Shen Yu only wanted a quiet break from work. Returning to the village where she grew up sounded like the perfect excuse to escape endless deadlines, but the trip quickly drags her back into memories she never cared to revisit. Every morning her Uncle Li wanders through the village shouting about gold, the same broken sentence he has repeated for years. Most people simply call him mad. Others still whisper that he ruined his life chasing a hidden gold deposit that never existed. Shen Yu always believed the second version was just another village story, the kind that grows a little bigger every time it’s told, until she realizes almost everyone is hiding a different piece of the same past.
Before she has time to sort through those old rumors, her newspaper unexpectedly sends her to a military guesthouse under heavy security. Nobody bothers explaining why she was chosen. The officers questioning her seem far more interested in her family than her reporting experience, especially Tang Can, whose relaxed attitude does little to hide the fact that he already knows more than he is willing to say. By the time Shen Yu leaves, she has far more questions than answers, and somehow her supposedly ordinary uncle has become the center of everything.
The investigation leads back to an expedition that vanished from public memory decades ago, a rare piece of dog’s head gold that should never have existed where it was found, and a missing map that people are still searching for after all these years. Those pieces fit together slowly, never in the way Shen Yu expects, and each new discovery forces her to look at her own family differently. One of the novel’s early reveals makes it clear that Uncle Li wasn’t simply a man who lost his mind over treasure, he walked away carrying secrets that others spent decades trying to erase, which immediately changes how every scene involving him feels.
That is where the mystery really takes hold. Old notebooks, forgotten photographs, abandoned research records, and conversations with people who would rather keep the past buried all become part of Shen Yu’s search. Every answer comes attached to another loose thread, making it difficult to tell who is protecting the truth and who is protecting themselves. Even Tang Can keeps his distance for reasons that only make sense much later, and the slow shift from reluctant partners to trusted allies never overshadows the investigation itself.
