Beiping, 1943. War rages and the dead lie scattered from starvation.
He Yuzhu opens his eyes amid the chaos, now a child in a courtyard house who never has enough to eat or wear. The family home is bare, his parents are miserable, and the neighbors’ schemes prick at their impoverished lives like needles.
At death’s door, he unexpectedly feels warmth at the center of his brow and opens a doorway to a mysterious space.
There is rich black soil for farming, a spring to quench his thirst, and time flows differently from the outside world.
From then on, in the years of famine, he secretly uses the food grown in his space to fill his family’s bowls. As the world falls into turmoil, he uses the space as a shield to hide urgently needed supplies. And when he faces open and hidden attacks in the courtyard, he carries a world-shaking secret and disguises himself as a fool, taking one step at a time from mere survival to protecting those he loves.
No one knows that this seemingly simple-minded boy carries a little world capable of defying fate. In an era when human life is worth less than grass, he will use this space to keep his family safe and carve out a different life in the courtyard house.
