An ailing mother forces Nuannuan to abandon her cherished metropolitan life and return to Chu Wang. Once there, she finds her birthplace fragmented and forgotten by modernity. Despite warnings, she quickly reconnects with Kaitian, a childhood sweetheart.

The village is centred around Red Lake, whose misty shores once provided solace to ancient kings and their entourages. The couple unearth forgotten treasures left behind from this royal past and are quick to capitalise, setting off a boom in tourism.

Word of the lake’s beauty spreads, attracting rampant outsider investment and infecting the sleepy village with dark tastes and unsettling appetites. Drunk on power, the newly elected mayor quickly starts to reshape Chu Wang to his own corrupt ends. Determined to share in this new abundance, will the villagers swap one type of poverty for another?

Translated by: Thomas Bray, Haiwang Yuan