In 1999, a wave of layoffs swept across the Northeast. Lin Jiao, who was expelled from the factory, was pulled into the "patchwork" business on the road by his childhood friend in order to raise the operating expenses for his seriously ill sister. From then on, with a machete and a passion for life, in the biting cold wind of the Ice City, he transformed from a poor boy who was trampled under the feet of local snakes, to cut the bloody path step by step, and became the "Ninth Brother" who was frightened by both black and white. But when his former brothers turned against each other over their territory and the woman he loved was involved in the whirlpool of power, he finally understood: the coldest thing in the world is not winter, but the human heart.
