Lu Mingyuan, a third-year botany student at Nanshan University, travels to Qingshan Village to conduct research for an academic assignment. While picking a rare rock fern, he accidentally falls into a dry well behind the village, hidden beneath tangled vines. At the bottom, a blood-red flower bud bursts open when his forehead bleeds. Its powder enters his body, leaving him unconscious.
When Lu Mingyuan wakes, he has a high fever that will not break, and dark blue-black patterns appear beneath his skin. The villagers mistake him for an evil spirit, tie him to an old locust tree, and prepare to burn him. At this critical moment, Chen the Blind, a one-eyed old man, steps forward and reveals that Lu Mingyuan has been infected with a “Heart-Eating Gu.” The demonic flower at the bottom of the well has entered his body, and within three months he will lose his mind and become a murderous walking corpse.
Chen the Blind uses a specially prepared herbal root to temporarily suppress the poison, then tells him to leave Qingshan Village before dawn and go to the county town to find Su Qingqiu at Qingjiang Bookshop and Yu Yiping at the auto repair shop. Only they can help him reach the “Great Ruins in the Mountains,” the one place where the Gu can be cured.
Lu Mingyuan makes it to the county town on foot and finds Su Qingqiu. Just as he is explaining what happened and asking about the truth behind the Great Ruins, loud smashing and arrogant shouting erupt outside. The pursuit has begun. The Gu poison, the Great Ruins, and friends and foes whose loyalties remain unknown form a vast web that draws him into a deadly ordeal.
