In Yanggu County during the Northern Song, Wu Dalang, a seller of baked buns, leads a quiet life with his beautiful wife, Pan Jinlian. Then a fallen bamboo pole sets off a storm. It strikes the local bully Ximen Qing, who is taken by Pan Jinlian's beauty and conspires with Wang Po to seduce her into an affair.
Rumors eventually reach Wu Dalang. When he catches the two of them meeting secretly at Wang Po's house, he flies into a rage and tries to catch them in the act, only for Ximen Qing to kick him to the ground. Wu Dalang vomits blood and takes to his bed. At Ximen Qing's urging, Pan Jinlian enters the bedroom at night with arsenic. Her hand trembles as she pours the poison down his throat, and she watches her husband writhe in agony without a trace of pity. Wu Dalang's “corpse” is hastily buried soon afterward, and no one in Yanggu County ever sees him again.
But in the dead of night, a faint sound comes from the thin coffin beneath the grave mound.
No one knows that a far greater mystery lies behind this death. Where did the vanished Wu Dalang go?
