“But Sect Leader,” Elder Ye Luo interjected, his brow furrowed. “For centuries, countless sects have attempted to bypass the Foundation Establishment Pill bottleneck. None have succeeded. Do we truly have the R&D capacity to solve a problem that has stumped the entire cultivation world?”

Sun Yi took a deep breath, his gaze sweeping across the boardroom with the weight of a CEO facing a shareholder revolt.

“This isn’t a question of if we can solve it,” Sun Yi declared, his voice steely. “It is a strategic necessity. Once we acquire Chaos Demon Commandery, our expansion plan involves aggressive recruitment. The majority of new hires will be Low-Grade Spirit Root talent. If we don’t patch this bug now, our entire workforce scalability is dead in the water.”

Elder Han Yun leaned forward, his expression earnest. “Sect Leader, give us the roadmap. We will execute.”

Sun Yi nodded, switching to deployment mode. “Good. Notify all personnel to assemble at the central plaza immediately. To fix the bug, we first need to understand the source code.”

He turned to the five Golden Core executives. “You are all senior management. Do you know why high-spec hardware—High-Grade Spirit Roots—finds it easier to break through bottlenecks, while legacy hardware struggles?”

“This…” Elder Jin Jue stammered. The other four Elders exchanged blank looks.

Sun Yi rolled his eyes internally. Classic user mentality. They know how to operate the software, but they have zero understanding of the backend architecture.

“Let me rephrase,” Sun Yi said, pacing the room. “Before the invention of the Foundation Establishment Pill, were low-tier cultivators simply unable to upgrade? The history logs clearly show ancient masters with poor aptitude ascending. How did they debug their cultivation without this specific patch?”

He paused for effect. “Furthermore, demonic beasts don’t have access to our pharmaceutical supply chain. How do they achieve breakthrough?”

The Elders stared at him, stunned. They had never questioned the established meta.

“We need to stop relying on proprietary, black-box solutions,” Sun Yi concluded. “Changqing, issue a mandatory all-hands meeting. I’m taking charge of this project personally.”

“Understood!” Er Gouzi scrambled to his feet and rushed out to broadcast the notification.

The atmosphere over Qingyun Sect was heavy, like a tech startup facing a massive layoff.

Despite the recent boom in resources and welfare, a dark cloud hung over the disciples. The depletion of Foundation Establishment Pills had triggered a panic.

In a corner of the training grounds, five Qi Refining disciples huddled together, their faces grim.

“Senior Brother Ma… he failed the upgrade,” a young cultivator whispered. “System crash. Fatal.”

“I told him the success rate was too low,” another sighed, shaking his head. ” attempting a Low-Grade hardware upgrade without the stabilizer patch is suicide.”

“He didn’t have a choice,” a third argued. “He was aging out. It was upgrade or obsolescence. With the Internal Affairs Hall out of stock, he couldn’t wait for a restock that might never come.”

A heavy silence fell over the group. They were all Low-Grade talents—legacy hardware that the cultivation world usually discarded. Sun Yi’s reforms had given them hope, pushing them to Qi Refining levels they never dreamed of. But now, they had hit the hard ceiling of Foundation Establishment.

“Is this it?” one disciple murmured, his eyes dull. “Are we just capped here forever?”

“No!” The youngest of the group clenched his fist, his eyes burning. “I believe in the CEO’s Mission Statement! ‘My Fate is mine, not the Heavens!’ I refuse to believe my specs are hard-capped!”

“But without the pill…” his friend hesitated. “Is it just a slogan?”

“The Sect Leader doesn’t sell vaporware,” the young disciple insisted. “If he says there’s a way, there’s a way.”

DONG! DONG! DONG!

Nine bell tolls resonated from the main peak—the highest-priority alert.

“All-hands meeting!” The disciples jumped up. “Something big is happening. Let’s go!”

Streaks of light filled the sky as thousands of disciples activated their flight techniques. The Qingyun Sect, once a backwater operation, now boasted a workforce of over four thousand, all capable of flight—a testament to Sun Yi’s aggressive resource allocation.

The central plaza was soon packed with anxious cultivators.

“Senior Brother Chen! Congrats on hitting Qi Refining Great Perfection! You’re ready for the next tier!”

“Don’t joke,” Senior Brother Chen replied bitterly. “I’m running on Low-Grade architecture. Without a pill, my upgrade chance is non-existent. I’m stuck.”

“The supply chain is broken,” another disciple lamented. “The monopoly cartels won’t sell to us. We’re bottlenecked.”

“It all comes down to our bad specs,” someone sighed. “If we were High-Grade, we wouldn’t need this crutch.”

“Where is the Sect Leader? Has he abandoned the project?”

“I heard he’s in closed development. He’s Low-Grade too… maybe he’s stuck just like us.”

“If anyone can hack the system, it’s him.”

As the murmurs grew louder, a pressure descended from the sky.

Sun Yi, flanked by his five Golden Core executives, landed on the high platform. He looked out at the sea of worried faces, his expression calm and authoritative.

“Attention, staff,” Sun Yi’s voice projected clearly across the square. “We have a bottleneck to smash.”