At the end of the Qing Dynasty, a reward of 100,000 taels of silver in the Forbidden City pushed the revolutionary leader Sun Wen to the forefront. Businessman Song Yaoru took a risk and helped him escape to Japan, so that the igniting flame of the revolution could survive overseas. At that time, Tokyo was home to China's earliest awakened youth. Chen Qiming, who embraces musical ideals, Lin Xiaoman, who is dedicated to painting, Zhao Shijun, who believes in the Three People's Principles, and Zhou Yuqing, who explores Marxism, are four young people with different backgrounds who met over the debate on national salvation on a foreign campus where cherry blossoms were blooming. The same concern for the country and youthful passion allowed them to forge a deep friendship to the melody of "The Internationale" and vow to revitalize China.
When the gunshots of the Revolution of 1911 came, the four people resolutely returned to the country and joined the tide of the times. Chen Qiming used music as a gun to compose the shocking "Roar of the Yellow River"; Lin Xiaoman used a paintbrush as a sword to paint "Bloody Youth" which recorded the blood and tears of the times; Zhao Shijun joined the Kuomintang and determined to transform China from within, but was torn between ideals and loyalty in the compromise between power and reality; Zhou Yuqing firmly believed in communism, went deep into factories and villages, and eventually went underground, fighting secretly on the line of life and death.
