Big Data Cultivation

Big Data Cultivation is a modern cultivation novel by the web author Chen Fengxiao, serialized on Chuangshi Chinese Network and Qidian from November 2017 to its completion, totaling roughly 10.3 million characters. The protagonist, Feng Jun, holds dual degrees from a top-985 university, yet after graduation he finds no job and struggles in the city—neither high nor low—unable to shed his scholarly airs while his life grows ever more pinched. A freak lightning strike changes everything: he and his phone are hit at the same time, and when he wakes he discovers he can transform into a stream of data and enter the various apps on his phone—shuttling between applications, retrieving information, rewriting rules, with the boundary between what he can and cannot do left entirely to his own judgment. More unexpectedly still, this ability to "become data" is not confined to phone apps; through it he can also travel freely to and from a real cultivation plane, where he encounters techniques, spirit stones, and cultivator conflicts. The story thus alternates between the urban world and the cultivation world: on one side the workplace, human relations, and money calculations of modern society; on the other the realms, techniques, and law-of-the-jungle of cultivation. Relying on the information advantage of his "data perspective" and a calculating mind, the protagonist gradually gains a foothold in both. The book's core premise is "deconstructing cultivation with technological thinking"; the language is humorous, the pacing well-modulated, and the scope expands from the urban workplace all the way to cultivation civilization and even a grander interstellar civilization.