In the years after the Revolution, China broken up into fiefdoms held by warlords, who are busy fighting each other. One warlord has imprisoned a girl and wants her to be his seventh wife, but he's too honorable to force her. The local revolutionaries wants to kill him and bring back the republic. But when a stranger returns from abroad with mastery of magic to recover the girl he loved, who is tricking whom and who will win at the end?

Mural tells the story of Zhu Xiaolian, a poor scholar who travels to the capital to take an examination. During this trip, Zhu becomes distracted by a mural and enters into the fantasy land depicted therein. There he meets the fairies who inhabit this fantasy land and encounters love and hate.