The original serialised version has a different ending, while the characterisations of certain characters such as Old Man Ji have been drastically altered in the revised editions.

Li Wenxiu, a young Han Chinese girl, loses her parents in the Gobi Desert while escaping from a group of bandits who are after a map of Gaochang.

Several years later, Li Wenxiu meets Hua Hui, a hermit, in an oasis in the Gobi Desert, and helps him cure his wounds.

Chen Dahai, the leader of the group of bandits who killed Li Wenxiu's parents, shows up and suspects that the map he has been hunting for is inside the house.

She decides to leave Kazakh territory and head to central China as she feels miserable after the loss of two of her loved ones and the marriage of her lover to another woman.