Chapter 567: Chapter 567: Isolating Patients from Doctors

Huang Shengjie looked at Lin Sizhi with a confused expression, then looked at Qian Li.

It was obvious that when Qian Li was talking to Lin Sizhi, she was completely different from before.

The toughness and cleverness she’d shown earlier seemed to have vanished entirely, replaced by unconditional concession.

Why?

What’s more, as the game had gone on to this point, Huang Shengjie still had many, many questions that hadn’t been answered, so he was even more at a loss.

Lin Sizhi seemed to have guessed what he was thinking and explained, "The reason you can’t figure out a lot of things is actually just because there’s an information gap between old players and new players.

"You might already have some hypotheses, but blind spots are blocking your thinking, so those hypotheses can’t be pushed any further."

Huang Shengjie was still a little confused. "Information gap? Blind spots?"

He looked at Lin Sizhi and found that the other party seemed to have completely figured out everything that had happened in the lounge.

And this was done without ever appearing in the lounge, just based on Huang Shengjie’s rough description.

Lin Sizhi glanced at Qian Li, then at Zhang Yuan. "It’s simple. These two are old friends; they’ve known each other for a long time.

"Qian Li, I remember that before, during the ’Simple Q&A’, a player from your Community once asked a question: what’s the surname of Player No.1 in Community 1.

"The answer was that his surname is Zhang.

"Could it be that it just happens to be this gentleman here?"

Qian Li looked a bit deflated and spread her hands without saying anything.

Obviously, the tricks that could run a new player like Huang Shengjie in circles were, to Lin Sizhi, just little gimmicks he could see through at a glance, not worth arguing or struggling over.

Zhang Yuan gave a somewhat helpless greeting. "Lawyer Lin, I’ve long heard of you.

"Before this I’d only heard some things about you in the Community, never actually met you.

"Originally I thought those might be some kind of demonized descriptions. Now it seems they weren’t exaggerated at all."

Huang Shengjie’s eyes widened. "What?

"So you two have known each other from the very beginning? In the first stage, you were players from the same Community!

"It was only after entering the second stage that the Communities were broken up, so you were assigned to different Communities.

"After you met again, you deliberately pretended not to know each other, and were actually playing a double act?

"The three of us mistakenly thought we could swing between you like a centrist, choosing whichever side was more beneficial to us, but in reality, from the start this was a trap you set for us three passersby?"

Zhang Yuan let out a silent sigh. "Yes."

After being exposed by Lin Sizhi, there was no point in continuing to pretend, so he could only be forced to enter the "confession mode" as Lin Sizhi called it.

Zhou Xiaoying’s expression was equally shocked.

"So you two were deliberately undercutting each other and talking against each other, but in fact you were just putting on a show for us?

"You’d already divided up the roles in advance.

"Qian Li, you were playing the good cop, deliberately acting relatively friendly; and Zhang Yuan was playing the bad cop, showing more malice.

"You even divided up the drugs clearly: one selling type O, the other selling type F. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

"That way, no matter how we chose, we were actually still inside your trap?

"But there are still a lot of things I don’t understand.

"Why did the doctor only see you two and not us? At the very beginning, Zhang Yuan was an Infected and didn’t have any drugs, so why were his symptoms lighter than Qian Li’s? And also..."

Huang Shengjie interrupted Zhou Xiaoying and explained, "I’ve more or less figured it out.

"Qian Li, you must have secretly given Zhang Yuan drugs, right?

"At that moment right after the first round ended, when you two brushed past and bumped into each other.

"So before you met in the first round, you didn’t know the other was in the game too, but after meeting, you immediately reached a tacit understanding: pretend not to know each other and undercut each other.

"Afterwards, once you went back to your rooms, you could directly initiate a call to work out more detailed strategies."

Qian Li looked at Lin Sizhi, then silently sighed.

"Forget it, I’ll explain it myself and save some time.

"In the first-stage game, Zhang Yuan and I were in the same Community.

"We weren’t a particularly strong Community, but when it came to ’running a black shop’, we did do a lot of discussion, research, and preparation.

"We’d worked out many sets of plans and frameworks. Once we met, with just a simple facial expression or gesture, we could roughly tell what type of strategy the other wanted to use.

"Originally, in the first-stage game, these preparations didn’t come in very handy.

"After all, as soon as other players saw we were from the same Community, they’d naturally assume we knew each other and become wary.

"I just didn’t expect that in the second stage these strategies would actually become useful again.

"Because we’d already been scattered into different Communities, and the name tags on our chests showed different Community numbers, it was hard for you to realize that we’d known each other all along.

"Right when the game started and we’d finished listening to all the rules, I realized this game was a standard ’negative-sum game’.

"Because the game itself doesn’t generate any visa time; all medical points and visa time only circulate among players. Moreover, when you consume visa time in the game to buy medical points, there’s a serious loss—you can only exchange at a ratio of 2:1 or even 4:1.

"In other words, if you want to gain from this game, you can only do it by looting other players.

"Sales, Auditors, and doctors are advantageous roles because they naturally control the channels through which drugs circulate.

"As ordinary patients, if we want to profit the same way, we have to cut off the drug circulation chain and find a position for ourselves on it.

"So from the first round on, I’ve been trying to sever your contact with the doctor.

"That’s also why the doctor has never seen you at all."

Zhou Xiaoying found it hard to believe. "But... how exactly did you do that? I slipped the doctor a red envelope with 5,000 medical points in it. Could you really offer a higher price than that every single round?

"That’s basically impossible!"

Qian Li explained, "In the first round, I directly gave 2,000 medical points.

"Among the three of us, that was bound to be the highest.

"Because according to the rules, the earliest the doctor can get special drugs is the second round, and they can only be handed to patients in the third round.

"So the vast majority of players wouldn’t offer that many medical points at the very beginning."

The "three" Qian Li was referring to were herself, Zhou Xiaoying, and Du Peng. The three of them were on the left half of Zone C and were assigned to the same doctor.

The other half was Huang Shengjie, Zhang Yuan, and Lin Sizhi, who were assigned to another doctor.

Zhou Xiaoying suddenly nodded in realization. "Right, in the first round I gave 500, and it got returned.

"Wait, but didn’t the doctor also not see you?

"I always thought the doctor had gone to see the Auditor."

Qian Li shook her head. "The doctor accepted my request, but I didn’t open the door."