A crystalline Soul Blade hovered high above the roiling waters of Sun Yi’s Sea of Consciousness. It radiated a terrifying frequency, an aura of absolute severance that made his very essence tremble.

It hung there like a guillotine for the mind.

Whoever coded this ‘Split Spirit Technique’ was a complete masochist, Sun Yi thought grimly. Self-mutilation as an upgrade path? It’s inefficient, but it’s the only way to expand the hardware.

Sun Yi ran a final diagnostic on the procedure. He reviewed every simulation, every variable he had calculated over the past weeks. The logic held up. The risk was within acceptable parameters.

He formed a seal with his hands.

A sharp, digital light flashed in his eyes. His lips parted, delivering the command.

“Sever.”

The Soul Blade dropped.

It slammed into his soul form with the force of a divine judgment.

CRACK.

In that instant, Sun Yi’s physical body convulsed violently. It felt as if a rusted saw were grinding through his skull. The pain wasn’t physical; it was existential. It was the screaming agony of the self being torn asunder.

System Critical. Integrity failing.

His consciousness shattered. Sun Yi blacked out, drowning in a white-hot ocean of torment.

Inside his Sea of Consciousness, the main soul cluster was cleaved cleanly in two. It became two independent, unstable masses of energy.

Immediately, instability set in. The two masses began to unravel, shedding data like a corrupted hard drive. Vast amounts of soul fragments began to drift toward the edges of his mind, seeking escape into the void.

Alert: Data leakage detected.

At that precise moment, the five Golden Core Elders surrounding Sun Yi sprang into action.

They didn’t hesitate. They flooded their Divine Sense into Sun Yi’s mind, constructing a massive, impenetrable firewall around his Sea of Consciousness.

Lockdown initiated.

Every drifting fragment, every wisp of escaping soul energy, was brutally shoved back into the containment zone. Nothing was allowed to leave.

Time lost its meaning. It could have been an hour; it could have been a century.

Eventually, the reboot sequence finished. Sun Yi’s consciousness flickered back online. The two destabilized soul masses suddenly generated a powerful gravitational pull, vacuuming up the loose fragments that the Elders had contained.

Sun Yi opened his eyes. He was drenched in cold sweat, but his gaze was clear. He looked at the five anxious faces around him.

“My thanks, Elders. The containment protocol was successful.”

Elder Ye Luo let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and waved a hand. “A small matter. It seems your theory was correct. By combining our strength, we easily sealed your mind. No soul fragments escaped.”

“But, Headmaster,” Elder Jin Jue leaned in, his face a mask of curiosity, “how did you deduce this flaw? This method… it is unheard of.”

Sun Yi nodded, his voice raspy but clinical. “I audited the legacy code of the Split Spirit Technique. I found a bug. An innately powerful soul is necessary, yes, but it’s not the only variable. The historical failure rate was too high to be random.”

Elder Jin Jue nodded solemnly. “Indeed. The Sect archives are filled with tragic tales. Many seniors with monstrous talent attempted this, only to end up with their souls annihilated.”

“Exactly,” Sun Yi explained. “My analysis revealed that when the Soul Blade impacts, it leaves behind two ‘Kernel Cores’. However, these cores are momentarily stunned—offline, essentially. During that reboot window, the soul’s outer data layers panic and attempt to migrate.”

“If the user’s soul density is too low, the data scatters before the Kernels can come back online. By the time the Kernels reboot, there’s nothing left to govern. The system crashes permanently.”

Sun Yi gestured to the Elders. “That is why I required an external server lock. Your Divine Sense acted as a temporary cache, holding the data in place while my Kernels rebooted.”

“Once the cores were active, they naturally re-indexed the fragmented data. Zero packet loss.”

“If a cultivator lacks the specs—specifically, a robust soul structure—the initial impact would simply crash the drive entirely. That is why only those with high-end hardware can attempt this.”

The five Elders nodded slowly, processing the logic. It was brilliant in its simplicity.

“Headmaster,” Elder Jin Jue asked, eyeing him with awe, “you have successfully cultivated the technique. How does the dual-spirit state feel?”

Sun Yi shook his head. “The process is not complete. I am currently running on dual-core architecture. My target is quad-core.”

He looked at them seriously. “I need you to maintain the perimeter. I am going to split them again.”

“What?!”

The Elders nearly jumped out of their skins.

“Headmaster, you court death!”

“A second split? Is such a thing even possible?”

“There are no records of this in the ancient texts! Even the founders stopped at one!”

“This is too reckless! We should wait for the Patriarch to return!”

The five Golden Core masters were terrified. One split was already a gamble with fate. A second split felt like juggling with active grenades.

Sun Yi smiled calmly, raising a hand to lower the temperature in the room. “Elders, please. Pause the panic. The reason your predecessors stopped at one split was due to hardware limitations. Their souls were too fragile.”

“My soul has been overclocked by the Heavenly Soul Liquid. My stats are significantly higher than the standard deviation. I can handle the load.”

“Furthermore,” Sun Yi added, his tone turning urgent, “the soul is like curing concrete. Once it settles, it hardens. If I wait, the structure will become too rigid to modify. I must execute the second split while the architecture is still malleable.”

The Elders looked at each other, exchanging glances of helplessness. They were terrified that their new golden goose was about to cook himself, but they also knew they couldn’t stop him.

“Headmaster,” Elder Jin Jue said, his voice trembling, “you are the future of the Qingyun Sect. Please… value your life.”

“Rest assured,” Sun Yi said, his eyes gleaming with the cold confidence of a man who had checked the math three times. “I have calculated the odds. I do not gamble with my life; I invest it. The ROI is guaranteed.”

“Very well,” Elder Qin Chu sighed, defeated. “We will follow your lead.”

The formation reset. The Elders sat back down, channeling their Divine Sense to maximum output, ready to catch him if he fell.

Sun Yi closed his eyes.

He returned to the Sea of Consciousness. This time, the process was more complex. He spent three days coding the energy, condensing it.

Finally, two massive Soul Blades materialized above the churning waters.

Sun Yi looked at his two newly formed soul avatars.

“Update in progress,” he whispered.

“Sever!”

ZOOM!

The two blades dropped simultaneously.

CRACK-CRACK!

The pain was exponential. It wasn’t just a headache; it was a total system wipe. Sun Yi didn’t even have time to scream before his consciousness blue-screened.

Inside his mind, the two souls were quartered. Four raw, pulsing soul cores emerged from the wreckage.

Chaos erupted. A tsunami of soul fragments tried to breach the hull of his mind.

Wham!

The five Elders slammed the gates shut. Their combined Divine Sense formed an iron cage, trapping the chaotic energy within the designated sandbox.

This time, the reboot took longer.

Sun Yi remained in a coma for seven days.

Slowly, the four soul cores flickered to life. They spun up, generating a powerful magnetic field that pulled the scattered fragments back into orbit.

Organization returned to the chaos.

When Sun Yi finally opened his eyes, the world looked different.

He felt… expanded.

Inside his mind, four distinct nodes of consciousness hummed in perfect synchronization.

Sun Yi smirked, rubbing his temples.

Upgrade complete. Single-core processor replaced with Quad-core architecture.