Plot
The film is set in Dengfeng, Henan during the warlord era of early Republican China. Hou Jie, a ruthless warlord, defeats a rival, Huo Long, and seizes control of Dengfeng. Huo Long flees to Shaolin Temple to hide, but Hou Jie appears and shoots him after tricking him into giving up his treasure map. Hou Jie ridicules the Shaolin monks before leaving.
Feeling that his sworn brother, Song Hu, is taking advantage of him, Hou sets a trap for Song in a restaurant under the guise of agreeing to his daughter's engagement to Song's son. Meanwhile, Hou's deputy, Cao Man, ambitious and feeling used by Hou, decides to betray his superior. During the dinner, Song states his intention to retire and cede everything to Hou, but then receives a tip-off that Hou is planning to kill him. In rage and embarrassment, Hou fatally wounds Song. Both families are then attacked by Cao's assassins. Despite being shot by Hou, Song saves him before dying. While fleeing, Hou's wife and daughter are separated. Hou's wife is rescued by some Shaolin monks who were stealing rice from the military granary to help refugees living at the temple. Hou escapes with his daughter, who is severely injured after they fall off a cliff. In desperation, he brings her to Shaolin, begging the monks to save her life, but their efforts are in vain, and she dies of her injuries. Hou's wife blames him for their daughter's death and leaves him. Hou attacks the monks in anger, but is quickly subdued.
Hou wanders in shock near Shaolin until he meets the cook Wudao, who provides him food and shelter after he was stuck in a pit for many days. Hou feels guilty for his past misdeeds and decides to become a monk and atone for his sins. During his stay in Shaolin, he gradually learns Shaolin's principles through study and martial arts, reforms, and finds peace. Hou later learns from the refugees that Cao has been recruiting male refugees to unearth relics under the pretext of hiring them to build a railway, and that Cao intends to kill them to silence them once their job is done. Hou intimidates the guards burying recent victims, then loads the corpses in a cart and drag it to the temple gate, where villagers and refugees identify their missing loved ones.
After Cao learns that Hou is still alive, he leads his soldiers to the temple to capture him. Hou volunteers to go with Cao so he can distract him while the monks break into Cao's base to save the imprisoned labourers. Hou is reunited with his wife and manages to escape with her. Hou's senior, Jingneng, is brutally killed by Cao while covering his juniors' escape. Upon returning to Shaolin Temple, the monks decide that they need to flee in order to avoid further trouble. Wudao leads the refugees away while Hou and the other monks remain behind to defend the temple and buy time. Cao arrives with his troops and attacks Shaolin. At the same time, the foreigners find they have been cheated; determined to silence Cao and the entire Shaolin community, they bombard the temple with artillery, killing many of the monks and Cao's soldiers. Hou defeats Cao in a fight but eventually sacrifices himself to save Cao from being crushed by a falling beam. He falls into the Buddha statue's palm and dies peacefully, leaving Cao wracked with guilt. The surviving monks kill the foreigners and stop the bombardment. Meanwhile, the refugees, fleeing on a mountainside, cry as they look down at the temple in ruins. Wudao tells them the Shaolin spirit will continue to live in them even though the temple has been destroyed.
It is revealed that, before the evacuation of the temple, Hou had met his wife for one final time. Repenting for his past, he gave the urn containing his daughter's cremated ashes to his wife, refusing to leave Shaolin and staying behind to defend it and cover the refugees' escape. She forgave him for his past and accepted the fact she could no longer be with him, even though she prefers his present self to his former one. Admitting that Cao's evil actions stems from his own past misdeeds, Hou stated it was solely his responsibility to guide Cao to the correct path.
