**Story Synopsis**
**Winter 1950: An Ironclad Oath by the Yalu River**
On the third day of his marriage, railway engineer Qi Tieshan receives a blood-red transfer order amid a world of ice and snow. As the flames from American bombers set the Yalu River Bridge aglow, he heads for the Korean battlefield with a copy of "Locomotive Troubleshooting Manual" sewn into his padded coat by his wife. He becomes one of the toughest rail spikes on the “unbreakable steel supply line.”
**From the flames of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea to the sheer cliffs of the Third Front construction:**
- **Engineering marvels**: Making a stethoscope from an American bomb casing, inventing the “ice-layer blasting method” in temperatures of -38°C, and sending encrypted messages through the vibrations of the rails
- **Romance amid the bloodshed**: Wedding rings forged from shrapnel, love letters hidden in the tracks, and a tunnel wedding lit by light reflected through a level
- **Historical milestones**: 12 real battles, prototypes of 7 national industrial patents, and a ceremony passing down the legacy of three generations of locomotives
**1984: The secret to immortality on the Chengdu-Kunming Railway**
As Qi Tieshan stands before Pier No. 7 of the Longgudian Bridge, a concrete pillar built with the ashes of 22 fallen railway soldiers, he hears a familiar 82 Hz vibration coming from the rails. It is the rhythm of “Ode to the Motherland,” tapped out on the tracks on the night of the 1953 armistice.
**“The rails may rust, but the oath made in 1953 is still being passed on, **
**vibrating at a frequency of 82 hertz between the atoms of every rail.”**
