Ning Leslie Cheung parts ways with the Taoist Yin Wu Ma and returns to his homeland, a village pressed by poverty and fear. In a brutal twist, he is seized by cannibals and thrown into a crowded cell where he shares space with Elder Chu [Ku Feng], a renowned scholar whose years of study have sharpened his mind more than his body. On the day of Ning’s scheduled execution, Elder Chu reveals a hidden escape tunnel he has dug and, before his own time runs out, entrusts Ning with one of his books and a pendant, nudging him toward freedom through the tunnel.
Ning obliviously steals a horse from Autumn [Jacky Cheung], a Taoist with extraordinary powers, and the two cross paths again at an abandoned villa where a misunderstanding nearly sparks a doomed encounter. A night shadowed by danger unfolds as rebel soldiers strike from the trees, disguising themselves as ghosts. Autumn, however, can sense or smell ghosts and demons and sees through the ruse, forcing a brief clash before things settle down. The rebel sisters Windy [Joey Wong Cho-Yin] and Moon [Michelle Reis] soon arrive, discovering Elder Chu’s pendant among Ning and Autumn’s belongings. The two sides quickly realize that the rebels have mistaken Ning for Elder Chu, while Ning mistakes Windy for the woman he loves, Siu Sin.
Windy and Moon explain the tragedy that has set them on this path: their father, Lord Fu [Lau Siu-Ming], has been framed for a crime and is being transported to the place of his execution. The rebels’ mission is clear—free him from a fate that seems already sealed. They press on, leaving Ning and Autumn to hold the villa’s ground. But the peace is short-lived: the villa is haunted by a corpse-demon, a malignant force that Autumn confronts with his powers. He tears through the old walls, using telekinetic might to reshape the building and incinerate the demon with talismans, even cleaving it in two. Yet the demon regenerates and escapes, prompting Autumn to burrow through the earth in pursuit, a chase that ends at dawn on a dusty road where an imperial convoy—led by Hu [Waise Lee Chi-Hung]—emerges.
Autumn’s freeze spell and the rhythm of his spectral corpses clash with Hu’s soldiers in a tense stand-off. The convoy turns out to carry Windy and Moon’s father, adding urgency to every decision. After the confrontation, the rebels decide to strike the convoy at the villa’s gates, only for the corpse-demon to return and unleash further havoc. Autumn’s powers finally push the demon into a fatal trap: he destabilizes the creature and detonates its head and body in a violent explosion, ending its threat—at least for the moment.
The threat escalates when the Imperial High Monk—the demon’s true mask—arrives with a formidable retinue. The monk employs hypnotic chants to subdue the group, and Autumn, with ears sealed against the chant, watches as the monk morphs into a colossal false buddha statue and rains lethal golden energy on the captives. An attempted counterstrike by Autumn is repelled, and the false buddha’s power flings the group into the air. Desperate, Autumn conjures a vortex of cosmic energy, but the demon’s magic counters the effort. Ning and Windy manage to escape to seek Yin’s aid, while Lord Fu, Autumn, and Moon are captured and brought back to the High Monk’s palace, where they fall into a sleep from which they hope to awaken later—as meals rather than prisoners.
Hu, stepping into the palace alone, discovers hollow corpses lining the royal chambers, a chilling sign that the demon’s true nature is behind the illusion. He frees the captives and fights with a self-sacrificing bravery to give them time to recover. Yet lacking spiritual magic, Hu cannot overpower the demon and is destroyed, though not before he shatters the demon’s entourage and loses an arm in the struggle.
The reinforcements arrive in the form of Yin and his companions. Yin speaks a mantra, forcing the demon to reveal its ultimate form: a giant thousand-year centipede. Yin summons a flurry of golden swords and taps into cosmic energy to strike, while Autumn dislodges two great masses of earth to crush the creature. For a moment the centipede seems dead, but it clings to life, swallowing both Yin and Autumn in a last, desperate gambit.
Yin, ever pragmatic, suggests that their souls be separated from their bodies to survive the ordeal. Autumn, though hesitant, trusts Yin’s judgment and agrees. The two separate their souls, then unite them to attack the centipede from the inside. In a harrowing twist, Autumn’s body cannot be recovered; his soul drifts away as the centipede is finally destroyed from within.
The dawn after the battle finds Windy in a different frame of mind as she moves toward a new life. Windy’s wedding to the Ma family becomes the backdrop for a quiet revelation: Ning races to Moon on the main street and, with a bittersweet blessing, wishes Windy a long, happy marriage before departing. In the desert, Yin and Ning glimpse Windy and Moon riding toward them, and Windy makes a bold choice: she decides to leave with Ning, stepping away from the arranged fate that had defined her path and choosing a future with him instead. The story closes on a note of uncertain futures, with love tested, loyalties shifted, and two fighters bound to learn what comes next as they walk away together.
