In a Beijing courtyard in the 1960s, Jia Dongxu, a young worker at a steel mill, was living a stifling life. His domineering mother, Jia Zhangshi, kept him under her thumb. The “Third Uncle” in the courtyard was always scheming, the “Second Uncle” loved throwing his weight around, and Sha Zhu was eyeing his wife, Qin Huairu, and looking for a chance to “help her out.” Jia Dongxu thought this was all life had in store for him: earning work points, supporting his wife and children, and getting dragged into the courtyard’s endless feuds. Then one day, he found an inconspicuous “black stone” in a pile of factory scrap.
It turned out to be an ancient cultivator’s “Spirit-Gathering Ring,” containing a fragmentary cultivation manual called the Mortal Tempering Art and a miniature herb garden. Jia Dongxu was stunned to discover that cultivation was real in this world! From then on, by day he was an honest factory worker; at night, he secretly practiced his cultivation art under the covers. In public, he was the timid young man in the courtyard; in private, he used spirit herbs grown inside the ring to improve his family’s circumstances and strengthen his body.
But cultivation was never easy. In a modern world with scarce spiritual energy, making progress was like rowing upstream. The “beasts” in the courtyard had sharp noses, and his transformation drew their attention. Ancient cultivators hidden in the city also set their sights on the Spirit-Gathering Ring in his possession… Gritting his teeth, Jia Dongxu relied on the shrewdness and ruthlessness of a streetwise alley kid to carve out a path of his own through the tides of the times and the mysteries of cultivation: a worker’s road to immortality. He would make sure the Jia family could hold their heads high, protect his wife and children, and see just how vast the world beyond the mortal realm really was!
The local guy doesn't like it very much