Chapter 32: Continued Honing of Battle Qi-Você me pediu para fazer um empréstimo para cultivar? Eu elimino a dívida fisicamente!(Quando a caneta toca o papel, a melodia das nuvens surge.)

You do not outright refuse the recruitment offers from the various warbands, choosing instead to maintain an ambiguous, keep-at-arm’s-length attitude toward their representatives. Whenever their stewards come to seek you out, you carve out time to chat with them. During these conversations, you project an image of enthusiasm, admiration, and a strong desire to join their ranks. However, whenever a steward produces a contract and attempts to finalize a formal commitment, you begin your performance. You steer the conversation toward unrelated topics or fabricate sudden, urgent matters to attend to. In short, you keep the warbands dangling, avoiding any definitive commitment.

Naturally, you have no intention of signing a warband contract. After all, you have invested such vast resources into cultivating talent, and you have no interest in letting others reap the harvest. Those who become warband stewards are no fools. They can naturally perceive your hesitation and wandering attention, and without anyone else saying a word, they instinctively suspect the involvement of rival warbands. In a competitive market rather than a monopoly, the outcome depends on who can offer the best terms.

At these moments, you remain silent. Even when the steward of the Golden Hand asks how many other warbands have approached you, you remain vague, refusing to name competitors to drive up your price. There is no need! Since these stewards have come in person, they are surely well aware of their competition. Saying nothing is the best way to keep your options open for a last-minute bidding war or to maintain this air of calculated indecision. Time is on your side; with just a few more years to develop, you will one day use your actions to shake this world, which is already sick to its core.

In April of Extraordinary Era 127, the Red Heart Society continued its expansion across both universities. Thanks to your investment in equipment, the society has become self-sustaining. Meanwhile, the main branch of the Red Heart Society, under the leadership of Lin Xue, is flourishing.

Cloud City University No. 1 is quite different from Cloud City University No. 2; the students there, unless they are truly exceptional commoners, are without exception scions of prestigious families. Of course, those who are not in top-tier institutions but attend first-class universities are either from collateral branches of their families with limited support, or they possess mediocre talent and poor self-control, unable to reach the elite schools despite an abundance of resources. After all, reaching the admission threshold for a first-class university requires a massive influx of extraordinary resources.

Among these two types of people, professional practitioners from collateral family branches have become the primary recruitment targets for the Red Heart Society. It is best if these individuals have some dramatic family history—perhaps their mother is a concubine, their siblings are being targeted, they suffer from chronic illness, or other miscellaneous grievances. The more miserable their circumstances, the more they will be baptized by the fervent atmosphere of the Red Heart Society upon joining, ultimately pledging their complete loyalty.

Under this trend, the membership of the Red Heart Squad has expanded to five hundred. Naturally, during this process, incidents have occurred where members could not resist various temptations. However, because you prioritize the ideological construction of the Red Heart Squad above all else, you use telepathic messaging for the vast majority of your work assignments. If someone cannot hear your teachings within the depths of their soul, it effectively signals that they have withdrawn their loyalty. You have no desire to retain such unfaithful members. Even if your solicitous care could coax them into offering their loyalty again, what would be the point? If they can withdraw their loyalty once, they can certainly do it a second time, or countless times thereafter. If they can retract their loyalty while the Red Heart Society and the Red Heart Squad are on the rise, one can only imagine how they might behave in a moment of crisis. Loyalty that is not absolute is absolutely not loyalty! Therefore, such people must be purged from the Red Heart Squad—without mercy. Anyone who pleads on their behalf will have their reasons investigated; if there is a conflict of interest or an inextricable emotional entanglement, they will be purged alongside the offender.

In June of Extraordinary Era 127, during the final assessment period at Cloud City University No. 1, you authorized Lin Xue to mobilize all members of the Red Heart Society to paint the Red Heart Squad’s emblem and various classic slogans throughout the campus. The new ideologies of the Red Heart Society began to appear openly in every corner of the university. Some teachers at Cloud City University No. 1 sensed that something was wrong, but their complaints vanished into the void without a sound. With the protection of the university president, these actions—which challenged traditional etiquette and social conditioning—met with almost no resistance.

Even when the matter drew the attention of the Cloud City Department of Education, it was dismissed by the university president, who claimed this was merely a theoretical practice regarding extraordinary etiquette being conducted by the students. A university, after all, is a sacred place for the collision of ideas and the practice of new theories. Such behavior was perfectly normal and required no alarm. That same month, the fervent activities of the Red Heart Society spread from Cloud City University No. 1 and were reignited in Cloud City University No. 2, where they had previously been suppressed. This time, the fervor that erupted at Cloud City University No. 2 was even more intense than at the first university. After all, Cloud City University No. 2 was the true birthplace of the Red Heart Society!

In August of Extraordinary Era 127, with your help, Lin Xue, Xiahou Chuan, Wang Meng, and Deng Qi all reached Level 20. However, you did not have them polish their Bronze Battle Qi. You had researched the matter of perfecting Bronze Battle Qi thoroughly. Even with an abundance of extraordinary resources, perfecting it is not a feat to be accomplished in a day. Unless one possesses rare magical items that boost comprehension or manipulate time, polishing Battle Qi to the state of perfection is a long-term project that takes years. While it would provide a certain limit-breaking boost after the second advancement, for Lin Xue and the others, this is not actually that important. Compared to the marginal gains from perfecting Bronze Battle Qi, the boost provided by completing the second advancement is significantly greater in the short term.

Of course, polishing Bronze Battle Qi is very important for you. After all, you can continuously receive gifts from other dimensions across the infinite space-time. With these offerings from various dimensions, time is on your side. Therefore, you must seize every opportunity to improve, grasping every limit of power you possibly can. Even if this process requires a certain expenditure of time, when viewed across the long timeline, it is all... worth it.

In September of Extraordinary Era 127, with your full support, Deng Qi was the first to complete his second professional advancement. He became the most powerful professional practitioner under your command.