Cultivating Immortality, but I Have Work Tomorrow

After seven straight days of overtime, 28-year-old programmer Chen Pingfan discovered that the data on his screen was flowing with his breath. He had established his foundation through the 996 work schedule. From then on, he was caught between two lives: by day, he was an overwhelmed project manager writing weekly reports, attending regular meetings, and navigating office politics; by night, he was a rookie cultivator in the city, learning cultivation techniques from the old janitor in the break room, using Excel to work out formations, and treating KPI pressure as a heart demon to temper himself against. When the spiritual qi revival became a global trend, traditional sects, government agencies, and international organizations entered the scene one after another. He was forced to leave his cubicle for an increasingly complicated stage: forming an underground cultivator alliance, developing cultivation-themed office software, helping the authorities manage the awakened, and even handling transnational crises at global summits. After twenty years of ups and downs, he grew from an office drone struggling to survive into a bridge between the cultivation world and ordinary society. In the end, he understood that his path did not lie in the immortal realm, but in this bustling human world: helping cultivators hold down regular jobs, and letting workers cultivate in peace. Perhaps this was the most down-to-earth ascension of the age.