THE LUNEFABLE REVIEW
I Can Control Resources: A Brilliant Demonstration in a Forgotten School
Energy manipulation offers a way out of Gao Neng’s neglected district, but the system’s first trial turns access, status, and improvisation into dangerous comedy.
THE SHORT TAKE
An inventive scarcity-based setting and lively contests of assumptions compete with prolonged farce that treats intrusion and sexual coercion too casually.
A school assembly explains who gets left behind
Gao Neng's school stands among cracked buildings and old claw marks in a district the Alliance no longer maintains. A visiting officer offers its students the prospect of a military education, then insults them for the circumstances they have inherited. I Can Control Resources begins with a sharp disparity between an institution's inspirational language and the contempt accompanying its distribution of opportunity.
The assembly becomes more compelling when the demonstration begins. Energy extraction turns an ordinary-looking piece of ore into a weapon, making the city's resource shortage and its hierarchy of fighters part of the same system. Gao Neng wants access to that world for practical reasons, including the possibility of finding his absent father. The promise of advancement matters because his present surroundings make remaining where he is feel like a sentence.
The second demonstration changes the meaning of the first
Shen Ning'Er refuses a fresh piece of ore and works with what the officer has already used. That small choice immediately establishes a different degree of precision. The increasingly elaborate manifestation is visually extravagant, but its starting point is economical: a supposedly depleted material still contains something a more capable practitioner can recover. The title's resource theme acquires an inviting physical expression.
Her position also creates a useful gap between public appearance and private authority. The students see an exceptional visitor their own age, the school adjusts its reverence, and her colleague treats her differently away from the assembly. She is more interesting when she recognizes and redirects an attempted manipulation than when the crowd merely admires her. Those changes of register suggest that reading status correctly may matter almost as much as controlling energy.
The system’s invitation sounds like a terrible idea
Gao Neng's mysterious opportunity arrives with an instruction so alarming that he first questions his own sanity. The system promises extraordinary power but makes the trial depend on approaching someone vastly beyond his abilities. A difficulty choice offers information without solving the practical problem. The mechanism functions less like a helpful mentor than an unreliable employer setting an absurd task with an inflexible deadline.
The humor comes from the distance between heroic wording and available means. He checks the strength of an ordinary stool, worries about a small expense, and tries to interpret a hint rather than simply charging ahead. His tendency to praise his own ingenuity gives the narration an intentionally inflated comic voice. The premise asks whether someone with very little force can improvise access to a situation everyone else understands through force and privilege.
His mother’s dinner makes the errand less trivial
The encounter with Xu Zilan briefly cuts through the performance. She has obtained food through cleaning work and wants to prepare something good for him; he is already committed to an evening he cannot explain. Her worn hands and careful offer put a material cost around his ambition. The scene is affecting because she does not know which part of his urgency comes from hope and which from the system's pressure.
The school routine carries a similar unevenness. A teacher can hand him responsibility for a younger class while going out with important visitors, compensating him with a coin for lunch. Gao Neng responds with an evasive solution that is funny but hardly conscientious. He is resourceful without becoming a model student or an uncomplicated champion of everyone below him. That imperfection gives his ambition a little more personality.
The hotel contains several incompatible plans
Tang Weiwei imagines himself an expert manipulator and approaches Gao Neng as a convenient person to implicate. Their negotiation turns the hotel's ordinary access arrangements into a contest of assumptions. Gao Neng notices more than he admits, while Tang mistakes enthusiasm for compliance. Alternating viewpoints lets the reader enjoy the instability before either participant fully understands how the evening is developing.
The serious weakness is the treatment of intrusion and consent. A sexual coercion plan, unwanted entry, and a prolonged bathroom misunderstanding are frequently processed as farce. Shen Ning'Er's capability does not make those violations harmless. The narration also repeatedly rewards Gao Neng's looks, mocks another character's appearance, and spends long stretches explaining supposedly perfect schemes. These habits can make the comedy exhausting, especially when the more interesting resource politics has temporarily given way to bedroom staging.
An inventive setting deserves more than a successful prank
The opening offers distinctive raw material for readers interested in energy manipulation, unequal post-disaster cities, and a protagonist who bargains instead of overpowering opponents. Its strongest images connect ability with scarcity: reusing ore, storing a manifestation for later, and calculating a hotel expense against a tiny budget. The implied conflict between the abandoned district and the City of Hope also gives the small encounter a larger setting to disturb.
Readers should expect brash system comedy and ethically abrasive characters rather than a straightforwardly admirable adventure. The trial itself remains unresolved, and the protagonist has not yet earned the extraordinary power being offered. What makes continuation potentially worthwhile is the collision of personal improvisation with institutions that have already decided how much somebody like Gao Neng deserves. The setting is most promising when control of resources means control of choices, and a clever escape from one trap risks placing him inside another.
Based on chapters 1–8 of the English edition. This is an opening impression, not a full-series verdict. No later plot developments are discussed.
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