The story unfolds in a fantastical world where knowledge-based cultivation intertwines with a Pure Land built on merit. The protagonist, Xing Chen, is a young cultivator who suffers a backlash from a temporal storm while investigating the ancient “Zhou Tian Ritual.” His cultivation randomly switches between “Great Perfection of Foundation Establishment” and “no spiritual power at all,” making him the laughingstock of his sect. To stabilize himself and uncover the truth, he is forced to leave the sect and embark on a journey to collect information scattered across the various levels of the “Gastronomic Realms.” In the realm of “Awakening the Palate,” he meets Su Wan, a compassionate spirit chef who seeks the Dao through cooking. He is also accidentally drawn into a deadly plot laid by his former cultivation partner, the “Heartless Immortal Maiden” Ling Shuang, who seeks to sever her final emotional ties, as well as the bloody conflict sparked by Mo Xuan, the “Pill-Hunting Medicine Immortal,” in an effort to save his people. Xing Chen maneuvers among the factions with his intermittently functioning cultivation and his unique understanding of the Great Primordial Pillfire Record. Using clues from the “Zhou Tian Stellar Shift Formation” and the mysteries of the “Hongmeng Creation Pearl,” he gradually uncovers the truth behind his temporal disorder: it is tied to an ancient conspiracy by the “All-Knowing Ones” to tamper with the Heavenly Dao, which caused the system of merit to collapse. In the end, Xing Chen chooses neither to become an all-knowing deity nor a perfectly virtuous sage. Instead, at the boundary between the “Taotie Divine Realm” and the “Sea of Merit,” he makes himself the pivot and restores the balance between the transmission of knowledge and the cycle of merit, defining a new form of justice for the cultivation world based on “information sharing” and “the circulation of merit.”
