In the 1990s, Huaichuan, a county in China. The police portrait expert Zhang Xin was ordered to draw the suspect. But he drew a woman who had been dead for more than ten years.
Zhang Xin, the portrait expert with the police, was ordered to draw a suspect for the murder of a photo studio owner. However, his portrait turned out to be of an actress from the art troupe who was killed more than ten years ago - Yan Hua. During the investigation, Zhang Xin discovered that the owner of the photo studio was just the murderer of Yan Hua. A series of truths are uncovered one by one. Zhang Xin finally found out that it wasn't Yan Hua who died that year. Instead, Yan Hua survived as someone else. In the process of investigating the case, Zhang Xin painted Yan Hua's secret and bitter life, and he also found the meaning of continuing the portrait.
In the 1990s, a homicide occurred in Huaichuan, a county in central China. Zhang Xin, a mock portrait expert with the police, was ordered to draw the criminal suspect. But unexpectedly, he drew a woman who had been dead for more than ten years. She was Yan Hua, a dancer from the former county art troupe. Everyone thought that Zhang Xin was wrong, but he thought thatthis person had some kind of secret connection with the murder case.
During the investigation, Zhang Xin determined that Yan Hua was one of the deceased in a serial murder case based on the clues of the year, and accidentally drew the murderer of that year, who is the deceased in the current murder case: Chen Mo, the owner of the photo studio. So, who is the murderer who killed Chen Mo?
Based on a broken diary left at the murder scene, Zhang Xin pinned the suspect on Lin Yin, the chief dancer of the county's art troupe. The criminal police captain Shen Zhang finally found the murderer through the investigation of the smuggled guns. She had been disfigured and admitted that she was Lin Yin. However, Zhang Xin realized that Lin Yin was the deceased of the yearthrough the facts he accidentally discovered, and the murderer in front of him was actually Yan Hua.
More than ten years ago, Yan Hua used the identity of the dead Lin Yin to continue Lin Yin's dance life, but was ruthlessly abandoned by the times in the changing world. When Yan Hua returned to her hometown again, she accidentally discovered that the murderer who killed Lin Yin was Chen Mo, so she killed him and wrote a full stop to herself as someone else. Zhang Xinpainted Yan Hua's secret and bitter life, and thus rediscovered his meaning as a portrait expert.
