Eternal Sleep Beneath the White Night

This is a Chinese Lovecraftian mystery novel. It primarily adopts Lovecraft's old-fashioned, nonfigurative style, while using local stories and cultural symbols to create a distinctly Chinese text.

The story follows marine biologist Guo Wuchen. One day, he receives word that fishermen on the Tumen River have caught what may be a new species of fish, so he leads his assistants there on a research expedition. They discover that once hauled from the water, the fish quickly takes the form of the head of the first person it sees, then emits strange syllables resembling speech. It soon rots away like a jellyfish, leaving behind bones that seem to bear some kind of symbols. After carefully documenting its features and discussing the matter with his friend Mo Wen, a scholar of ancient languages, Guo discovers a connection to an ancient dynasty that routinely carried out mass human sacrifices. Guo disappears while investigating, so Mo Wen heads to the Changbai Mountains to search for him, only to encounter one mystery after another...