Wang Changgen, a police officer at the Bukui City Police Bureau, quits because he despises the bureau's collusion with the Japanese. As a child, he received the abbot's teachings at a temple in his hometown, an old town. He learned fortune-telling and how to read the heavens, earning the nickname Wang the Seer. When solving cases, he often acts mysteriously, pretending to know past lives and see the future, using psychological suggestion and manipulation. Throughout his police career, he never leaves a case unsolved. He never marries and spends many years with Taozi, a prostitute.
Just as he plans to buy Taozi's freedom and return to his hometown to live a quiet rural life, he gets caught up in a burglary case involving a female thief. He discovers she was forced to steal, and when he closes in on the mastermind, the investigation uncovers that the traitor Wang Xikui is refining opium for the Japanese. Wang wants to expose the case, but Wang Xikui joins forces with the Japanese and murders Taozi.
Wang Changgen and his apprentices, Zhang Suo and Ma Xiaolong, set out to avenge Taozi. By chance, they cross paths with a guerrilla unit as it raids the Japanese opium refinery. Together, they wipe out Wang Xikui and the Japanese. To avoid Japanese retaliation, Wang plans to return to the temple in his hometown and become its caretaker alongside the abbot. But he learns that the Japanese, hoping to store the ashes of their fallen soldiers at the temple, beheaded the abbot and seized it.
Outraged, Wang joins forces with a black-clad Nationalist secret agent and Mr. Zhao of the underground party to match wits with the Japanese officer Ichiro Kyukawa. In the end, they wipe out the Japanese soldiers occupying the temple.
It's wonderful, and the sentences are fluent. Thoughtful enough.
The plot is exciting and the writing is brilliant. The sentences are fluent!