A Regressor’s Tale of Cultivation

Deputy Manager Seo Eun-hyun signed up for a corporate workshop trip expecting bad coffee and worse team-building exercises, and instead the ground literally splits open mid-hike and dumps him and his coworkers into a forest that seem almost fantastical, the kind old legends call the Ascension Path, where the air itself feels palpable.And this might not be most weird part for this scenario, as Seo's already lived through this place, not once, fifty years of it, dying or nearly dying and getting yanked back to day one over and over, so by the time his coworkers are still panicking about where the office building went, he's already running through what killed him last time and the time before that. He doesn't have some hidden bloodline or a sword that chooses him, what he's got is memory, every failure logged, every person he watched die still sitting in his head, and that's less a gift than something he has to carry.This world runs on raw strength, people born with the right talent get scooped up by powerful sects and given every advantage, everyone else gets left to figure it out or die trying, and immortals and monsters both walk around acting like the normal rules just don't apply to them. One wrong bow to the wrong creature and that's it, game over, so every step actually costs something here.Weirdly, the same instincts Seo used reading office politics, figuring out who's actually in charge, smoothing over conflict before it blows up, still work here, just with higher stakes. His coworkers aren't along for the ride either, some of them start showing real ability, others realize the forest doesn't care how they ranked back at the office. None of it comes easy for Seo either, every loop back to day one drags the last life's damage with it, and he keeps going anyway, mostly because stopping was never actually an option he let himself consider.