For me, "old school" martial arts movies involving genuinely skilled practitioners are treasures from the past, as it's so common for wirework, CGI, and other technological tricks to substitute for advanced combat ability.

So I was quite pleased seeing the whole thing and watching each of the creative and well choreographed fights. There's also a simple and effective story as well.

The lead character played by Meng Yuan Man is a kung fu enthusiast who is forbidden by his grandfather to study the martial arts further after his elder brother gets killed in a duel. The grandfather prefers that the young man puusue only academic scholarship, but Meng rebels by running away, hoping to find masters to continue training him.

None the less he does not seek to avenge his elder brother, but rather to further his art as well as to find his own path in life, and sincerely believes learning martial arts can be for righteous or base purposes depending on the individual.

Thus, in a series of adventures he meets and befriends three different people who each impart their unique skills to him. The core of the plot however, is that each of these instructors gets ruthlessly eliminated one after another by a mysterious assassin who is an expert with daggers.

By the time the third teacher, a young woman played by Lily Li (veteran of many Shaw Brothers movies), gets murdered, I had a hunch who was behind the killings and I was right. This revelation was still very upsetting, as it was a tragic waste for each of the three teachers to die for training the youth to be a better man.

Ultimately, after this plot twist is revealed the young man tracks down and kills the assassin in a thrilling showdown, incorporating all elements of the skills he had learned.