Most of the other examinees from his prep area had already arrived.

They each sat at a station with their name flashing on the screen, faces grim, eyes closed as they rested and centered themselves.

Lin Ye found his assigned seat and sat down.

A line of text appeared on the computer screen:

[The next test will begin shortly. Examinees, please relax your Spirit, enter a state of meditation, and bring your spiritual state to its optimal condition.]

A flicker of understanding crossed Lin Ye’s eyes.

He understood.

This test had to be the so-called spiritual strength and pressure resistance test.

Lin Ye closed his eyes, his breathing steady.

He recovered from the exertion of the previous endurance run.

With his Healing out of combat skill,

Lin Ye could ensure his physical stamina and Spiritual Power were always at their peak.

Before long, Lin Ye opened his eyes.

Just then, an announcement echoed around him.

"We will now begin the second major component of the 167th annual Dongjiang City Mock Exam: the Practical Combat Performance Test."

"The first item is the spiritual strength pressure test."

The electronic voice reverberated throughout the testing facility.

’It’s starting!’

In the spectator waiting hall,

Chen Meng’s fists clenched instantly, his knuckles turning white from the force.

This was the test he was most worried about for Lin Ye.

The series of inhuman stats Lin Ye had displayed during the foundational martial arts test were indeed outrageous.

Lin Ye had been elevated to an unprecedented height, with all eyes on him.

Under these circumstances, any slight flaw would be magnified infinitely.

If he faltered on the spiritual strength portion, even if his total score remained the highest in Dongjiang,

the image of a "flawless" monstrous genius would begin to crack.

Chen Meng’s gaze drifted involuntarily toward the independent viewing area on the second floor.

Seated there were not only the top figures of Dongjiang City’s education system,

but also a deputy director who had come all the way from Ninghai Province.

Lin Ye’s goal was the Qiming General Star Training Camp.

It was a battlefield, a crucible that gathered all the monsters from across the province.

Whether Dongjiang City would even get a recommendation slot for the training camp this year was already uncertain.

If they didn’t receive one, then no matter how talented Lin Ye was, he would have no way in.

Therefore, simply being number one in Dongjiang was far from enough.

Lin Ye had to display his ultimate talent and prove himself decisively in front of those VIPs!

...

Lin Ye sat on the cold metal chair, his heart calm as he looked at the screen before him.

"After the test begins, a series of simple questions involving mental arithmetic, logic, reasoning, and verbal knowledge will appear on the screens of all examinees."

"Please answer as many questions as possible while maintaining the highest possible accuracy."

"Test, begin!"

At first, Lin Ye was a little confused.

Why would a Martial Arts High School exam include questions that seemed unrelated to martial arts?

The next second, he understood.

An invisible wave, like quicksilver spreading across the floor,

radiated out from the mirrored metal sphere above everyone’s heads, blanketing the entire room!

It was a pure, spiritual pressure!

Almost instantly, Lin Ye saw several examinees near him turn pale, their brows knitting together in pain.

This was a direct sign of their Spiritual Power being forcefully suppressed.

Lin Ye could clearly sense that this spiritual pressure wasn’t constant; it was steadily and relentlessly increasing.

In this environment, the difficulty of maintaining a clear mind to solve problems requiring thought and logical reasoning was naturally magnified.

Lin Ye’s fingertips tapped lightly on the virtual keyboard as he began to answer.

He had always been a top student in liberal arts, with a memory and logical thinking ability far superior to the average person.

Coupled with the fact that the questions were at a middle-school level at their most difficult, they were still very simple for him.

The questions on the screen switched rapidly.

In just a few short minutes,

the spiritual pressure from above had already intensified by at least fifty percent.

Lin Ye’s Sea of Consciousness was as steady as a rock; this level of pressure didn’t cause even the slightest ripple.

But the others in the room weren’t so lucky.

Every student who made it into Test Hall 1 was an elite from their respective school, with a resilient will and strong Spiritual Power.

However, under this constant, pervasive spiritual assault, their mental defenses began to crumble.

Some started to claw at their hair in frustration.

Others unconsciously bit their fingers, their gazes losing focus.

Worse still, some were already clutching their heads, their bodies trembling slightly as they fought back the excruciating pain that felt like it was tearing their brains apart.

Lin Ye didn’t get distracted by the others.

He knew very well that if he hadn’t been continuously adding points to his Spirit attribute for so long, he would undoubtedly be one of those struggling right now.

Lin Ye focused his mind, completely immersing himself in the questions before him.

His mouse clicked again and again, selecting the correct options.

For questions that required calculation, Lin Ye simply activated the scratchpad mode in the blank area to the side, jotted down the formulas, and computed quickly.

Gradually, people started to break.

A student suddenly shot up, his face as white as a sheet, and staggered toward the exit.

Just a few meters from the door, he couldn’t hold on any longer and vomited the entire contents of his stomach.

This person’s collapse was like a signal.

One after another, more and more students chose to give up.

They all knew their spirits were on the verge of their limits. Pushing further was not only pointless but could also cause irreversible damage to their spiritual core.

A few proctors wearing special protective helmets watched all of this dispassionately.

Their muffled voices, distorted by the helmets, seemed surreal in this context.

"Examinees who can’t take it anymore, leave immediately!"

"Don’t force yourselves! If you faint, pass out, or even suffer a mental breakdown, all of your scores for this exam will be voided! It’s not worth the risk!"

Hearing this, Lin Ye’s heart tightened.

Weren’t these words, which seemed intended to persuade them to quit, just another way of adding pressure to this spiritual test?

No one could know precisely where their limit was.

Should they quit while they were ahead and secure their current score?

Or should they risk it all to strive for a higher score, and face the possibility of all their efforts coming to nothing?

This choice was a greater test of human nature than any of the logic problems on the screen.

But Lin Ye had no such concerns.

He discovered that the spiritual pressure emanating from the metal sphere overhead had stabilized after reaching a peak and was no longer increasing.

With his current Spiritual Power, forget completing the test—he could sit here for a whole day without any problem.

Time ticked by, second by second.

The number of people in the room dwindled.

Finally, an examinee who had misjudged their limit rolled their eyes back and fell stiffly from their chair.

A proctor immediately came forward and deftly dragged him away.

Soon after, another student started spouting nonsense and giggling foolishly, and was also quickly escorted out.

In just ten minutes,

the massive room, once full of people, now held only three.

Besides Lin Ye, the other two were wearing the uniforms of Celestial Star Martial Arts High School.

Of course, they had no idea that the guy in front of them, hunched over his test and seemingly completely unaffected,

had, just a short while ago, crushed their school’s prized number one genius under his heel.

The pride of a prestigious school made it impossible for them to accept losing to a student from an ordinary school.

’Just a little longer!’

’I can still hold on!’

’I will protect the honor and dignity of Celestial Star Martial Arts High School!’

Two minutes later.

Both of them were sleeping like babies.

Ah, the bliss of youth. Out like a light.