Jianghai sells phone cases in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen. A cheap tour group scams him into going to Myanmar. While night fishing, he's caught in a flash flood, and on the brink of death, he gains an electric eel clone that can generate electricity and sense the bioelectric fields of living creatures.
Back in Shenzhen, he makes two hundred thousand yuan repairing phones and winning at casinos. After getting into trouble, he flees illegally to the Philippines. Salvaging a sunken World War II ship earns him 3.5 million dollars, enough to buy a private island.
Then he returns to Myanmar. Rare earth mining rights, ore processing plants, the power grid, water network, communications network: step by step, he gets a stranglehold on Kachin State's lifelines. When a division of government troops advances on him, he lays an electric field trap at the water source, leaving twenty thousand men paralyzed in the water.
Ten years later, seventy percent of Myanmar's electricity is in his hands. He has five thousand security guards and more than a thousand officers. He's not the president, but he's the man no one can do without.
In the final scene, he sits in his top-floor office in Yangon and calls the old commander. "Your water and power aren't enough over there. I'll send people to fix it tomorrow." The old commander says, "Mr. Jiang, if you say it needs fixing, then we'll fix it."
He hangs up and gazes out at the countless lights beyond his window. Every single one belongs to him. He smiles. I'm fucking just a phone case salesman.
