In the early Qing Dynasty, elite Jin guards infiltrate General Li’s palace and reclaim the legendary Chicken Cup. Three hundred years later, Jin guard descendant He Fan sacrifices his life to protect the artifact from treasure hunter David Wong during a battle at a temple.

A police detective investigating the kidnapping of elementary school students becomes involved in the intricate network of the underworld. Beijing policeman Li Hui Yan has gone alone to a small town in Dongbei due to a kidnapping case. By chance, he meets Zhou You, a mortician who is searching for the truth about his father's death. The two are pulled into grudges and entanglements that span three decades. In twelve days and nights, a secret about human nature is revealed.

In the chaotic era of the Republic of China, Cheng Yang, the top master of the traditional Chinese trickster fraternity Qianmen, received his lover Ma Zhenzhen's death note and learned that the Nine-Dragon Sword had fallen into Warlord Zhang's hands. With no chance to seize it by force, Cheng Yang recalled the eight core members of Qianmen and used a series of eerie tricks, including ghost opera performers, bloody handprints, weeping Buddha statues, strange rice worm phenomena, and the Great Luo Golden Immortal ruse, to force Warlord Zhang to take out the sword himself.