Demon Chang Mian has been bound and enslaved in the Painting Workshop since she was a child. Now she is the best skin painting artist. The Demon King orders the capturing of General Shouyang's fiancée Qiu Sang. In the accident Chang Mian kills Qiu Sang and decides to take her place.

”A grand drama about love and self-sacrifice in the shadow of politically conservative China, on a search for its new identity after the Mao regime.” (From the 2007 Stockholm Film Festival catalogue.)