The Disciple (The Mysterious Door)

The Disciple (also titled The Mysterious Door: The Disciple, and labeled by secondhand booksellers as "The Disciple: Unlocking the Lost Secrets of Mayan Culture") is a full-length suspense novel by Sheng Dongxiao, published by Huashan Literature and Art Publishing House in 2009. The book revolves around a secret that throws the whole world into panic: the author's central premise is that today's world and humanity may have sprung from a "great and sacred experiment," and that we are merely the second generation of humans on Earth; and whoever we are, even the faithless, are destined at birth to the fate of "Disciple." The story begins with a "Mayan Arcana Journey" ten years earlier. An American expedition is unexpectedly endangered while on an activity within Country C; the victims happen upon a stone wall as smooth as glass, which draws out an ancient organization that has endured for nearly a century, "The Door," whose members call themselves Disciples. Ten years later, on the day the Asian human genome sequence map is released, an ordinary Chinese researcher, Li Ru, experiences what seems a commonplace encounter and is promptly dragged into a bizarre case: the mysterious characters the victim left on his business card before dying make him a target wanted by the Mafia and several American underworld organizations. An airmail letter from the victim's adopted daughter then forces him onto a long journey to return the ashes, carrying him almost into the lion's den. Through a chain of riddles—hieroglyphic ciphers, a missing head portrait, a missing-plate newspaper, crystal skulls, bronze statues and the "Qiankun Wooden Box"—the novel braids together archaeological secrets, transnational crime and a conspiracy about human origins, unlocking layer after layer until it reaches the truth behind the word "Disciple."