In a northern county town in the cold winter of 1987, blacksmith Zhao Tiezhu guards the town's last earthen smithy, while demolition bulldozers will arrive in three days. His father's passing left behind incomplete traditions of the intangible cultural heritage skill of iron flower scattering, and he has only mastered basic forging with no one to teach the core flower-striking technique. Qian Daping, a temporary worker at the cultural center, travels everywhere seeking folk arts to save her position and the rice bowls of her veteran colleagues, eventually finding Sun Laojue, an elderly iron flower master hiding in a recycling station who closed his hands after a past accident.