Chen Xuan is a 25-year-old unemployed city dweller. After getting fired again and again, dumped, and thrown out by his landlord, he dies in a car crash after getting drunk late one night. When he opens his eyes again, he finds himself reborn in a cultivation world overrun by the uncanny, as the "foolish young master" of the Chen family in Qingzhou.
He is a "fool" because, while still in the womb, he was attacked by a "womb-born specter," damaging his soul. He spent more than a decade acting like a simpleton after birth. Chen Xuan merges with the broken memories of the body's original owner and awakens a mysterious stone stele deep in his sea of consciousness: the Specter-Quelling Stele.
In this world, spiritual energy and "spectral energy" coexist. Traditional cultivation involves absorbing spiritual energy to temper the body, but a thousand years ago, the Heavenly Dao was tainted by the "spectral source," and countless indescribable creatures appeared in the world. Cultivators can be corrupted by spectral energy and transformed if they make even the slightest mistake. People gradually discovered two paths of cultivation: the orthodox path of martial arts and cultivation, and the spectral path of devouring uncanny beings and fusing with spectral energy. Those who fail to cultivate the latter become new specters outright.
Chen Xuan's Specter-Quelling Stele can suppress the spectral energy within him and keep him safe from corruption. It can also "analyze" the remains of specters he kills, extracting cultivation techniques and spectral arts that are safe to practice. He can even subdue specters and make them serve him. Rising from obscurity, Chen Xuan gradually uncovers the secret behind the corruption of the Heavenly Dao. In the end, he will suppress ten thousand specters and reshape the immortal path.
