Seven warriors come together to protect a village from a diabolical General. Tsui Hark directs this action epic, that also stars Donnie Yen.

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À l'aube des années 1660, la Mandchourie annexe la Chine pour y installer la dynastie Ching. À la suite des multiples insurrections contre le gouvernement, ce dernier interdit l'étude et l'exercice des arts martiaux afin de maintenir l'ordre et la discipline dans le pays. Fire-wind, chef militaire de la dynastie antérieure, se dit qu'en aidant le gouvernement à faire appliquer la nouvelle loi il parviendra à s'enrichir rapidement. Il a projeté de s'attaquer à la dernière ville frontière, petite bourgade du nom de Martial Village, dont les habitants sont réputés rebelles et courageux.

 Hark (The Blade) adapted his massive martial arts epic Seven Swords (AKA Qi Jian) from Liang yu-Sheng's popular novel Seven Swordsmen from Mount Tian. The story opens in the 1660s, following the implementation of China's (Manchu) Qing dynasty. To quell possible nationalist uprisings, the emperor issues a decree forbidding the use of martial arts, and guarantees decapitation for anyone who violates that order. A class of bounty hunters quickly formed to enforce the law and collect 600 pieces of silver for each violator; the most massive and domineering of the warriors is the bald, muscular Fire-Wind (Sun Honglei), a bellicose and volatile creature who lives in an elephantine tentlike dwelling on a hill. This walking terror selects Martial Village, a hamlet in northwestern China, as his next assignment. Meanwhile, in Martial, two young adults, Wu Yuanyin (Charlie Young) and her ex-beau, Han Zhibang) rescue an old executioner, Fu Qingzhu (Lau Kar-leung) who foresees the coming wrath and acknowledges the necessity of pulling in the mythical 'Warriors of Mt. Tian' to fight Fire-Wind and his cronies.