A rural school teacher, Jan, murders a pupil, the young daughter of a family under whom he had previously been a tenant. The father, Caj, tracks him to China to exact revenge - but at the moment of vengeance, Caj cannot act. he returns home only to take a concubine, who in turn bears him a son: Sungu, a prodigious composer of verse. At Caj's deathbed, the boy is informed he has been brought into the world purely for the sake of vengeance; he takes an oath to annihilate Jan.