The protagonist, Chen Zao, runs a barbecue stall in an urban village and levels up each night by listening to his customers’ stories. He stands up for a middle-aged programmer who was laid off, absorbing his resentment and stubbornness. He helps a waitress get over being deceived by a jerk, absorbing her anger and awakening. As his powers grow, he discovers that the city is carrying out an “Emotional Purification Project” to eliminate all negative feelings and turn humanity into happy robots. He must protect this “imperfect, bustling world of ordinary life.”
This is the most down-to-earth power imaginable: Chen Zao can absorb the “everyday vitality of human life,” the emotional energy in ordinary people’s joys and sorrows, and in the daily struggle to put food on the table, then convert it into fighting power. The more commonplace and trivial it is, the purer the energy. The emotions of elites in their high-rises are “diluted,” while the bustle of street-side restaurants in the urban village is “concentrated.”
