The little black snake that led the fathers to the cub is my new favorite side character. That poor thing climbed several mountains to find its boss, then had to communicate through drawings and dramatic reenactments. The part where it plays dead to show the cub is injured is hilarious. Snakes being useful and cute in stories is not something I see often, and I'm loving it. 1
Is the story emotionally manipulative? Yes, absolutely. But it earns it because the situation is desperate and the characters are well-developed. I’m invested in their survival, so the tears feel earned. Not a dry eye in the house when the villagers share the salted water.
The opening scene where Chen Dian and Yan Yu activate the space-time device felt super rushed. They just step in, get dizzy, and pass out, then wake up on a grassland. I wish the author spent more time on the actual travel sensation or the transition between worlds. It was over in a paragraph. The description of the sky and grass after waking was okay but nothing special. Still, it got the story going quickly, which I guess works for some readers.
Okay, when those two skeletons disintegrated while walking and just became "part of the bone sea," that gave me chills. It's such a cold and brutal world. And the fact that he felt grateful for his own decision to rest? That's some dark humor right there. I was like "yeah, you dodged a bullet...or a disintegration."