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

Chapter 143: Successfully Building the V2.0 Demon Refining Tower

The massive spiritual vortex slowly wound down. Although the Rank 3 Unicorn Spirit Rhinoceros soul had been successfully processed into liquid, Sun Yi stood before the Soul Refining Flag with a deep frown carved into his features.

“What troubles you, Headmaster? Was there a flaw in the operation?” Elder Qin Chu asked, his archaic robes rustling as he stepped forward.

Sun Yi shook his head, his eyes analyzing the cooling runes. “The current throughput of the Demon Refining Tower is unacceptable. The hardware maxes out at Rank 3 demon souls, and it can only process them sequentially—one by one. The efficiency is abysmal. We need to patch the system and optimize the refining rate.”

“Is there a path forward, Headmaster?”

“The most direct method is a vertical upgrade,” Sun Yi stated, tapping his chin. “If we could upgrade the Soul Refining Flag and the Soul Refining Stele to Rank 4, the processing speed would skyrocket.”

“Alas, that is no simple feat,” Elder Qin Chu sighed, his brows knitting together. “We do not possess a Rank 4 artifact refiner within the Sect. Elevating these to Rank 4 Spirit Weapons would be a tribulation in itself.”

Sun Yi nodded. “This tower isn’t just about artifact refining. It relies on a complex tech stack: Formations, talisman crafting, and alchemy. To upgrade the hardware via brute force, we’d need to contract at least four Rank 4 miscellaneous arts Masters.”

“Finding even one or two such exalted Masters in the Chaos Demon Commandery would be difficult,” Elder Qin Chu mused. “Their fees would bleed the Sect dry, assuming we could even gather them all at the same time.”

Elder Qin Chu’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Ah! What about the Seven Star Tower? Their headquarters sits in the Heavenly Saint Commandery. With their vast network, they surely possess the means to assist us!”

“Denied,” Sun Yi said instantly, shooting down the suggestion. “The Heavenly Soul Liquid is our core intellectual property. I will not outsource our R&D to third-party vendors, especially external entities from outside our Commandery. The risk of corporate espionage is too high. We handle this in-house.”

The stakes were simply too great. Bringing in outside Masters might upgrade the tower, but it would inevitably leak the existence of the Demon Refining Tower. Sun Yi refused to gamble the Sect’s future. Even a neutral party like the Seven Star Tower was too much of a security threat.

“Then… what is our recourse?” Elder Qin Chu asked, looking at Sun Yi as if he held the secrets of the Heavens.

“Let me run some numbers. There might be a way to scale our output horizontally without needing higher-tier materials,” Sun Yi muttered.

He looked up, a sharp glint in his eyes. “Elder Qin Chu, I need you to initiate a construction project. Excavate a massive underground chamber deep within the main peak’s mountain belly. This entire tower—the Demon Refining Tower—must be relocated underground for maximum security.”

“Furthermore, continue sourcing the raw materials we used to build this one. Once we have the inventory, we aren’t upgrading this tower; we’re building a second one. Parallel processing will double our output.”

“A brilliant stratagem, Headmaster! Leave the logistics to this old man. I shall arrange the excavation at once!” Elder Qin Chu bowed deeply and hurried off.

Sun Yi descended to the first floor.

At the bottom of the vortex, a heavy, metallic silver liquid pooled inside a dark vessel. The Heavenly Soul Liquid. Sun Yi quickly retrieved an identical black container from his Storage Ring and swapped it out, securing the processed product.

It was fortunate he had looted that mysterious black ore from the subterranean depths of the Soul Refining Valley. Ordinary containers would have dissolved under the liquid’s potent spiritual weight.

Carrying the vessel of Heavenly Soul Liquid, Sun Yi stepped out of the tower and sent out a localized telepathic ping. Er Gouzi immediately responded, ushering 10 Qi Refining Grand Perfection disciples into the clearing.

“The system update is ready,” Sun Yi announced, holding up the vessel. “You may begin absorbing the Qingyun Dew. Go slow. Process it drop by drop to prevent system overload.”

“We obey the Headmaster’s command!”

The 10 elite cultivators, who had been vibrating with impatience, practically lunged forward. They surrounded the black vessel reverently, using their Qi to extract the liquid drop by drop, beginning the agonizingly slow process of absorption.

For the next 10 days, Sun Yi locked himself away, hyper-focused on redesigning the tower’s schematics. Redesigning proprietary hardware from scratch was a massive headache.

When Elder Yan and the other core researchers realized Sun Yi was optimizing the system, they eagerly joined his think-tank.

The R&D team rapidly expanded. Soon, anyone who wasn’t currently in isolated cultivation was brought in to crunch numbers and test arrays.

Through this massive crowdsourced effort, the redesign project accelerated. Though the individual cultivation base of the members was low, the sheer volume of brainstorming yielded surprisingly efficient algorithms.

Half a month later, Sun Yi stood over a massive parchment table. Version 2.0 of the Demon Refining Tower was finalized.

“This is it,” Sun Yi said, a satisfied smile curving his lips. “We didn’t increase the raw quality of the materials, but by optimizing the array geometry, the refining power has increased fivefold. The ROI on this design is massive.”

While Sun Yi finalized the blueprints, the Sect Elders were spinning like tops, working themselves to the bone.

Elder Ye Luo was running mass-training bootcamps for the Split Spirit Technique. Every disciple who successfully absorbed the Heavenly Soul Liquid and met the minimum stat requirements was immediately funneled into his classes.

However, a bug in the system quickly surfaced. This artificial liquid lacked the raw potency of the natural source Sun Yi had discovered in the valley. There was a hard saturation limit for Qi Refining cultivators.

Er Gouzi was the first to hit the wall. After his soul strength had multiplied by 20 times, his Sea of Consciousness rejected any further liquid.

Sun Yi diagnosed the issue immediately: low-resolution product. The artificial liquid had impurities that capped out the local hardware of a Qi Refining cultivator.

It was slightly disappointing, but a 20x soul multiplier was more than enough. It allowed the disciples to execute the Split Spirit Technique twice, forming four distinct soul fragments within their Sea of Consciousness.

This power vastly exceeded the bottleneck requirements for breaking through to the Foundation Establishment stage.

Once certified by Elder Ye Luo, these disciples were handed off to Elders Han Yun and Li Tai, who marched them up to the main peak’s heavily guarded core for their breakthroughs.

For weeks, the skies above the Qingyun Sect’s main peak churned violently. Massive tides of Spiritual Qi crashed against the mountain daily as cultivators shattered their bottlenecks. The general populace of the Sect watched in awe, completely unaware of the industrial revolution occurring behind the scenes.

Two months later.

Sun Yi stood on the 3rd floor of the brand-new V2.0 Demon Refining Tower.

It was a behemoth, standing twice as wide and significantly taller than the prototype. The layout of the 3rd floor had been completely overhauled.

The central Formation circle was massive. Instead of a single Stele, 18 obsidian Soul Refining Steles were arranged in a geometric ring. At the absolute center floated not one, but three Soul Refining Flags, their dark fabrics woven together to form a devastating sub-array.

Sun Yi initiated the boot sequence.

The three Soul Refining Flags snapped to life, their fabric whipping in a sudden, localized gale. The 18 monoliths hummed with resonant frequencies, locking the Formation into place.

Sun Yi didn’t hesitate. He pulled a Sealing Soul Talisman from his robes and tossed it into the array.

A Rank 2 demon soul materialized with a screech. The central Formation instantly shredded it into sub-atomic spiritual particles, refining it in the literal blink of an eye.

Sun Yi immediately tossed a second talisman.

A massive Rank 3 demon wolf soul exploded into the chamber. It threw its head back to unleash a terrifying howl—but the sound was choked off instantly. The combined gravitational force of the three-flag array seized the Rank 3 beast and crushed it like a tin can.

The wolf had zero capability to resist. It was liquified in seconds. The processing speed was exponentially faster than the prototype, utterly obliterating their projected fivefold efficiency metrics.

“Heavens above! This speed is monstrous!” Elder Qin Chu gasped, his eyes bulging.

Sun Yi nodded, checking the output logs. “The efficiency has indeed scaled. With both towers running in parallel, we can easily meet the Sect’s consumer demand.”

Elder Qin Chu stroked his beard, a new worry creasing his brow. “True, Headmaster. But at this burn rate, our supply of demon souls will be depleted in a matter of days.”

“Heh.” Sun Yi chuckled darkly, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the west. “The Myriad Demon Forest is right on our doorstep. Why worry about a shortage when we have an infinite resource pool?”