A Shanghai Office Drone’s Cultivation Diary

Chen Fan, a burnt-out 996 office worker crushed by his mortgage and laid off without warning, unexpectedly awakens his family’s secret “slacking Feng Shui arts.” He uses a teleportation talisman to catch the subway and clock in, a broken-promise talisman to puncture his boss’s empty promises, and even a rush-order talisman that makes delivery riders take off like rockets!

After taking in Ju Zuo, a gluttonous cat demon, and Wang Cai, a directionally challenged dog demon, as roommates, he gets dragged into Shanghai’s hidden supernatural world. A vampire who skipped town without paying rent is hiding in an old Bund mansion; Lujiazui office towers use overwork talismans to siphon off merit; and a spiritual leyline node at Disneyland has become a target for foreign monsters.

He has to handle his parents nagging him to get married, using matchmaking talismans to introduce elders to eligible partners from the hidden world. At the same time, he works for the Hidden World Administration, teaming up with the stiff and proper Su Qingyao and retired urban enforcement officer Wang Jianguo to thwart a wealthy tycoon’s scheme to monopolize spiritual leylines and cleanse pollution-spawned influencer pothos spirits.

Subway crowd controls, typhoon preparations, 996 work culture, demolition disputes... The everyday woes of Shanghai’s working stiffs are all handled with a little supernatural flair. Slacking off doesn’t get in the way of saving the world, and he slays demons just to pay his mortgage! This is a down-to-earth urban cultivation adventure, full of jokes that will resonate with overworked office workers, with a warm message at its heart: “The best kind of cultivation is making everyday life feel alive.”