One painting, A Hundred Scenes of Mortal Life, and ten people who have lost their way.
Plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, pine, lotus, ink: seven days, seven trials, to decide their fates.
Lin Mo, a restorer of calligraphy and paintings, receives an invitation to an unfamiliar auction. It bears just seven words: If you wish to escape, enter the painting.
The next moment, he and nine others trapped in their own realities are drawn into the world of an ancient Ming dynasty painting. Only those who clear the trials can leave. Fail, and their memories will be erased as they are trapped forever in a ten-day cycle.
Poetry at a tea gathering, a maze of bamboo slips, a chess match on a pine-covered terrace... Each trial asks the same question: Why have you come here?
As the truth is gradually revealed, Lin Mo discovers that the mastermind behind it all is his own ancestor from seven lifetimes ago. And the real enemy is among his fellow travelers, willing to let everyone else perish just to remain in the painting forever.
Is the world outside really better?
If you lose every memory of the people who stood by your side, are you still “alive”?
In the end, Lin Mo puts brush to paper. What he paints is not a landscape, but ten stick figures drinking tea.
