The story follows Sui Yuan, a scholar traveling to Beijing to pursue his studies, who accidentally stumbles into the "mandarin duck hot pot" trap set by the carp demon Jiang Xiaoyu and falls in love with her. Centered around the Yangtze River, the story reinterprets hot pot culture and creates a bizarre and colorful world of demons.

Thousands of years ago in ancient China, a man fights against his destiny. He wants another chance to be reunited with his loved one and he gets that chance, in a far away place and a far away time, in modern Finland.

When the women of her time had their feet bound to please men, Qiu Jin was already questioning the sexual inequality of feudal traditions. Free-spirited and well-educated, she grew up practicing martial arts and was as well versed in poetry as she was in sword-fighting. When this rebellious girl moved to Beijing with her husband, she witnessed how her country was raided and ravaged by foreign powers. With the encouragement of her neighbor Wu Zhiying, the wife of righteous magistrate Li Zhongyue, Qiu Jin left her family behind to pursue study in Japan. There, she met some like-minded schoolmates who shared her ideals, including revolutionary leader Xu Xilin, and secretly joined his anti-Qing cause. After returning to China, Qiu Jin participated in the uprisings staged by Xu Xilin, leading a small group of hot-blooded students against the armed forces of the corrupt Qing government...