| **Naive Arrival in the World** | Kicked off the mountain for stealing sacrificial offerings, he tries to **con a bun shop owner with fake talismans** and gets chased by the proprietress. He accidentally saves **Su Li, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been poisoned by a Gu**, (female lead 1), then demands an exorbitant fee for the treatment | Knows only basic talisman techniques: his evil-repelling talisman turns into a barbecue talisman, and he uses a spirit-calling banner as a clothesline | Greedy for small gains, but sticks to his “three don’ts”: never con children, the sick, or the kind |
| **First Taste of Success** | Gets caught up in the **ghost baby’s attempt to be born through another woman** (a warlord’s seventh concubine) and is arrested as a charlatan by policewoman Lin Yue (female lead 2). To escape, he demonstrates **paper effigies taking punishment in someone’s place**, accidentally exposing a **warlord’s secret corpse-raising operation** | Learns fragments of the "Unvirtuous Secret Arts": a **backfire curse that works like a staged accident** (hurts the enemy, but himself first), and a **money-powered ghost-repelling technique** | Learns to hide his sharp edge behind a playboy’s facade |
| **Crisis and Awakening** | To save Su Li, he recklessly uses the **Fate-Reversing Soul-Swap Formation** and suffers backlash. The Miao witch A Nu (female lead 3) keeps him alive with a love Gu. Burdened with debt because the Gu is addicted to sweets, he is forced to take a job **setting up Wi-Fi in a haunted house** (the ghosts demand full signal bars) | Combines Gu techniques to develop **foodie Dao arts**: glutinous rice candy bombs to blast evil spirits, and hot pot broth for drawing formation symbols | Shifts from looking out for himself to protecting others |
| **Unleashing His Talent** | At the Shanghai Mystic Arts Convention, exposes **fake Celestial Masters colluding with the Japanese invaders**, playing thunder magic incantations over a loudspeaker (and getting condemned for blasphemy). Captured shikigami are refitted into **automatic shoulder-massaging, floor-sweeping workers** | Creates **scientific Dao arts**: using a car battery to summon heavenly lightning and a microscope to identify demon poison | A playboy facade |
