
The story follows Sui Yuan, a scholar traveling to Beijing to pursue his studies, who accidentally stumbles into the "mandarin duck hot pot" trap set by the carp demon Jiang Xiaoyu and falls in love with her. Centered around the Yangtze River, the story reinterprets hot pot culture and creates a bizarre and colorful world of demons.

Xuan Yuan the Great Emperor tells the legendary story of the ancestor of Chinese people: Ji Di. Ji Di lived in the Yellow River basin about 5000 years ago.