On a night of torrential rain, at the top of Jiangcheng's landmark, the Golden Palace, retired Major General Huo Zhonglou gazed down upon the business empire he had built with blood. No one knew that this low-profile philanthropist on screen was the city's true "emperor."
Twenty-four-year-old Su Nian, a sports college student working her way through school, was delivered to his private room as a "gift." She thought it was the beginning of a nightmare, never imagining she would become the sharpest blade in the hands of a dragon. From fear to attachment, Su Nian sank into Huo Zhonglou's pathological control, and witnessed with her own eyes the monstrous crimes behind the former hero: backroom deals between politicians and businessmen, rivals dying in "accidents," and popular stars kept like caged pets... Every one of them could turn the city's world upside down.
As the champions of justice fell into darkness time and again, and the last remnants of conscience gradually rusted amid a life of drunken excess, Su Nian saw only the shadow of herself as a "plaything" in Huo Zhonglou's eyes. Love and hate intertwined into the deadliest of webs. At last, she understood that the only way to kill a dragon was to first become the blade in its hand.
At the button that would bring it all crashing down, Huo Zhonglou fell into a pool of blood. His final gaze passed through layers of conspiracy and settled on the hands that had once massaged his feet. He had spent his life moving pieces on the board, only to lose in the end to the gentlest trap he had laid himself.
