The pace and tone of the film is immediately made clear with an opening fight in the woods as Wah-jee (Cheung Lik) and his uncle (Sham Chin-bo) attempt to flee from ruthless fighters led by Mien Tsu-mun (Chan Lau).
Once recovered from his wounds, Wah-jee is put to work at the temple, making soy milk runs into town and cleaning out the smoke-filled oven.
He spends time with two junior monks and trades friendly kung fu blows with Tsui-jee (Jeannie Chang), the attractive soy milk seller.
Fed up with the torturous regimen of chores at the temple, Wah-jee leaves but overhears Tsu-mun's plans to kill Huang and decides to warn his mentor.
There is also a smaller parallel plot interwoven with the previous one involving a brother of Jang-lee (Mark Long) who heads off to a Tibetan temple to seek out a kung fu master named Kaung Wu Chun (Jack Lung) in order to get the manual of 36 Deadly Styles.