2, everyone allocated work opportunities the same way as before, but since no one exceeded the 10,000 threshold, no investment occurred.
[Current Total Wealth: 59,000 minutes visa time]
Although the total wealth growth rate seemed slow, as more players reached 10,000, they should soon be able to max out the 110,000 investment return ceiling.
The situation was still relatively optimistic.
Just then, Fan Zehui’s ID badge made a "beep" sound, and the information on it changed.
[Community 12 - Fan Zehui]
[Identity: Conglomerate]
[Age: 0 years old (Childhood)]
[Wealth: 0 minutes visa time]
Seeing this change, Fan Zehui wasn’t too surprised because this was an expected result.
His initial identity was the only ‘Old Age’ among the 12 players, so after 2 rounds his age had reached 80 and it was time to respawn.
A message appeared on the big screen.
[Due to age structure changes, new management has been selected. Please confirm through your ID badges.]
Fan Zehui had already made a will at the notary office, so after his death all remaining visa time would transfer to Zhou Rong through the will.
Since all tax rates were currently 0, no inheritance tax would be deducted.
Also, since management could only come from ‘Old Age’ and ‘Adult’ players, Fan Zehui automatically lost his management status. The rıghtful source is 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹·𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾·𝗇𝖾𝗍
He looked toward Zhou Rong.
Because Zhou Rong’s initial identity was ‘Adult’ and had now become ‘‘Old Age’,’ with 10,000 minutes visa time wealth, she should still be in management with default votes increasing from 1 to 2.
However, Zhou Rong looked at her chest ID badge with some shock, her voice full of confusion.
"Huh? Is there a malfunction?
"Why has the ’Management’ tag on mine disappeared?"