Setting: Cangnan, a fictional coastal prefecture-level city in southern China. Its four core districts are the old town, the coastal new district, the Xiling Mountains, and an abandoned military-industrial harbor. The city conceals four chapters of secret history: the Third Front construction campaign after the founding of the nation, the smuggling craze of the 1990s, the real estate crash of 2000, and the 2025 fraud scandal in the new energy industry.
Central mystery: Beginning with a series of “symbolic murders,” the story gradually uncovers a shocking conspiracy spanning 30 years, involving the political, business, and police worlds, and shaping the fates of three generations. Every case ultimately points to an underground structure the city has forgotten: the Sea Eye Project.
Main cast:
- Lu Chen, captain of the criminal investigation squad: Haunted by an unsolved case from ten years ago, he's cool-headed and obsessive, with an extraordinary sense of smell and eye for detail.
- Su Wan, criminal psychology consultant: A gifted psychologist who witnessed a horrific locked-room crime as a child and suffers from hypersensitivity to emotions.
- Wang Jianjun, veteran detective: A living map of Cangnan who knows every buried secret in the city and keeps a secret he can't tell anyone.
- Lin Xiaoya, technical police officer: A hacker-level tech expert responsible for tracing digital evidence and cracking coded symbols.
Key mysteries:
1. Why is the same set of ocean-wave symbols carved into every victim of the serial murders?
2. Why have all the members of the Sea Eye investigation team, who disappeared ten years ago, reappeared?
3. How many bodies and how much truth lie buried beneath the city?
4. Which member of the team is a mole? Who is seeking revenge? And who survived what happened back then?
