In the winter of 2016, Li Mo, a 35-year-old ordinary lathe operator, spent 688 yuan on Taobao for a dull gray Hetian jade safety pendant.
During an electrical accident at the workshop, his blood soaked into the ancient jade, awakening the long-dormant Foundation-Building Chapter of the Great Void in his mind.
From then on, by day he was Lathe Operator No. 037, a taciturn worker at a machinery plant, machining parts amid the smell of oil and the roar of lathes;
by night, he was the last cultivator on Earth in the Age of Declining Dharma, absorbing wisps of spiritual energy as thin as mist in a shabby, thirty-square-meter dorm room.
While others worked overtime to save for a house, he worked overtime to buy astragalus and goji berries, the closest things to “spiritual medicine” he could find.
While his coworkers discussed bride prices and housing costs, he pondered how to train a strand of true qi as thin as a hair until it was as thick as a chopstick.
Ten years.
The factory replaced its lathes several times. His coworkers married and divorced, and the factory director retired, then returned to work.
He had been stuck at the ninth level of Qi Refining for two whole years. In moments of despair, he even wondered what good cultivation was. Could it put food on the table?
Then, on a rainy night in 2026, he was forced to act to save a female doctor.
Green light flickered at his fingertips, and three knife-wielding thugs were struck as if by a truck.
From the shadows, someone chuckled. “Fellow Daoist, Chen Shouyi of the Hidden Sect has been waiting for you for a long time.”
His peaceful life was shattered from that moment on.
The Xuanyin Sect’s pursuit, the lingering soul of Kunlun’s jade guardian, the secrets of the Dragon-Locking Formation, the prophecy of the nine Dragon-Subduing Jades...
And the jade at his chest, growing hotter by the day.
He discovered that the jade was more than a cultivation manual. It was also a “treasure detector”:
Darksteel beneath an abandoned lathe, a Republic-era bronze mirror on Antique Street, soul-nourishing wood buried beneath a cemetery...
