Lin Yan, a senior operations engineer who slacks off at a major tech company, spends his days fixing server bugs and blocking anomalous data. Then, during a late-night maintenance shift, he discovers a string of indecipherable gibberish on the company’s homegrown “metaverse social platform.” It isn’t a programming error, but a spiritual fluctuation that looks like a “distress signal.”
Even more bizarrely, every user who clicks on the string starts experiencing paranormal phenomena: eerie images pop up on their phones, disembodied whispers come through their headphones, and some even see phantom “virtual NPCs” from the platform in the real world. These NPCs turn out to be the long-forgotten magical races of legend: the spiritfolk, shadow wraiths, and star spirits. Their “spirit cores” have been sealed inside network data, but as the metaverse grows more popular, the seals begin to weaken, and supernatural phenomena start spilling into reality.
To stop a disaster, Lin Yan is forced to transform from a “slacking operations engineer” into a “code abyss explorer.” He must hide his identity while dealing with his company’s suspicions, as the frequent data anomalies lead his bosses to think he’s making mistakes. At the same time, he teams up with Su Mian, an intern designer who can also sense spirits. She excels at using design software to draw their forms and can detect magical energy through sight. With technical support from the hacker Lu Yan, he unravels the dark web church’s conspiracy: blocking signals from spirits being abducted with firewalls, rebuilding the spirit core seals with algorithms, and constructing a “spirit refuge” within the metaverse. Guided by Ling Xi, he gradually uncovers the truth behind the “Code Abyss.”
