In the imaginary Linhu City of the Republic of China, concessions, chambers of commerce, newspapers, and the city defense department were all constraining each other. Night sailing at the pier, medicine circulation, and secret ledgers determined who would live and who would disappear in a city. The heroine Shen Zhiwei returns to the city with a half-page account book left by her father. On the surface, she joins the Chamber of Commerce as a secretary, but in fact she is tracking down the real culprit of a dock fire. The male protagonist Lu Chenzhou is the president of the Linhu Chamber of Commerce and the director of Ci'an Hospital. To outsiders, he seems gentle and restrained, but secretly he is in charge of shipping, intelligence and underground transactions. He is a typical white-cut black man. The two initially tested each other and used each other, and gradually got closer amidst repeated defenses, concealments and losses, but they were repeatedly torn apart by old cases and the truth. The conflicts throughout the book always revolve around "investigation and self-protection" and "hatred and dependence", and ultimately a realistic ending must be given on the edge of the knife.
