Southern Archives: Together into the Sea Abyss

“Number Twenty-Three, you've finally come home.” A string of blood sacrifices in a fishing village in Nanyang, corpses with their eyes gouged out and talismans carved into them: all point to the “Demon Fetus Project,” destroyed twenty years ago. Zhang Haiyan, an agent dispatched by the Southern Archives, thinks it's just another ordinary case involving the occult. Until the night he is ambushed at the docks, and a man in white pulls him away from a knife's edge. The man's name is Zhang Haixia. Dark red patterns wind across his body, and a crescent-shaped white mark is carved into his palm. He says, “I'm Zhang Haixia. From now on, this case is mine.” Zhang Haiyan sneers. “And why is that?” Zhang Haixia removes his bandages. The patterns on his entire arm glow hot beneath the moonlight. “Because I'm the original ‘Demon Fetus’ they're looking for.” A temple deep in the rainforest, a mother entity beneath the Sea Eye, a priestess who has lived for a thousand years in the Moon Abyss... As the truth is peeled back layer by layer, every clue points to one name: Zhang Haiqi. The eternally youthful director of the Central Archives, and Zhang Haixia's mentor. How long has she lived? Why has she allowed the “Vessel Project” to continue for twenty years? When Zhang Haixia presses a dagger to his mentor's throat, Zhang Haiqi smiles: “Kill me, and you'll never find out who the next ‘replacement’ will be.” Conspiracies, bloodlines, taboos, and a deadly trap. Nanyang is both the beginning and the end. He takes a blade for him; he gives him his blood. From the fishing village to the abyss, from vessel to human. “Number Twenty-Three” is dead. The one who lives is Zhang Haixia.