Kien’s Missing‑In‑Action remains‑gathering team finally reaches the Jungle of Screaming Souls in late 1975, where he endures a rain‑soaked night in a hammock above rows of dead soldiers while recalling the 1969 massacre of his 27th Battalion, the secret altar and the legends of wandering souls. Over the next two years the platoon endures the tragic encounter at the abandoned Leprosy Village, loses Lofty Thinh, and falls into a ritual of card‑playing and hallucinogenic rosa canina that is later banned. A poignant conversation with “Rattling” Can reveals his planned desertion and eventual death, and driver Tran Son offers grim reflections on the dead that populate the jungle. After the team departs, Kien visits the remote hamlet of Doi Mo, reunites with Lan—daughter of his former god‑mother Lanh—who implores him to remember a place after the war, sparking his resolve to write about the conflict. Back in Hanoi he lives in a cramped apartment, works at a magazine, is haunted by jungle memories, befriends a mute girl, struggles with addiction and existential dread, and commits himself to recording the war’s lingering ghosts.