Ji Jue felt that something was off. This wasn’t intuition or anything as vague as that. He could clearly sense that the world seemed far more real than before!

It was like watching a 1080p screen through glasses with a prescription of minus five hundred and thinking everything looked perfectly clear, only to suddenly switch to 20/20 vision and stare at a 4K display. Only then did you realize just how atrocious the old resolution and frame rate had actually been! 

Had the simulation just been upgraded? Did they swap in a better graphics card? At a time like this? Why?

It felt like being in the middle of an exam when someone suddenly appeared at the door, walked up to the examiner with a grave expression, and whispered something to them. One had no idea who that person was or what they had said, but the atmosphere immediately became completely different. One knew that some unknown change was taking place, yet one knew absolutely nothing about it.

It was an extremely unpleasant feeling.

Maybe he was just being paranoid and reading too much into things. But as an examinee who could be manipulated however the higher-ups pleased, having some kind of preparation—even if it was only mental preparation—was still better than having none at all. 

After yet another round of eliminations, only thirteen of the original thirty-two contestants remained. Some had been taken out when their opponents...