Initially, when Elder Tie had barged into Peak Master Huo Yan’s office raving about a disciple calibrating ten thousand swords using the mythical "Unmoving Zen Heart," Peak Master Huo had dismissed it as a stress-induced hallucination.

But as he stepped into the warehouse and saw the impossibly neat and perfectly stamped "Outbox" mountain of ten thousand swords, his blazing eyes went wide.

He marched forward, snatched a sword from the top of the pile, and inspected it. The geometric lines were flawless. The Qi signature was perfectly balanced. He checked another. And another.

They were all immaculate.

’Heavens,’ Peak Master Huo thought. His hands trembled slightly. He had just been complaining at the last board meeting that the Heavenly Forge lacked true, generational talent. And now, standing right in front of him, was a peerless array genius. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

To possess an Unmoving Zen Heart meant a cultivator was completely detached from worldly outcomes. They had no ego, no greed, and no anxiety. Peak Master Huo himself didn’t possess it. Despite his immense talent, he was too tied to the mortal world. He had to manage budgets, fulfill sect quotas, and worry about department profits.

But this child? This child could process ten thousand mundane swords without a single flicker of frustration. He was a saint free of mortal desires!

’If only I could poach him,’ Peak Master Huo lamented internally. His eyes turned gloomy. ’But he is a Core Disciple of Clear Cloud Peak. I cannot shamelessly steal a disciple from that eccentric old man.’

However, just because he couldn’t make Su Bai his direct disciple didn’t mean he couldn’t recruit him as a consultant.

Seeing the executives arrive, Su Bai stood up and offered a professional bow. "Greetings, Peak Master Huo. I have finished the requested deliverables."

He held out his hand expectantly. He was ready for his 10 Low-Grade Spirit Stones.

"Good... good!" Peak Master Huo stroked his fiery red beard with gleaming eyes. But instead of reaching for his wallet, the old man grabbed Su Bai by the shoulder. "Come, Martial Nephew! Let us speak in my office!"

Before Su Bai could protest, he was aggressively dragged out of the warehouse and pulled into a luxurious, heavily warded VIP room at the top of the peak.

"Elder Tie, bring the advanced scrolls," Peak Master Huo ordered. Elder Tie immediately scrambled to the back room to rummage through the classified documents.

Peak Master Huo gestured for Su Bai to sit. "Tell me, Martial Nephew Su. What do you think of arrays and the art of forging?"

Su Bai blinked, slightly annoyed that his payment was being delayed for an executive interview, but he gave his honest assessment.

"I think this department is excellent," Su Bai replied smoothly. "It doesn’t just provide vital infrastructure for the sect’s security. It is a highly optimized manufacturing division that generates massive external revenue. It keeps the sect’s economy afloat."

Peak Master Huo stared at him for a second, then burst into a booming, roaring laugh.

"Revenue! Economy! GAHAHA!" Peak Master Huo slapped his knee. "You speak with the exact same pragmatic tongue as your Master!"

Su Bai was genuinely surprised. "My Master?"

"Indeed," Peak Master Huo smiled. "Before his foundation was destroyed and he became the eccentric hermit you know today, your Master was a peerless jack-of-all-trades. He didn’t care about looking ’profound.’ He cared about what worked. If he hadn’t been crippled, he would have easily reached the absolute peak of this world."

Su Bai fell silent. Ever since he had joined the sect, he had only seen his Master as a worried, overprotective old man who constantly traveled to dangerous realms to find a cure for him. To hear that his Master was once a pragmatic, multi-talented genius was a massive lore drop that genuinely warmed his heart.

Just then, Elder Tie returned and carefully placed a stack of complex array blueprints on the table.

Peak Master Huo’s intention was simple. Since Su Bai had the Unmoving Zen Heart, he just needed to spark the boy’s interest in formations. If Su Bai became passionate about arrays, he could help the Heavenly Forge reach new heights, even if he belonged to another peak.

"Take a look, Martial Nephew," Peak Master Huo gestured proudly. "These are our sect’s most advanced spiritual routing formations."

Su Bai leaned forward. He expected to see incomprehensible, mystical Daoist mandalas.

Instead, he froze.

The blueprints featured a central power source (a spirit stone node) with glowing, geometric lines branching out at strict 90-degree angles, connecting to various "resistors" (Qi dampeners) and "capacitors" (Qi storage nodes).

’Wait a minute,’ Su Bai thought. His corporate IT brain buffered. ’Aren’t these literally just Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) and wiring diagrams!’

Cultivation arrays were just electrical engineering!

"Fascinating," Su Bai murmured as his eyes scanned the blueprint. He pointed to a specific intersection of lines. "Peak Master, does this node act to throttle the flow of Qi so the outer edge doesn’t overheat?"

Peak Master Huo’s eyes lit up. "Exactly! You grasp the concept incredibly fast!"

Su Bai nodded along, asking a few more rapid-fire questions to confirm his understanding. The logic was identical to modern circuitry, just using spiritual Qi instead of electricity.

"Would you like to try?" Peak Master Huo asked. He was practically vibrating with excitement as Elder Tie handed Su Bai a specialized brush, ink infused with spiritual dust, and a blank piece of premium parchment.

"I suppose I could draft a concept," Su Bai said.

He held the brush, thinking about what kind of "circuit" would yield a good product.

In the cultivation world, swords often shattered when a cultivator injected too much violent Qi into them at once. It was a classic hardware failure caused by a massive power surge.

’I’ll just build a distributed load-balancing array with a built-in surge protector,’ Su Bai decided.

He lowered the brush.

As Su Bai began to write, Peak Master Huo and Elder Tie leaned in closely. They held their breath. They expected him to draw a variation of the classic Radiant Sky arrays he might have read about in the archives.

Instead, Su Bai’s brush moved in bizarre, completely unfamiliar patterns.

He didn’t draw a single, massive central node radiating outward like a sun. Instead, he drew a network of parallel micro-channels. He added strange, interlocking geometric gates (Logic Gates: AND/OR/XOR) that divided the space into a highly organized grid.

Elder Tie frowned in deep confusion.

But as Peak Master Huo watched the ink dry, his fiery eyes widened. His breath hitched. It was as if he were staring at a profound, heaven-defying treasure.

Su Bai was actually having a lot of fun. He never thought his past-life knowledge of IT infrastructure and motherboard design would be useful in the cultivation world. He smiled with genuine nostalgia as he placed the final stroke.

"Done," Su Bai said as he set the brush down.

"What... what is this?" Elder Tie asked.

"I call it the ’Distributed Load-Balancing Surge Array,’" Su Bai explained. He pointed to the parallel lines. "Normally, if a junior injects too much Qi into a sword, the single primary array overloads and the sword shatters. But this design splits the incoming Qi into sixteen parallel micro-channels."

Su Bai pointed to the logic gates. "If the Qi exceeds a safe threshold, these nodes automatically redirect the excess energy into a harmless feedback loop, dissipating it as light or heat rather than kinetic stress. It essentially makes the weapon shatter-proof against user error."

Silence descended upon the VIP room.

Elder Tie’s jaw hit the floor. If they printed this array on the Outer Sect swords, their replacement costs would drop by ninety percent! It would save the department a fortune!

Peak Master Huo, who had already realized the mechanical genius of the drawing, nodded slowly. A massive, delighted smile spread across his weathered face. Su Bai had just confirmed exactly what he was thinking.

The boy wasn’t just a genius. He was a revolutionary.

"Martial Nephew Su," Peak Master Huo said. His voice trembled with sheer executive excitement. "How would you like a highly paid consulting contract with the Heavenly Forge?"