In the fourteenth year of the Republic, in Tianjin, Cui Xiaoqi, a disciple of the Qianmen school, makes his living around the docks using the arts of the Bee, Hemp, Swallow, and Sparrow. He only takes ill-gotten gains from the wicked and often helps the poor and vulnerable. After a chance encounter with his master’s junior fellow disciple, Shen Moru, he inherits the Qianmen Secret Manual. Together with Su Wanqing, a princess of the former Qing dynasty, he devises a scheme to outwit Matsumoto Ichiro, a Japanese invader plundering cultural relics. Using unorthodox cunning to uphold justice, he blazes a different kind of path through the martial world amid the chaos of war.
