Lu Chuan is a poor scholar who loves paintings and spends much of his time and money buying them. Through his collecting, he makes a few disreputable friends in the art world. Unhappy with his lot in life, he soon learns to escape reality by immersing himself in paintings day after day.
By chance, Lu Chuan discovers that the paintings in his home change ever so slightly each day, even though no one has touched them. He keeps this secret to himself and sets out to investigate. But before he can follow his own clues and uncover the stories within the paintings, a great battle between spirits quietly begins, and Lu Chuan is inexplicably drawn into the conflict. Caught in a struggle between life and death, he witnesses the joys and sorrows, the meetings and partings, and the tangled bonds of good and evil in the world inside the paintings.
This experience leaves him with endless affection and longing for that world: Daoist Master Shen, who takes him as a disciple and teaches him everything he knows; the white sable who saves his life time and again; and Chu Manying, whom he cannot bear to leave behind. The world within the paintings feels like a great dream, yet for a time, he cannot tell whether he is in the real world or inside a painting...
