"Senior Brother Lu! It's bad! That kid... he 'cleared' the Forest of Repentance!"
Lu Yuan, who was flirting with a female disciple, nearly fell off his flying sword. "What do you mean cleared? Is he dead?"
"No! He's alive! He... he ate half the sect's 'forbidden' mosquitoes!"
When Lu Yuan arrived, he saw Ian squatting on the ground, dismantling his bug zapper. Ian didn't even stand up. He just waved. "Yo, Master 'Broken Dial.' You're just in time. The energy conversion rate on this stone is too low, so I optimized it. Now it can fire directional pulses."
"What kind of monster are you?" Lu's eyes flashed with fear.
"I'm a reasonable man," Ian stood up, brushing dirt off his pants. "According to your rules, I survived the forest for three days... well, one day, but since the mosquitoes are all dead, there's no point in staying. So, I passed, right?"
"Passed? You destroyed sect property!" Lu Yuan reached for his flying sword.
"Wait." Ian calmly held up a shard of the spirit stone he had carved. "That 'Foundation Establishment Pressure' you use is generated by specific meridian vibrations, right? I just tested it on the mosquitoes. If I add a reverse-gain rune to this stone..."
Ian pressed a point on the stone.
An invisible wave rippled out. Lu Yuan felt his chest tighten. His circulating Qi suddenly retracted into his dantian as if meeting its natural predator. The flying sword beneath him wobbled and fell to the ground with a clang.
"You..." Lu Yuan realized with horror that he couldn't move a single spark of Qi!
"It's called 'Destructive Interference,' Master," Ian walked over, looking down at the fallen Lu Yuan. "Your Qi frequency is too simple. With a little targeted wave, you're just a hair dryer with the power cut."
Ian leaned down and patted Lu's cheek, his voice cold and mocking: "Now, prepare the best outer sect benefits for me, plus those 1,000 strings of cash you embezzled. Otherwise, I'll tell your Sect Leader that you broke the recruitment tool to line your pockets and accidentally collapsed the forbidden forest's ecosystem."
Lu Yuan gnashed his teeth, his eyes full of hatred. "You think you can survive in this Sect? The system will crush you!"
"The system?" Ian laughed—a sharp, arrogant laugh. "My favorite thing to do is take a shambolic system like yours and strip it down to scrap metal, one logical error at a time."