As a thunderstorm approaches, peace at the autocratic miner-businessman Zhou Puyuan's idyllic mansion is broken.
His rebellious second wife Fanyi, in love with his elder son Ping, discovers the latter has fallen for the maid Lu
Sifeng, daughter of the head servant Lu Gui. As Lu Shiping, wife of Lu Gui, comes to visit Sifeng, she discovers to her great horror that the mansion owner is her former love and that her daughter is carrying the baby of her own son, Ping.
As Zhou Puyuan wakes up to the ugly reality unknowingly exposed by Fanyi, he also finds that the defiant worker-representative Lu Dahai, son of Lu Gui and Shiping, is the second son he had with Shiping. When all is revealed, Sifeng and Fanyi's own son by Puyuan, Zhou Chong, are sacrificed in a lightning accident as Zhou Ping shoots himself.
As the thunderstorm releases its full rage, both Shiping and Fanyi go mad, leaving Zhou Puyuan to savour the bitter fruits of a seemingly inevitable tragedy
