If Sun Yi had been a monolith in the hearts of the Qingyun Sect disciples before, the aftermath of this battle had elevated him to the status of a celestial peak. He was no longer just a leader; he was an insurmountable summit.

Sun Yi looked at the five disciples standing before him. They were fidgeting, apprehension radiating off them like heat waves.

“At ease,” Sun Yi said, offering a faint, calculated smile. “I didn’t pull you from the ranks to reprimand you. I reviewed the logs. Your recent performance metrics yielded the highest ROI for the Sect. As a result, I’ve flagged you for a priority upgrade package. I will be personally overseeing your development.”

Priority upgrade package? Personally overseeing?

The five disciples felt their hearts hammer against their ribs. Blood rushed to their faces, flushing them crimson with sudden, overwhelming adrenaline. To receive personal guidance from the Headmaster—a man who had just dismantled the Sect’s elite with casual ease—was a fortune defying the Heavens.

They collapsed to their knees in unison, foreheads touching the cold stone of the square.

“This disciple thanks the Headmaster for his grace!” they shouted, voices trembling with devout gratitude.

Sun Yi waved a hand. A gentle current of True Qi swept out, lifting them to their feet against their will. He turned to the wider audience, his voice projected for maximum coverage.

“The Qingyun Sect operates on a meritocracy,” Sun Yi announced, his tone corporate yet commanding. “We do not mistreat high-value assets. If you contribute, you will be compensated.”

The thousands of disciples on the periphery looked at Zhang Yuan and his group with naked envy. They had just witnessed Sun Yi’s terrifying specs. If these five were going to be “optimized” by such a monster, there was no telling how high they would soar.

Desire burned in their eyes. They wanted that upgrade.

Sun Yi read the room perfectly. Good. Morale is leveraged.

“Rest assured,” he continued smoothly. “This is merely the beta group. As long as you generate value for the Sect, I will expand the program. There is room at the top for anyone who meets the KPIs.”

The crowd erupted.

“Excellent! I must redouble my efforts for the Headmaster!”

“The Headmaster is only at the Qi Refining stage and he’s already this broken. If he trains us… could we reach that level of efficiency?”

Sun Yi turned back to the five chosen disciples. “Stand aside. I need to clear some bandwidth. I’m initiating my breakthrough.”

The five scrambled backward, giving him space.

Elder Jin Jue, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, bellowed with spiritual force, “Clear the floor! All disciples, retreat to the perimeter! Form a defensive cordon. No one is to disturb the Headmaster’s ascension!”

The square emptied in seconds. The disciples took to the air, hovering on their flying swords outside the plaza’s boundary, creating a massive amphitheater of spectators.

Sun Yi stood alone in the center of the vast stone square. Thousands of eyes bore into him, but he felt no pressure. To him, they were just background processes. His focus was entirely on the system upgrade he was about to execute.

Suddenly, a sharp, digital glint flashed in his eyes.

System check complete. Initiating sequence.

A tyrannical aura detonated from his body. The Red Gold Sword shot upward, transforming into a streak of brilliant light that hovered directly above his crown.

Boom!

An overbearing Sword Qi pierced the clouds. At that moment, Sun Yi didn’t look like a cultivator; he looked like a divine blade unsheathed against the firmament. The sheer pressure forced many of the weaker disciples to tremble, fighting the urge to kneel in worship.

“Today,” Sun Yi’s voice cut through the wind, “I will demonstrate that breaking through the firewall of a realm is not a mystical impossibility. It is a logic puzzle. Do you remember my source code?”

In an instant, the phrase surfaced in everyone’s mind.

Sun Yi raised his right hand, pointing a finger accusingly at the sky. He roared, his voice shaking the foundations of the Sect.

“My fate is determined by me, not the Heavens!”

Execute.

The new Five Elements Art revved up like a hyper-engine. The True Qi from his main Dantian and the five auxiliary Gates surged simultaneously. It coalesced into a towering tsunami of energy, crashing violently against the invisible barrier within his body—the Bottleneck.

BOOM!

Something inside him shattered. The limiter was removed.

Immediately, the world responded. A terrifying “Heavenly Punishment Force” materialized out of thin air. It was the universe’s anti-cheat mechanism, designed to crush those with insufficient specs.

One stream of this force hammered his physical body. Another stream drilled straight into his Sea of Consciousness, targeting his soul.

Detected: External malicious code, Sun Yi noted coldly.

Previously, when he had analyzed this force inside Zhang Yuan, it had been a static sample. Now, experiencing the live attack, he understood why the native “users” feared it. It was aggressive, invasive, and designed to wipe the hard drive.

No wonder Low Grade Spirit Roots couldn’t upgrade. This force was a catastrophic system crash waiting to happen.

For a normal cultivator, this would be a death sentence. But Sun Yi?

He stood immovable.

Like a reef in a torrential current, his physical body—tempered by the grueling Trinity Cultivation protocols—tanked the impact with zero deformation.

Inside his mind, the soul attack fared no better. It smashed against his fortified mental defenses and was repelled instantly.

Threat assessment: Negligible.

The Heavenly Punishment Force exhausted itself in moments. It had failed to purge the anomaly.

With the firewall breached, Sun Yi’s aura skyrocketed. The ambient Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi within the Qingyun Sect began to scream toward the square, drawn by a massive vacuum.

In the blink of an eye, a visible vortex of energy formed above Sun Yi’s head.

A storm of Qi ravaged the square, pouring into his body. The Red Gold Sword bathed in the influx, emitting a blinding golden radiance as its Sword Qi fluctuations spiked tenfold.

In the air, the Qingyun disciples stared with eyes wide enough to tear. Shock, admiration, and fanaticism churned in their guts.

“He did it! The Headmaster has initialized Foundation Establishment!” Elder Jin Jue clenched his fist, his voice trembling as he transmitted to the other Elders.

“The Headmaster is a monster,” Qin Chu gasped, staring in disbelief. “He broke through… effortlessly. It’s illogical!”

They had all been worried. Even with Sun Yi’s confidence, a breakthrough was supposed to be a life-or-death struggle.

But this? This was as simple as drinking water. It was trivial. It shattered their understanding of cultivation mechanics.

“The Headmaster’s theory was correct,” Elder Ye Luo whispered, his eyes burning with fervor. “That force… that was the Heavenly Punishment. As long as the hardware—the body and soul—is robust enough to withstand the backlash, the spirit root bottleneck becomes irrelevant!”

He clenched his fists. Trinity Cultivation. It is the true Great Dao.

“It seems we cannot remain idle,” Elder Han Yun said, a gratified smile touching his lips. “We must prioritize body refining immediately.”

“Heh.” Elder Li Tai grinned, his face splitting into a brilliant, toothy smile. “Suddenly, the Nascent Soul stage doesn’t feel so… unreachable.”

Down in the square, Sun Yi was undergoing a complete system overhaul.

First, the storage.

His Dantian expanded at a terrifying velocity. The walls stretched and solidified, the internal volume ballooning until it was a full five times its previous size.

Capacity increased by 500%, Sun Yi noted with satisfaction. This explains the discrepancy in Qi pools between tiers.

He shifted his attention to the auxiliary drives—the Five Gates. They were syncing with the main system, expanding in perfect unison. Five times the capacity across the board.

As the Five Elements Art cycled, the True Qi within all six reservoirs began to compress. The quality spiked. It was no longer gaseous; it was becoming denser, purer—a software optimization that maximized output per unit.

He checked his hardware.

Physical integrity: +10%.

Sun Yi mentally shrugged. A ten percent boost to his chassis was marginal, but considering his base stats were already monstrous, it was acceptable.

But the real upgrade was in the processor.

A wave of transformative energy washed into his Sea of Consciousness. The eight distinct soul fragments he had cultivated began to swell like over-inflated balloons.

In moments, eight blurry, child-sized phantoms stood within his mental space. They radiated a profound, mystic energy.

Sun Yi focused his will.

Merge.

The eight souls slammed together.

In the next heartbeat, a colossal, singular Soul Avatar manifested within his Sea of Consciousness, dominating the mental landscape.