In the late autumn of 1935, three people are found dead in locked rooms in quick succession in the Shanghai French Concession. Beside each body lies a bronze plaque engraved with a coiled candle-dragon. Shen Jinglan, the "Lone Star" agent embedded in the police station and assigned to the Special Service Section, is ordered to investigate. But he discovers that the coded message on the plaque points to the long-lost "Zhuyin Files": a top-secret plan compiled by the Japanese military over ten years, detailing spy networks in China, bioweapons laboratories, and strategic resource locations. The files consist of ten fragments, each hidden inside a strange artifact.
The Military Statistics Bureau, the 76th Office, Japan's Special Higher Police, the Green Gang, and even Soviet intelligence are soon drawn into the affair. Shen Jinglan has no choice but to form a temporary alliance with Lin Mobai, an elite assassin from the Military Statistics Bureau; Gu Wanqing, a songstress of mysterious identity; Qin Shu, a codebreaking genius; and "Butterfly," a double agent. Together, they unravel one deadly mystery after another, moving between isolated Shanghai, old mansions in Beiping, classified archives in Nanjing, a sunken ship in Wuhan, the smoke of war in Chongqing, a Hong Kong film studio, and the jungles of northern Myanmar.
But when he finally pieces the fragments together, he discovers that the "Zhuyin Files" are themselves a trap designed to lure everyone in. The real Zhuyin was never a set of files, but a "Civet Cat Replaces the Crown Prince" scheme that has been unfolding for more than a decade. And Shen Jinglan's own past is the key to unlocking the ultimate truth.
