As the eight fragments of his soul synchronized into a single entity, Sun Yi felt a massive spike in system resources. His spiritual bandwidth expanded exponentially, a stark contrast to his previous limitations.

Initiating active scan.

He projected his Divine Sense outward.

Instantly, the world around him rendered in high-definition clarity. The scan expanded rapidly, pushing past the square, past the sect gates, sweeping across the mountains with terrifying speed.

Range check complete. Maximum radius: Seventy li.

Sun Yi mentally noted the metric. This was absurd. For reference, a late-stage Golden Core cultivator—like Elder Jin Jue—typically capped out at sixty li. Sun Yi had just entered Foundation Establishment, yet his radar coverage already exceeded the Sect’s heavy hitters.

Alert. Stability Critical.

Sun Yi’s internal monitors flashed red. The eight soul partitions, having been temporarily bridged, were beginning to fuse permanently. The code was compiling into a single executable.

Rollback! Initiate separation sequence immediately!

He hadn’t spent months fragmenting his consciousness just to let it merge back into a default singular soul now. Multitasking was his core advantage; he couldn’t afford to lose his parallel processing capabilities.

With a thought, he forced the souls apart, breaking the resonance.

As the eight souls isolated themselves again, the terrifying range of his Divine Sense collapsed, shrinking from seventy li down to twenty. Still, twenty li for a fresh Foundation Establishment cultivator was a statistic that defied all known logic.

Deep within his Sea of Consciousness, the eight child-sized soul avatars floated silently, entering standby mode.

Outside the square, the Golden Core Elders exchanged glances of pure shock. They had all felt it—that sudden, tyrannical sweep of Divine Sense that briefly dwarfed their own.

“Did you feel that?” Elder Jin Jue murmured, his eyes wide. “That intensity… it wasn’t inferior to mine.”

“Monstrous,” Elder Qin Chu breathed.

Sun Yi remained standing in the center of the square for two hours, running background diagnostics until his physical transformation was 100% complete. His cultivation base hadn’t fully solidified, but the architecture was stable. There was no risk of a version rollback.

He opened his eyes.

System: Green across the board.

With a thought, the Red Gold Sword dissolved into a stream of data-like light, retracting into the Gold Gate within his body. The oppressive aura around him vanished, replaced by the calm, unassuming presence of a CEO who just closed a major deal.

He swept his gaze over the thousands of hovering disciples.

“You’ve seen the data,” Sun Yi announced, his voice amplified by True Qi. “Breaking through realms is not a mystical lottery. It is an engineering problem.”

The crowd hung on his every word.

“As long as your hardware specs—your physical body and soul strength—meet the system requirements to tank the upgrade backlash, the bottleneck does not exist.”

He paused, letting the implication sink in.

“Continue to optimize your physical bodies. As for the soul…” Sun Yi tapped his temple. “I am developing a patch for that. Give me some time to finalize the R&D.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Meeting adjourned.”

Sun Yi signaled to the five selected disciples. “You five, follow me. Changqing, you too. Elders, join us in the conference room.”

“Understood.” Elder Jin Jue nodded, his respect for the Headmaster now absolute.

The group departed, flying toward the main peak’s cultivation chambers.

As soon as Sun Yi’s figure vanished, the silence over the Battle Tower square shattered. The crowd erupted like a breached dam.

“Heavens above! Did I just hallucinate? The Headmaster broke through as easily as breathing!”

“Unbelievable! I’ve seen geniuses struggle for days, coughing blood and popping pills. The Headmaster just… did it!”

“I’ve heard legends of Heavenly Spirit Roots ascending effortlessly, but a Low Grade Spirit Root? Never! It violates the Dao!”

“The Headmaster’s theory is proven! It’s not about the Spirit Root; it’s about the chassis! If we upgrade our bodies and souls, the bottleneck is just a paper tiger!”

Hope, raw and intoxicating, spread through the disciples like wildfire.

“We have a chance,” a disciple whispered, tears welling in his eyes. “Even with trash aptitude… we can ascend.”

“The Headmaster wouldn’t lie to us! He proved it with his own body!”

“I’m done slacking off. I’m hitting the gym—I mean, the tempering grounds—right now!”

“Being a genius isn’t about birthright anymore,” another shouted, clenching his fists. “It’s about the grind! Strength is the only truth!”

“Let’s go! Time to cultivate!”

The atmosphere in the Qingyun Sect had fundamentally shifted. Where there was once resignation to fate, there was now a fanatical drive for self-improvement. The “Face-Slapping” of the old cultivation dogma was complete.

Inside the main peak’s high-security cultivation chamber.

Sun Yi took the head seat, with the Elders and Changqing flanking him. The five disciples—Zhang Yuan, Zhao Lun, and the others—stood in a row, radiating nervousness. They felt like junior interns called into the CEO’s office.

“I have two directives for you,” Sun Yi said, cutting straight to business. “First: You will re-spec your characters. Switch your cultivation method to the Five Elements Art. Second: You will prioritize body tempering above all else.”

The room went silent.

Re-cultivating? Switching main cultivation methods was a massive sunk cost. It meant erasing progress and rebuilding foundations.

“Headmaster,” Elder Jin Jue asked, perplexed. “You want them all to run the Five Elements Art? Why?”

Sun Yi leaned forward, his expression serious. “My diagnostics confirm that the human body has five potential expansion slots—five Dantians. The Five Elements Art is the only software compatible with this multi-core architecture.”

He gestured to himself.

“Previously, this art was just ‘one of the best’. Now? It is the proprietary technology that will define our Sect’s dominance.”

“Since the technique is so powerful, why wouldn’t we cultivate it?” Sun Yi continued rhetorically. “I don’t just want these five to switch. I want to roll this out sect-wide. The goal is to have every disciple running a five-Dantian build.”

Elder Jin Jue winced, doing the mental math. “Headmaster, the capital expenditure… To open five Dantians requires the essence of the Mi Luo Beast. Do we have the supply chain to support mass adoption?”

“We plan for scale,” Sun Yi said, his voice cold and pragmatic. “We need to stockpile now. Simultaneously, I’m initiating a research project to find a workaround—a method to unlock Dantians without relying on the Mi Luo Beast resource.”

“Understood,” Elder Han Yun, the Head of Human Resources (Transmission Elder), nodded. “I will begin the propaganda campaign for the Five Elements Art immediately.”

The five disciples stood trembling, their minds reeling. Opening five Dantians? They had just stumbled upon a core trade secret of the Sect.

Sun Yi noticed their anxiety. He smiled—a practiced, disarming expression.

“Relax. We aren’t going to liquidate you. You heard the briefing. The Sect has cracked the code for multi-core cultivation. I am the prototype.”

He stood up, pacing slowly in front of them.

“My combat metrics? You saw them. I suppressed Foundation Establishment cultivators while still in Qi Refining. That wasn’t magic. That was leverage. I had five times the fuel reserves.”

He stopped and looked each of them in the eye.

“If you install this upgrade, you will gain the same capacity. You will be able to punch above your weight class. The question is: Do you want the upgrade?”

“I’ll do it!” Zhang Yuan shouted without hesitation. He had seen the power firsthand. He wanted it.

“I’m in!” Zhao Lun followed instantly. “I’ll switch immediately!”

“Me too!”

“This disciple is willing!”

The remaining three scrambled to agree. They weren’t idiots. The Headmaster was a living god of war, and he was offering them the blueprint to his power. Who would refuse? To reject this was to reject the path to supremacy.

Sun Yi nodded, satisfied with the conversion rate.

“Good.”

Suddenly, his expression sharpened. The casual ‘Tech-Bro’ demeanor vanished, replaced by something colder.

“However,” Sun Yi said, his voice dropping an octave. “Before I grant you access, you must agree to one condition.”