Two years after Ye Zhetai’s death, Ye Wenjie is working in the Greater Khingan Mountains with the Inner Mongolia Production and Construction Corps. She is sickened by the mass logging around her, and the sight of felled trees recalls cleaning her father’s battered body. While clearing branches from a giant Dahurian larch, she notices that reporter Bai Mulin shares her grief over the destruction. Unlike workers such as Ma Gang, who treat the trees as disposable, Bai speaks of the region’s ruined streams and ecological damage, then secretly lends Ye an English copy of Silent Spring.

The book profoundly alters Ye’s thinking. As the narration explains from a much later vantage point, Rachel Carson’s argument makes Ye see that many ordinary human actions can be as destructive as the Cultural Revolution itself. From that realization, Ye reaches a far darker conclusion: humanity cannot count on its own moral awakening and may need a force from outside the human race to correct it. Four days later, when Ye returns the book to Bai, she learns he has been helping clear forest around the mysterious and heavily guarded Radar Peak base. Bai shows Ye a draft letter to Beijing condemning the Corps’ ecological destruction, and Ye copies it out in her own neat handwriting. During this quiet work, Ye briefly feels warmth and trust again, though Bai’s final question about whether she is fleeing something goes unanswered.

Three weeks later, Ye is summoned to headquarters and finds the copied letter and Silent Spring laid out as evidence. Director Zhang of the Division Political Department questions her. Ye explains that she only copied the letter for Bai Mulin, but Zhang says Bai has already claimed he merely mailed it for her and did not know its contents. The authorities denounce Silent Spring as reactionary propaganda and accuse Ye of stealing it to arm herself ideologically against socialism. Ye realizes she has no way to defend herself. The narration adds that Bai did originally write the letter out of genuine concern, but fear drove him to sacrifice Ye when the letter touched a political minefield.

The company commander and political instructor treat Ye’s case as proof of her suspect class background and supposed resentment toward the Cultural Revolution, and she is sent to division headquarters. In detention, after the other women are removed, a military court representative named Cheng Lihua visits her cell. Cheng first acts warm and maternal, then presents a document about Ye’s father’s conversations, based on reports attributed to Ye’s younger sister Wenxue. Ye understands that the material could be used to strike at people connected to sensitive national defense work, likely related to the bomb project, and that signing as a witness would help legitimize a politically lethal accusation.

Cheng promises leniency if Ye cooperates and warns that refusal could turn Ye into an active counter-revolutionary. Even under that threat, Ye says she cannot sign for events she does not know. Cheng’s kindness instantly vanishes. She methodically pours freezing water over Ye and her blanket before leaving her locked in the winter cold. As Ye begins to freeze, she hallucinates figures from her shattered life, including Wenxue, Bai, Cheng, her mother, and her father, all beneath a red flag, while darkness closes around her.