In China's southern Guangxi province, limestone peaks wall off villages that the road network never reached. Rather than build costly roads to these isolated communities, the government resettles residents on the edges of major cities, and the village of Xiao Jiang is next on the list. One villager, Yuan Feng Huang, refuses to leave. He has spent years planning to dig a road through the mountain by hand, a five-kilometer project he intended as a retirement undertaking. At 48 he is diagnosed with cancer and given a limited time to live, so he moves the plan up and starts digging now, racing to finish before his illness or the resettlement order overtakes him. The film follows the excavation itself, the physical toll on one man working largely alone, and what success or failure means for the handful of families still living in Xiao Jiang. It is a small, specific story about whether one person's labor can keep a place on the map.