Zheng Jie became even more anxious.
"What exactly is Lawyer Lin thinking? After checking all this data, his likes are probably almost used up, right?
"It looks like he’s searching for someone. Is he looking for the culprit who’s inciting players to kill each other?
"But so many people have broadcast messages. How is this behavior any different from looking for a needle in a haystack?
"Could the person he’s looking for be Gao Jialiang and Fang Wencong from Community 1? Otherwise, why would he check three pieces of information about Gao Jialiang?
"But I can’t see anything from this.
"Even if it really is Gao Jialiang or Fang Wencong, we probably can’t kill either of these two.
"These two must have already found fixed matching partners in the game through some method.
"And once such fixed partners appear, no one else can match with them anymore. Even if you have ‘Likes’ and ‘Dislikes,’ it’s impossible to kill them.
Zheng Jie scratched his head anxiously, feeling that with his intelligence, he was no longer qualified to think about the current situation.
He could only do his utmost to keep himself alive.
[Please enter the meeting room immediately. Delays will result in instant death penalty.]
Zheng Jie opened the door and quickly walked through the corridor toward the meeting room.
"Stop! Stay right there!
"My hand is on the murder button. Take one more step and I’ll kill you."
The moment the other person entered, they were startled by Zheng Jie’s voice.
This was a woman he hadn’t seen before, but it didn’t matter to Zheng Jie, because regardless of whether he knew them or not, whether they were male or female, he couldn’t trust anyone now.
"Turn around and stand against the wall with your hands behind your head.
"I don’t want to kill you. As long as you wait quietly for ten minutes, both of us will be fine."
Zheng Jie lowered his voice to make himself sound fierce and dangerous.
In reality, his body was trembling slightly.
The woman hurriedly faced the corner and stood with her hands behind her head, "I understand! I’ll do as you say, don’t be impulsive!"
Zheng Jie nodded, "Good.
"Let me tell you, before the game ends, I’ll give you one ‘Dislike.’ You don’t need to give me anything, and you can’t approach the control panel."
The woman’s panicked voice came from the other end of the room, "Okay, okay, as long as you don’t kill me, whatever you say goes.
"What about the room fee?"
Zheng Jie said, "Just let it deduct the money."
The woman quickly said, "I can pay for all of it."
Zheng Jie shook his head, "No need! Whether you pay for all of it or we each get deducted 200 for timing out, it’s the same."
The woman stopped insisting, "Okay, alright then."
After ending this meeting, Zheng Jie returned to the lounge once again.
Seeing that the number of times he’d been reported was still 2 with no change, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
He had survived another round.
Facts proved this method indeed worked.
According to the game mechanics, the ’murder’ operation would take effect within 10 seconds. In other words, if a player had enough ‘Dislikes’ or ‘Likes’ in hand, they could counterattack before dying within the 10 seconds of being ’murdered.’
Although on the surface this seemed like a rule encouraging mutual destruction, in actual operation, it instead increased the strategic space for players.
If pressing the ’murder’ button caused the opponent to die immediately, it would become a pure speed competition game where whoever pressed faster would survive.
There would be no room for mutual trust between players.
But allowing a full 10 seconds meant that if one side really pressed ’murder,’ the other side would have ample time to counter-kill, making both sides more rational.
With Zheng Jie securing the ’murder’ button first, as long as he hadn’t actually pressed it, the other party would likely not provoke him recklessly, allowing both sides to leave safely.
Zheng Jie could also use this opportunity to consume his ‘Likes’ and ‘Dislikes,’ preventing too much visa time from being deducted when he left.
Giving ‘Likes’ to male players and ‘Dislikes’ to female players would relatively not cause too much harm to the current situation.
Zheng Jie felt his back was completely soaked with cold sweat, and his legs were somewhat weak.
This kind of bluffing looked simple, but actually applying it carried enormous psychological pressure, more exhausting than a fight.
However, just as Zheng Jie sat down in his seat, he saw three more names on the leaderboard slowly crossed out with red lines.
One from Community 9, two from Community 12, and judging by the names, all were male.
35 players remained alive.
Zheng Jie felt some difficulty breathing, and just then, a new broadcast appeared.
[Jiao Hongtao from Community 8 broadcasts one piece of data to all players.]
[Among currently deceased players, the ratio of players who died from female reports is: ’60%’.]
It had finally begun.
Zheng Jie had already guessed earlier that when those two female players died, it wasn’t that males had no death risk, but simply that many people hadn’t yet accumulated three reports.
Now, the game had been going for 6 hours, and after the killing rule update, there had been 6 meetings.
Deaths caused by ’reports’ were starting to appear in clusters.
This data had tremendous destructive power for those male players who had already been reported and had enough ‘Dislikes’ on them.
Actually, if they adopted Zheng Jie’s ’bluffing’ strategy, they could effectively improve their survival rate.
But the problem was that players couldn’t communicate, and even if they had such strategies, they couldn’t share them.
As for broadcasts, they could only broadcast ratio data, nothing else.
Lawyer Lin’s data could indeed remind Zheng Jie, but that was because they belonged to the same Community 17, with some mutual trust and understanding.
Other players who hadn’t heard of the concept of "bluffing" beforehand, or were slightly less intelligent, couldn’t understand it at all.
Of course, if they really wanted to inform other male players about this ’deterrence’ method, there were two approaches, though both were quite forced.
The first method was to inform the meeting player after random matching, then have them relay it to other players, slowly spreading it through this method.
But the problem was that the meeting players might not help relay the information, and the efficiency was too low, with insufficient time.
The second method was the talent show, informing all players on the talent show stage.
But the problem was that this game’s talent show started from the 2nd hour, with 3 shows per hour, totaling only 21 shows.
With 2 people per talent show, most players could only appear on stage once.
Zheng Jie had already been on stage and was unlikely to be selected again.
Among the remaining players who could participate in talent shows, only those with relatively high like counts were left.
In Community 17, that would be Lin Sizhi and Yang Yuting.
Both of them had received many likes at the beginning, so they still hadn’t participated in talent shows until now.
"Now I can only hope that when Brother Lin performs in the talent show, he can spread this method as much as possible and save more people..."
Soon, the last meeting of the 6th hour ended.
Zheng Jie watched the other person walk out of the meeting room and breathed a sigh of relief.
Next, as long as he didn’t encounter a madman, he would most likely be safe before the final meeting.
Returning to the lounge, Zheng Jie sat down in his seat with mixed feelings. There were still two hours until the game ended, with 6 meetings remaining.
He glanced at the large screen, and his heart sank again.
Three more names had been crossed out.
[Community 1, Fang Wencong]
[Community 9, Xiao Zhiyu]
[Community 12, Zhao Duo]
[Zhang Shichao from Community 9 broadcasts one piece of data to all players.]
[Among all male players, the ratio who have been ’reported’ is: ’65%’.]