Kien and the MIA Remains‑Gathering Team drive the massive Russian Zil truck through the flooded Central Highlands, finally stopping beside a creek in the Jungle of Screaming Souls. The driver falls asleep; Kien climbs into a hammock, where the leaky tarpaulin lets rain drip onto the plastic sheets covering rows of dead bodies. Half‑asleep, Kien drifts in a night filled with eerie jungle sounds and memories of the 1969 battle in which his 27th Battalion was annihilated, the commander’s suicide, and the subsequent naming of the area as the Jungle of Screaming Souls. He recalls the altar his squad built in 1974 and the strange spirits rumored to haunt the place.

The narration shifts to the squad’s earlier two‑year occupation of the site. Near the Zil’s parking spot lies an abandoned Leprosy Village once cleared by the regiment. Lofty Thinh bravely entered, killed a large orang‑utan, and later died; the entire platoon was eventually wiped out, leaving Kien as the sole survivor. The scouts built huts along the stream’s forks and spent long rainy days hunting, trapping, fishing, and playing cards. Their card games used cigarettes, snuff, flint, rosa canina roots, and photographs as stakes. The hallucinogenic rosa canina, prized for its intoxicating vapor, is later banned by the political commissar, who orders its eradication.

During a rainy night, Can (“Rattling” Can), a thin boy from Squad 2, approaches Kien’s hammock, confesses his plan to desert, and pleads for Kien’s help. Kien rejects him, but when Can attempts to flee, the military police later find his decomposed corpse. A letter from Can’s mother reaches the platoon, confirming his death. The driver, Tran Son, explains that the jungle is haunted by the ghosts of countless dead soldiers from many units, and philosophizes about peace and war.

The team eventually leaves the jungle. While traveling, Kien reflects on his past, his longing for death, and his brief promotion to an officer‑training program, which he ultimately rejects.

Later, Kien arrives at Doi Mo hamlet, the site of his earlier training. He meets Lan, the daughter of his former god‑mother Lanh. Lan shares the tragic story of her family: both brothers killed in the war, her husband (a Tay soldier) dead in Laos, and her infant son who died shortly after birth. She urges Kien to remember that a home and a woman await him, offering a final place of peace. Kien kisses her hand, promises to return, and departs, resolving to write a novel that captures the war’s horror and his sacred duty to remember.