In Yunzhou City, down-on-his-luck antique book restorer Lin Yan runs the old Yanzhitang shop. Burdened with massive debts, he also has to deal with the Civilization Restoration System: it lets him see and mend cracks in all things, but after every supernatural feat, he must explain it using science at a ninth-grade level or lose his voice.
To pay off his debts, Lin Yan gets caught up in bizarre events, from the CBD suicide-jump curse to a ghost train on the subway late at night. He faces evil spirits with his carving knife while explaining things to reporter Su Wan as “infrasound resonance” or “mass hysteria.” His “scientific feng shui” makes him famous across Yunzhou, but it also draws the murderous attention of Zhao Xuan, master of the Xuan Kong Pavilion. Zhao wants to damage the city's dragon veins, unleash baleful energy, and cultivate demonic powers.
As the conflict escalates, Lin Yan discovers that Yunzhou City is a feng shui prison suppressing an ancient evil. The person he most wants to protect, his martial aunt Gu Qingci, turns out to be the key vessel for the seal. Zhao leaves Gu Qingci on the brink of death, forcing Lin Yan to choose between “saving one person” and “saving an entire city.”
At last, on the night the Tower of Heaven is overrun by a hundred ghosts, Lin Yan rallies the city's supernatural practitioners. Using the power grid as talisman paper and landmark buildings as the eyes of a formation, he carries out a “city-scale restoration,” repairs the seal, and uses scientific lies to mend people's fearful hearts. He lays the supernatural to rest beneath a veneer of science and becomes a legend hidden amid the bustle of everyday life.
