"Empty City" tells the story of criminal policeman Qin Tian who took a vacation to the Yunnan border to relax after his partner died in the line of duty, and unexpectedly joined a 16-person tour group. On the way, they encountered heavy rains and road collapse, and everyone was forced to wander into an empty ancient city called "Zhiziluo" on foot. The Soviet-style buildings from the 1980s were preserved here. Old iron biscuit boxes were displayed in the windows of the supply and marketing agency. The weather forecast from decades ago was suddenly broadcast from the rusty radio speakers. The strange "sense of time and space dislocation" made people feel chilling.
The calm was soon broken, and mysterious deaths occurred one after another. What happened to the deceased was vaguely related to the old news in 1986 that "all people were evacuated due to landslide risk" in the ancient city. Qin Tian relied on his professional acumen to detect anomalies: the so-called "landslide prophecy" may be a lie, and there are undiscovered secrets hidden under the empty city. As clues emerged from abandoned libraries, air-raid shelters, old state archives and other places, he discovered that this ancient city was once a secret passage for the smuggling group "Shancha Society". In the crisis of fear and trust, Qin Tian leads the survivors to trace the truth, but gradually discovers that everyone has a secret connection with the secret decades ago: the retired teacher was once the librarian of the ancient city, the businessman's father was the director of the supply and marketing cooperative, and the grandmother of college student Xiaoxue was a key witness to the incident. As the shadow of the "Mountain Tea Club" gradually becomes clear, the human struggle and family bonds behind the truth also unfold. Another abandoned city on the other side of the Lancang River indicates that this search for the truth is far from over.
