In the winter of 1937, Shen Shichang, the owner of Shen's Steel Factory, died suddenly when the blast furnace burned out. What he left to his daughter Shen Xingke was a factory heavily in debt, an account book stained with blood and tears, and a final warning: "The factory is a man-eating monster, and women cannot touch it."
Deep in the ledger, Shen Xingke came across the year 1937 that his father did not dare to talk about - the "military steel" smelted for the Japanese, and every ton was soaked with the flesh and blood of his compatriots. The name "Chen He" on the pension list is like a cold needle piercing the conscience of the times.
Creditors are pressing for the door, the Japanese are coveting it, and the shadow of the Black Dragon Society is shrouded. Everyone said she should sell the "monster." But Shen Xingke chose to light the fire. She named the first billet "Jing", but she didn't know that the real purgatory had just begun.
When the mysterious businessman Hu Qingshan brings an order that cannot be seen, when the "incriminating iron" secretly hidden by his father is unearthed from the abandoned blast furnace, when the simple desire to "smelt clean steel" pushes her into the torrent of underground resistance - Shen Xingke finally understands that what she wants to smelt is never steel, but how to keep the last authenticity of the human heart in an era of decline.
The fire burns day and night, reflecting loyalty and betrayal, protection and sacrifice. From the accounting room to the workshop, from the dock secret passage to the core of the blast furnace, a silent war is unfolding in iron and fire. In the end, the flame that can burn away all sins was held in the hands of the daughter who once said that "women cannot touch the steel factory."
This is the history of the rebirth of a man and a steel mill in a desperate situation, and it is also a nation's almost stubborn protection of "purity" and "authenticity" in the years of humiliation.
