In the third year of the spiritual qi revival, Linjiang City became the nation's first city to pilot the commercialization of spiritual qi.
Shenghe Capital bought up every spiritual vein in the city. Spiritual qi became a commodity. Cultivation was no longer a matter of talent, but of how much you could spend. Grade B cultivation pods were diluted with spent spiritual qi, public qi stations suffered frequent outages, certification could be bought with a guaranteed pass, and tickets to secret realms were resold on the black market. Martial artists at the bottom could never advance, becoming nothing but expendable resources for capital.
On the day the qi station was sealed off, porter Lin Po awakened the [Class Barrier-Breaking System].
His absorption efficiency doubled whenever spiritual qi was privatized, charged for, or restricted. The more monopolized a resource was, the stronger he became. But he could absorb only 10% of freely available spiritual qi. He was destined to fight capital.
From blasting open a spiritual qi blockade valve with one palm, to exposing the fraud of diluted qi in public, to forcibly entering a secret realm monopolized by Shenghe, to challenging the legality of privatized spiritual qi in court, every step Lin Po took exposed another lie.
Capital sold spiritual qi to prolong its life. He seized the rules and defied heaven.
At a board meeting, Shenghe's chairman, Sheng Yuanshan, looked at the data for the "Barrier Breaker" on the giant screen and furrowed his brow for the first time.
"Spiritual qi is a commodity. Commodities have a price."
Lin Po stood in front of the qi station in the poor district, watching the residents greedily breathe in the spiritual qi that had resumed flowing.
"Spiritual qi is free."
