Su Bai’s eyes snapped open. The world seemed to slow down.

His pupils dilated as an impossible, hyper-lucid mental clarity washed over his brain. He entered a terrifying, absolute state of corporate "Flow."

He didn’t think about the Dao. He didn’t think about martial arts, immortality, or the heavens. He completely turned his brain into a highly efficient, data-processing machine.

Su Bai moved.

Grab sword. Inject Qi. Verify Array. Stamp Seal. Next.

Clack. Hiss. Clack. Hiss.

Grab. Inject. Verify. Stamp. Next.

His hands moved in a mesmerizing, rhythmic blur. Because the tea made him utterly immune to boredom or frustration, he didn’t need to pause to meditate and clear his mind. He was doing in three seconds what took a normal Heavenly Forge disciple three agonizing minutes.

The assistants stood frozen. Their jaws hung open.

Suddenly, Su Bai’s hand stopped. He pulled a sword from the line and placed it on a separate table.

"Defect," Su Bai said mechanically, not even breaking his rhythm with his other hand. "The Durability Rune is misaligned by two millimeters. Junior Brother, verify and re-carve it."

The assistant scrambled forward, checking the sword. His eyes went wide. It was misaligned! He quickly pulled out his carving tools and began frantically fixing it.

"Defect," Su Bai tossed another sword over. "Incomplete Weight-Reduction Array. Fix it."

Within ten minutes, Su Bai had completely taken over the warehouse. He was processing swords so fast that the assistants were sweating bullets just trying to keep up with his defect pile. It was a flawless, terrifying assembly line.

Hours later, Elder Tie returned to the warehouse to check on Su Bai, bringing a tray of premium snacks to reward the young man’s hard work.

When Elder Tie stepped into the room, he froze.

Dozens of Heavenly Forge disciples had abandoned their stations and were crowded around Su Bai’s desk. They were watching in absolute, breathless amazement. The massive mountain of unchecked swords was already a quarter of the way gone.

Everything was perfectly organized. The workflow was immaculate. And Su Bai sat in the center of it all. His face was entirely devoid of emotion. His eyes were fixed in a state of supreme, unblinking focus. He didn’t miss a single geometric line. He didn’t make a single wasted movement.

Elder Tie’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. The tray of snacks slipped from his hands, crashing to the floor.

’Heavens...’ Elder Tie’s heart pounded in his chest like a war drum.

He wasn’t seeing a man doing data entry. He was witnessing a miracle.

’This child isn’t just calibrating swords... he is tempering his own soul!’ Elder Tie thought. His mind was blown by the sheer profundity of the scene. ’To find such profound, unwavering stillness in the absolute most mundane of tasks! He has no ego! He has shed his mortal desires!’

In the cultivation world, the ability to perform a mundane, repetitive task ten thousand times without losing focus or giving into frustration was considered a legendary, mythical mental state.

It was called the "Unmoving Zen Heart." It was the ultimate prerequisite for becoming a Grand Array Master.

"He is the perfect vessel!" Elder Tie whispered. "He has returned to the Natural Dao! I must report this to the Peak Master immediately!"

Without another word, Elder Tie spun on his heel and sprinted out of the warehouse.

Hours later, the rhythmic Clack, Hiss finally stopped.

Su Bai stamped the seal onto the ten-thousandth sword and set it down. He blinked, shaking his head as the effects of the Obscuring Mind-Fog Tea finally began to wear off.

His corporate flow state dissolved, leaving him feeling incredibly satisfied, like a manager who had just cleared out a month-long email backlog in a single afternoon.

The entire warehouse erupted into cheers.

The Heavenly Forge disciples swarmed him. Their eyes were literally glowing.

They couldn’t believe it. A soul-crushing task that usually took months of grueling, migraine-inducing labor had been perfectly executed in a few hours. And he hadn’t missed a single microscopic defect.

"Senior Brother Su! How did you do it?!" a junior blacksmith asked, practically vibrating with excitement. "How did you maintain your Dao Heart through such endless monotony? What is the secret to your Unmoving Zen?"

Su Bai blinked. He couldn’t exactly tell them he drank a toxic weed that acted like an Adderall IV drip.

Cornered, Su Bai resorted to a skill he had honed to perfection in his past life: Corporate Middle-Management Gaslighting.

It was the ancient art of giving an intern a complete non-answer that sounded profound enough to make them think the solution was their own fault for not working hard enough.

Su Bai put on his best, deeply empathetic HR smile.

"Junior Brothers and Sisters," Su Bai said softly. His voice carried the calm weight of a seasoned executive. "There are no tedious tasks. There are only tedious mindsets."

The warehouse fell dead silent. The disciples leaned in, hanging onto his every word.

"You look at ten thousand swords and see a mountain of suffering," Su Bai continued, gesturing smoothly to the ’Outbox’ pile. "I look at ten thousand swords and see ten thousand opportunities to demonstrate value to the organization. Do not focus on the volume of the deliverables. Do not categorize the work as ’hard’ or ’easy.’ Just align your internal metrics with the Sect’s vision. The answer isn’t in the sword. The answer is already within you."

He placed a hand on the junior blacksmith’s shoulder.

"I know you can do this too. You are all highly talented assets. I believe in you."

It was a textbook corporate deflection. A word salad that meant absolutely nothing.

But to the mystically-inclined Heavenly Forge disciples? It was the equivalent of being struck by lightning.

The junior blacksmith’s eyes widened in sheer, trembling realization. "I... I understand! I completely understand! Thank you for the teaching, Senior Brother!"

Su Bai froze. ’What do you understand? I literally just spouted HR nonsense.’

"He’s right!" another disciple gasped, dropping to his knees. "It’s the matter of how we view the world! We categorize things based on how difficult the job is, creating our own mental bottlenecks! To Senior Brother Su, everything is equal! The moment we label something as ’difficult,’ our brains manifest an inner demon to make it difficult! It’s all a construct! Frightening! How frightening!"

"You’re overthinking it," Su Bai said quickly, trying to stop the madness.

"Ah!" a third disciple cried out as tears streamed down his face. "’Overthinking!’ That is the root of the inner demons! We must empty our minds of the ’volume of deliverables’ and simply execute the Dao! I see the path!"

Pop. Pop. Pop.

A series of muffled spiritual explosions echoed through the warehouse as half a dozen blacksmiths immediately sat cross-legged on the floor, entering states of deep epiphany. Their cultivation bases began to rapidly surge and break through their bottlenecks.

Su Bai stared at them in utter disbelief. He almost laughed out loud. He had just successfully gaslit an entire department into enlightenment.

’Whatever. As long as I get paid,’ Su Bai sighed internally.

Since Elder Tie was still gone and his payout was delayed, Su Bai decided to capitalize on his location.

"System, sign in."

[Ding! Signed in at Heavenly Forge Peak.]

[Reward: The "Gossiping" Quenching Trough.]

A small, heavy iron basin filled with dark, shimmering water materialized in his system storage. Su Bai checked its description. He was thoroughly confused by the name.

[Use: A specialized cooling basin that absorbed too many different weapon intents over the centuries. It now constantly "murmurs" the history of whatever metal is dipped into it. It is extremely distracting and maddening. When a blacksmith dips a newly forged sword into this water, the trough will whisper a thousand overlapping voices about the iron ore’s entire history, immediately messing up the blacksmith’s concentration and ruining the sword’s Dao intent.]

Su Bai’s eyes widened.

This reward was entirely different from the others. It wasn’t a direct poison like the pills or the tea. It was psychological warfare. A trough that literally info-dumps a metal’s entire history into your brain until you lose your mind.

’How am I supposed to use this?’ Su Bai wondered. ’If I stick my hand in it, will my Reversal Body invert the auditory madness into absolute silence? Or... wait. If it tells me the history of a metal... can I use it to reverse-engineer things?’

Before he could theorize further, the heavy doors of the warehouse slammed open.

Elder Tie came rushing back in. And walking right beside him was an incredibly imposing old man radiating the terrifying, blazing heat of a Peak Master.