In the seventeenth year of the Republic of China, turmoil began to appear in a small town in the south of the Yangtze River. Shen Qinghe, a daughter of a down-and-out scholarly family, returned to his hometown to escape disaster. In an old alley, he met Lu Jingyao, a Chinese language teacher at a girls' school who was as gentle as jade. The two became acquainted through books, but were repeatedly put in danger because of Lu Jingyao's hidden identity as an underground worker. Qinghe used his family status as a cover to help him deliver information, support each other in troubled times, and guard the righteousness and growing affection of his family and country among the bricks and black tiles.
