Lin Zhou's City

Lin Zhou, a young man from the small city of Linjiang, headed north to Beijing with three hundred yuan scraped together by his mother. While working part-time at a milk tea shop, he wrote The Summer of the Produce Market, which unexpectedly caught the eye of Chen Man, the founder of an advertising agency. He thought it was his chance to put down roots in the big city, unaware that he had already stepped into a carefully laid trap. Chen Man and the father of real estate developer Zhang Yang had conspired to use his image as a "struggler from the grassroots" to promote a fake charity ad and steal elderly people's life savings. Just as Lin Zhou clutched his hard-won job offer in excitement, his girlfriend Su Xiao suddenly left a note saying, "My dad has terminal stomach cancer. He needs 300,000 yuan for surgery," then disappeared, intending to marry Zhao Shanhe, a wealthy businessman from Wuzhen. Lin Zhou pursued her to the water town of Jiangnan, only to uncover the cruel truth: the diagnosis was forged, Su Xiao had given in to save her father, who was being threatened, and Zhao Shanhe was a key link in Chen Man's money-laundering operation. A chase along the flagstone streets, evidence in an old house's cellar, a long-buried "theft" case at the police station... Lin Zhou infiltrated the scam ring with a voice recorder, but at the critical moment discovered that the advertising agency where he had just started working was a money-laundering front. Even Sister Zhou, the gentle boss, had been forced to cooperate because her son was being held over her.

From a confrontation in a Beijing office tower to a flight through Wuzhen's canals, from holding on in a five-square-meter rental room to standing beneath the spotlights at a charity advertising competition, Lin Zhou struggled through deception, threats, and betrayal with the "Zhou" pendant Su Xiao had given him in his hand. But when a call from Zhang Yang's father overseas came with a death threat, and his mother received an anonymous warning at her vegetable stall in Linjiang, he finally understood: this fight for survival and dignity had long since become about more than just his and Su Xiao's future.