The sickly young master Pei Qi is poisoned by the "owl egg" poison. Although he has divine insight that can detect all illusions, he only has three months left to live. When the movie assassin of "The Enemy Soul of the Former Dynasty seeks his life" uncovered the conspiracy of the "Human Faced Owl", he had to drag his body and lead the bodyguard Lu Lingfeng, the talented girl Xijun, and the heroine Cherry into this life-and-death situation in Chang'an. Through the optical tricks in the movie, the psychological game in front of the sacred stone, and the hallucinogenic maze in the imperial garden, Pei Qi used the price of coughing up blood to tear apart the enemy's disguise step by step - the missing old eunuch, the second uncle who defected to the villain, and the uncle who pretended to be a national advisor. Family grudges and national enemies are intertwined into a web, and the ultimate plan of the "Human Faced Owl" is to sink Chang'an in the ruins of a gunpowder explosion. The sickly man must use his wisdom and fate to fight to the death in the last three months of his life so that the lights of Chang'an will never go out.
The preface does not match the postscript