“Your career isn’t over yet, Zhao Lun. Go take a seat on the bench. Focus on R&D for auxiliary skills until I secure the Heavenly Soul Liquid patch,” Sun Yi said, nodding encouragingly.

“Understood.” Zhao Lun stood up shakily and moved to the edge of the room, his expression still grim but no longer hopeless.

The next test subject didn’t need prompting. Another mid-grade Spirit Root disciple strode to the center of the array.

“Disciple Qian Tong, ready for deployment,” the young man announced, taking a deep breath. His gaze was unwavering.

Sun Yi nodded. “No need to be nervous. Even if the system crashes, we have backups. Drink the tea and initialize.”

Qian Tong nodded, downed the Bodhi Tea in one gulp, and sat cross-legged. He began circulating his cultivation technique, attacking the bottleneck. Sun Yi hooked his Divine Sense into the disciple’s meridians, monitoring the real-time data.

Qian Tong’s internal telemetry was almost identical to Zhao Lun’s. The rebound force generated by the mid-grade bottleneck was massive. After just the first impact cycle, Qian Tong’s body and soul took significant damage.

Sun Yi didn’t authorize the Foundation Establishment Pill immediately. He let Qian Tong run a second cycle, allowing the damage to compound. The disciple gritted his teeth, his face twisting in pain, but he persisted.

“Deploying assets now,” Sun Yi ordered, handing over both the Foundation Establishment Pill and the Vitality Pill. “Take them both.”

Qian Tong swallowed the pills without hesitation.

As the medicinal energy flooded his system, Qian Tong launched a third assault on the bottleneck. The rebound force spiked again, identical in magnitude to the previous attempts. However, this time, the Foundation Establishment Pill acted as a firewall, filtering out a significant portion of the backlash.

The impact on Qian Tong’s body and soul was noticeably reduced. Meanwhile, the Vitality Pill worked overtime, patching up the physical damage in real-time. The soul damage accumulated, but Sun Yi noted that Qian Tong’s soul specs were slightly higher than Zhao Lun’s, granting him better durability.

Fourth impact. Fifth impact.

The rebound force continued to hammer Qian Tong, but the medicinal buffer allowed him to tank the damage. By the tenth impact, Qian Tong was bleeding from his nose and ears, his body trembling violently, but the bottleneck was showing cracks.

Sun Yi considered aborting the run. The damage metrics were entering the red zone.

Suddenly, Qian Tong’s eyes snapped open. He roared, his voice cracking with desperation.

“My Fate is mine, not the Heavens!”

With a final, desperate surge of will, he rammed his remaining True Qi into the barrier.

BOOM.

An internal explosion rocked the room. The bottleneck shattered.

A massive suction force erupted from Qian Tong, pulling in the ambient spiritual energy. His aura stabilized and began to climb.

He had broken through. With the Foundation Establishment Pill acting as a buffer and the Vitality Pill keeping his hardware intact, Qian Tong had successfully upgraded.

Sun Yi looked at the disciple with a thoughtful expression. Did shouting the slogan actually boost his output? Or was it just a placebo?

On the sidelines, Han Yue and Luo Yifei sighed in relief. Zhao Lun and the remaining volunteers looked on with blatant envy.

Qian Tong’s body began the metamorphosis process. The mysterious energy of the new realm washed over him, repairing his soul damage. His physical wounds, aided by the Vitality Pill, healed at a visible rate.

A moment later, Qian Tong retracted his aura and fell to his knees before Sun Yi, his face filled with reverence.

“This disciple thanks the Sect Leader for granting me this future!”

Sun Yi blinked, then smiled and waved his hand. “The breakthrough was your own effort. I just provided the server space.”

Qian Tong shook his head firmly. “If not for the Sect Leader’s management, I would still be a Qi Refining level-six nobody with zero prospects. You gave me a path forward. You are my great benefactor.”

Sun Yi smiled and pulled Qian Tong up. “As the CEO, it’s my job to provide opportunities. Whether you can capitalize on them depends on you. Go stabilize your new build.”

“Yes!” Qian Tong retreated respectfully to the side.

Sun Yi fell into deep thought. Both Qian Tong and Zhao Lun had mid-grade Spirit Roots. The decisive factor wasn’t talent or will—it was the Foundation Establishment Pill mitigating the rebound force.

Hypothesis confirmed: The pill is a damage reduction buffer.

Sun Yi turned to the final group—the four low-grade Spirit Root disciples. These were the true hard mode players.

“Who’s next?”

“I am!” A square-faced young man stepped forward, his expression resolute.

Sun Yi nodded. “Good initiative. Name?”

“Disciple Zhang Yuan.”

“Relax, Zhang Yuan. Drink the tea and begin.”

Zhang Yuan nodded, though his eyes betrayed his terror. He drank the tea and sat down, initiating the breakthrough protocol.

Sun Yi monitored the data stream closely.

The moment Zhang Yuan hit the bottleneck, Sun Yi’s eyes widened.

Warning: Catastrophic Feedback Detected.

The rebound force generated by the low-grade bottleneck wasn’t just strong—it was tyrannical. It was over five times stronger than what Qian Tong had faced.

One impact.

Zhang Yuan’s face went grey. His body convulsed as if he’d been electrocuted. Internal hemorrhaging began instantly. His soul flickered like a candle in a hurricane.

Sun Yi frowned deeply. The scaling was exponential. The “system” of this world actively punished lower-grade hardware with exponentially higher resistance.

Zhang Yuan gritted his bloody teeth and launched a second impact.

BOOM.

The rebound force tore through him. Zhang Yuan spat a mouthful of blood, his aura plummeting.

Sun Yi moved instantly, shoving a Vitality Pill into the disciple’s mouth. “Abort!” he ordered sharply. “Elders, prepare for emergency shutdown.”

“Sect Leader… let me try one more time,” Zhang Yuan gasped, lifting his bloodshot eyes to look at Sun Yi. His gaze was filled with a desperate, unyielding unwillingness to accept his fate.

Sun Yi looked into those eyes and hesitated. He saw himself in them.

“Fine,” Sun Yi said quietly. “One last attempt. Make it count.”

Zhang Yuan took a deep breath, gathered every scrap of his remaining True Qi, and slammed it into the bottleneck with suicidal force.

CRACK.

Not the bottleneck. Zhang Yuan.

The rebound force exploded outwards. Zhang Yuan’s blood vessels ruptured en masse, turning him into a figure of blood in an instant. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed, unconscious.

“Suppress it! Now!” Sun Yi roared.

The five Golden Core Elders moved as a blur, pouring their immense power into Zhang Yuan’s body to clamp down on the rampaging energy before he detonated.

It took several tense minutes to stabilize him. Zhang Yuan survived, but he was broken.

Elder Jin Jue wiped cold sweat from his forehead. “That was close. If we were a second late, he would have exploded. It… it really is impossible for low-grade roots to break through.”

The room fell into a heavy silence. The remaining low-grade disciples looked pale as ghosts. The reality of their “talent” was a crushing weight.

Sun Yi stood there, lost in thought.

Why? Why does the rebound force scale so aggressively with lower talent? We are all running the same Qi Refining software. The only variable is the Spirit Root quality.

Spirit Roots are innate hardware bestowed by the Heavens. Is the system rigged to prevent low-spec hardware from upgrading? Or is there a fundamental incompatibility I’m missing?