While exploring a dig site in Dunhuang, archaeology student Shen Jibai comes across a patterned piece of pottery. The pattern is identical to the one on a broken jade pendant his grandfather left behind before dying when Shen was five. He follows the trail to Lenghu, Qinghai, and finds a stone chamber deep in the Kunlun Mountains. Carved into the wall are the names of forty-three generations of the Shen family. In every generation, someone has been “recorded.” The forty-fourth branch is empty, waiting for him. He turns himself into an anchor, believing he has broken the cycle. But then he discovers another wall behind the stone chamber. The wall is alive. The pattern is not a ledger. It is a menu. The flesh and blood of forty-three generations has fed it. Now it is hungry. “Remember, and you can break the cycle.”
