During the Republican era, Liu Jiayao was a schoolteacher with a modest monthly salary. He was a hearty, outgoing man who loved making friends with heroes and other worthy people, and his family gradually grew more prosperous. One day, he helped someone on the street and caught the eye of a venerable monk. The monk gave him a genealogy book belonging to Kong Yuze, a prince from the Qing dynasty. Liu Jiayao had no idea what it was for, so he left it at home for twenty years. His son, Liu Haitian, later came to Qingdao and met a family. They were descendants of Kong Yuze, and had been searching for their lost genealogy, which held a world-shattering secret. Without alerting the Kong descendants, Liu Haitian investigated in secret and uncovered a mysterious portrait of a beauty. He never expected that as soon as one crisis passed, another would follow: he was drawn into a wrongful case from the Qing dynasty.
