The novel revolves around the strange character of the obsessive bookworm, Professor Qin, "the greatest Sinologist," who despises academics and believes that communication with the world is unnecessary as long as books exist. Therefore, he lives isolated in his home with and for thousands of books. However, human pettiness manages to infiltrate his home, tightening its grip on him, diminishing his presence, confining him to a small room with his books, and pushing him into communication with the world, which will soon devour and torment him, as if life is taking a fierce revenge on him, while he tries to evade it with the same precision and care with which he interprets an ancient text. The novel is structured in three parts, each divided into sub-chapters. The first part begins with a conversation between an arrogant intellectual and a nine-year-old boy, and the third part ends with the intellectual's self-immolation. It begins with a question and ends with an answer that the intellectual finds as a definitive solution to all questions. In the first part, the author introduces us to the character of "the greatest Chinese scholar" in his strictly defined daily life, which places him in a deadly isolation, making him hate people and reality. In the second part, "chaos" reaches its peak, when the isolated intellectual mixes with real people in a real city outside the walls of his head. The third part depicts the extreme failure of the attempt to reclaim that world in the head, after it becomes clear that madness has taken over humanity.