In a year of famine, Chen Maisui loses her parents and brothers, and this orphaned girl carries a sack of wild vegetable roots to settle in an abandoned village no one cares about. She clears fields, stores grain, and makes smoked meat, managing to build a decent life alongside a few elderly and frail companions. Then she finds a blood-soaked man by the river. A jade pendant carved with a dragon hangs from his waist, yet he claims to be a refugee. Chen Maisui doesn't ask where he came from, simply handing him a bowl of hot soup. Later, when pursuers seal off the village, he grips her wrist. "Will you come with me?"
