The Era of Pain

"The Era of Choosing Pain" Civilization is suspended above the abyss, breathing on pain. We have tamed the last beast: pain. We invented "Compiler", which can transform personal physical and mental pain into clean energy that lights up cities, drives machinery, and keeps "suspended towers" standing tall. The price is that every adult citizen must become a "pain-chooser" and regularly enter the "pain-choosing cabin" to choose one of the multiple pains matched by an algorithm and sacrifice it to the energy network of civilization. This is an era where there are no natural disasters, but everyone is burdened with a mini-doomsday. The small choices of individuals converge into the blood that maintains the grand existence. Shao Jue, who still has the pain of not choosing his childhood in his right ear, is forced to step into this precise and cruel cycle. When he discovered that the "standardized pain memory" provided by the system was mixed with unfamiliar fragments, and when he met Shen Wei, the architect whose left eye flashed with the sequelae of over-compilation and secretly smuggled "uncompiled pain essence", doubts began to arise: Is what we compile pure pain, or tampered memory and humanity? Is the foundation of that glorious inverted crystal spire built on "meaningless happiness" that has been systematically erased? Choice is existence, pain is energy. This is the ultimate transaction about the survival of civilization and individual dignity. It is also a rebellious journey to dive into the abyss of consciousness and salvage the forgotten truth. When the "ghost of pain" whispers in the energy network, and the cobblestones of the old era feel hot in the palms of the new world, the moment of choice arrives again.