Power and Devouring

During the 1993 crackdown on crime, Jiangcheng police officer Gao Qiang encounters the strangest murder case of his career: Du San, a crime boss who ran an underground casino, is stabbed twenty-seven times in a locked room. A message in blood is scrawled on the wall: “Police dogs, you're next.” The only person to turn himself in dies suddenly in custody, Gao Qiang's investigative partner is shot with a “stolen gun,” and a key ledger vanishes from the evidence room without a trace. Then Gao Qiang realizes with a jolt: the killer is standing right behind him in a police uniform, saluting. As the campaign against organized crime deepens, Third Brother's casino is transformed into a commercial complex, while the restructuring of state-owned enterprises conceals a money-laundering network. And the “shadow” pulling the strings is none other than Chen Mo, a rising star of reform. When legal documents become playthings of power and fangs grow behind the police badge, Gao Qiang must dissect his own beliefs as he pursues the killer: “We wiped out the underworld, only to raise an even more vicious monster. It wears a suit and sits beneath the spotlights on the dais.” This life-and-death struggle spanning ten years is not merely a battle between the police and criminals, but a brutal exchange of blood between idealists and the shadows of the system. When case files go up in flames at a chemical plant, someone sees two shadows rising from the ashes: one in handcuffs, the other gripping a gun, but their faces are identical in the firelight.