The Seal of the Yellow Spring Eye

Written by the web novelist Xiangxi Guiwang, this book also appears under the title Sea Monster Incident Investigation Notes: The Seal of the Yellow Spring Eye. It was first serialized on platforms such as Tianya Community and Motie Chinese Network, and in 2011 Liaoning Education Press released a print edition. The protagonist, Zou Kainan, is a diver who works at sea year-round—a "water ghost," in the book's own words, who dons an iron diving suit to inspect underwater engineering projects. Because of his work he goes to sea frequently, and later, invited for a large sum by his company superior Meng Yang, he joins a team heading to an island called Yellow Spring Eye to take part in a project publicly described as "biotechnology research and development." From the moment they land, strange things happen one after another: eerie rumors circulating among the crew, unidentified creatures appearing underwater, and the evasive accounts everyone on the island gives of their origins all fill Zou Kainan with suspicion. As clues such as the "ghost-haired jellyfish," the "giant serpent of the strange island," the "submarine graveyard," and the "death diary" surface one by one, he gradually discovers that the so-called ghosts and sea monsters are not supernatural beings but possibly the product of animal gene grafting, tied to an old case of biochemical weapons research during World War II; and that Meng Yang's true purpose is not drug development but to track down hidden data left over from those experiments. His companions Wang Chenfei, Zhao Biancheng, Han Xicheng, and others each harbor secrets of their own backgrounds, and almost every one of them conceals another identity; even Zou Kainan himself may be more than the technician hired to dive. Told in first person, the book blends island adventure, historical revelation, and biochemically inflected science fiction, explaining ghost stories through the idea that "horror can be manufactured" and driving the plot with layer upon layer of identity reversals. It belongs to the strand of Chinese web suspense-thriller fiction that leans toward "scientific explanations of the supernatural."