Chapter Summaries

After being killed by overwork in his previous life, Lu Ping awoke as the sole survivor of a village massacre and was forced to work in the Black Tiger Gang’s mine. When the Office Survival Simulator activated, he began its first free simulation in the hope of surviving.

• Lu Ping woke among the corpses of Sunset Glow Village and was captured by the Black Tiger Gang.
• The gang sent Lu Ping to its mine, where an overseer ordered him to dig and threatened him with a whip.
• The Office Survival Simulator activated and offered Lu Ping one free life simulation.
• With the overseer threatening him, Lu Ping accepted the simulation, and the mine vanished into darkness as white light appeared.

Lu Ping experienced a simulation of his future as a slave in the Black Tiger Gang’s mine, where he used the Flattery Trait and ruthless choices to survive. After earning the useless-sounding Paid Pooping Trait, he was transferred to the back kitchen and awaited his next Trait at age twenty.

• Lu Ping received the Flattery Trait and equipped it, making his praise unusually effective with people of higher status.
• When the overseer targeted him, Lu Ping offered him ore, surviving while slave number nine was beaten to death.
• Lu Ping endured his first year in the mine by keeping a low profile and stealing food during a cave-in, surviving when only three of seven trapped slaves lived.
• At age nineteen, Lu Ping gained the Paid Pooping Trait and was transferred from the mine to the Black Tiger Gang’s back kitchen.
• Lu Ping learned kitchen work and hid leftovers to eat, then waited for the Trait generated after his second year of service.

Lu Ping endured years of kitchen labor, beatings, and failed attempts to understand a cultivation manual while his traits kept him alive. At age twenty-one, he gained the B-rank Passing the Buck trait, which could let him shift any trouble or difficult task to someone else, and faced the choice of which trait to replace.

• Lu Ping was forced to equip the C-rank Fall Guy trait, which caused him to take blame and punishment for mishaps in the kitchen while Flattery helped him placate the fat steward.
• After two years, Lu Ping found a damaged Body Tempering Instruction and chose to study it rather than give it to the fat steward.
• Lu Ping failed to comprehend the incomplete manual but hid it and continued reading it secretly each night.
• During his third year in the kitchen, Lu Ping was blamed for more mishaps, beaten forty-two times, and broke a bone, but he recovered faster than before.
• At age twenty-one, Lu Ping obtained the B-rank Passing the Buck trait and was asked whether to replace one of his three equipped traits.

Lu Ping relied on Flattery and Passing the Buck to survive the Black Tiger Gang’s back kitchen, repeatedly shifting blame onto other workers while Fall Guy drew trouble toward him. By age twenty-nine, after years of failing to understand the Body Tempering Instruction, the simulator began generating another entry.

• Lu Ping rejected Paid Water-Drinking, Nameplate, and Failed Clock-In, keeping Flattery, Passing the Buck, and Fall Guy equipped.
• When the fat steward accused Lu Ping of stealing silver, Lu Ping chose to redirect the blame and flatter the gang leader rather than expose the steward or flee.
• Passing the Buck made the evidence point to another worker, and Flattery convinced the gang leader to trust Lu Ping; the framed worker was beaten to death that night.
• Lu Ping recognized that the number of people who had died because of his actions was growing, but he continued surviving in the back kitchen.
• From age twenty-five to thirty-six, Lu Ping remained an odd-job worker and studied the Body Tempering Instruction without understanding it, while rejecting several useless entries.
• At age twenty-nine, the simulator began generating a new entry.

After acquiring the Salty Fish trait, Lu Ping endured the fat supervisor’s abuse without losing his composure, then chose to flee the Black Tiger Gang by going to the front line. He survived the battle and emerged alone with the Body Tempering Instruction, but the system warned that his traits would stop generating after a year away from an organization.

• Lu Ping replaced Passing the Buck with the S-rank Salty Fish trait, keeping Flattery and Fall Guy equipped.
• Salty Fish kept Lu Ping’s state of mind steady through the fat supervisor’s prolonged insults, making the supervisor fear him.
• When the fat supervisor sent Lu Ping to the front line as cannon fodder, Lu Ping accepted the transfer and secretly took the Body Tempering Instruction.
• Lu Ping survived the battle by playing dead beneath corpses for three days, then crawled out to find the Black Tiger Gang and its leaders destroyed.
• The system began Lu Ping’s automatic resignation process and gave him a year before his length of service would end and trait generation would stop.
• Lu Ping considered traveling east to find work, north to a cultivation sect’s outpost, or south to a place recruiting workers.

Lu Ping chose the mundane path and reached Qingliu Town after a grueling journey, where he resumed his years of service as an apprentice at Zhangji Smithy. He gained the A-grade Artisan Spirit trait, replaced Flattery with it, and left off eager to test what it could do.

• Lu Ping chose the mundane town option and walked fifteen days to reach Qingliu Town, surviving on scraps and roadside plants.
• After other businesses turned him away, Lu Ping accepted an apprentice job at Zhangji Smithy, canceling his automatic resignation countdown.
• Lu Ping learned smithing from Old Zhang and noticed that forging rhythms matched the breathing and movement described in the Body Tempering Instruction.
• At age thirty-seven, Lu Ping received the A-grade Artisan Spirit trait and replaced Flattery with it while keeping Salty Fish and Fall Guy equipped.
• Lu Ping forged a remarkably precise first cleaver, impressing Old Zhang, then finished work eager to test his new trait.

Lu Ping used Cost Reduction and Efficiency Improvement to strengthen his work and cultivation, but after Old Zhang died, Zhang Xiaoliu's gambling debts put the smithy and its workers in danger. Faced with Zhou Mazi's men, Lu Ping had to choose between fleeing, trying to pay the debt with forged ironware, or gambling with Zhang Xiaoliu.

• Lu Ping swapped Fall Guy for Cost Reduction and Efficiency Improvement, then used cheap materials to forge a dagger whose value far exceeded its cost.
• Lu Ping kept forging and cultivating, while his body grew tougher and he sensed a faint force between heaven and earth.
• Old Zhang died, and his nephew Zhang Xiaoliu inherited the smithy and took its valuables to pay his gambling debts.
• Zhou Mazi's men arrived to claim the smithy workers as payment, and Lu Ping faced the threat of being enslaved again.
• Lu Ping received three options: flee with his manual and savings, forge ironware to pay Zhang Xiaoliu's debt, or gamble with him.

Lu Ping spent years searching for work while trying to reach the Body Tempering Realm, finally breaking through at age fifty-eight by forcing a dangerous cultivation attempt. The breakthrough succeeded, but accumulated ailments and backlash rapidly consumed his vitality as he closed his eyes in the ruined temple.

• Lu Ping left Zhangji Smithy with his cultivation manual and 113 copper coins, restarting the year-long resignation countdown.
• Over the following years, Lu Ping worked at several jobs in different towns, but his traits remained Craftsmanship, Cost Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement, and Salted Fish.
• At age fifty-eight, Lu Ping chose to force a breakthrough despite the risk of severe backlash and reduced lifespan.
• Cost Reduction and Efficiency Enhancement and Craftsmanship helped Lu Ping draw Spiritual Qi into his Dantian, advancing him to the early stage of the Body Tempering Realm.
• Lu Ping felt his vitality rapidly draining, memorized the cultivation method, and closed his eyes beside the clay Buddha.

After the first simulation ended, Lu Ping returned to the mine with Early Body Tempering cultivation and used his one-time trait change to prepare for survival. He recognized that a support beam was about to collapse and quietly positioned himself near Uncle Sun as dusk approached.

• Lu Ping returned to Mine tunnel number three with the memories and cultivation he had gained in the simulation.
• Lu Ping equipped Salted Fish, Friend of Women, Flattery, and Passing the Buck, then received a task to earn official status in the Black Tiger Gang.
• Lu Ping noticed a split in a support beam and remembered that it would break at dusk, killing Uncle Sun.
• Lu Ping edged close to Uncle Sun and whispered, "Follow me," but Uncle Sun continued mining without answering.
• As dusk neared, Lu Ping listened as the mine's support structure began to fail while he and Uncle Sun remained near the unstable beam.

Lu Ping held up a collapsing mine beam long enough for the slaves to escape, and the Black Tiger Gang recruited him after hearing what he had done. The KPI task was completed, unlocking his second life simulation.

• Lu Ping braced a falling crossbeam and urged Uncle Sun and the other slaves to escape the collapsing mine.
• After the last slave got out, Lu Ping shoved the beam aside and escaped as the tunnel collapsed.
• The triangular-eyed overseer told Bushy Beard what Lu Ping had done, and Bushy Beard took Lu Ping to the Black Tiger Gang’s main hall.
• Lu Ping impressed the gang leader with his strength and flattery, and the gang leader freed him from mine work and ordered him to join the gang.
• Lu Ping completed the KPI task, gained official status in the Black Tiger Gang, and unlocked his second simulation attempt.

Lu Ping entered a second simulation and faced the Black Tiger Gang leader’s suspicions about his strength. After surviving three attacks, he was pinned to a table and questioned about his master, just as someone kicked open the hall door.

• Lu Ping accepted the D-rank Breakroom Gossip trait and realized the gang leader had isolated him for observation.
• The gang leader invited Lu Ping to a feast, where Lu Ping used Flattery while answering questions about his past.
• When the gang leader challenged Lu Ping’s strength, Lu Ping chose to fight back and revealed that he could cultivate.
• Lu Ping dodged two attacks but was subdued by the gang leader’s third strike and pressed onto the table.
• The gang leader demanded to know who Lu Ping’s master was, but someone kicked open the main hall door.

Lu Ping used the Friend of Women and Flattery traits to escape the gang leader's grasp by accepting Qian Cuihua's invitation. After surviving the night, he was assigned to her logistics team and returned to the woodshed with a bundle beneath his pillow.

• Qian Cuihua entered the gang leader's hall, took a liking to Lu Ping, and invited him to her courtyard for tea.
• Lu Ping chose to go with Qian Cuihua and followed her through the gang's rear courtyard.
• Lu Ping spent the night in Qian Cuihua's room and survived, while the Salty Fish trait kept his Dao heart unmoved.
• Qian Cuihua assigned Lu Ping to her logistics team and removed him from the gang leader's direct supervision.
• Lu Ping returned to the woodshed before daybreak and found an extra cloth bundle beneath his pillow.

Lu Ping used Qian Cuihua’s favor to gather Black Tiger Gang intelligence while secretly preparing for escape as the Blood Sha Sect threatened the gang. After taking six Body Tempering Pills, his spiritual power surged and his Dantian trembled.

• Lu Ping accepted three Low-Grade Body Tempering Pills from Qian Cuihua and stayed by her side, playing both the Gang Leader and the Third-in-Command.
• Lu Ping used Qian Cuihua’s trust to learn about the gang’s accounts and the Second-in-Command’s share of the ore profits.
• Lu Ping found five hundred taels and a locked chest hidden in the rear courtyard warehouse, then chose to remember the location without reporting or taking the money.
• The Gang Leader told the Black Tiger Gang’s core members that the Blood Sha Sect had seized three outlying strongholds, while Lu Ping gained more responsibility as the Gang Leader found him useful.
• Lu Ping questioned whether Qian Cuihua’s confidences and their first encounter were part of a larger plan.
• After Qian Cuihua sent him more Body Tempering Pills, Lu Ping took his sixth pill and felt his spiritual power surge as his Dantian trembled.

After learning Qian Cuihua had used low-quality pills to keep her lovers weak and disposable, Lu Ping gained poison immunity and discovered someone had drugged her tea. He pretended to pass out and watched as Zhao Tiezhu searched her room and found a hidden booklet and silver notes.

• Lu Ping realized Qian Cuihua had raised former lovers on low-quality Body Tempering Pills, leaving them poisoned and capped at the middle stage before they died or disappeared.
• On his one-year service anniversary, Lu Ping gained the S-rank Heavy Tomato User trait, which made him immune to most poisons and knockout drugs.
• Lu Ping replaced Passing the Buck with Heavy Tomato User, and the trait began clearing the Pill Poison from his meridians.
• When the Third-in-Command invited Lu Ping to drink tea, he detected Drunken Immortal Powder and chose to pretend he had been knocked out.
• Zhao Tiezhu entered the room, searched it, took a thin booklet from a drawer, and uncovered a hidden stack of silver notes.

Lu Ping killed Zhao Tiezhu before he could murder Qian Cuihua, then searched a hidden compartment in the Black Tiger Gang’s warehouse. He found a token bearing a pattern connected to the massacre at Sunset Glow Village and faced a choice about whether to take it.

• Zhao Tiezhu approached Lu Ping, believing him unconscious, and Lu Ping chose to grab Qian Cuihua’s blade and stab Zhao beneath the chin, killing him.
• Lu Ping took the banknotes and slipped past the gang’s patrols and hidden sentries on his way to the rear courtyard warehouse.
• Lu Ping found five hundred taels of silver, a Low-Grade Spirit Stone, and a strange token inside a secret compartment.
• Lu Ping recognized the pattern on the token as matching one he had seen on the cuff of a dark figure during the massacre at Sunset Glow Village.
• Lu Ping considered whether to take the token, leave it behind, or test it with a shouted phrase.

Lu Ping escaped the Black Tiger Gang through a drainage ditch and headed for the Greenwood Sect, but a mountain beast drove him into a swamp. He ended the chapter battered and half-sunk in the muck, with the wild boar blocked on the other side.

• Lu Ping took the mysterious token and a short blade from the warehouse, then escaped the Black Tiger Gang through its drainage ditch as the gang went into lockdown.
• Lu Ping traveled north toward the Greenwood Sect, carrying money, Spirit Stones, the token, and his short blade.
• Lu Ping chose a slow route through the woods to leave fewer traces and encountered a Spiritual Qi-touched wild boar on the third day.
• Lu Ping climbed a tree to avoid the charging boar, but it snapped the tree and sent him crashing into a thorny thicket.
• Lu Ping ran from the boar for an hour before a swamp stopped its pursuit, leaving him half-sunk in the muck.

After fleeing a wild boar and surviving on wild greens and a snake, Lu Ping found a map to the Greenwood Sect among three slain cultivators. A wounded, drugged Jiang Mutian then appeared and became affected by Friend of Women, leaving Lu Ping trapped beside her.

• Lu Ping avoided the wild boar and moved into damp, poisonous low ground, where Heavy Tomato User protected him from toxins.
• After his rations ran out, Lu Ping survived by gathering wild greens and catching a snake.
• Lu Ping chose to search three corpses by a fire and found a map marked with the Greenwood Sect.
• As Lu Ping tucked away the map, icy spiritual power trapped his ankles and Jiang Mutian emerged from the darkness.
• Heavy Tomato User detected drugs in the air, and Friend of Women activated when Jiang Mutian looked to Lu Ping for help.

Lu Ping was seized by the gravely injured cultivator Jiang Mutian, who brought him to a hidden cave and revealed that transferring her poison into him was the only way to save her. The transfer began, but Lu Ping’s Heavy Tomato User Trait purified the poison and converted its remaining power, loosening his cultivation bottleneck.

• Lu Ping chose not to resist when Jiang Mutian grabbed him and carried him into a sealed cave.
• Lu Ping pretended to submit and learned that Jiang Mutian had been afflicted with Severed-Fate Hehuan Powder, which threatened her cultivation and life.
• Jiang Mutian told Lu Ping that the only cure was to transfer the poison into him, which would normally kill him, and promised him silver and pills if he survived.
• Jiang Mutian began transferring the poison to Lu Ping, whose Heavy Tomato User Trait stripped away its harmful effects and converted the remaining spiritual power.
• The converted power widened Lu Ping’s meridians, surged through his Qi and Blood, and began loosening his middle-stage Body Tempering Realm bottleneck.

After surviving a painful breakthrough to Body Tempering Realm Completion, Lu Ping found the storage ring Jiang Mutian had left behind but could not open it. He set out for the Greenwood Sect and, on the nineteenth day, came face-to-face with an injured wild boar that charged him.

• Lu Ping woke alone in the cave after reaching Body Tempering Realm Completion and found Jiang Mutian’s storage ring.
• He discovered he could not open the ring because he lacked Divine Sense or Jiang Mutian’s imprint, and realized she had left it as a burial offering.
• Lu Ping rejected the chance to seek revenge on the Black Tiger Gang and chose to follow the fragmentary map toward the Greenwood Sect.
• He covered his tracks, found no pursuers, and traveled through the mountains, protected from miasma, poison, and tainted water by his trait.
• On the nineteenth day, Lu Ping encountered the injured black-maned wild boar that had chased him before, and it charged as options appeared.

Lu Ping killed the Black-Maned Wild Boar, reached the Greenwood Sect, and paid his only Low-Grade Spirit Stone to join as a probationary disciple. After hearing that the 372 recruits had six months to reach Qi Refining or face the sect’s arrangements, he watched them thank the sect for its mercy.

• Lu Ping used the mud pit and the boar’s injured leg to kill the Black-Maned Wild Boar, then ate its meat after his Heavy Tomato User ability nullified its parasites and toxins.
• On the twenty-third day, Lu Ping reached the Greenwood Sect and found that applicants had to pay one Low-Grade Spirit Stone or take a Greenwood Loan.
• Lu Ping paid his only Low-Grade Spirit Stone and became a probationary disciple, carrying over his service time and canceling his automatic resignation countdown.
• The Greenwood Sect led Lu Ping and 372 other probationary disciples into the Qi-dense Ascension Hall.
• Deacon Liu Cheng told the recruits they had six months to reach Qi Refining to become true disciples and said the sect would make arrangements for those who failed.
• After Liu Cheng said the sect would not waste anyone blessed with immortal destiny, the recruits kowtowed and thanked the sect for its mercy.