Cultivation, Inc.I Use Capitalism to Fix a Dying Sect

Chapter 128: Seven Great Illusions Determine Loyalty

The simulation wasted no time. Soon, Er Gouzi was thrust into the second illusion.

This time, the scenario was a cooperative dungeon dive with a Junior Brother. At the climax of the run, the Junior Brother stumbled upon a rare treasure, while Er Gouzi’s loot table remained entirely empty. Immediately after, the Junior Brother was severely injured by a trap and fell unconscious.

Left alone with an unconscious ally and a priceless artifact, Er Gouzi hesitated. The temptation was palpable. But in the end, his moral compass held firm. He did not succumb to the dark path of killing to seize treasures.

He stood guard until the Junior Brother awoke. The system flashed a pass, and the illusion dissolved.

“Vice Headmaster Changqing possesses an admirable Dao heart,” Elder Jin Jue praised, stroking his beard. Previously, the Elders had kept their objections to Sun Yi’s executive appointment quiet, but that didn’t mean they had internally approved of Er Gouzi.

Seeing Er Gouzi resist the urge to betray the Sect and refuse to slaughter a fellow disciple for a quick power spike, the Elders finally nodded in genuine recognition.

Sun Yi also nodded in satisfaction. He wanted every Qingyun Sect disciple under his management to have a strict ethical bottom line.

The third illusion loaded. Several Qingyun Sect disciples were being hunted by a pack of Demon Beasts. Er Gouzi was the only one at full HP; the rest of the party was severely wounded, reduced to nothing but dead weight and burdens.

Yet, Er Gouzi did not abandon his liabilities. Instead of maximizing his own survival rate and fleeing, he stood his ground. He tanked the damage, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the wounded until the monsters were pulverized.

He paid a brutal price in blood, but the illusion shattered. Stage three clear.

Next came the fourth level: an interrogation stress test. Er Gouzi was captured by a hostile superpower and strapped to a torture rack. They demanded he leak Sect data, applying agonizing physical torment. Despite the pain, Er Gouzi’s lips remained sealed. No compromise. Stage four clear.

“Good! Good! Good!” Elder Qin Chu’s eyes lit up, uttering three successive praises.

The fifth level tested his alignment. Er Gouzi accidentally discovered a forbidden, high-tier Evil Art. It offered a massive XP boost, but the cost required the blood sacrifice of ordinary mortals. Er Gouzi stared at the manual, then destroyed it. He refused to farm civilians for stats. Stage five clear.

Level six shifted to a grand battlefield. Er Gouzi led a squadron of Qingyun Sect cultivators, holding the line at a fortress city against an endless tide of Demon Beasts. A high-ranking Demon Clan commander stepped forward, offering Er Gouzi a buyout—defect and receive unimaginable resources.

Er Gouzi spat at the commander’s feet. He firmly rejected the buyout and held the frontline, fighting with ferocious brute force until his body was torn apart. Stage six clear.

“Not bad. He is full of mettle!” Elder Ye Luo nodded, a rare look of admiration on his face.

The final seventh level pushed the difficulty to the absolute limit. In this scenario, the Qingyun Sect was completely surrounded by a coalition of hostile forces. It was an apocalyptic, life-or-death crisis. The enemy’s metrics were overwhelmingly superior. Faced with the binary choice of total surrender or total annihilation, Er Gouzi chose the latter. He chose to go down with the ship.

The moment he made the decision to die for the Qingyun Sect, the simulation ended.

Seven levels, back-to-back. Er Gouzi had cleared them all.

The Heart Questioning Array deactivated, and Er Gouzi was forcibly ejected from the server. Standing outside the Array’s perimeter, he looked completely disoriented. His eyes were unfocused, his mind still trying to reboot from what felt like a lifetime of trauma.

“Not bad, Vice Headmaster Changqing. You did not disappoint us!” Elder Jin Jue stepped forward, a wide smile on his face, and clapped a heavy hand onto Er Gouzi’s shoulder.

Er Gouzi jolted, overwhelmed by the unexpected favor. His entire body stiffened, and his mind went blank.

Since his promotion, he had been incredibly diligent and conscientious. The workload was immense, but during the grind, he had genuinely grown to love the Qingyun Sect. It had become his home. Yet, he was painfully aware that he was a diversity hire pushed through by Sun Yi. The legacy board members—the Elders—had never truly accepted him.

But now, Elder Jin Jue’s gaze was warm, filled with genuine respect.

“Well done. Keep up the good work. In the future, if you require any assistance, this old man’s door is always open to you!” Elder Qin Chu also stepped up, giving him an approving pat.

“With the Headmaster and you leading us, the Qingyun Sect is destined to rise to the Heavens.”

“The Headmaster’s vision is truly profound. To have selected such an outstanding Vice Headmaster is a blessing for our Sect.”

“Continue your cultivation. If you meet any obstacles, just give the order. We old bones will always be your backing.”

One by one, the remaining three Elders walked over, offering their validation. Er Gouzi was so stunned he couldn’t even formulate a response.

“Hea… Headmaster…” he stammered, looking at Sun Yi for a lifeline.

Sun Yi walked over, his lips curving into a sharp smile. He clapped Er Gouzi on the shoulder. “Your metrics in the simulation were flawless. The Board of Directors is highly satisfied. They have officially recognized your authority. From today onward, you aren’t just backed by me; all five Elders are in your corner.”

Sun Yi’s tone shifted back to business. “Alright, enough celebration. Open the recruitment drive immediately. Test every applicant for the War Hall. Any disciple who clears all seven illusions gets full clearance. Onboard them into the War Hall and give them access to top-tier resource allocation.”

“Understood, Headmaster! I will deploy the testing schedule immediately!” Er Gouzi’s face flushed with ecstatic joy.

“Get to work. Send me the analytics report when the testing is complete.”

With his instructions delivered, Sun Yi turned and headed straight for the Headmaster’s cultivation chamber.

For the past few days, his processing power had been entirely occupied with installing the Heart Questioning Array. He hadn’t touched the newly acquired Myriad Spirit Body Tempering Art. Now that the hardware was online, he could finally dedicate some bandwidth to this new software.

The manual delivered by Mo Wen contained 4 layers of source code. Sun Yi started parsing the 1st layer.

With his 8 Divine Souls acting like a multi-core processor, combined with the overclocking effect of his spiritual tea, decrypting the 1st layer was effortless.

He took a deep breath and executed the circulation technique.

Instantly, Sun Yi felt the shift. Previously, he had used high-tier spirit medicines to brute-force his physical stats. While his hardware was durable, the upgrades were not systematic. There were massive inefficiencies and unoptimized sectors in his musculature.

Now, as the Body Tempering Art initiated, a boiling warm current flooded his meridians. The unoptimized sectors were rapidly patched and reinforced.

Moments later, Sun Yi opened his eyes, a slight smirk on his lips. Compiling the 1st layer was a breeze.

Given his already absurd base stats, the 1st layer was basically a minor system update. It merely defragmented his physical structure and required minimal time. He ran a quick self-diagnostic; the improvements were noticeable.

He immediately moved on to decrypt the 2nd layer. Again, the download and installation were seamless.

Upon completing the 2nd layer, the physical feedback was significantly stronger. It felt as if his entire musculoskeletal system was being refactored. A wave of dark, foul-smelling impurities was purged from his pores—garbage collection for his biology. Sun Yi felt lighter, more efficient. A quick flex confirmed a direct increase to his raw strength.

“Just as I calculated,” Sun Yi muttered. “Relying on raw items is inefficient. You need the proper software drivers to maximize the hardware.”

He threw a few test punches. The air shattered with sonic booms. Satisfied, he sat back down.

Next was the 3rd layer. This was a significant jump in complexity. It took a full 3 days of heavy processing to completely comprehend the technique.

The moment he began to run the 3rd layer, the metamorphosis was violent.

It was as if his previous physical development had been heading down a corrupted tech tree. Now, the Myriad Spirit Body Tempering Art was aggressively overwriting his foundation, forcibly correcting the errors.

An indeterminate amount of time passed.

Sun Yi opened his eyes. He ran a diagnostic check on his new parameters and immediately frowned.

There was a massive bug.

After the technique corrected his physical baseline, his passive leveling speed plummeted to near zero. Drawing ambient Spiritual Qi from the environment was no longer enough to power the upgrades. Worse, his body was screaming with an intense, agonizing hunger—a critical low-battery warning.

Almost instinctively, Sun Yi accessed his Storage Ring and began refining high-grade body tempering spiritual materials. Only as the dense energy flooded his system did the starvation alert clear.

Sun Yi let out a heavy sigh, staring at his rapidly depleting inventory.

“So that’s the catch,” he muttered, shaking his head.