THE LUNEFABLE REVIEW
My Daily Basic Stipend Is 10 Million
Daily Stipend: the employee who cannot afford to quit
A failing robotics firm acquires one remarkably devoted employee—and nobody knows what his salary really means.
THE SHORT TAKE
An energetic office-system comedy whose best jokes expose the gap between profitable behavior and genuine professional virtue.
The last employee wants the company to survive
Chen Xiao has an excellent reason to remain at a failing robotics company, and it is not the reason his boss imagines. His new system turns his salary into a daily payment. Leaving the employer would interrupt that wonderful arrangement for a year. A struggling business therefore becomes something he must protect with an enthusiasm that looks suspiciously like loyalty.
My Daily Basic Stipend Is 10 Million makes its opening entertaining through the distance between his private calculations and everybody else's interpretation. The title promises spectacular wealth, but the first problems are recognizable office problems: an empty order book, a shrinking team, an inexperienced salesperson, and a manager who does not want to share useful knowledge. Magic makes the incentives outrageous without removing the workplace.
A pay cut becomes a character reference
Feng Feifei is trying to rescue the business with her own money after its products fail to find a sufficient market. Her technical qualifications cannot substitute for customers. When she offers reduced basic pay alongside more generous commission, Chen sees a devastating reduction in his magical income. Staying is still more profitable than leaving, which makes his acceptance look considerably nobler than it feels.
The misunderstanding has enough practical detail to work. Departing employees are not simply villains for wanting secure wages, and Feng has immediate obligations beyond admiring the hero. Her confidence in Chen grows because she cannot see the hidden penalty keeping him there. The comic question is whether his excellent financial reason for helping her can produce something resembling the dedication she believes she has discovered.
Two people are discussing different salaries
The encounter with procurement assistant Bai Lu gives that joke its best variation. An alarming arrival involving her car leaves Chen with scratched hands and an unexpected connection to the person he came to meet. His subsequent performance combines genuine business interest with calculated displays of discomfort. He is not an innocent professional rewarded solely for being pleasant.
Then they discuss pay. Bai understands his figures as monthly wages, while Chen is silently thinking in daily income. His willingness to endure a cut makes her reconsider her own attitude toward work. The reader can follow both interpretations without either participant understanding the other. It is a stronger comic mechanism than simply having a bank notification prove that the protagonist has become rich.
An opportunity still needs a proposal
Bai's interest concerns equipment procurement and the possibility of a separate research project. The distinction matters: a promising conversation is not the same thing as money already delivered. Feng has to supply technical expertise, quotations must be prepared, and research support depends on further work. There is a small but useful business underneath the reward announcements.
Chen's frank admission that he cannot produce the necessary documentation adds another entertaining imbalance. He may have brought back an opportunity, but he has not instantly acquired every professional skill. Yuan Kai, the superior who dismisses him, can actually write the proposal. Their antagonism consequently involves a dependency that neither man enjoys acknowledging. The person with the most impressive result still needs somebody else to make it usable.
The office clock has become a game mechanic
The rivalry turns particularly petty when Chen discovers that the system values results more than the appearance of constant labor. His computer game and Yuan's paperwork occupy the same office while their explanations of who is working hard move further apart. Feng encounters fragments of their conflict and reads those fragments through her growing faith in the new salesperson.
An overtime incentive sharpens the absurdity. Time that one colleague experiences as exhaustion becomes a private target for the other. The scene draws humor from the office clock rather than an elaborate action sequence. It also reveals how readily Chen's supposed love of work becomes a willingness to prolong somebody else's work. That uncomfortable edge is more interesting than treating every successful trick as proof of his superior character.
A funny arrangement with a selfish beneficiary
The limitations sit close to the comedy. Chen's crude assumptions about successful women and his habit of interpreting their attention through entitlement can make the narration unpleasant. His treatment of Yuan also moves from retaliation into deliberate obstruction. Meanwhile, repeated calculations and explanations of the same misunderstanding slow scenes whose joke is already clear. Readers wanting considerate colleagues or convincing procurement procedures will find this a deliberately indulgent fantasy.
For readers who enjoy an unreliable office hero, however, the opening offers a distinct hook. The rewards do not merely remove the need to work; they give Chen peculiar reasons to preserve a job, avoid ordinary career incentives, and recruit other people into his enthusiasm. Begin for the salary conversation and the increasingly ridiculous distribution of credit. Stay to see whether a man motivated by a private loophole can help build a company worth keeping alive.
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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