Su Yiran is an ordinary wage slave worn down by KPIs, whose greatest wish in life is to clock out on time. Then one day, he starts having bizarrely vivid “precognitive dreams.” In them, he sees either twisted monsters from the Classic of Mountains and Seas or boundless star maps of the cosmos. Desperate to preserve his already fragile mental health, he takes up tai chi and Taizu Long Fist in an attempt to calm his mind, but unexpectedly cultivates the legendary “qi” within himself. From then on, he flunks every regular class but gets a direct pass into the cultivation program.
The end of the world doesn't arrive in 2012, but his entire worldview collapses. He is recruited by the mysterious agency known as Bureau 749, where he discovers that monsters really do exist on Earth, and that they are all failed, spliced-together experiments left behind by an ancient “Heavenly God civilization.” Meanwhile, a fanatical organization called the Northern Dark Cult is trying to revive the indescribable “boss” behind them, making it a truly cosmic-scale sweatshop.
At the end of his tether, Su Yiran slaps the table. “Whoever wants to work overtime at this rotten job can do it! I'm going solo!” He gathers his best friend “Big Bear” and their other companions to establish the Pavilion of the Heavenly Sea, with the slogan: “We reject the rat race, but specialize in dealing with all manner of evil spirits.” As they investigate, they uncover a shocking truth: Earth is merely a cell in a gigantic organism, and the entire universe is part of its vast body. They're not just wage slaves, they're cell wage slaves in a live-action Cells at Work!
