The hero, Yao Hao, is a young man whose father, General Yao, was assassinated and whose mother was killed in an attack on the funeral procession. He survives the attack and winds up at a Shaolin temple where he insists he wants to stay and become a monk after he's been forced to go through 49 days of meditation. His beautiful fiance pleads with him to come back with her, but he refuses. The head monk, Brother Fa, an orphan who's been at the monastery all his life and is expecting to succeed the current Shaolin Abbot, is jealous of the privileges Yao Hao has had in life and asks him questions about the outside world, including what it's like to touch a woman.