"Reverse Heaven" is ultimately just a game, not real cultivation, so it's easy to fall for it and also easy to wake up.
If it were real cultivation, with a master testing your willpower, maybe many poor kids from rural backgrounds would really grit their teeth and work in this mine for a year or two before realizing the truth.
But "Reverse Heaven" is a game, so the time required for each gameplay in the game is generally fixed.
For a gameplay with no fun like this, ten minutes might be barely acceptable, but if it runs longer than that, players will easily realize something's off.
"Oh no, I've been scammed!"
"What should I do? Can I fight these guards? They all seem much stronger than me."
The more Chen Tingquan thought about it, the more something felt wrong, so he tried to walk out of the mine, pondering if he could beat the guards if they tried to stop him.
Shouldn't he be able to win?