History student Su Xian and “Shovel” Liu Yun accidentally transmigrate to the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932 while looting a battlefield site.
From the power struggles in the palace at Xinjing to the living hell of the collective villages, the two modern people, once flippant and carefree, are forced to depend on each other under the Japanese invaders' iron heel. Su Xian uses his knowledge of history to infiltrate the Imperial Household Department, where he witnesses the signing of the Japan-Manchukuo Protocol and the crimes of the opium drugging policy. Liu Yun struggles to survive at the bottom of society, witnessing the brutal truth behind the policy of “using Chinese to control Chinese.”
With no System and no cheat abilities, they can't change the course of history. All they can do is escape death again and again, watching the Anti-Japanese United Army fighters eat tree bark and swallow cotton batting in the freezing wilderness, all to protect the homeland behind them.
From mutual disdain to entrusting each other with their lives, they finally understand, when all the splendor has faded, the era's most painful question: What did those who came before them die for?
This is an epic of escape, awakening, and redemption, dedicated to all who carried a flame forward through the darkness.
