Map of the Salt Sea Beneath the Ice Dome

Beneath the Ice Dome: Map of the Salt Sea

An introduction to an original epic novel of “Snowy Mountain Mysteries + Ancient Tomb Exploration”

📖 Story Outline

In the winter of 1984, while sorting through old Republic-era archives, the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping discovers a strange map made using “salt-crystal rubbings.” It marks not mountains and rivers, but a city that moves.

There is only one faded line of Tibetan annotation along the map's edge: “When the salt sea dries, the ice dome opens. The greedy enter and become murals.”

Kong Wu, a retired reconnaissance soldier; Shen Tang, a restorer of ancient architecture; and Tashi Dundrup, a high-altitude guide, each arrive in Lhasa for different reasons. Kong Wu was discharged after being wounded on the Laoshan front and is searching for his father, who vanished years ago. His father was a geologist who joined an expedition to Tibet in 1954 and never returned. While restoring the Potala Palace's ancient texts, Shen Tang discovered that three generations of her family had all met violent deaths under the map's curse. Tashi Dundrup, meanwhile, is bound by a secret his people have guarded for generations: deep in the Karakoram lies the “Holy City of Salt,” which resurfaces once every sixty years. And 1984 is the sixtieth year.