”A grand drama about love and self-sacrifice in the shadow of politically conservative China, on a search for its new identity after the Mao regime.” (From the 2007 Stockholm Film Festival catalogue.)

Demon Chang Mian has been bound and enslaved in the Painting Workshop since she was a child. Now she is the best skin painting artist. The Demon King orders the capturing of General Shouyang's fiancée Qiu Sang. In the accident Chang Mian kills Qiu Sang and decides to take her place.

Backed into a corner by mounting debts, a youth agrees to submit himself to a high stakes game of chance in international waters aboard a disused warship.