It is a world within our world, yet unseen by any human, and the beings here control time and tide and the changing of the seasons. On the day Chun turns sixteen, she is transformed into a dolphin to explore the human world. She is rescued from a vortex by a human boy at the cost of his own life. Chun is so moved by the boy's kindness and courage that she decides to give him life again. But to do this, she must protect the boy's soul, a tiny fish, and nurture it to grow. Through adventure and sacrifice, love grows, yet now she must release him back to the sea, back to life in the human world.
The story revolves around Xia Tian, a single mother and an associate researcher whose life's work is a machine that can allow people to return to the past. However, upon the completion of the machine, her son, Dou Dou, gets kidnapped and is held ransom in exchange for it. The only way she can save her son is by using the machine to travel an hour and fifty minutes back in time to prevent the kidnapping.
An empress commissions a painting of herself from a Fresh outsider in hopes of stirring her husband's interest in this lavish period piece. The Lady in the Portrait is a period yarn evoking the unique rapport between a French missionary and the Manchurian Empress whose portrait he's ordered to paint.