“Stay here and consolidate your build. I’m going to inspect the facility.”

Sun Yi stood up and walked out of the chamber. Luo An, still rebooting his worldview after witnessing the Sect Leader’s reckless consumption of resources, remained frozen in place. Sun Yi wasn’t worried about security; inside the Scripture Library, the only danger was a paper cut.

He stepped out of the cultivation suite and immediately hit a wall of noise. The library lobby was gridlocked. It looked less like a place of study and more like the floor of a stock exchange during a crash.

Elder Han Yun looked like a system administrator facing a massive DDoS attack. He hadn’t anticipated the sheer volume of user traffic. The server—the library—was crashing hard.

“Sect Leader! It’s the Sect Leader!” A disciple spotted him, and the shout rippled through the crowd like a wave.

Hundreds of eyes locked onto him. Han Yun, spotting his savior, practically dived through the mob to reach him.

“Sect Leader, the system is overwhelmed! The Transmission Hall can’t handle the throughput. We have too many users and not enough bandwidth!”

Sun Yi looked at the sweating Elder. “Give me the diagnostic. What’s the bottleneck?”

Han Yun wiped his forehead, looking burned out. “Demand has outstripped supply. We have thousands of disciples but limited copies of the manuals. Fistfights are breaking out over access to basic tutorials. And the physical architecture… we simply don’t have the floor space.”

Sun Yi frowned, then swaggered into the center of the chaos with the confidence of a CEO taking the stage at a product launch. The crowd parted automatically.

“Colleagues!” Sun Yi’s voice projected clearly. “Due to rapid scaling, our infrastructure has experienced some latency. As the one in charge of operations, I take full ownership of this downtime.”

The tension in the room evaporated. A public apology from a Sect Leader? It was unheard of. It was a masterclass in PR damage control.

Sun Yi raised a hand. “I am thrilled to see this level of engagement. It proves that our workforce is hungry for growth. I believe that one day, this corporation—this Sect—will dominate the market because of you.”

He pivoted to the solution. “However, we have a supply chain issue. The manuals are scarce resources. So, I am opening up a crowdsourcing initiative. Who is willing to assist the Transmission Hall in creating redundant backups of our database?”

“I’ll do it!” “Count me in!” “Sect Leader, use me!”

The response was immediate. The disciples were eager to contribute to the platform.

Sun Yi nodded, satisfied. He turned to Han Yun. “Elder Han, calculate the manpower needed to clone the entire database ten times within twenty-four hours.”

“Five hundred head count,” Han Yun said, beaming.

“You have access to the labor pool. Execute the protocol.”

“Understood. Consider it done.” Han Yun looked like a weight had been lifted off his soul.

Sun Yi addressed the crowd again. “The content bottleneck will be resolved by tomorrow. regarding the spatial constraints, we will deploy an expansion patch soon. For now, if your project isn’t critical, please rotate out to balance the server load. Go grind some cultivation and come back later.”

“Understood, Sect Leader!” “I’ll go grab a mission ticket!”

The crowd dispersed efficiently. The traffic jam cleared.

“Impressive crisis management,” Han Yun said, looking at Sun Yi with newfound respect.

“It’s just traffic control,” Sun Yi said, waving it off. “But we need a permanent fix. That’s your KPI for the month.”

“I guarantee it,” Han Yun promised.

“Now,” Sun Yi said, “assign me a runner. I need to ingest some data in the private suite.”

Han Yun signaled a young cultivator. “Xiao Wen, you report to the Sect Leader.”

Xiao Wen, a sharp-looking kid at the fifth level of Qi Refining, bowed nervously. “Awaiting instructions, sir.”

“Pull all documentation on raw materials and refining theory. Deliver them to my office. Once I process a batch, rotate it out for the next set.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sun Yi returned to the quiet of the private chamber. The noise of the lobby faded.

He brewed a fresh pot of Calming Tea—his cognitive performance booster—and picked up a jade slip. It was a travelogue from a Golden Core cultivator, essentially a market analysis of the surrounding regions.

For the next six months, Sun Yi vanished into “Deep Work” mode.

He became a data sponge. He absorbed everything: material science, refining protocols, algorithm optimization (cultivation arts), legacy code (ancient secrets), and proprietary tech (arrays and talismans). He was downloading the world’s source code into his brain.

Outside his office, the Qingyun Sect was undergoing a radical restructuring. The Battle Tower had become the killer app, driving user engagement to all-time highs. Disciples were grinding battles, earning Points, and leveling up their combat metrics.

On the surface, the company was booming. But in the back office, the financials were screaming red.

Six months later. The Central Hall.

The atmosphere was heavy. This was a hostile Board Meeting. Patriarch Qingxuan and the five Golden Core Elders sat in grim silence.

“Qin Chu,” the Patriarch broke the silence, looking at the CFO. “What is our runway?”

Elder Qin Chu looked like he had aged a decade. “We are facing a liquidity crisis. We have six months of cash flow remaining. The burn rate is astronomical—dozens of times higher than last fiscal year. We are operating at a massive deficit. If we don’t secure a new revenue stream, we go bankrupt.”

“And where is the CEO?” Qingxuan asked.

Qin Chu shook his head. “He’s been locked in the library for half a year. I’ve tried to flag the issue, but he just tells me to ‘trust the process.'”

“Trust?!” Elder Jin Jue slammed his hand on the table. “We are six months from insolvency! This ‘Sect Leader’ is a fraud. He sold us a vision of 10x returns and a path to the Nascent Soul IPO, but all he’s done is burn our reserves to buy popularity!”

Jin Jue’s face was twisted with buyer’s remorse. Sun Yi had promised them “stock options” in the form of resources to reach the Nascent Soul stage. Instead, the company assets were shrinking. It looked like a classic pump-and-dump scheme.

The other Elders murmured in agreement. The “Spirit Cakes” Sun Yi had drawn for them were looking like vaporware.

“Patriarch,” Jin Jue stood up, his voice cold. “I move for a vote of no confidence. We must arrest Sun Yi, liquidate his policies, and return to the legacy business model. It is the only way to salvage the Sect.”

Patriarch Qingxuan’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue. The numbers were damning.

He looked at Elder Han Yun. “Bring him here. It’s time for a performance review.”

“Yes, Patriarch.” Han Yun turned and marched out of the hall.