Chapter 724: The Production Rooms

Wen Wan returned to her waiting room and tried entering the number 0211 on the machine corresponding to Zeng Yiming.

After pressing the confirm button, a special light effect appeared over the four digits along with a distinctive click, and the numbers were locked in a green border.

This meant all four digits were correct.

Wen Wan stared at the screen, "Completely right?"

She had gone in with considerable scepticism, wondering whether Zeng Yiming had been running some kind of scheme. It had occurred to her that he might have coordinated with Liang Guicheng in advance, getting Liang Guicheng to deliberately provide the wrong last digits, while quietly slipping false information into his own calculations.

That would have sent everyone chasing the wrong numbers and quite possibly not reaching the correct answer until the very end.

But she now realised she had been overthinking it. That wasn't what had happened at all.

Each return to the waiting room came with three minutes of rest time.

Wen Wan's eyes moved instinctively to the other machines.

The one for Liang Guicheng, the fruit farmer, read: Total sales of 'XX67' tonnes.

On an impulse she reached forward and entered the number 0367.

The click sounded again. Green borders locked around the digits 0, 6, and 7. But the digit 3 was highlighted in red, wobbled slightly, and produced a harsh error tone before being pushed upward, marking it as a wrong guess.

"Got part of it right. The first digit is zero."

The reason she had tried that particular number was that she had been making rough inferences from the information available.

Liang Guicheng was a fruit farmer, and from the look of him, he didn't seem like someone running a large orchard operation. He looked more like a small to mid-sized farmer.

The most likely crime for a fruit farmer would be selling produce containing pesticide residue.

Given that the unit was tonnes, and assuming a smaller scale operation with a typical kind of fruit, the total was unlikely to be enormous, certainly not reaching the thousands.

So Wen Wan had taken a simple guess. If the first digit wasn't 0, she could try 1 next time.

As it turned out, the first digit had been right on the first try.

From here, she could keep eliminating wrong guesses to pin down the second digit.

Wen Wan took a breath and then tried random guesses on the machines for He Qing, the installer, and Zhao Xiuying, the stall owner.

For those two, she had no useful leads at all. Pure guesswork was all she could manage.

She entered 2349 and 1273 respectively. Both came back as entirely wrong.

The wrong digits were recorded in the display at the top of each machine.

The three minutes of rest time ran out. Wen Wan stepped back out of the waiting room and returned to the main game floor.

[The crime number of Zeng Yiming (Restaurant Manager) has been correctly guessed by at least 2 offender players. Crime has been exposed.]

[Zeng Yiming's crime: During the operation of his sushi restaurant, he failed to properly clean the tableware, resulting in serious food safety and hygiene violations, with a cumulative total of 2.11 million occurrences.]

[Penalty status: Not yet tried.]

[All audience members, please cast your votes to complete the First Trial.]

The game floor fell completely silent. Zeng Yiming said nothing, waiting quietly.

A moment later, the broadcast rang out again.

[The results of the First Trial vote for Zeng Yiming (Restaurant Manager) are as follows:]

[Guilty: 15 votes]

[Not Guilty: 12 votes]

[Charge established in the First Trial. The offender will receive the Instant Death Penalty.]

Hearing the result, Zeng Yiming let out a quiet sigh.

He had clearly been hoping for the best possible outcome: an outright Not Guilty verdict at the First Trial.

His crime was genuinely not especially serious. In the real world, something at this level of food hygiene violation would most likely result in a fine or a requirement to make improvements.

And Zeng Yiming had also confessed voluntarily, and explained the genuine difficulties he had faced. Both of those things could reasonably have swayed some audience members toward Not Guilty.

But in the end, the Guilty votes still came out above half.

Looking on the brighter side, Zeng Yiming's efforts had clearly made some difference. Among those 12 Not Guilty votes, there were almost certainly some swing votes that he had won over.

Given this vote tally, Zeng Yiming only needed to secure a modest number of Sympathy Votes for the Second Trial, and he had a real chance of being found Not Guilty then.

But looking at it less optimistically, if even Zeng Yiming, with his relatively minor crime, couldn't secure a Not Guilty verdict at the First Trial, that suggested the sincerity check on voting was fairly strict in this game.

For players with more serious crimes, avoiding a Guilty verdict at the First Trial would be even more unlikely.

Successfully concealing your crime number for the entire game and avoiding the trial altogether might actually be the more worthwhile gamble.

The broadcast did not sound again, and Zeng Yiming's bracelet made no move to inject anything into his wrist. Everything appeared to proceed as if nothing had happened.

But it was clear enough that a Death Exemption Ticket had been consumed.

Whether it had been a direct use or a pre-borrowed one wasn't visible to the other players, though the difference between the two didn't particularly matter.

The five offender players all wore varying expressions, but regardless of anything else, Zeng Yiming had now officially become the Production Director. They could begin producing medication.

They made their way to the Production Rooms and each read through the notice boards outside.

[Each of the following production stages has a maximum duration of 2 minutes.]

[1. Soaking: The offender player must use their bare hands to remove the raw medication ingredients and keep them immersed in a highly toxic solution. During this time, the hands will experience intense burning pain and accumulate toxins.]

[This stage determines the medication's Potency: the longer the soaking time, the stronger the effect.]

[2. Washing: The offender player must purchase the cleaning solution at their own expense (1,000 minutes of visa time per use) and use it to wash the raw materials after exposure to the toxic substance.]

[This stage determines the medication's Side Effects: the shorter the washing time, the greater the addictive properties and adverse effects of the medication.]

[3. Temperature Control: The offender player must endure extreme cold or extreme heat within the room.]

[This stage determines the available operating time for the next stage, Stage 4 Processing.]

[4. Processing: The offender player must carry out operations under the opposite temperature conditions to Stage 3.]

[This stage determines the medication's Yield Rate: the longer the processing time per batch, the higher the proportion of functional medication and the fewer defective units produced.]

[5. Sorting: The offender player must remove the finished medication from the production line and package it. Contact with the medication will result in electric shocks.]

[This stage determines the medication's Price: the more units successfully removed per batch, the lower the per-bottle sale price.]

[The stages above will collectively determine the type of medication produced: Type I, Type C, Type M, Type 0, or Type F.]

[IMPORTANT NOTICE]

[To activate any of the above production stages, the offender player must insert a coin into the machine using visa time.]

[The offender player may choose to insert a Real Coin (2,000 minutes of visa time per use) or a Fake Coin (free of charge).]

[When a Fake Coin is inserted, the Production Room will appear to operate normally, but in reality it will neither cause any harm to the offender player nor produce any corresponding effect on the medication.]

[However, the offender player in the next stage can clearly see whether the previous stage's player used a Real or Fake Coin.]

[Once medication production begins, the batch count begins accumulating. Even if a player leaves their Production Room or deliberately refuses to cooperate, it is not possible to pause production or prevent the game from eventually ending.]

[All damage inflicted by the Production Rooms on offender players will be removed upon returning to the community at the game's conclusion.]