By a strange twist of fate, Ziluo enters his future father-in-law's home with hopeful anticipation to meet his prospective bride. But he doesn't know who the match is, and at first sight, he falls for Chi Huanqin, the older sister of his future wife, Chi Yanni. One fleeting glance leaves him utterly captivated. When Chi Yanni appears, he can't help feeling disappointed, yet a month later, he marries her.
Over the next thirty years, Ziluo's marriage is full of hardships, while his secret love for Chi Huanqin never fades. Chi Huanqin knows how he feels, and she too harbors affection for him. But her younger sister Chi Yanni, family obligations, reputation, and moral principles bind her like chains, leaving her unable to accept his love.
Crushed by the weight of his marriage and the torment of unrequited love, Ziluo grows close to and falls in love with his colleague Yin Manli. They spend two comforting years together. But when their forbidden affair is exposed, it hits like a storm. He and Yin Manli are disgraced, suppressed and ostracized by their organization, and plunged into darkness.
As time passes, Chi Huanqin's husband dies. Though she is sixty and no longer young, she remains the moonlight in Ziluo's eyes. Believing the time is right, Ziluo pursues her, heedless of society's judgment. Deeply moved when she learns of his unhappy marriage, Chi Huanqin still finds the mountain of moral expectations standing in their way. In the end, all she can do is meet with Ziluo in the brief intervals between their lives and talk. Their seemingly ordinary moments together are the happiness Ziluo, weathered by a lifetime of hardship, has longed for all his life. He spends his days caught between love and helplessness, and this is all the happiness he can have.
Yet in the latter half of his life, a sudden, large-scale epidemic takes Ziluo's wife's life and leaves Chi Huanqin stranded in his home. Together, they rely on each other and share a brief, beautiful time in the final years of their lives.
