Childhood friend Li Ru exhausted her one-hundred-thousand savings and an ancestral hot pot secret recipe to help couple Wu Yi and Sun Xiaohong open a hot pot restaurant. Five years later, Wu Yi's chain grew big but refused to repay the debt. At the wedding banquet, Li Ru held an IOU to demand the debt, but was slandered by the two for making trouble. Li Ru opened a restaurant to compete with them, retaining customers by freshly simmering soup bases and free tastings; Wuji stole inferior ingredients and recycled bottom oils, losing customers, and then hired people to frame, engage in low-price involution, and use internet celebrities to create hype, all of which were exposed. After law enforcement investigated, seized, and sealed Wuji, the two counterfeited the Liji trademark to defraud for investment in other places, and finally were sentenced for multiple crimes. Li Ru adhered to integrity, applied for intangible cultural heritage for the soup base, and made it a well-known local catering chain benchmark.