A hundred years after the spiritual qi revival, China's cultural heritage has collapsed overnight and the Taoist tradition has vanished. People are forced to study foreign systems of professions, leaving them constrained at every turn. At the international tournament for promising young cultivators, not a single Chinese competitor has made the top ten in a century.
Lu Qingya, who spent his whole life guarding a Taoist temple, opens his eyes to find himself a graduating student in the Era of Spiritual Tides. He has also taken over a failing university, Xuandu University, which is three months behind on salaries and facing closure. It stands on the former site of the Taoist tradition's ancestral temple, which was destroyed a century ago.
He awakens the Taoist Preaching System: he lectures on the Tao, and for every bit his students cultivate, he receives at least ten times as much in return.
Ten students who failed the entrance exams and nobody in the world wants, and a failing school that would rather flip the table than kneel. Three months later, they take the stage at the citywide tournament for promising young cultivators.
"It's been a hundred years. This year, China belongs in the top ten."
