In her diary, Snow writes about how a fox bewitches an unsuspecting scholar. As he shrivels and becomes addicted to her presence, a servant brings a monk to exorcise the fox from his home. Infuriated, the man organizes a raid in the village, and they discover a fox den beneath a grave.

Snow travels to Dalian from Mukden. She lies to a pimp and says that she wants field work to get passage on a train. When the pimp attempts to sexually assault her on the train, Snow uses her influence to knock him out and throw him off the train. When a soldier asks her where she is headed, she tells him that she is hunting for a murderer.

Bao, a self-made detective, is summoned to a popular restaurant where a woman’s frozen body was found in an alley nearby. The owner has moved the body for fear that his restaurant’s reputation will be ruined. However, he asks Bao to uncover the woman’s name to lay her spirit to rest. Bao has the ability to detect lies. He collects what little information he can about the woman: that she was wearing the clothing that nightly entertainers wear and that she was smiling when they found her.