In Jinmen in the 17th year of the Republic of China, the rain always smelled like gunpowder smoke.
He is the Beiyang warlord, Si Muchen, who holds a large number of troops. He has stepped through the Jidong defense line with iron hooves, carrying his family and country in the barrel of his gun, but also hiding his unknown weakness. She is Jiang Ruoxi, a strange woman in the business world who travels among various forces. Her abacus is more crisp than the sound of a gunshot. The hem of her cheongsam sweeps across the most dangerous chess game in troubled times.
An arms deal caused two parallel lines to suddenly intersect. He exchanged the ancient books left by his mother for life-saving food and grass. She used road signs to break through his closed defense line, but she handed him a gun with a scope next to the Japanese bomb fuse.
"Commander, does he know that the ancient books in your warehouse contain unfinished information from my late husband?"
"How could it be that Miss Song used a grave-visiting scene to lure me to protect the weapons hidden in the temple?"
From the intrigues at the pier to the hail of bullets in Baoding Mansion, they are each other's bargaining chip and the only salvation in troubled times. When the iron hooves of the Japanese approached, and when the Zhili warlord's knife was placed on the side of his neck, he discovered that what was hotter than the arms was her concern hidden in the fragrance of gardenia flowers; she finally understood that what was more precious than gold bars was the half of the clear sky he held up for her in the beacon fire.
"When the Japanese are beaten away," he whispered in her ear, and the smoke spread over each other's clothes, "I will give you the entire headquarters in exchange for your willingness."
She raised her hand and wiped the blood from the corners of his lips, her eyes as sharp as the man's: "Then you must stay alive first and accompany me to transport back the national treasures smuggled out one by one."
The war rages on for three months, and a letter from home is worth ten thousand gold.
