A Record of Practicing Zhu You: Tokyo’s Psychological Flu

The affliction emerged on a parallel Earth. The Fourth Industrial Revolution coincided with conflicts in several regions, plunging the global economy into stagflation. Anxiety, panic, and hostility accumulated without respite. Mental illnesses surged and swept across the world. With bright job prospects, Zhang Chi enrolled in mental health studies to pursue the Thirteen Branches of Zhuyou: a psychological therapy that used prayers, suggestion, visualization, and talismans to regulate emotions and the flow of vital energy, much like hypnotherapy. However... Driven by an intense thirst for knowledge, Zhang Chi did not blindly trust his textbooks. Little by little, he saw through the falsehoods perpetuated by academia and gradually glimpsed the true nature of this ancient shamanic healing art. Unlike the altered version, the Ancient Zhuyou Art could channel human spiritual energy, such as obsession, fear, hope, anger, and resentment, to project consciousness into the material world, manifesting spells and driving out ghosts and evil spirits. He realized that what people called reality was merely one of the world's many dimensions. And where would people go once they left behind the suffering flesh and blood of the material dimension? Curiosity drove Zhang Chi to keep searching. His perseverance paid off: he found the gateway to Ascend to a higher-dimensional world. But the conditions for Ascension were harsh, and it consumed vast amounts of spiritual energy. Ordinary gathering grounds could not provide enough. So he turned his attention to the capital of the island nation. As the most densely populated city in the world, it lay at the heart of the global mental health crisis. Cases kept breaking out along the railways, and cries could always be heard in the school buildings. Men and women, electric vehicle owners and gas-powered car owners, vegetarians and meat eaters... the citizens harbored mutual resentment, their emotions colliding with ferocious intensity. There, Ascension seemed within reach.