The Whole Journey to the West Cast Joins a City Crime Mystery: High-Stakes Case Files

In a modern urban setting, criminal psychology professor Chen Xuanzang leads the “Journey West” special task force, a supernatural crime investigation unit. Its members include Sun Qitian, a forensic trace expert cast out by the system; Zhu Gang, a former award-winning undercover reporter; Sha Jing, a retired military doctor turned forensic examiner; and Bai Long, an heir to a hacker family. They specialize in supernatural and serial cases that the police cannot handle through conventional channels. Each case reflects the human themes behind one of the original story’s Eighty-One Trials, from obsession with appearance and data tyranny to cult manipulation and the corruption of capital. As the team unravels bizarre crimes, they keep getting closer to the central conspiracy of the “Longevity Society,” a secret organization looming over the entire city. The Society seeks to combine ancient arts with modern biological and digital technologies to achieve eternal consciousness, and Chen Xuanzang’s unusual psychological makeup is the key to its plan for longevity. What began as a hastily assembled, fractious alliance grows through life-and-death investigations into a team that finds redemption and personal growth. In the end, they confront the Longevity Society’s ultimate mastermind and protect the truth of human nature and the order of the city. The book follows an eighty-one-chapter structure to complete a spiritual journey of “subduing demons and driving out evil, while facing the demons within.”