In 1986, when a state-owned factory allocated housing, Zhou Zheng was pushed aside by employees with influential connections and assigned only an abandoned cold-storage room. With secret help from his neighbor, Uncle Wang, he discovers discarded heating pipes hidden behind the cold-storage walls and learns that the property is about to fall within a demolition boundary. Zhou Zheng spends all his savings reinforcing the building, but Liu Wei repeatedly reports him and makes trouble, while the factory director alternately threatens and tempts him. Using patience and intelligence, Zhou Zheng overcomes each crisis, eventually secures demolition compensation, and helps Uncle Wang bring down the corrupt factory director. He then resigns to start his own business, beginning with a renovation crew. Despite malicious competition from industry rivals and suppression by the powerful, he ultimately wins a bid for the old factory buildings and transforms them into the Zhengjingfang mixed-use complex, opening a wonton shop and achieving an extraordinary rise in social status.