I Work at a Dyeing Factory and Cultivated Immortality on the Side

Cui Jiucheng is an ordinary worker at a dyeing and printing factory in Zhejiang's Binhai Industrial Zone. Every day, he works around dye vats and bolts of fabric, his hands permanently stained with dye that never washes off. His life runs like a production line on repeat: work, go home, squeeze into a stuffy communal dormitory. His greatest dream is to save enough money to buy a small house in the county town. During one night shift, as he handles a discarded dye barrel, a strange blue liquid leaking from it splashes onto his hand. That night, faint blue patterns resembling printed fabric designs appear in his palm.

The next day, he discovers that he can easily lift a dye vat he could barely move before, and even "see" the fibers woven into fabric. As the blue patterns grow clearer, he accidentally triggers them during a warehouse collapse and teleports outside the factory, to the seaside. Only then does he realize that the "waste" came from a leak of spirit liquid from the cultivation world, and that he has been drawn into a world beyond any ordinary person's imagination.

From then on, Cui Jiucheng keeps his secret hidden as he works at the dyeing factory and saves money, while exploring the "Dyeing Dao spirit patterns" within his body. Other cultivators advance by absorbing spiritual energy, but he can transform ordinary dyes into "spirit ink" by printing fabric and mixing dyes, then draw talismans using dyeing techniques. Others temper their bodies by toughening their muscles and bones, but he tempers his body with steam while working over scalding dye vats. From the factory buildings of Binhai Industrial Zone to the secret cultivation-world realm he stumbles into, this worker with the smell of dye clinging to him takes the most down-to-earth path imaginable, carving out a unique "Dyeing Dao" and turning his life around, rising from the dust to the peak.