A Writer's Odyssey 2021

Six years after his daughter Juzi, nicknamed Tangerine, Shengdi Wang disappears during a human trafficking abduction, former bank employee Guan Ning, Jiayin Lei, becomes obsessed with finding her. His fixation shatters his marriage, drains his savings, and sends him wandering across China chasing rumors of missing children. He repeatedly clashes with suspected traffickers and criminal networks, earning a reputation as a volatile, single-minded vigilante.

During a tense confrontation, Guan is arrested but released by Tu Ling, a mysterious employee of the powerful Aladdin Group. Tu Ling, Mi Yang, guides Guan to Li Mu, Hewei Yu, a wealthy but physically frail chairman who promises help only if Guan agrees to assassinate Lu Kongwen, Zijian Dong, a young novelist.

Lu Kongwen is the writer behind the online fantasy Godslayer, whose protagonist is a heroic young man also named Kongwen. In the created world, Kongwen is aided by Black Armor, and the city is ruled by Redmane, a fearsome four-armed demonic ruler. Jingfei Guo embodies Black Armor, a guiding presence bound to Kongwen, while Redmane’s reign feeds Li Mu’s growing physical pain whenever the story’s violence spills into reality. Fearing the plot could seal his fate, Li Mu pressures Guan to carry out the assassination.

As Guan tails Lu Kongwen, he discovers the author is not a celebrity but a struggling young man living with his mother. The lines between fiction and reality begin to blur as Guan notices eerie parallels: the fantasy city mirrors real locations, and events from the manuscript echo in the real world. Inside the fantasy realm, Kongwen travels through a ruined landscape under Redmane’s oppressive shadow, protected by Black Armor. He learns Redmane killed his family and dominates the population through fear and supernatural power. Along the way, Kongwen encounters a young girl warrior who resembles Tangerine, hinting that Guan’s missing daughter may exist within this other world.

Guan grows to sympathize with Lu Kongwen, recognizing that the writer may not grasp the supernatural consequences of his own creation. He also uncovers Tu Ling’s ambivalence about Li Mu’s aims. As the story approaches its climax, the boundary between fiction and reality continues to thin, and injuries endured by Redmane begin to affect Li Mu in the real world, while real-world events trigger violent mutations in the fantasy narrative.

Li Mu reveals his true plan and deploys assassins and corporate power to force Guan into completing the murder. But Guan turns against Li Mu, clashing with the company’s enforcers while Kongwen confronts Redmane in the collapsing fantasy city. In a pair of parallel battles, Guan realizes Li Mu and Redmane are two manifestations of the same malevolent force. In the fantasy realm, Kongwen mortally wounds Redmane as the city falls; in the real world, Guan survives a brutal showdown with the armored assassin tied to Black Armor’s world. With Redmane’s destruction, the supernatural link between the two realms begins to unravel.

After Li Mu’s downfall, Guan receives new evidence that Tangerine may still be alive and resumes his search with renewed hope. Meanwhile, Lu Kongwen survives and presses on with his writing, now aware that his stories hold the power to reshape reality itself.