From the Start: I’m the Boss of a Street Food Stall

The protagonist, Chen Zao, runs a barbecue stall in an urban village and levels up every night by listening to his customers’ stories. He stands up for a middle-aged programmer who was laid off, absorbing his frustration and tenacity. He helps a waitress who was deceived by a scumbag work through her emotional turmoil, absorbing her anger and awakening. As his abilities grow, he discovers that the city is implementing an “Emotional Purification Project,” which aims to eliminate all negative emotions and turn humanity into happy robots. The protagonist must protect this “imperfect, vibrant world of ordinary life.”

This is the most down-to-earth kind of power: Chen Zao can absorb the “vitality of everyday life,” the emotional energy in ordinary people’s joys and sorrows, and in the daily grind, and turn it into combat strength. The more commonplace and trivial it is, the purer the energy. The emotions of elites in high-rises are “diluted,” while the life and bustle of open-air food stalls in the urban village are “concentrated.”