Based on standard progression metrics, Sun Yi calculated a thirty-day lead time to break through to the next stage. For the average disciple, a month was a blink of an eye. For Sun Yi, it was an unacceptable bottleneck in his production schedule.

He reached into his storage bag and withdrew several porcelain bottles of Tempering Spirit Pills. These were essentially system optimizers, designed to purge impurities from True Qi. Cleaner energy meant higher throughput and easier upgrades.

Sun Yi downed a pill. It dissolved instantly, a warm current merging with his internal energy to scrub the “code.” It worked, but the processing speed was agonizingly slow.

“Inefficient,” he muttered.

Without a second thought, he uncorked every bottle and downed the entire inventory.

The massive influx of medicinal energy roared through his meridians. As he cycled the Five Elements Art, the purification process accelerated from a trickle to a flood. He was brute-forcing the optimization.

Nearby, Luo An’s eyelid twitched.

The bodyguard was trying to meditate, but the sheer auditory and spiritual disturbance of Sun Yi’s consumption was impossible to ignore. The new Sect Leader was swallowing Tempering Spirit Pills like they were breath mints. In less than a minute, he had burned through twenty thousand Spirit Stones’ worth of inventory—more than the total net worth of most Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Sun Yi, oblivious to his bodyguard’s internal screaming, ran a diagnostic. The purity of his True Qi had doubled. The “bloatware” was gone.

Now for the hardware upgrade.

He pulled out the Essence Fruits. These were rare, high-density XP packs that most disciples only whispered about in legends. Sun Yi tossed one into his mouth.

A surge of pure, unadulterated power exploded in his chest. As he ran his cultivation algorithm, the energy integrated into his dantian faster than even the High-Grade Spirit Stones could manage.

But it wasn’t fast enough. The progress bar was crawling.

Sun Yi frowned and grabbed a second fruit.

Luo An snapped. He opened his eyes, horror written across his face. “Sect Leader, stop! Those are Essence Fruits! You cannot chain-smoke them! The diminishing returns are severe—you must wait ten days between doses to reset your tolerance!”

Sun Yi paused, the fruit hovering inches from his lips. “Are there side effects? System crashes? Qi deviation?”

Luo An blinked, caught off guard. “Well… no. The energy is gentle. You won’t explode. But you will waste the medicinal efficacy.”

“So, no bugs, just a higher cost of acquisition,” Sun Yi nodded. “Acceptable.”

He tossed the fruit into his mouth.

Luo An watched, jaw slack, as his world view crumbled. Sun Yi didn’t stop at two. He grabbed the third, then the fourth, popping them with the casual indifference of a man snacking during a movie.

“Sect Leader!” Luo An’s voice cracked. “That is an Essence Fruit!”

“Flavor profile is decent,” Sun Yi mused, swallowing. “A bit tart. We need to secure a stable supply chain for these.”

Luo An looked ready to faint. Each bite was a thousand Spirit Stones. Sun Yi had just consumed ten thousand in a single sitting. But the tragedy wasn’t the cost; it was the inefficiency.

“Sect Leader,” Luo An whispered, his lips trembling. “Does your heart not bleed? By stacking the doses, you are liquidating seventy percent of the potency. It’s… it’s a crime against cultivation.”

Sun Yi looked at his bodyguard, his expression dead serious.

“Luo An, let me teach you a fundamental concept of economics: Time is money.”

Luo An stared blankly.

“Time is our only non-renewable asset,” Sun Yi continued, lecturing the bodyguard as if he were a junior analyst. “If I can secure a level-up today, why would I wait one hundred days? Because I’m afraid of ‘wasting’ inventory? I have the capital. I can afford the burn rate. What I cannot afford is the delay.”

Time is money?

The phrase bounced around Luo An’s skull. It sounded profound, yet deeply wrong in the context of immortal cultivation. But looking at Sun Yi—calm, rich, and utterly unbothered—Luo An realized the terrifying truth. The Sect Leader wasn’t crazy. He was just so wealthy that ‘waste’ was a meaningless variable.

“The efficacy is peaking,” Sun Yi said, waving a hand. “Update your worldview later. I need to compile this build.”

Sun Yi closed his eyes.

The energy inside him was a raging torrent. It felt like he had overclocked his CPU without upgrading the cooling fan; he was stuffed to the bursting point. He drove the Five Elements Art to its limit.

His True Qi slammed into a barrier—the firewall preventing entry to the next level. The first impact bounced off. Sun Yi didn’t panic. He simply redirected the massive surplus of “wasted” energy and rammed it against the wall again.

Crash.

The barrier shattered.

Sun Yi felt his internal architecture expand. Qi Refining Level 4.

He didn’t stop. The tank was still full. He poured more “capital” into the engine.

Twenty-four hours later, his body shuddered. A shockwave of spiritual pressure blasted outward. Qi Refining Level 5.

Another day passed. The aura spiked again. Level 6.

On the third day, the final surge hit. The energy swirled, condensed, and settled. When the dust cleared, Sun Yi had stabilized at Qi Refining Level 7. The Essence Fruits were finally exhausted.

He opened his eyes. The world looked sharper. His dantian hummed with a capacity that dwarfed his previous specs.

Three days. Four levels.

For a man with garbage-tier Spirit Roots, this was a statistical impossibility. But Sun Yi had simply replaced ‘talent’ with ‘budget.’

“Cultivation,” Sun Yi murmured, flexing a hand that crackled with power. “The user interface is clunky, but the mechanics are surprisingly pay-to-win.”

Across the room, Luo An watched in defeated silence.

If a genius had consumed those fruits properly, they would have hit the Great Perfection stage. Sun Yi had barely scraped into the late stages. The waste was astronomical. If the disciples knew, they’d riot.

Whatever, Luo An sighed internally, closing his eyes. He’s the boss. If he wants to burn money to keep warm, that’s his prerogative.

“Luo An,” Sun Yi’s voice cut through the silence. “What did you observe during this sprint?”

Luo An opened one eye, confused.

“I have the worst possible hardware configuration,” Sun Yi said, gesturing to himself. “Gold, Wood, Fire—a complete mess. Yet, in seventy-two hours, I outperformed years of traditional effort. So, I ask you: Is aptitude really that important?”

Luo An froze. He had spent his life believing that Spirit Roots were destiny. But looking at the man in front of him…

Sun Yi smiled, a shark-like glint in his eyes. “If every employee in the Qingyun Sect had access to this level of funding, would ‘talent’ even be a KPI we track?”

“How…” Luo An stammered. “How could every disciple have these resources? That’s impossible.”

“Everything is vaporware until you ship it,” Sun Yi said dismissively. “You wouldn’t understand the business model yet. Back to work.”

He ignored the shell-shocked bodyguard and turned his attention inward.

His stats were up, but his control was lagging. The rapid scaling had left his handling a bit loose; he needed to stabilize the new build before pushing for the next update.

“No new features for now,” Sun Yi decided. “No new spells. I don’t have the bandwidth.”

His priority remained the data center. He had delayed his visit to the Scripture Library for too long. Without access to the source code—the world’s knowledge base—his strategic planning was flying blind.

“First, stabilization,” he thought. “Then, data mining.”