In the autumn of the 26th year of the Republic of China, the smoke of the Battle of Songhu had not yet cleared, the city of Nanjing was about to be destroyed, and the Yangtze River was crowded with boats fleeing south.
Hankou, this river city on the thoroughfare of nine provinces, became the last refuge. Thousands of wounded soldiers were transported from the front line every day, ammunition boxes and coffins were piled on the docks, and people lay waiting to die in the hospital corridors. The air was filled with the smell of iodine and rot, a smell unique to this era.
Shen Huaijin is twenty-six years old and a surgeon at a small clinic on the edge of the French Concession in Hankou. Two years ago, she was the most brilliant student at Peking Union Medical College. A surgical accident caused her to lose her license and she fled to the south in despair. She doesn't like to talk, doesn't make friends, and spends all her energy on the operating table - as if saving one more person can wash away the life on her hands.
What she didn't know was that she had been caught in a huge web.
A porter on the Hankou dock gave her an old pocket watch, a mysterious man who was shot on a rainy night left a copper coin, the old shopkeeper of the drug store next door hid the secret of the former imperial doctor, and a pair of surgical forceps left by his father sealed the legacy of the Tongmenghui. There was also the special pass given by the Japanese, which allowed her to walk freely in the occupied areas, but also allowed her to be called a traitor by her compatriots.
From 1937 to 1945, from Hankou to Northeast China, Shen Huaijin had to face more than just guns and death. She has to survive in the tripartite struggle between the military command, the underground party, and the Japanese military's special high school. She has to face the wounded Japanese soldiers and her own inner hatred on the operating table. She has to make a choice after discovering the germ warfare plan of Japan's Unit 731 - whether to protect herself wisely or to test the poison with her own body.
