“Sustainable growth, Sect Leader. Sustainable growth.” Patriarch Qingxuan’s voice was stern, the lecture continuing as Sun Yi recovered from his electrical burnout. “You cannot simply overclock your cultivation until the system crashes. We need you alive for the next fiscal quarter.”

“Understood, Chairman. I’ll adhere to safety protocols,” Sun Yi lied smoothly, checking his internal diagnostics. His body felt incredible—rebooted and upgraded.

“Good.” Qingxuan sighed, handing over a jade slip. “Now, regarding the external contractors. I’ve compiled a portfolio of assets to use as… incentives. Review the package before I deploy.”

Sun Yi scanned the inventory list. It was heavy on high-grade materials—Tier 4 spiritual herbs, rare ores, and refined artifacts. The kind of wealth that screamed ‘old money.’

He frowned. “We need to restructure this deal. Strip out the high-value, low-volume assets. Replace them with bulk commodities.”

Qingxuan furrowed his brow. “If we dilute the quality, will the Nascent Soul mercenaries bite? We need to show them we can pay.”

“We need to show them we can pay, not that we are worth robbing,” Sun Yi corrected, his voice dropping to a serious, conspiratorial tone. “If we flash a Tier 4 Spirit Herb, they won’t see a payment; they’ll see a supply chain. They’ll wonder where we got it, and if we have more.”

He tapped the table. “We are hiring wolves to kill other wolves. We cannot invite them into our house while wearing a meat suit.”

“This is basic asset shielding,” Sun Yi continued. “Pay them in mountains of Spirit Stones and common resources. It conveys the same monetary value, but the optical message changes. It says: ‘We are liquidating our savings to survive,’ not ‘We are sitting on a secret treasure trove.'”

“Furthermore, frame the narrative correctly. Tell them the Black Wind Stockade and Evil Spirit Valley are the real prizes. They’ve dominated the market for decades; their treasuries must be overflowing. Direct the mercenaries’ greed toward our competitors.”

Patriarch Qingxuan stared at Sun Yi, a look of dawning realization on his face. He had been so focused on the recruitment that he hadn’t considered the counter-party risk.

“I… hadn’t considered the target fixation,” Qingxuan admitted. “You are right. If I had gone with my original package, I might have inadvertently triggered a hostile takeover against us.”

“You have a mind for the fine print, Sun Yi. I’ll have the logistics team restructure the payload immediately.”

Qingxuan vanished from the room, rushing to mitigate the risk he hadn’t even seen coming.

Alone again, Sun Yi stood up and rolled his shoulders. His joints popped with the sound of cracking stone. The Thunder Spirit Grass had done its job; his hardware specs were now far exceeding the recommended requirements for a Qi Refining cultivator.

“Chassis is reinforced,” he muttered, throwing a casual jab. The air pressure cracked like a whip. “Physical stats are optimal. I could probably dismantle a Battle Tower simulation with bare hands.”

But raw strength wasn’t enough. He needed mobility. He needed the Wind Thunder Step.

“Software installation time.”

Sun Yi sat cross-legged and pulled out a bottle of Wind-attribute Demon Cores. These were the raw batteries of magical beasts—chaotic, powerful, and usually toxic to human cultivation.

Standard protocol required refining these into pills to remove the ‘impurity’—the beast’s will and chaotic data. absorbing a raw core would corrupt a cultivator’s mana foundation, leading to a mottled, unstable power base.

But Sun Yi didn’t plan to absorb them.

He popped a Tier 2 Wind Core into his mouth like a breath mint.

As the core dissolved, a biting, cold energy flooded his meridians. It was the essence of Wind—sharp, erratic, and fast.

“Do not digest,” Sun Yi commanded himself. “Just emulate.”

He refused to cycle his Five Elements Art. He didn’t convert the energy into his own mana. instead, he let the raw wind power saturate his tissues, creating a temporary, artificial ‘Wind Environment’ inside his body. He was using the core as a bridge, a signal booster to force his body to resonate with the ambient wind mana in the atmosphere.

Half an hour later, the energy dissipated. Result: Null. No connection established.

“Burn rate is acceptable,” Sun Yi noted, checking his inventory. “I have thousands of these. Iterate.”

He popped another core.

Outside, Patriarch Qingxuan had finished restructuring the resource package and returned to the CEO’s office for a final sign-off. He paused at the door, his Divine Sense sweeping the room.

He froze.

Inside, Sun Yi was eating Demon Cores. Raw.

Is he trying to ruin his foundation?! Qingxuan’s instinct was to kick the door down. Consuming raw cores was the quickest way to pollute one’s True Qi. It was cultivation suicide.

But he hesitated. He watched closely.

Sun Yi wasn’t refining the energy. He was letting it flood his system, waiting for it to fade, and then popping another one. It was a cycle of pure waste. He was burning valuable resources just to feel the breeze they created.

“What is he doing?” Qingxuan muttered, baffled. “He’s just… leaking the energy?”

It looked like madness. It looked like a bored rich kid lighting cigars with banknotes. Qingxuan’s frugality screamed in protest. He prepared to intervene.

Suddenly, Sun Yi’s eyes snapped open.

Flash.

There was no buildup. One moment Sun Yi was sitting; the next, he was standing in the opposite corner of the room, a trail of blurred afterimages fading in his wake.

“Gotcha,” Sun Yi laughed, the sound echoing in the stone chamber. “The driver is installed!”

It had taken dozens of cores, but by saturating his body with foreign wind energy, he had finally tricked his senses into locking onto the atmospheric frequency. He had forced a connection.

“Hahaha! Brute force engineering always wins if you have the budget!”

He triggered the technique again, his figure blurring as he zipped across the room. It was rough, unpolished, and buggy, but it was undeniably the Wind Thunder Step.

The door creaked open. Patriarch Qingxuan stood there, jaw slightly unhinged.

“That… that was the Wind Thunder Step,” Qingxuan stammered. “How? You don’t have the Spirit Root for it.”

“Patriarch! You’re still here?” Sun Yi dusted off his robes, grinning.

“Never mind that,” Qingxuan waved his hand, stepping inside, eyes wide with curiosity. “Do it again. I need to see the runtime data.”

“Sure.”

Sun Yi took a breath, channeled his mana, and pushed.

Whoosh.

He streaked across the room, leaving a faint distortion in the air.

Qingxuan watched with the critical eye of a veteran developer. He nodded slowly, then frowned.

“It works,” the Patriarch analyzed, rubbing his chin. “It is definitely the Wind Thunder Step. But… the latency is terrible. Your output is only about twenty-five percent of the theoretical max speed.”