The two players participating in the talent show on the big screen were obviously more panicked than Zheng Jie.
Originally, the talent show was a good thing for earning extra likes, and everyone wanted to compete to get on. Who would have expected that when it was finally their turn, it had turned into a blatant killing game.
What was worse, killing through the talent show was easier than killing through meetings.
For killing through meetings, you first had to enter the same meeting room with the other party through matching or invitation, ensure your “Likes” or “Dislikes” outnumbered theirs, and additionally consume “Likes” or “Dislikes” to launch an attack.
But the talent show was different. As long as 20 players pressed "Boring," death would come immediately.
From previous talent show situations, getting 20 “Boring” votes wasn’t uncommon.
The talent show had just begun, and Performer No. 1, an honest-looking middle-aged man, was already crying bitterly.
"I don’t have any talent, I don’t have much visa time either. I just want to live safely until the game ends. Please, everyone, don’t kill me!"
He began kneeling on the ground, kowtowing with loud "bang bang bang" sounds.
So even if he wanted to end the talent show performance immediately, he couldn’t do it.
Zheng Jie sat in his chair, watching Performer No. 1 continuously kowtowing, his heart also clenched.
Finally, the agonizing minute passed, and the man with a large red patch on his forehead from kowtowing hurriedly got up from the ground and frantically pressed the button beside the talent show stage.
A notification sound played, and the audio switched to Performer No. 2.
Only then did the man seem like he had survived a catastrophe, continuously clasping his hands and bowing toward the camera.
Others had used this button to end the talent show early before, but none had been as urgent and heartfelt as this man.
Performer No. 2 also panicked. This was a woman in her thirties who looked fairly well made-up, with a small water stain on the shoulder of her clothes. She was now so frightened that she cried and sobbed toward the camera, completely disregarding the integrity of her makeup.
Fortunately, after the minute passed, nothing happened either.
[Performer No. 1 cumulatively received 7 “Interesting” votes, earning 0 additional “Likes.”]
[Performer No. 2 cumulatively received 2 “Interesting” votes, earning 0 additional “Likes.”]
Not only did few people vote “Boring,” but even those voting “Interesting” became scarce.
This might be because players had no time to pay attention to the talent show, being too busy racking their brains thinking of survival strategies.
It might also be because players simply couldn’t describe their feelings about watching the talent show as “Interesting.”
Or perhaps they felt afraid of the fact that "talent shows could lead to death," so they subconsciously avoided pressing any buttons within their reach.
Seeing that the two players participating in this talent show were safe, Zheng Jie couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Obviously, while this killing condition seemed easy, it wouldn’t be achieved quickly and immediately.
Most players weren’t participating in the game for the first time, they would still seriously consider the rules.
Killing through the talent show would mean at least 20 players participating together, so the 1/10 visa time obtained after killing a player would also have to be divided among 20 people.
After such division, there wouldn’t be much left.
Most players still had instinctive compassion, would sympathize, would feel sorry for their own kind. Just for these trivial bits of visa time, it would be hard to truly make up their minds to execute the performers on the talent show stage, even if they were strangers.
Moreover, when unable to determine whether the other party was actually threatening, having a few more players survive could reduce the probability of encountering killers in upcoming meetings.
So most players temporarily couldn’t press “Boring” to kill without psychological burden.
Even if some psychopathic players indiscriminately clicked “Boring,” or some players had grudges against the talent show participants, they couldn’t possibly reach 20.
This made Zheng Jie breathe a little easier. It seemed that even taking the talent show stage didn’t necessarily mean immediate death.
Moreover, he had already been on stage once, so now he was relatively safe.
Based on the current game mechanism, the talent show would prioritize selecting players who hadn’t been on stage yet.
Otherwise, if a player never got likes, wouldn’t they keep going on the talent show? That wouldn’t make much sense either.
Not getting likes previously and ending up on the talent show stage early had actually turned into a good thing for Zheng Jie.
"But... if I remember correctly, Lawyer Lin and Yang Yuting seem to haven’t been on the talent show yet, right?"
Zheng Jie couldn’t help but worry about the two of them.
From the talent show mechanism, Lin Sizhi and Yang Yuting should have received quite a few likes, so they ranked later in the talent show order.
But now as time passed, being later in the talent show seemed increasingly dangerous.
"Damn, if I had known this would happen, not getting ‘Likes’ and getting more ‘Dislikes’ would have been better!"
At this moment, Zheng Jie also realized that dislikes were also a resource.
The first phase had deliberately concealed related rules, so everyone subconsciously didn’t want to be disliked.
As a result, in the second phase, they became the most miserable type of people: having neither likes nor dislikes meant that whether the opponent chose to report or murder, they had no ability to fight back at all.
Because both "reporting" and "murder" operations had a prerequisite: comparing the numbers of “Likes” and “Dislikes” between both sides, and only those with more could execute the killing operation.
In other words, the more “Dislikes” someone had, the more initiative they possessed.
They could kill whoever they wanted, while others couldn’t kill them at all.
Just then, a new broadcast message appeared on the big screen.
[Community 17’s Lin Sizhi broadcasts a piece of data to all players.]
[In the last meeting, the percentage of players who actively sent meeting invitations to players with more likes than themselves was: ’15%’.]
Zheng Jie was stunned, "Oh? What does this mean?"
He was puzzled because this 15% data didn’t seem to reveal much additional information.
But since this was data sent by Lin Sizhi, Zheng Jie felt there must be some deeper meaning, so he spent more time thinking about it.
Suddenly, inspiration struck him.
"If the data doesn’t have much additional information, doesn’t that mean the information is hidden in the way the data was filtered?
"How many people specifically made this behavior doesn’t matter, but making this behavior is important!
"That means Lawyer Lin is reminding us that actively meeting with players who have more likes than ourselves can better ensure our safety and improve survival probability!
"Yes, exactly, that’s it!"
The more Zheng Jie thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed.
According to the game mechanism, the most dangerous players now were those who had accumulated 5 “Dislikes” and were full of resentment.
According to the game mechanism, since players who got more likes usually had fewer dislikes, matching with players who had more likes would obviously be much safer.
Among players who had already met with him, which ones had more likes?
Although he couldn’t check, he could roughly guess that the later a player appeared on the talent show, the more likes they had.
Of course, matching with such players wasn’t entirely risk-free, because they might also "report." But after all, "reporting" required three times before death, compared to "murder," there was still some margin for error.
Choose the lesser of two evils.
Zheng Jie rallied again. He hurried to the entrance of the meeting room corridor and sent a meeting invitation to Zhou Rong from Community 12 through the small screen.
This was the safest meeting partner Zheng Jie could currently think of.