Kinley arrives in a quiet valley to unravel the mystery surrounding the disappearance and death of the abbess at the local nunnery. His number one suspect is a woman named Choden, and the rumor mill in the village buzzes with fear that she is a demoness who brings bad luck—even as she has vanished. A young girl named Jampa darts to warn her, underscoring the uneasy tension between superstition and investigation.
The village police chief, Chief Wangdi, demands that Kinley go undercover, search for her, and extract information. The next day, Jampa drops a startling hint: the bus Choden will ride may be the one Kinley himself boards. Disguised in plain clothes, Kinley travels on the same bus as Choden. At a rest stop, she approaches him and asks him to accompany her on foot to their destination, claiming to be his husband to deflect pursuers. What follows are days of trekking through the jungle, during which Choden answers Kinley’s questions with parables that feel both ancient and uncanny: a nun who does not stop meditating even as stones are thrown, an abbess who protects her nuns from invasion by turning them into pigs, and an abbess who continues meditating after death, transforming into a rainbow. These tales deepen the mystery and hint at a larger, almost magical world shadowing the investigation.
Back in Kinley’s home, the pair stay under one roof, and he must hide all evidence of his police role. Just as a fragile bond begins to form, Choden leaves without a word. The chief accuses Kinley of nursing romantic feelings and orders him to quit the case, but Kinley stubbornly presses on, driven by duty and doubt in equal measure.
Kinley soon learns that the abbess’s nunnery sits atop a valuable mineral deposit. He tracks down Norbu, the geologist who uncovered the treasure, only to find that Norbu has a rock-solid alibi. A subsequent encounter with Choden on the street reveals another truth: the abbess is alive, hidden away. Kinley then pursues the doctor who treated Norbu, only to discover that hospital records have been destroyed, leaving him with fragmented clues until he notices a doctor’s ringtone that matches one heard at the crime scene.
Choden arranges a meeting with the doctor, and Kinley alerts the chief so an arrest can be made. But Kinley soon realizes that the chief is colluding with the doctor to seize the land deed to the nunnery. He hurries to intervene and rescue Choden, but both are knocked unconscious. In a twist, Choden reveals that the land deed everyone has sought was sewn into the seam of Kinley’s own clothes the entire time. She disappears once more, and Kinley returns to the village only to confront a new, unsettling truth: the abbess had just died. When he goes to see the body, the nuns reveal she had actually died two years earlier, but asked them to keep it secret, and that her body had transformed into a rainbow.
