Jeom-rye works as a sharecropper to make a living for her good-for-nothing husband and her son Yong. But the village men are always trying to seduce her. When she rebuffs her landlord's advances, she is wrongly accused by his wife and is forced to leave. Sam-su, the servant who is smitten with her, offers to lend her husband, Deok-hi, money for her affections. Deok-hi tries to sell her off to Sam-su but Jeom-rye gets him arrested for trafficking humans. Sam-su realizes Jeom-rye's sincerity and drops the charges and Deok-hi repents his ways only too late. He dies of an illness. When her son Yong dies from indigestion after eating rice cakes, she goes off the edge.
Han Wu-song, an antique collector, gets killed while appraising a bronze horse rider statue which trader Wang Dae-in has stolen from a tomb. Dae-in dies on the scene and Wu-song leaves the killer's name on the cave wall before he dies. Dae-in's son Wang Gak thinks Wu-Song killed his father and fights with his son Jung-pa. Trader Kwan and her daughter Mi-ryung stop the fight. Jung-pa and Mi-ryung's love is disturbed by Ju-yang. Gak and Jung-pa chase him to find Wu-song's body with Ju-yang's name on the wall but Mi-ryung appeals them not to kill...
