Despite his injury, Yu refuses to postpone the funeral and sits vigil through the night. At dawn, Douguan reflects on Beauty and the woman Liu, both of whom had vanished three months earlier. Douguan observes that the fire melted and cracked the varnish on Dai Fenglian’s coffin. He recalls how Yu’s men confiscated the coffin from a centenarian former Qing scholar who desperately clung to it as his intended resting place; the distraught old man died by suicide, ramming his head into the coffin.

The funeral begins. A cavalry commander named Five Troubles posts sentries, prompting a challenge from Black Eye, whom Yu talks down. The crowd becomes dangerously packed, and when soldiers fire warning shots to control the throng, a stampede ensues, trampling several people to death. The ceremony resumes with the presentation of canopies and a new spirit tablet to replace the one destroyed in the fire.

As the gong sounds, Yu remembers his youth as a professional coffin bearer, including a prestigious job where the Qi family offered 1,000 silver dollars to move an enormous quicksilver-filled coffin through seven narrow gates without spilling a bowl of wine balanced on top. After the bearers’ first attempt failed, Second Master Cao slapped Yu, shocking him into a burst of strength that allowed him to successfully move the coffin, though Yu later vomited blood from the exertion.

During the funeral ceremony, Douguan attempts to sing a traditional send-off song to guide his mother’s spirit to the afterlife, but is overwhelmed with grief and cannot finish singing.

The narrative shifts to a flashback from 20 days earlier, when Yu and Douguan exhumed Dai Fenglian’s body. As soldiers dig deeper into the grave, a powerful stench of decay rises, which Douguan perceives as the comforting aroma of his mother’s milk. Beneath a final layer of sorghum stalks, they find five field voles. The four brown voles scatter while the last one, a white vole, remains planted on a sorghum stalk located in the grave. The soldiers stone the white vole to death to remove it.

Douguan remembers the exhumed corpse as radiantly beautiful, though the Iron Society soldiers would later describe it as hideously decomposed. As Dai Fenglian’s body is lifted from the earth, Douguan perceives her beauty dissolving into mist, leaving only a white skeleton. When Yu attempts to move the skeleton, it disintegrates into loose bones. Overwhelmed, Douguan drops the leg bone he was holding and runs away, howling with grief.

At noon, the funeral procession begins, led by a monk from Tianqi Temple.

During a ritual stop at a roadside tent, a shot rings out. Men from the Jiao-Gao regiment, concealed in the crowd, hurl grenades at the Iron Society soldiers, killing or wounding over a dozen. Black Eye is hit in the abdomen. Fulai, the boy who received the green marble from Douguan, is killed by shrapnel; Douguan sees the marble lodged in the blood flowing from Fulai’s mouth.

Yu pulls Douguan into a ditch for cover. Little Foot Jiang leads reinforcements in a full charge, while Five Troubles leads the Iron Society cavalry in a counterattack, but another volley of grenades routs them. Douguan is wounded in the buttocks. Five Troubles is thrown from his horse and killed by bayonets. Yu shoots Jiang in the ankle, temporarily halting the pursuit, but Jiang orders his men to continue. As the Jiao-Gao troops close in and the surviving Iron Society soldiers prepare to surrender, machine guns suddenly open fire from behind the Black Water River dike, attacking both groups.

The narrative flashes back to the winter of 1939-40, when Yu, Douguan, Beauty, and the woman Liu lived together in a shack. Yu and Douguan survived the harsh winter hunting dogs that became fattened on the human corpses.

In spring 1940, they visit Dai Fenglian’s grave and encounter Black Eye and his Iron Society horsemen. Black Eye confronts Yu, blaming him for Dai Fenglian’s death. Five Troubles, the young cavalry commander, intervenes, eloquently appealing to Yu to join the Iron Society and set aside personal feuds to fight the Japanese.

The narrative shifts to a nested flashback from early 1926. After being falsely accused of being the bandit chief Spotted Neck, Yu kidnapped County Magistrate Nine Dreams Cao’s 14-year-old son and demanded 10,000 silver dollars in ransom. Little Yan, the magistrate’s enforcer, retaliated by kidnapping Dai Fenglian and Douguan. They then conducted a tense but otherwise peaceful hostage exchange on the Black Water River bridge.

Shortly after, Dai Fenglian left the distillery to arrange her mother’s funeral. A torrential three-day rainstorm trapped Yu at home, prompting him to share wine with Passion, Dai Fenglian’s 18-year-old servant.

During the rainstorm, Yu and Passion began an affair. After the storm had ended, Dai Fenglian returned and became suspicious of Passion. Three days later, Dai Fenglian announced that she would spend the night at her parents’ home, springing a trap for Yu and Passion once they resumed their affair. Dai Fenglian scratched Passion’s face and slapped Yu, who laughed at first and then slapped her back, sending her reeling. Dai Fenglian started crying. Yu then left the family home, taking Passion with him to live in Saltwater Gap.

In 1940, as Yu and Douguan ride toward Saltwater Gap with the Iron Society, Five Troubles shares his political philosophy: China needs an emperor rather than political parties, because an emperor governs the nation as his own family, while parties breed endless factional conflict.

Five Troubles reveals that his earlier intervention was deliberate: He and his comrades had pressured Black Eye to recruit Yu. He plans to help Yu usurp Black Eye’s leadership through a staged revolt, after which they will consolidate control over Northeast Gaomi Township, expand into neighboring territories, and ultimately establish an independent state with Saltwater Gap as its capital and Yu as its leader, free of Communists, Nationalists, and Japanese alike.

Yu is deeply moved by Five Troubles’ vision. Five Troubles swears Douguan to secrecy, and as they ride on, Yu embraces the plan as heaven’s will.

The narrator explains that decades later, in Hokkaido, Yu would continue to agonize over the disaster of 1928, when County Magistrate Nine Dreams Cao destroyed his 800-man bandit force. Yu escaped the Jinan massacre and walked two weeks back to Gaomi, but the memory of Dai Fenglian’s curses and slaps kept him from returning to her. Instead, he went to Passion in Saltwater Gap.

After two months in hiding, Passion told him that Dai Fenglian was now living with Black Eye. Enraged, Yu confronted them, interrupting an Iron Society ritual. When Dai Fenglian appeared with Douguan, the two former lovers traded bitter insults. Yu challenged Black Eye to a bare-knuckle duel: three punches each, with Dai Fenglian overseeing the drawing of straws. Yu won the draw and delivered three devastating blows to Black Eye’s torso, drawing blood. Black Eye theatrically spared his first two punches, then felled Yu with his third. Yu accepted defeat, vowed to return in ten years, and staggered into the wasteland. After he left, Black Eye collapsed from internal injuries, and Dai Fenglian ran after Yu, sobbing and calling his name.

The machine guns attacking both the Iron Society and Jiao-Gao regiment belong to “Pocky” Leng’s detachment. A mortally wounded Jiao-Gao soldier sacrifices his life to destroy the last machine gun emplacement with a grenade.

The narrator explains how Yu rose to leadership in the Iron Society: After a disastrous first battle exposed Black Eye’s protective sorcery for being useless against bullets, Yu consolidated power by kidnapping both Little Foot Jiang and “Pocky” Leng and ransoming each for weapons and horses. The resulting peace led to his decision to hold Dai Fenglian’s grand funeral, which the narrator identifies as a great mistake.

As Yu leads a retreat, the mortally wounded Black Eye shoots him in the neck. Yu looks back and sees Black Eye with his intestines spilling out; after they walk away, another shot rings out, and Douguan sees a small hole in Black Eye’s temple.

The next morning, Leng’s forces tie captured survivors to willow trees. An old Iron Society soldier argues bitterly with his Jiao-Gao brother-in-law over the death of his son, killed by Jiao-Gao bayonets. When Douguan kicks horse dung at Leng, Leng threatens to castrate him. Japanese troops then attack the village with artillery, imprisoning both the Iron Society and Jiao-Gao survivors. After intense fighting, the guards free the prisoners, and 80 survivors from both sides grab weapons and charge the Japanese together.