The unnamed narrator explains that he has returned to Northeast Gaomi Township to research his family history and the Battle of the Black Water River. A 92-year-old survivor of the 1939 Mid-Autumn Festival massacre sings a traditional song crediting the narrator’s grandmother, Dai Fenglian, with devising the rake tactic. The survivor’s recollections are fragmentary: Dai Fenglian had the smallest feet in the village; her family owned a prosperous distillery; the Japanese conscripted all able-bodied workers and animals to build the highway; and there were rumors of an affair between Dai Fenglian and Arhat Liu, the family foreman. She recalls that Douguan killed his first man at 15 and that Arhat Liu killed one of the family mules and mutilated the other, an act for which he was subsequently skinned alive by the Japanese.

The narrator dismisses the affair rumors and states they would not alter his portrayal of Dai Fenglian regardless. He cites county records from 1938 confirming the forced labor campaign and Arhat Liu’s execution.

In 1938, when the Japanese first arrive at the village, Arhat Liu tries to stop puppet soldiers from confiscating the family’s two prized black mules. A Japanese soldier wounds his scalp with a bayonet. Dai Fenglian smears the blood on her own face to stun the soldiers into silence. She eventually persuades Arhat Liu to comply. After the soldiers leave, she washes the blood from her face in a vat of sorghum wine.

Arhat Liu is forced to work on the highway construction site near the Black Water River, where he watches the family’s mules being used to flatten sorghum fields. That afternoon, a laborer who attempts to escape is shot dead. Locked in a stockade at night, Arhat Liu watches another prisoner kill a Japanese sentry and escape, then crawls out through the opening himself. He crosses the wooden bridge but hears the family’s mules braying and returns for them. When the animals, unable to recognize him, kick him violently, he retrieves a hoe and, in a rage, hamstrings one mule and kills the other with a blow to the head.

The novel returns to 1939. At dawn, Commander Yu’s guerrillas take positions along the dike overlooking the stone bridge. Yu orders a former bandit “Mute” to set up the rake barrier. He also instructs his men to wait for Detachment Leader Leng’s forces to cut off the enemy’s retreat before opening fire. He voices his distrust of Leng, suspecting that Leng may try to undermine his authority, and designates Douguan as his messenger, giving him a French Browning pistol.

A flashback reveals that two nights earlier, Dai Fenglian hosted a tense meeting between Yu and Leng, who argued over Yu’s refusal to subordinate his troops. Dai Fenglian made them drink wine from the vat stained with Arhat Liu’s blood, sealing a pact to fight the Japanese together, and asked Yu to bring Douguan to the ambush. To test the boy’s courage, Yu shot a wine cup off his head with the Browning.

When Yu sends Douguan to alert “Mute’s” squad, the soldiers tease him about his mother; enraged, Douguan tries to shoot one of them, but the pistol misfires. Yu later instructs him to kill the Japanese first, then anyone who disrespects his mother next.

As the men wait through the morning, a second flashback depicts what happened over the previous year: After Arhat Liu was taken, Dai Fenglian made Douguan drink blood-tainted wine, and the villagers were forced to witness Arhat Liu’s execution. The Japanese officer ordered Sun Five, the village butcher, to skin Arhat Liu alive, a prolonged act of mutilation Arhat met with defiant curses. That night, a rainstorm washed away all traces of the corpse.

Convinced of Leng’s treachery, Yu orders the men to stand down at mid-morning and sends Douguan to tell Grandma, meaning Dai Fenglian, to prepare and deliver fistcakes to their position.

The narrative shifts to Dai Fenglian at 16 years old. Her father has arranged her marriage to Shan Bianlang, the heir to a prosperous distillery who is rumored to have leprosy. On her wedding day, Dai Fenglian is carried in a sedan chair by four bearers, one of whom is the 20-year-old Yu Zhan’ao. Inside the hot, stifling chair, Dai Fenglian grows increasingly terrified about her future. The bearers torment her by violently rocking the chair and making crude remarks about her groom’s leprosy. When her small, bound foot slips out from beneath the curtain during a rest stop, Yu Zhan’ao gently returns it inside, an act that deeply moves her.

At Toad Hollow, a highwayman stops the procession and demands Dai Fenglian come with him. Yu Zhan’ao confronts him and, finding his weapon to be merely a gnarled tree knot, kicks him down. The other bearers and musicians beat the highwayman to death. Yu cleans the soiled sedan chair and helps Dai Fenglian back inside. As a rainstorm begins, she removes the front curtain to watch Yu’s back as he carries her onward through the downpour.

In 1939, Douguan runs back to the village, where anxious residents have gathered at the distillery. Sun Five the butcher, overwhelmed with guilt ever since Arhat Liu’s execution, wanders through the compound. Douguan tells Dai Fenglian that Commander Yu wants fistcakes delivered and that Detachment Leader Leng never appeared. Dai Fenglian orders the villagers to prepare food. A 17-year-old girl named Lingzi clings to her, crying.

A flashback explains that Lingzi survived sexual assault by Big Tooth Yu, the quartermaster and Commander Yu’s uncle. Adjutant Ren, a stern officer who had trained Yu’s recruits, demanded Big Tooth Yu’s execution, but Commander Yu refused to kill the uncle who had raised him. When Ren resigned in protest, Dai Fenglian challenged Yu’s hesitation, calling him spineless. Douguan rushed between them when Yu threatened Dai Fenglian with his pistol, prompting Yu to relent. He publicly thanked his uncle before ordering the execution. “Mute” carried out the sentence, and Big Tooth Yu met his death without complaint. Adjutant Ren returned to ensure a proper funeral, during which Commander Yu fired a shot that narrowly missed Ren’s head. Three months later, Ren died when his pistol accidentally discharged during cleaning, and Commander Yu wordlessly claimed his weapon.

Dai Fenglian and Wang Wenyi’s wife rush toward the bridge carrying fistcakes and soup. Wang’s wife had begged Dai Fenglian to help her husband join the guerrillas after a Japanese bomb killed their three young sons. Douguan returns to the dike, reports to Commander Yu that food is coming, and spots four approaching Japanese trucks. Yu orders his men into position. As the trucks near the bridge, Douguan grows extremely nervous and gets permission to urinate in the sorghum field.

Upon returning, he sees Dai Fenglian and Wang’s wife arriving on the nearby riverbank. His shout of recognition alerts the Japanese, who open fire with mounted machine guns. Dai Fenglian is shot twice in the chest and falls, scattering the fistcakes. Wang’s wife is shot in the head and tumbles into the river. Douguan screams and runs to his mother, throwing down his pistol, and reaches her just as “Mute” pulls them both off the exposed dike before another volley sweeps the area. Wang Wenyi, grief-stricken, stands on the dike calling for his wife and is immediately cut down. Commander Yu, enraged but disciplined, orders his men to remain hidden and hold fire.

The mortally wounded Dai Fenglian tells Douguan that Commander Yu is his real father. Douguan tries to carry her deeper into the sorghum field but collapses under her weight, and his desperate attempts to stop the bleeding fail. As she dies, Dai Fenglian experiences a flood of memories.

She recalls arriving at the Shan household and her wedding night, when she held her husband at bay with scissors. On the third day, as her father escorted her home, she begged not to return. Passing through Toad Hollow, Yu Zhan’ao appeared, swept her off her donkey, and carried her into the sorghum field, where they consummated their relationship on his rain cape, conceiving Douguan. Yu showed her his sword and told her to return in three days. When she did, she learned that both Shan Bianlang and his father had been murdered.

In her final moments, Dai Fenglian defends her choices to heaven and asserts that she lived without fear of judgment. She calls Douguan’s name; he promises she will survive and runs to get his father. Alone, Dai Fenglian has a vision of doves landing in the sorghum and feels her spirit rising with them. Finding peace, she whispers her final words and dies.

As the Japanese trucks attempt to cross the bridge, Commander Yu orders the attack. The guerillas’ cannon destroys a truck loaded with rice, and the lead truck’s tires are punctured by the rake barrier. “Mute” boards that truck and decapitates two soldiers before being fatally shot. A soldier named Fang Six is shot in the stomach; Commander Yu helps Six’s brother, Fang Seven, fire the cannon again, destroying another truck. Fang Seven is then shot in the face. Commander Yu is wounded in the shoulder and has Douguan bandage it before giving him a pistol.

Douguan fires at a Japanese officer escaping from a truck but misses; a shot from behind kills the officer. Douguan leads Commander Yu to Dai Fenglian’s body in the sorghum field, and Yu weeps and closes Dai Fenglian’s eyes.

Detachment Leader Leng’s troops finally arrive and eliminate the remaining Japanese soldiers. Leng claims they nearly made it in time, but Commander Yu calls him a traitor and aims his pistol at him; bodyguards disarm and restrain Yu. Douguan shoots one guard in the buttocks. Leng releases them, leaves one machine gun, and grants them the trucks and rice before his troops loot the battlefield. The Japanese officer killed earlier is identified as a general. As the sun sets over the burning wreckage, Douguan finds a nearly whole fistcake made by his mother and gives it to Commander Yu, then takes one for himself.