During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, the famous general Qi Jiguang was slandered by eunuchs, which led him to retreat into the forest. He went to the capital in order to take martial arts exam, but after failing he did not have a plan what to do.

A small town defends itself from the Japanese by use of a network of tunnels during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

With the fishermen's life on the southeastern coast in the early 1960s as its background, the film depicts a group of militia women who work both as fisher women and fighters defending their homes and the motherland.