Seventeen-year-old Ning Zhao is an odd-job cultivator responsible for repairing magical artifacts. Despite three years of diligent cultivation, she has been unable to gather spiritual energy and is regarded by the Xuanxiao Sect as a talentless good-for-nothing. During a mission to dismantle a discarded contract furnace, she rescues a little gray-and-white beast named Manman that has been imprisoned inside. She unexpectedly discovers that the nurturing contract she signed upon joining the sect was tampered with long ago, and that the fruits of her cultivation have secretly been transferred to a gifted senior sister all these years. Manman can track contracts that steal spiritual energy and return the stolen power to its rightful owner, but falls asleep for an entire day every time it uses this ability. Ning Zhao escapes the sect with Manman and makes a living repairing discarded magical artifacts. Along the way, she gradually takes in other cultivators who have suffered the same fate, eventually turning a dilapidated temple into the mutually supportive sect known as the Returning Sect.