After the Battle of Shanghai, Chu Zi, a reporter for a Chongqing newspaper, was persecuted by the authorities for recommending that his paper publish the patriotic appeal "Unite to Resist the Japanese and Fight the Enemy as One" by Situ Meitang. Forced to flee, he made his way to Jiujiang, one of the main battlefields of the Battle of Wuhan.
A newspaper in Jiujiang took in Chu Zi, who had made a modest name for himself in Chongqing.
After the Japanese army occupied Jiujiang, it intensified its cultural aggression alongside its military campaign. It launched Plan A, devised five years earlier by intelligence chief Doihara Kenji, hoping to seize the Buddhist scripture Avatamsaka Sutra, written on palm leaves and kept at Donglin Temple in Jiujiang. The Japanese army confiscated cultural relics dating back to the Qing dynasty and imposed Japanization and enslavement through education.
Yan'an pointed out: The destruction of a people begins with the disappearance of its culture.
Under the editor-in-chief's direction, Chu Zi joined a small team formed by the New Fourth Army and anti-Japanese patriots to protect the scriptures, thwarting the Japanese army's plot. At the same time, they uncovered the truth behind the massacre of the prominent Shangguan family, whose members had been killed as soon as the Japanese entered Jiujiang.
