While the five disciples were busy downloading the data from the jade slips, Sun Yi settled into a lotus position nearby. He flicked his wrist, and a jade bottle materialized from his inventory.

It contained thirty drops of Cold Jade Snake Essence Blood—a Tier-2 cryogenic refining agent.

Sun Yi tapped the bottle, isolating a single drop. He opened his mouth and swallowed it.

The moment the essence hit his stomach, it flash-froze his insides, expanding into a wave of glacial energy that flooded his meridians.

Warning: Hostile psychic signature detected.

A remnant soul of the Cold Jade Snake surged into his Sea of Consciousness, manifesting as a spectral serpent. It reared back, hissing, ready to strike at his main soul.

“Hmph.”

One of Sun Yi’s eight sub-cores activated. A blur of mental energy materialized beside the serpent and delivered a casual, devastating backhand.

Bang.

The serpent didn’t even have time to scream. It shattered into code fragments and dissolved.

Threat neutralized. Processing energy…

Sun Yi frowned. The absorption rate was abysmal. At this pace, upgrading his hardware would take all night.

Inefficient. Execute batch processing.

He tilted his head back and downed the entire bottle in one go.

If any other cultivator had seen this, they would have screamed in horror. Essence blood was meant to be refined drop by drop over days. Consuming it like a shot of cheap tequila was suicide.

Boom!

The glacial energy detonated in his gut. Inside his mindscape, the remnant soul of the snake reappeared—this time massive, roaring like a dragon.

Delete.

Sun Yi’s soul avatar didn’t hesitate. One punch. The massive serpent disintegrated instantly.

The icy energy raged through his tissues for a full hour before settling. Sun Yi ran a diagnostic on his muscles.

Result: Marginal increase in tensile strength. ROI: Low.

“Garbage,” Sun Yi muttered.

The Tier-2 material was obsolete. His body was already optimized to the peak of Tier-2; adding more fuel to a full tank was just spilling it on the ground. He had wasted 90% of the medicinal potency.

But to Sun Yi, waste was just an operational cost. Time was the only non-renewable resource.

He pulled out another bottle—twenty drops of Earthy Yellow Liquid. Gulp.

Next.

He pulled out a tray of rare herbs. Crunch.

Sun Yi began a spree of consumption that would have given a traditional alchemist a heart attack. He devoured rare Tier-2 resources like they were popcorn, stopping only when the system notifications for stat increases hit exactly 0.00%.

Zhang Yuan and the others had stopped reading. They stared at their Headmaster, their jaws hanging loose.

They watched him chew through a fortune in “heavenly treasures” in minutes. They realized their previous estimation of him was wrong. He wasn’t just wealthy; he was a spendthrift maniac.

Tier-2 optimization complete. Initiating Tier-3 upgrade.

Sun Yi retrieved a jade box. inside lay a five-inch crimson vine—the Red Fire Vine.

It was a rare Tier-3 material that grew only in active magma flows. Standard protocol required slicing it into thin wafers and brewing it for days.

Sun Yi shoved the entire vine into his mouth and chewed.

System Alert: Thermal runaway imminent.

The moment the vine slid down his throat, a tyrannical heat exploded in his core. It felt like he had swallowed a live grenade made of lava.

His skin turned a violent shade of lobster-red. Steam hissed from his pores, raising the ambient temperature of the room until the air shimmered.

“Headmaster!” Zhang Yuan gasped, terrified Sun Yi was about to spontaneously combust.

Sun Yi gritted his teeth. Internal temperature critical. Coolant systems failing. Rerouting power to containment.

It hurt. It felt like his blood was boiling into vapor. But compared to the hellish agony of the Red Flame Spirit Liquid he had taken previously, this was merely a stern workout.

He tanked the damage.

Two hours later, the heat subsided. The energy integrated into his cellular structure.

Sun Yi opened his eyes and exhaled a long plume of gray, turbid smoke.

He stood up and casually threw a punch at the empty air.

CRACK!

The air didn’t just move; it shattered. A visible shockwave—Gang Feng—ripped through the chamber, creating a vacuum tunnel that slammed against the far wall.

The disciples turned pale. The pressure from that casual swing triggered their fight-or-flight instincts. If that fist had connected with them, there wouldn’t be a body left to bury.

Sun Yi looked at his fist, satisfied.

Previous Specs: Could pulverize a Foundation Establishment cultivator, but would bounce off a Golden Core’s kinetic shield. Current Specs: Kinetic output sufficient to breach Golden Core defenses.

Hardware Status: Tier-3 Entry Level.

“Acceptable,” he nodded.

He wasn’t done. He pulled out a dark red fruit the size of a ping-pong ball. It was ugly and wrinkled—the Earth Pattern Fruit.

He tossed it into his mouth.

This one was gentle. A warm, nourishing energy flooded his system, reinforcing the density of his bones and skin. An hour later, he exhaled again.

Structure reinforced. Upgrade complete.

He rolled his shoulders, feeling the raw power humming under his skin. He glanced at the five stunned disciples.

“Status check. Let me know when you’ve memorized the manual. My schedule is tight.”

“U-Understood, Headmaster!” they stammered, diving back into the jade slips.

Sun Yi sat back down. He had a few minutes of downtime while the ‘beta testers’ prepped for surgery.

Time to check the software.

He pulled out a bottle of Small Spirit Pills.

These were potent consumables designed for Foundation Establishment cultivators. When he was in Qi Refining, Lin Yi had warned him that taking one would result in a “buffer overflow”—literally exploding his body.

But things had changed.

Sun Yi had been too busy to cultivate properly. Between managing the sect, mastering Alchemy, Artifact Refining, Formations, and running eight parallel processing threads in his mind, his CPU utilization had been at 100%.

Now, however… I have the hardware to support the surge.

He popped a Small Spirit Pill.

Boom.

The energy released was violent, a tsunami of spiritual power crashing against his meridians. For a normal Qi Refining cultivator, this would be a death sentence. Their channels would rupture like cheap piping.

But Sun Yi’s body was now a Tier-3 fortress. The violent energy crashed against his meridian walls and did… absolutely nothing. His body absorbed the impact with ease, converting the chaotic flow into stable cultivation base.

Sun Yi’s eyes lit up.

Hypothesis confirmed.

If the hardware (body) is upgraded to Tier-2 or higher, the system can handle high-voltage inputs (pills) without crashing.

This means I can power-level the low-level employees.

If he could mass-produce Tier-2 bodies for his disciples, he could feed them these high-grade pills. Sure, 50% of the energy would be wasted due to inefficient absorption, but the speed? The leveling speed would be exponential.

Standard sects would never allow such waste. But Sun Yi smiled.

To the moon.