Shan Tao Yun is an exiled Chinese national, a former Beijing Investigator, on parole from the Tibetan gulag to which he had been consigned as punishment. Leading a mule bearing a corpse at the request of a local wisewoman, he comes upon a traffic accident involving a government bus transporting illegal monks to prison. Two women in an approaching vehicle are shot, and one dies in his arms. Shan must find the killer, for his reward will be the life and sanity of his son, Ko, who is imprisoned in a Chinese "yeti" factory where men are routinely driven mad.