The Classic of Mountains and Seas Is a True Record

While excavating the Yin Ruins, archaeologist Lin Jue discovers a black, tube-shaped container dating back 5,200 years. When he opens it, he uncovers the truth behind the Classic of Mountains and Seas: it is not a myth born of the ancients’ primitive imagination, but a dossier on ancient biological technology that was deliberately altered and censored.

The Lingyu, with a human face and a fish’s body; the man-eating monster Youyou; the Zhulong, a thousand li long... All 400-plus strange beasts described in the Classic of Mountains and Seas once truly existed. They were biological weapons created and tamed by an ancient civilization using the art of qi, deployed in warfare, engineering, and communications. After Yu the Great controlled the floods and brought peace to the land, he sealed all the records in five underground palaces and left behind a warning written in blood: “Use no beasts as tools, nor lives as instruments. Those who defy this will surely suffer the consequences.”

Five thousand years later, the underground palaces are reopened. The Keepers of the Bamboo Slips, the New Xia Society, and transnational powers all take the stage in turn, forcing Lin Jue into a game that spans time itself. From the Yin Ruins to Kunlun, from the East Sea to the Yin Mountains, he gradually closes in on the common source of all the strange beasts: an entity known as the Source.

But the truth is far more terrifying than the technology behind the beasts: the Source is not a creator, but a door. Five thousand years ago, the ancient civilization exhausted itself sealing away a passage connected to an unknown entity. Yu the Great sealed it instead of destroying it because there are things even he could not destroy.

Now the door is being opened again.