One wrong step, and you’re bound to the underworld for life. When Lin Xiao accidentally helps a fugitive in a cornfield, his life veers completely off course. Textbooks are replaced by machetes, and his first love is swallowed by bloodshed. He opens barbecue joints, takes over KTVs, gets into freight, and moves into real estate, building an empire on the edge between the lawful and the criminal. He even becomes sworn brothers with powerful figures from Beijing’s elite circles. But when his old brothers turn against him, the full force of the state comes crashing down, and gunfire erupts in northern Myanmar, he finally understands that the road paved with gold leads, in the end, to a bloodstained throne from which there is no turning back. This is the rise and fall of a generation’s underworld kingpin, and a tale of crime and punishment, brotherhood, and redemption.
