Gu Yanzhou, CEO of Yanzhou Real Estate, is a slick, wickedly charming tycoon who can turn the business world upside down. Childhood family trauma has left him obsessed with controlling everything, measuring even love in terms of power and money. When he plans to demolish the century-old Qingyunli neighborhood to build a commercial complex, he encounters the biggest “surprise” of his life: Wen Xu, a historic-building restoration specialist.
Wen Xu is as steadfast as Qingyunli’s gray bricks, holding fast to his conviction that old buildings should be restored to their original state. On the surface, he accepts a design commission for the neighborhood’s “protective relocation,” but in truth, he joins forces with the residents to gather evidence against the demolition. Gu Yanzhou admires his professional edge, but pressures him by altering the plans and freezing the funds, only for Wen Xu to expose him in front of everyone with a building safety report. Enraged and humiliated, Gu Yanzhou has him confined, but all he gets in return is Wen Xu’s resolute retreat, evidence in hand, and a cutting remark: “You won the project, but lost everything worth respecting.”
A year later, they meet again. Wen Xu has become a historic preservation volunteer and holds irrefutable evidence of the Gu family’s illegal demolitions from years ago. Gu Yanzhou, meanwhile, has humbled himself, following him from Shanghai to a little old courtyard house in Suzhou. He stands guard with an umbrella in the rain for three days, asking only for a word of forgiveness. But what Wen Xu hands him is documentation of the old case in which his father forcibly demolished the Lu family’s ancestral home. Before they can reconcile, the family’s debts must be settled.
When a crisis strikes the Gu family and Gu Yanzhou’s father tries to shift the blame onto him, a group of demolition victims clashes with Wen Xu. Gu Yanzhou steps in and takes a potentially fatal blow for him. Lying in his hospital bed, he finally lowers his defenses. “I’m just afraid you’ll leave without a word, like my mother did.”
What began as a struggle over conflicting interests ultimately becomes the path to redemption for them both.
