At twenty-eight, architect Xu Du suffered a brain hemorrhage and was declared brain-dead.
As he hovered on the brink of death, his soul left his body and activated a set of rules called “Hundred Crossings.”
He had to travel at random through one hundred parallel worlds, inhabiting one hundred ordinary people and helping each of them resolve the deepest obsession and regret of their life. Only after completing all one hundred trials could his soul return to his body.
Meanwhile, only seven days would pass in the present world.
He inhabited a young soldier stationed on the border, and twenty-four days of tenderness made up for half a lifetime of cold;
He inhabited a retired veteran detective, took off the badge he had worn all his life, and gave the victim justice;
He inhabited a timid new recruit who was afraid to die, watching him go from dreaming of “making it home alive to marry a wife” to the moment he charged a tank with a sack of explosives in his arms.
Some people had their deepest wishes fulfilled; others died with regrets.
Some found closure; others failed.
The Hundred Crossings rules cared only that each life was fully lived, not whether it ended in success or failure.
Xu Du began as a detached observer, but slowly found himself warmed by the lives of these ordinary people.
He thought he had come to help others cross over.
Only later did he realize that he was the one being helped across.
