Synopsis：A soldier of the Eighth Route Army captures a strategic offensive map from the Japanese forces, but is severely wounded. He entrusts the map to his younger brother Erzhu, a peasant, and asks him to deliver it to a comrade at the train station. Meanwhile, Qin Gui (Huang Hong), sent from the northeast by his shopkeeper, arrives at the station to retrieve the map. Elsewhere, Laoyao (Wei Zongwan), a cotton-fluffing peasant determined to join the Eighth Route Army and fight the Japanese, is searching for the troops together with his young uncle Shunzi (Zhao Liang). The uncle and nephew encounter a skilled ventriloquist storyteller (Xu Yukun) in a teahouse. The trio rescues the wounded Erzhu amid gunfire from Japanese officer Issei Sasaki (Sun Min), who is leading a team in pursuit of the map. The storyteller takes Erzhu's place to deliver the map, while Laoyao and Shunzi race away to lure Sasaki's squad. At the station, Qin Gui mistakes the storyteller for an Eighth Route Army contact and clings to him. Laoyao and Shunzi catch up briefly, but the four are scattered again by Japanese artillery fire. Qin Gui, Laoyao, and the storyteller end up trapped in a cellar, while Shunzi goes to a nearby village to recruit villagers for rescue. Thus begins a thrilling game of cat and mouse between ordinary people and the Japanese soldiers.