Traditional Chinese medicine practitioner Pan Zhengyong tumbles into the bitter winter of 1950. The heated brick bed is cold as ice, and four gaunt children huddle around him. The youngest, Nian'an, has a fever so bad his lips have turned black. The original owner of this body died in a snowstorm trying to save the child.
Pan tears up his padded coat to plug the hole in the window, uses melted snow to bring Nian'an's fever down, and studies half a sack of moldy corn, wondering how they'll stay alive.
When a village child has convulsions, Wang the Immortal jumps around until his clothes are soaked with sweat. Pan pushes the shaman aside and saves the child's life with a skullcap decoction. When spring comes, he teaches the villagers to make compost and graft crops, until the corn ears grow so heavy they bend the stalks. When a black bear wrecks the fields, he digs a trench and builds a wall of fire, a hundred times more effective than a sacrifice.
The flatbread Li Mingyu gives him is still warm. Er Zhuzi's hand shakes like a sieve as he learns to write his name, and an old hunter slips him his sharpest hunting knife. Gazing over the vast forest, Pan Zhengyong knows these hands can take a pulse and carve out a path to survival. In the depths of the mountains, the hearth fires of Panjia Village will burn brighter and brighter.
