Kline, a former Los Angeles police officer turned private detective, is hired by a powerful pharmaceutical conglomerate boss to investigate in Asia the disappearance of his only son, Shitao, whom he has not seen in person since the boy was ten. Now in his 30s, Shitao has gone missing in the Philippines where he had been helping in an orphanage.
Kline flies out to Mindanao and the trail takes him to Hong Kong. There, enlisting Meng Zi, an old friend and former colleague now working for the Hong Kong police, Kline follows a faint trail left by the ethereal Shitao. The path leads to local organized crime syndicate boss Su Dongpo, who is making trouble for the underworld, triggered by an overriding passion for his drug-addicted girlfriend Lili. Caught in the crossfire between Su Dongpo's mafia drug ring and the Hong Kong police, Kline found himself alone, in this unknown city, when Meng Zi is victim of an assassination attempt and hospitalised.
Leaving behind his 5-star hotel for a shabby murder scene apartment in order to get inside the mind of Shitao, Kline gradually loses himself in the terrifying memories of a serial murderer, Hasford, whose speciality was dissecting his victims' limbs while they were still alive, then reassembling them into installation sculptures.
After a few weeks immersed in his haunted memories, torn between good and evil, Kline is about to leave Hong Kong when he finds Shitao, who has become a mysterious vagrant with healing powers.