After the Japanese withdraw, a full moon rises over the blood-soaked field. Yu treats his wound with a mixture of sorghum powder, gunpowder, and soil. They circle the massacre site, where moonlight shines on blood pools and dismembered bodies. The narrator briefly notes their differing personalities and jumps ahead to Yu’s later return from Hokkaido and Douguan’s 1957 emergence from hiding.

Exhausted, they rest on dry earth. Douguan recalls biting Dai Fenglian’s nipple while nursing at age four, drawing blood. This occurred when Yu was having an affair with Passion, the hired girl who became Second Grandma, who later had a daughter with Yu before being gang-raped by Japanese soldiers in 1938.

Douguan lies on Yu’s stomach looking at stars, made hungry by the memory of Dai Fenglian’s fish soup. Yu loads a single bullet and fires it into the air. They enter the sorghum field and are confronted by a pack of dogs feeding on corpses. Yu fires seven times, killing and wounding several, before his pistol gives out. They enter the ruined village and find their house and distillery still burning. On the road, they encounter a hunched old man guarding a pile of looted goods. Yu angrily confronts him and beats him.

The 15-year-old girl who will become the narrator’s mother, Beauty, and her three-year-old brother, Harmony, have spent one full day in a dry well. The morning before, when the Japanese attacked, Beauty’s grandfather lowered them into the well for safety. After a mortar explosion nearby, they could no longer hear their mother’s voice.

Beauty comforts a crying Harmony at the bottom. They spend a cold, damp night underground. The next morning is silent; Beauty’s cries go unheard, and Harmony develops a high fever. Beauty’s first menstrual period begins while they are trapped. Suffering from extreme thirst and hunger, she eats small white mushrooms that make her violently ill. She awakens at dusk to sounds of the Japanese sacking the village and survives the night semi-conscious.

Beauty awakes to a new day. Her cold body cooled Harmony’s fever while his warmth kept her from freezing, but eventually she acknowledges he is dead. A terrifying night follows, as a venomous black snake guards a hole, the only water source she can find.

The morning after the massacre, Yu, Douguan, Wang Guang, Dezhi, Guo Yang (“Gimpy”), Blind Eye, and a woman named Liu gather on the village wall. Yu takes the blame for the destruction and rallies them to collect weapons from the battlefield. They amass a large arsenal of Japanese and Chinese rifles, grenades, pistols, and sabers. As the woman Liu prepares food, Blind Eye warns that something is approaching.

Hundreds of dogs emerge from the sorghum field, led by Red, Green, and Blackie. Douguan and the others move to fire, but Yu stops them from wasting ammunition. Eighty poorly armed soldiers then emerge, led by Commander Jiang (“Little Foot Jiang”), who praises Yu’s heroism and proposes joining forces. Yu angrily refuses, accusing them of hiding during the battle, but after negotiation gives the regiment 24 Czech rifles and one Japanese rifle.

The mobile bicycle platoon of Detachment Leader Leng (“Pocky” Leng) then arrives. Jiang publicly shames Leng for failing to rescue the village. As Leng prepares to leave, Yu grabs him and declares they have unfinished business after the war. Leng rides away. Jiang shakes Yu’s hand and declares his regiment their ally.

Forty-six years later, the narrator is home on summer holiday when he learns that a lightning strike has split open All-Souls Grave, scattering bones. He goes to the site with his small blue dog. The grave holds an indistinguishable mixture of bones from all sides, along with dozens of dog skulls mixed among the human ones. He helps villagers gather the scattered bones. An old man remarks that the dogs of that era were as good as humans, prompting the narrator to toss a large canine skull back into the grave. His mother burns spirit money; the narrator kowtows three times. His mother notes that 46 years have passed and that she was 15 then.

Back in 1939, Yu and Douguan go to the dry well to hide 15 Japanese rifles, suspecting Leng’s or the Jiao-Gao regiment’s soldiers had tried to steal them the night before. Douguan peers into the well and sees two bodies: one is Beauty, still barely breathing; the other is her brother, Harmony. Yu lowers Douguan into the well, where Douguan confronts the black snake, cracks its bones, and hurls it out. He ties the rope around Beauty, and Yu pulls her up, then retrieves Harmony’s body. The rifles are lowered in, and Douguan is pulled out last. They observe Beauty’s emaciated condition.

Beauty recovers under the care of the woman Liu. Yu falls gravely ill with typhoid fever but begins recovering. Douguan takes command and leads Beauty, Wang Guang, Dezhi, Gimpy, and Blind Eye in sustained battle against the dog packs.

Following Dezhi’s suggestion, they launch a surprise grenade attack on the dogs’ resting place, killing and wounding dozens. Following Beauty’s suggestion, they bury 43 armed grenades along the dogs’ paths. Meanwhile, a power struggle erupts in the dog pack: Red prompts Green to attack Blackie, then turns on the wounded Green. The pack kills Green. Blackie, badly wounded by Red, leaps into the river, dying by suicide. Red becomes undisputed leader.

With Gimpy gone and only Douguan, Beauty, and Dezhi remaining alongside Blind Eye and Yu, the reorganized pack returns. Red sends a mongrel to lead a frontal assault while he leads 60 dogs in a flanking attack. Wang Guang panics and is eaten. Dezhi bolts to draw dogs away and is torn apart. Douguan, Beauty, and Dezhi stand back-to-back as grenades go off around them. Beauty throws a grenade but forgets to pull the pin. The dogs finally flee, except for Red, who slashes Douguan’s face and bites him in the crotch before Yu arrives and shoots him in the eye.

Red’s bite has ripped open Douguan’s scrotum, severing one testicle. Yu, devastated and fearing his family line is finished, shoots Red several more times, then carries Douguan to Dr. Zhang Xinyi. The doctor reluctantly performs surgery, stitching the wound but unable to reconnect the blood vessels. He discards the severed testicle, a sight that haunts Beauty, but suggests Douguan may still be able to father children with one. He refuses payment.

Yu experiences suicidal ideation but is driven by his desire for revenge to continue living. The woman Liu comforts him, telling him her brother-in-law fathered many children with only one testicle. Yu and Liu begin a sexual relationship. On Liu’s instruction, Beauty sneaks to Douguan’s bedside to test his virility and discovers he is still functional. Douguan wakes and startles her; she runs out and bumps into Yu. Learning what happened, Yu is overcome with joy. He grabs Liu’s breasts, fires three shots into the air, and loudly proclaims their good fortune.

Five days before the massacre, Yu finds 50 silver dollars hidden in a wall of their house and takes Douguan into town to buy ammunition for revenge on Pocky Leng. They bury their pistols outside the city, and Yu carries Douguan on his back, feigning cholera, to get past the sentries. At the train station, they witness an anti-Japanese sniper shoot a soldier off a train. Yu takes Douguan to an old acquaintance, a sex worker who provides 550 cartridges for the 50 silver dollars. Unable to sneak out across the railroad tracks, they wait five days until the Mid-Autumn Festival, when they disguise themselves as departing villagers and smuggle the bullets out stuffed inside a goat. Outside the city they retrieve their guns and extract the ammunition. As they near their village, they hear gunfire and realize the Japanese attack has begun.

In the sorghum field, Yu shoots and kills the Japanese officer commanding a mortar battery shelling the village. The attackers are initially repelled from the village wall by grenades before the mortars blast open the main gate. Japanese cavalry charges the breach but is driven back. Yu and Douguan are hunted through the sorghum, discover that the Jiao-Gao regiment has used exploding firecrackers as a diversion, and witness a Japanese cavalryman kill a Jiao-Gao soldier with a saber. Douguan faints and awakens alone. He wanders through the field among dead Jiao-Gao soldiers, encounters villagers waiting to loot, and reaches the village edge in time to see hundreds of his fellow villagers flee through the breached wall, only to be machine-gunned in the sorghum field. As the Japanese enter the village at sunset, Douguan faintly hears Yu calling his name.