When a northern garrison town was abandoned, young ferryman Lu Tingzhou cut the rope his father depended on to survive, saving a boatload of refugees in the process. Afterward, he headed south with a register of the dead, hoping to claim the grain and compensation owed to them. But he discovered that the retreat had been more than a lost battle: through grain records, military orders, and waterways, the imperial court was deciding which places deserved to survive and which people could be recorded as already dead.
He meets an apprentice doctor who insists on treating enemy and allied wounded alike, a grain officer who believes precise calculations can reduce casualties, and a group of people who can never go home again. To save those in front of them, they make choices that can be explained but never undone. In the end, a friend who once helped rescue refugees becomes the person drawing up the sacrifice lists. And the ferryman who once only wanted to prove his father had not deserted must finally write his own crime into the register.
