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

Chapter 201: Qingyun Battle Armor

To effortlessly absorb a full-force strike from an early-stage Golden Core cultivator… the defensive threshold of this spirit armor was genuinely terrifying, especially considering Sun Yi was currently operating at a mere early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivation.

“Has it reached its operational limit?” Patriarch Qingxuan asked, his eyes locked on Sun Yi.

Sun Yi shook his head, running a quick diagnostic of his internal state. “Not yet, Patriarch. Let’s escalate the load. Try a mid-stage Golden Core attack. The spiritual circuitry should handle the transient surge without a problem.”

Patriarch Qingxuan nodded. With a casual flick of his wrist, another staggering wave of sword energy tore through the air, slamming directly into the armor.

Instantly, intricate rune-inscribed matrices flared to life across the sleek metal plating. The defensive Formation booted up at maximum capacity, forming a dynamic feedback loop that perfectly neutralized the incoming kinetic and spiritual force.

As the sword energy safely dissipated, Sun Yi nodded in profound satisfaction. The defensive output was flawless. Bridging the gap between early Foundation Establishment and mid Golden Core was practically unheard of.

Monitoring his True Qi depletion rates, Sun Yi calculated the thermal and spiritual load. I can sustain about five consecutive strikes at this intensity before my True Qi reserves run dry, he analyzed.

And that wasn’t even the absolute ceiling. If he bypassed the safety regulators and pushed the armor’s matrices into a transient overload, he hypothesized it could withstand a single, devastating blow from a late-stage Golden Core cultivator. The trade-off, however, would be a complete and instantaneous drain of his remaining True Qi, leaving him practically defenseless afterward.

When Sun Yi relayed these calculations to the onlooking elders and craftsmen, a feverish light ignited in their eyes. The implications of such a system were staggering.

“Commencing offensive trials!” Sun Yi declared.

The two pairs of metallic wings locked onto his back suddenly deployed, folding out with a sharp, mechanical snick. Engaging the Wind Thunder Step, arcs of volatile lightning and localized cyclones erupted around his boots. Like a blur of pure Teleportation, Sun Yi flickered out of existence, reappearing dozens of meters away in a heartbeat.

Channeling the Northern Sword Art, he initiated the secondary sequence. The smaller pair of wings mounted on his upper shoulders seamlessly detached, uncoupling into individual lethal components. Eighteen razor-sharp blades hung suspended in the air, humming as they synchronized with Sun Yi’s command. They quickly formed a high-speed orbital ring around him, radiating violent fluctuations of sword energy.

“Strike!”

Sun Yi thrust two fingers forward. The eighteen blades accelerated instantly, bombarding a designated testing zone in the forging area like a torrential, metallic downpour.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The entire facility violently trembled. The impact zone shattered into pulverized rock. Shifting his hand seals, Sun Yi rerouted the control frequencies. The eighteen streaks of light shot skyward, magnetically locking together high above to form a single, colossal blade dozens of meters long. A domineering, almost suffocating pressure descended upon the courtyard.

“Cleave!”

With a sharp downward slash of his hand, the monolithic blade plummeted. It struck the earth with the apocalyptic force of a localized meteor.

KRACK-BOOM!

The reinforced ground of the forging area ruptured. A terrifying trench—over five hundred meters long, a dozen meters wide, and plunging several meters deep—was gouged into the earth. Spiderweb fissures raced outward from the epicenter, throwing thick plumes of dust and debris into the air.

The sheer destructive output was undeniable, but the cost was steep. Sun Yi’s face was ashen, his spiritual aura flickering weakly.

With a strained gesture, he recalled the weapons. The eighteen streams of light zipped back, seamlessly docking into the base plate on his back and reforming the secondary wings.

He took a deep, grounding breath. That final synchronized assault had completely emptied the True Qi across his multiple Dantians. The burst damage is phenomenal, but my base cultivation is still the bottleneck. Without a higher realm, my sustained power output and overall endurance are severely compromised.

Regulating his breathing, Sun Yi casually strolled back toward the stunned group.

The spectators stared at the devastation, their expressions a mix of awe and fanaticism. Each of those eighteen blades was forged to the peak of High Grade at the third tier. A single blade was lethal enough; a perfectly synchronized array of eighteen was an absolute nightmare.

Sun Yi was only an early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator. Yet, the raw power of that final kinetic bombardment made even Patriarch Qingxuan’s jaw drop. He had lived long enough to see countless prodigies, but none who could weaponize their spiritual reserves with such brutal, efficient scaling at this stage.

The Patriarch felt his long-held understanding of the Dao fracturing. Is this… is this what cultivation is supposed to look like?

But beneath the shock lay a surging, undeniable thrill. Sun Yi was a disciple of the Qingyun Sect—their Headmaster, no less. With this visionary at the helm, and an army outfitted in this mechanized armor, the Sect’s ascent would be unstoppable.

“Does this masterwork have a designation?” Patriarch Qingxuan asked, his voice trembling slightly as he inspected the sleek plating on Sun Yi’s body. If this prototype could move to an assembly line… the tactical advantage would be world-shifting.

“Patriarch, we finalized the schematics under the name ‘Qingyun Battle Armor’.”

It was a title they had agreed upon during the R&D phase. The moment any cultivator strapped into this exoskeleton, their combat metrics would multiply exponentially.

“Excellent. The Qingyun Battle Armor,” the Patriarch repeated, savoring the words. “Can we scale up production?”

Sun Yi’s expression shifted into CEO mode. “The blueprint is designed for modular, standardized mass production. However, our supply chain has a critical bottleneck.”

“Refining the Qingyun Battle Armor relies heavily on a highly specialized alloy—Flowing Silver. It possesses unique conductive and malleable properties necessary for the spiritual circuitry. Standard Flowing Silver is a second-tier material, fine for second-tier armor. But to forge the third-tier variant, we require an upgraded catalyst: Flowing Silver Essence.”

“It’s a rare spirit iron ore. Currently, the assets we liquidated from the Black Wind Stockade and Evil Spirit Valley each contain a minor Flowing Silver vein.”

Sun Yi paused, projecting his vision to the group. “That yield is pitifully inadequate for our expansion goals. If we want to outfit the entire Qingyun Sect, we need to aggressively stockpile Flowing Silver on the open market and heavily optimize the extraction rates at our current mining sites.”

“Understood. The logistics are in your hands,” Patriarch Qingxuan nodded firmly. “Name what you need from me.”

“I’m glad you offered, Patriarch,” Sun Yi smiled, his tone slipping into calculated politeness. “We do need your expertise. Only the high-temperature purification of your Nascent Flame can process the components to a third-tier, ninth-grade standard. I must ask you to continue serving as our primary refinement engine.”

“My immediate objective is to manufacture a specialized batch of third-tier, ninth-grade Qingyun Battle Armor exclusively for our Golden Core executives. Equipping our top-tier personnel will dramatically spike our operational combat power.”

“Say no more. Give me the raw materials. I’ll handle the refinement,” Patriarch Qingxuan agreed instantly, practically vibrating with motivation. He wanted to see his Sect clad in this armor yesterday.

“I appreciate your hard work, Patriarch.” Securing high-level, free labor to process his supply chain was always a win in Sun Yi’s book. He swiftly transferred the required bulk materials over.

With the high-level forging secured, Sun Yi pivoted to his human resources. He had an attendant page Er Gouzi to the R&D center.

“Headmaster! You sent for me?” Er Gouzi reported briskly.

“Give me a status update on the miner recruitment drive,” Sun Yi demanded, slipping comfortably into his administrative role.

“Sir, our compensation packages are extremely competitive,” Er Gouzi reported with pride. “The rogue cultivator market is flocking to us. Our current active mining workforce has surpassed 7,300 contractors.”

“Of those, over 500 hold Foundation Establishment credentials. The remainder are entry-level Qi Refining operatives.”

“I’ve rapidly deployed them across our various spirit ore sectors. It’s early in the fiscal quarter, but our raw output metrics have already skyrocketed across the board.”

Sun Yi gave an approving nod. “Excellent work. Ensure we have internal Sect supervisors stationed at every site. And make this strictly clear: they are to treat our workforce with respect. I have a zero-tolerance policy for middle management abusing contractors or skimming their wages. We are building an empire, not a sweatshop.”

“You have my word, Headmaster. Compliance will be strictly enforced.”

“Good. The immediate priority is an acute shortage of Flowing Silver. The moment you leave here, reassign every Foundation Establishment miner to focus exclusively on Flowing Silver extraction. We are pivoting to an incentive-based model: bump their baseline compensation by fifty percent. That equates to them taking home a fifteen percent cut of the raw ore they mine.”

“Furthermore,” Sun Yi continued, his eyes sharp, “authorize a direct buyback program. We will purchase their cut of the Flowing Silver at ten percent above the current market rate. Do not nickel-and-dime them. As long as we monopolize the supply, capital expenditure is irrelevant.”

“Finally, dispatch scouts into the Chaos Demon Commandery. We need comprehensive geological surveys for any untapped Flowing Silver veins. If you locate one, acquire it aggressively and break ground immediately.”

“Understood, Headmaster,” Er Gouzi affirmed, quickly memorizing the new directives.

“Hold on, don’t leave just yet,” Sun Yi said, shifting gears. “Give me a macro-level brief on the Sect’s overall status.”

He had been buried in the R&D labs for months. He needed fresh data on the Qingyun Sect’s current operational footprint.

“Our structural expansion is exceeding projections,” Er Gouzi reported smoothly. “We’ve successfully erected 400 Qingyun Dao Palaces across the region. Every franchise is operating precisely according to your strategic blueprint. Furthermore, our public relations are phenomenal; the mortal populace’s brand loyalty to the Qingyun Sect is at an all-time high.”

“In terms of talent acquisition, our regional Dao Palaces have recruited over 2,500 new initiates. Demographically, we’ve secured one Heaven Spirit Root, eleven High Grade Spirit Roots, over 200 Middle Grade Spirit Roots, and the remainder are Low Grade Spirit Roots.”

“Two and a half thousand fresh recruits. Solid numbers,” Sun Yi noted, highly satisfied with the influx of fresh blood.

In the traditional cultivation market, elite Sects were notoriously strict. They wouldn’t even look at a Low Grade Spirit Root, selectively hoarding only the High Grade and Heaven-tier prospects. Sun Yi, however, understood the value of a massive, loyal workforce.

“Have we completed proper background checks and established detailed HR files for each initiate?” Sun Yi fired off the questions. “Have their families received relocation assistance? Are there any grievances regarding our placement system? How is their ideological onboarding progressing, and are their cultivation schedules optimized?”

Er Gouzi smiled confidently. “Headmaster, your onboarding protocols were followed to the letter. Every recruit passed a rigorous behavioral screen. Regardless of their raw talent, anyone showing traits of extreme malice, cruelty, or psychopathic tendencies was immediately rejected.”

“Their dependents have been provided with premium housing and stipends. The gratitude levels are immense. The ideological education seminars are running continuously, and the results speak for themselves—retention is perfect, and the new blood has rapidly developed a fierce loyalty to the Sect.”

“As for their training, we aren’t holding back. Resources are heavily subsidized, guaranteeing they cultivate in the most optimal environment possible.”