After twenty-four hours of system diagnostics, Sun Yi had finally stabilized the Split Spirit Technique. The sensation was intoxicating—like upgrading from a single-core processor to an octa-core hyper-threaded beast. He didn’t just feel the world; he processed it in eight parallel streams.

Naturally, the first stress test was data ingestion. He headed straight for the Scripture Library.

The results were within expected parameters: efficiency had skyrocketed. It wasn’t just reading eight times faster; it was the ability to cross-reference, analyze, and compile data simultaneously without hitting a bottleneck.

Satisfied with the hardware upgrade, Sun Yi pinged Er Gouzi for a status report.

Inside the Scripture Library’s VIP cultivation chamber, the air hummed with psychic pressure.

Eight jade slips hovered in a perfect orbit around Sun Yi’s head, glowing softly as his Divine Sense violently extracted information from all of them at once.

When Er Gouzi stepped through the formation barrier, he froze. The sheer density of the mental energy in the room made the air feel like heavy syrup. Seeing the eight floating slips, his eyes widened in sheer awe.

The Headmaster’s Divine Sense… it is as vast as the ocean.

He quickly composed himself, bowing low with deep reverence.

“This disciple greets the Headmaster. You summoned me?”

Sun Yi didn’t turn his head. He simply terminated seven background processes and focused his primary thread on the man standing by the door. The jade slips clattered gently to the table.

Sun Yi’s gaze felt like a scanner, stripping Er Gouzi down to his raw data.

“Not bad,” Sun Yi said, his voice flat but approving. “Qi Refining Level Nine. You haven’t been slacking on the grind.”

“It is all thanks to the Headmaster’s benevolence,” Er Gouzi replied, voice trembling slightly with emotion. “Without the sect’s resources, a disciple with a Low Grade Spirit Root like mine would never dream of such heights. We are merely repaying your kindness.”

“Kindness has nothing to do with it. It’s an investment,” Sun Yi corrected effortlessly. “I see the sect average has finally hit the Level Nine floor.”

“Yes, Headmaster. However…” Er Gouzi hesitated.

“Speak.”

“While the base cultivation has risen, most disciples are now bottlenecked at Qi Refining Grand Perfection. Morale is stable, but stagnation breeds bugs in the system. Everyone is anxious.”

Sun Yi tapped his finger on the desk. He had expected this. The server population was hitting the level cap, and the expansion pack wasn’t ready yet.

“And the physical optimization? How is the body tempering project?”

“That is where the stability lies,” Er Gouzi reported. “Everyone is obsessed with tempering their flesh. But we have a supply chain issue. The resources from the Seven Star Tower are sufficient for now, but we lack a standardized Body Tempering technique. We are brute-forcing the process with raw materials. It’s… inefficient. We are bleeding capital.”

Er Gouzi looked pained. To a native cultivator, wasting resources was a sin against the Heavens. To Sun Yi, it was just poor ROI.

“Inefficiency is temporary,” Sun Yi said dismissively. “The next trade window with the Seven Star Tower is opening soon. I’ve already put in a purchase order for new software—Body Tempering manuals. They’ll deliver.”

He shifted the conversation, treating the sect management like a quarterly review. “What about the R&D division? The Miscellaneous Arts Hall.”

Er Gouzi’s gloomy expression instantly vanished, replaced by a beaming smile.

“Explosive growth, Headmaster! Ever since we injected the raw materials from the Myriad Demon Forest, the Miscellaneous Arts Hall has been booming. Participation is at an all-time high.”

He began listing the stats with pride.

“In the Refining Hall, Elder Yan has successfully ascended to become a Tier-3 Artifact Refiner. We now have over sixty Tier-2 Refiners, and the Tier-1 count has doubled.”

Sun Yi nodded. Tier-3 hardware production. Good.

“The Alchemy Hall has produced two Tier-3 Alchemists. Over fifty Tier-2s.”

“And the Talisman Hall?”

“That is the crown jewel,” Er Gouzi said excitedly. “Thanks to the endless supply of demon hides, their proficiency is skyrocketing. We have our first Tier-3 Talisman Master, over seventy Tier-2s, and five hundred Tier-1s.”

Sun Yi’s eyes narrowed in calculation. Five hundred Tier-1 Talisman Masters. That’s a lot of firepower. The assembly line for the Heavenly Soul Liquid is coming together.

“And the Formation Hall?”

“Lagging behind,” Er Gouzi admitted. “No Tier-3 Masters yet.”

“Expected,” Sun Yi waved it off. “Formations are code. You can’t just throw money at coding; you need raw intelligence and logic. Resources help, but the user is the bottleneck there. The Seven Star Tower will bring new documentation soon. Let them compile at their own pace.”

Sun Yi leaned back. “Now, the most critical metric. The Battle Tower. Combat power.”

In this world, numbers meant nothing if you couldn’t defend your server from a hostile takeover.

“Traffic is high,” Er Gouzi said. “The disciples are combat-hungry. Their proficiency in converting Qi to violence has increased drastically. However…”

Er Gouzi’s face darkened.

Sun Yi paused. “However? System error?”

“A social error, Headmaster. A glitch in the culture.”

Er Gouzi sighed, looking genuinely troubled. “Under your new policies, resources are plentiful. But the disparity in hardware—Spirit Roots—is creating a divide. The High Grade Spirit Root disciples are leveling faster and hitting harder. They have begun to… look down on the Low Grade disciples.”

Sun Yi’s expression went cold.

He had designed the Qingyun Sect to be an open-source meritocracy. He removed the paywalls and the caste system of Inner and Outer sects to encourage healthy competition. He wanted a optimize-or-die environment, not a return to feudal aristocracy.

“Define ‘look down on’,” Sun Yi said softly.

“Arrogance. Exclusion. They haven’t broken any explicit rules, so I cannot punish them,” Er Gouzi explained helplessly. “But the atmosphere is turning toxic. The talented believe they are the chosen elite. I fear a faction war is brewing.”

“Talent,” Sun Yi scoffed, standing up. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. “They think a slightly better CPU makes them gods? They’re just running default settings on better hardware.”

He walked past Er Gouzi, his face rippling as the Phantom Mask rewrote his features.

“I’m going to inspect the server population personally.”

Sun Yi, now wearing the generic face of a nameless disciple and the plain grey robes of the rank-and-file, drifted into the Battle Tower plaza.

The area was packed. The energy was high, the sound of steel on steel ringing out from the sparring zones. It looked like a thriving game lobby.

But it only took Sun Yi thirty seconds to spot the bug.

The plaza was segregated.

On one side, the Low Grade Spirit Root disciples—the grinders, the hard workers—were huddled together, sharing tips. On the other, the High Grade disciples stood in tight, exclusionary circles, radiating smug superiority.

Sun Yi moved closer to the tower entrance.

“Get lost! Go grind somewhere else, trash. We’re using this spot.”

The voice was loud, piercing, and dripping with entitlement.

Sun Yi turned.

Five cultivators stood near the prime meditation spots. They were all at the Foundation Establishment stage—early achievers, likely carried there by their superior Spirit Roots.

Blocking their path were several Qi Refining Grand Perfection disciples. They looked angry, humiliated, but hesitant to strike back against their superiors.

The leader of the five, a young man with a face that screamed ‘main character syndrome’, sneered down his nose. His chin was tilted so high he was practically looking at the sky.

“Did you not hear me?” the youth spat, dusting off his pristine sleeve. “This zone is for elites. Mediocrity is contagious. Move.”

Sun Yi watched from the crowd, his eyes dead calm.

Elites?

In his eyes, they were just bugged code that needed to be patched.