Main protagonist: Chen Yang, 21 at the start of the story, a vocational school graduate with no steady job. Kind by nature, loyal, meticulous, restrained yet ruthless, he is driven by circumstance into the underworld. Rising step by step from a street thug at the bottom, he endures betrayal, life-and-death struggles, and redemption amid the tides of the times. In the end, he sees the underworld for what it truly is and walks toward a different fate.
